Marinette hastened up the stairs, leaving the chattering candlestick and talking clock far behind her. She slowed as she reached the landing, stopping to spin around and examine the half-lion, half-man beasts that stood between columns of marble, holding the world on their backs. There was some sort of agony she had seen in the Beast's eyes that matched their looks. For a split second, she wondered if perhaps his bouts of anger were caused by something far more harrowing… Perhaps she ought to have offered him some more leeway. Perhaps she shouldn't be sneaking around his castle against his direct wishes.

Still, her curiosity got the better of her. Why must she keep away from the West Wing? What was housed there that was so utterly important that she could not see it?

Continuing down the hall, she passed dragons holding spears within their clawed grips, snakes entwining sconces, and sinister looking carvings of sharp-winged butterflies. There were smashed mirrors, broken vases, and the long carpet beneath her feet was ragged, torn, and practically missing in large sections. It looked like a natural disaster had wrecked its way down this hall. And at the very end were large, menacing, dark wood doors, practically painted black in their shadows.

The door handles formed a snarling lion face as they shut together. Marinette reached out to touch them, and then yanked her hands back. Bad idea. This was a bad idea, wasn't it? Every fiber of her being convinced her it was. She looked behind her. Were there eyes on her? No. No one was there. Just long, empty shadows. It was eerily quiet. She could no longer hear any noise from the furniture come to life. Turning back, she reached out again. If no one wanted her in this wing, they would have locked the doors.

They didn't.

With a heave, she yanked one side of the twin doors open, and peeked inside the expansive room. The damage and destruction of the hall was nothing compared to the mess that faced her. The grand bed at the center of the room had been smashed to the smallest of pieces, the frame just barely bent inwards to support scraps of fabric that had once formed the canopy over top. Other furniture was likewise destroyed, turned over, and littered around the room. Marinette crept inside this visual cacophony, the door softly banging shut behind her.

As she explored, her eyes landed on a painting, clawed through most viciously, though the intelligent green eyes of a long-forgotten face remained hanging in the center of the frame. Before she could look closer, something even more fascinating caught her attention. A pink glow out in front of the broken balcony doors, trapped under a glass dome on a small, sturdy table- the only piece of furniture left standing, unbroken and untouched.

Again, she approached. The glow was coming from the flowers on a branch of cherry blossoms, floating lightly in the air under the glass covering. A few petals littered the table below where the branch floated. Tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear, Marinette pursed her lips, and then reached out to pluck the glass dome off the table. But before her hands even grazed the cool, smooth glass, there was a grinding sound.

Startling, Marinette whirled to face the balcony door. Previously bent inward and made of broken wood, a cold metal wall had shot from the ground floor through its structure, breaking it entirely, but closing her in and sucking away the moonlight which she had seen by. Now there was just the pink glow, and also a whiring all around her, and it felt like about fifty small men were doing a jig down her spine. Marinette shot towards the door she had entered by, stumbling and falling over multiple pieces of furniture, scraping her arms and legs about a million times by the time she made it across the humongous room.

Pushing on the door, she found it stuck. Not even stuck, but immovable. She pulled on the door handle, pressed down, tried to pull backwards in the direction it was not supposed to go, and then pushed all her weight against it to move it forward. It. Would. Not. Budge. Finally ceasing her useless efforts, Marinette cried out in great panic.

"Help! Help, please, help! I'm stuck in here!"

No one heard her, of course. Because, though not to Marinette's knowledge, there was now a thick layer of steel surrounding the West Wing.

Meanwhile, in a completely different room of the Agreste Castle, pottery, armoires, plates, bowls, and teacups all bustled around two long, grey consoles. Doing the best they could™ with their lack of human appendages they pressed buttons, toggled levers, and looked reeeeeeal close at gauges that meant one thing or another. A trio of forks was busy in a corner trying to assuage rolls of paper on which very important numbers® were written that were shooting uncontrollably out of a long thin slot. Obviously, given that they were forks, they weren't doing very well.

The Beast sat at the center of this mayhem, squinting at a tiny screen laying flat in front of him, and then looking up at a larger one that was visible to the whole room. He was pushing buttons and spinning dials just like everyone else.

Tottering across the top ridge of the control panel was Plaggsworth, a clock who looked an awful lot like a cat, only accentuated by his grumpy and lazy personality. Stopping in front of the Beast, he drawled, "We'll get visuals of the West Wing in t-minus thirty seconds. Besides that, everything looks good, boss."

The Beast looked up. "T-minus? What does that mean?"

Plaggsworth shrugged. "I dunno. Ancient scroll said it."

Recalling the ancient scroll, the Beast whipped his head around to face Wayzzrobe. "And you're sure this will work, Wayzzrobe?"

The living wardrobe nodded the head he didn't have and flung open the doors in his chest (kinda mimicking hand motions? but they'd be, like, really short, stubby, flappy hands) wherein resided a very old and very important looking scroll. Wayzzrobe weazed in an educational voice, "Yes, my prince, it is all as has been stated in the ancient scroll. Our best bet of removing the curse is to send the West Wing into space. Because, as we all know, love is very complicated. Like a square kind of complicated."

