Fifty-One: Showstorm
Author's Note: The day of the show has arrived, and Chat gets down to business helping Marinette. Except, of course, Hawkmoth has other ideas.
My head pounded mercilessly as I settled into the makeup chair; the combination of lack of sleep and the impromptu celebration with Carapace had caught up to me, and as I stared at the bedraggled image reflected back at me from the mirror, I knew my makeup artist had her work cut out for her. The paper cup in my hand was already my third coffee of the morning; early indicators had me worried there wasn't enough caffeine in the greater Paris metro area to get me through the show.
Somehow, I promised the image in the mirror, I'll get through this day. It's for Milady anyway – which makes it totally worth the struggle.
I downed the last of the cup and started to get up to pour another from the pot in the corner when the door to my trailer opened and Madge appeared. "Hey cutie," she laughed as she breezed in with her bags.
I rolled my eyes. "I'm not sixteen anymore," I said as I hugged her, laughing as always at her joke.
"Doesn't mean you're not as handsome as you were back then," she smiled.
"I didn't know you were on today," I said as she guided me back into the chair and started to look me over. Madge had been with House of Gabriel since before I was even an Agreste; she was our top artist, and though I was also the top talent, even I didn't always have the honor of getting her. "What brings you out on a Tuesday?"
"When word came down that you were doing this," she said as she unpacked her goods, sliding the ones that House of Gabriel had already provided off to the side, "I asked for the gig. I haven't done your makeup for a fashion show in a few years now, so I wanted to knock the rust off as it were."
Arching an eyebrow, I looked at her. "I'm glad I could help," I said.
She looked at me in the mirror with a smile. "I like a challenge," she said, her eyes roaming me before she turned and put her hands to my face. "Which I clearly have on my hands. What on earth have you done to yourself?"
"I've been putting in the hours getting ready for the show," I said defensively. "And… I may have helped a friend celebrate a milestone last night."
She turned my face one way and then the other, clucked, then ran a finger along my day-old stubble and clucked further. "Didn't used to have to deal with that," she muttered
That made me smile. "I did remind you I'm not sixteen," I laughed.
"True," she murmured before hooking a finger in my shirt and looking down the front. "As does that," she groaned as she looked back at me. "Have you completely forgotten you're a model?"
Despite my age, I felt a slight flush. "No," I said. "I just haven't done anything recently that didn't require a shirt," I replied, opting to leave out that I also spent a significant amount of time clad in magical black leather.
Madge rolled her eyes and turned to her bags, producing a razor and crème, then pointed me to the small bathroom at the rear of the trailer. "Go make this better while I get arranged."
I took the items from her and slid off the chair, feeling very much like I was once more a teenager but accepting the subtle rebuke in good humor. There were things one was supposed to do when one was a model, and to be perfectly frank, I'd been less and less inclined to keep up with the massive grooming regimen as I'd grown older. As I closed the door to the small space, disrobed and folded myself into the extremely tiny shower, I reminded myself that it was still an important part of my life – my career, for that matter – and resolved to be a little more diligent about it moving forward.
Who am I kidding? I thought as I got down to business. Time doing this kind of thing each day is time I can't spend with Marinette. Too bad Chat Noir isn't part of this campaign. It would make this part easier…
Sighing, I reminded myself yet again that the shelf life for a model – super or otherwise – tended to be quite short. I had maybe five more years before we'd have to find a new face for the Gabriel brand, a small window that I needed to make the most of.
Years of experience made short work of the process, and I managed to avoid nicking myself anyplace Madge couldn't easily hide with makeup. My latent feline sense of smell made the horrid scent of the shower gel more potent to me than normal, causing me to rinse a third time; it was one of the House brands that I detested and would never bring to the apartment. Father had a weird sense of what people liked in the fragrance department, stretching back to that awful perfume with my name on it. It was one of many things I'd been trying to change.
The hot water revived some part of me, and I felt more like Adrien Agreste when I re-appeared for Madge in comfy sweats. "Much better," she said as she attacked me with her waiting brush.
Thirty minutes after that, I was bronzed in tanning pigments from head to toe, my hair had been gelled within an inch of its life, and all traces of my sleepless nights had been hidden beneath enough makeup I nearly looked like I was sixteen again. Shrugging into the first outfit, I arrived backstage at the massive runway that had been crafted off to the side of the Grand Palais a fraction of a moment before the sun finally cleared the top of the glass dome. Peeking around, I could see the angle of the runway itself was perfectly set to be full of natural illumination, something that would make the outfits I was about to showcase seem all the more alluring. It was an old trick from my Father that I was not ashamed to reuse.
Marinette was there waiting for me, holding a clipboard and wearing a headset. She looked as exhausted as I felt, but a smile brightened her face as I strode over to her. "Hey kit—Adrien," she greeted, quickly covering her gaffe