Plaggsworth gave a flat look and the Beast looked confused, but they were both distracted by a general gasp and a shout from Tikkiere. On the large screen, now visible was a blurry interior shot of the West Wing, and through the fuzz they could see Marinette banging on the door in the background.

"She's in there! Why? How?! Did no one lock the doors?" Tikkiere turned her waxy head (she's a candle) to glare at Plaggsworth.

"Sugarcube, I'm a clock. A tiny clock. I can't lock doors."

They both looked at the Beast, the only one clearly tall enough (and with relatively functional hands, though they tended to tear everything they touched) to complete such a task. But given he was as annoyingly oblivious as Adrien is in canon, plus his totally-not-out-of-character-what-are-you-talking-about bursts of rage, no one could really expect anything from him. Currently he had a vaguely worried-but-blank look that gave the illusion of intelligence.

Wayzzrobe gave a groan, and admonished, "The countdown is about to begin, there's no going back."

Plaggsworth shrugged again, without caring. "Well, we can do without her."

Adrien (the Beast) nodded at the logic of that argument while Tikkiere made an :O face (a weird look on her, given that she was a candle… she's not a bouncy ball anymore! she's, like, rectangular! no, I can't imagine it either) but she was also too indifferently french to attempt to do anything about Marinette's well-being.

Adrien leaned back, putting his clawed feet up on the control panel, waiting patiently without guilt for the West Wing to shoot up into space and the curse to evaporate him back to his handsome-golden-haired-prince form (cuz he's a giant lion-man right now, can you visualize it?). No, he's not selfish, this Adrien just has zero brain cells. Like, "will probably end up married to Chloe" kind of zero brain cells (not the "believing-this-scheme-to-send-the-curse-to-space-will-work-even-though-that's-preposterous" kind of zero brain cells- trust me, it's gonna work. It was in an ancient scroll. Those are always trustworthy).

Back in the West Wing, Marinette had fallen against the doorframe, looking really sad and distraught cuz she was (wait a minute before you guys stab me for making her sad, there's more), and getting really scared by the automated anachronistic voice that was now echoing around the room in a countdown from ten.

"10… 9… 8… y'all get it… ooh look now we're at 3… 2… 1…"

And there was no "Blast Off" because that'd be too cheesy but the West Wing did indeed blast off into outer space and somehow the forces of nature didn't smash Marinette into pieces like the furniture littered around her. Nah, she made it safely into outer space and though she was crying and sad still, she began to float and that was really weird, so it distracted her from her sad drama.

Floating around the room, avoiding pieces of floating furniture, and boy were there a lot of those, the Beast sure made a mess, Marinette made her way to the glowing cherry blossom branch, which was now floating in mid air too. She plucked it out of the air, and then there was a sound, which was really scary cuz it had been super quiet for a while now besides her own blubbering.

That sound was a sort of metal carving sound and then a wooden carving sound, as across the room, a hole was cut through the door to the West Wing and a really handsome alien floated in as all the air and pieces of furniture were sucked out. The laws of the universe still weren't behaving properly around Marinette, so she was fine, and she and the handsome alien ended up floating closer to each other (probably in a really pretty, spinny, romantic-drama-type way).

"You're so handsome. I can't breathe."

Luka the alien nodded with a soft smile. "Yeah, that's right, I took away your necessity to breathe so you can survive out here in outer space. What are you doing up here, btw?"

Marinette faltered between having a mental breakdown and pretending this was not affecting her whatsoever. She chose the latter. "I have literally no clue."

"That's alright. I can help you get situated. This is my space rabbit," Luka shot his hands forward, holding a rabbit (that he pulled out of thin air, but not like a magic trick, more like a continuity error) incredibly inappropriately (like with his hands around its waist: kids, DON'T DO THIS, everyone holds rabbits wrong, you gotta support their back feet, but it's fine in this context because Luka has a space rabbit and space rabbits are nothing like real rabbits except they look identical). "I don't have a name for him yet, you want to name him?"

Marinette got really hyper. "Ooh, you should name him Fluff, or Bunnix, or maybe Sass? Hmm, I dunno."

Luka laughed all charming like, and patted Marinette on the shoulder. "It's alright, we can name him later. C'mon, do you want to meet my alien family?"

Marinette nodded enthusiastically and took Luka's hand (she was still holding the cherry blossom branch because idk symbolism though the rabbit might have continuity errored out of there again or maybe Luka was still holding it inappropriately, I mean who really cares) as he led her floating out into outer space towards a pirate-ship-looking-craft in the distance aw isn't that nice what a lovely happy end with no questions left to be asked whatsoever amiright?

A/N: Um, so, yeah. April Fools! Pff. Oh, and if you're upset cuz you kinda actually wanted some Miraculous B&tB!AU (I mean even I was having fun thinking out how the AU would work and this was a crackfic XD), I have a semi-solution: my fic, Black Claws and Red Dots kinda has a Beauty-and-the-Beast vibe! And it's already finished, so you can read straight through it~ Anyways, shameless self-promo aside, this was just me taking a break from other fic chapters to write something dumb, I hope you're all doing well, hope you enjoyed my lame bs, and have a lovely day!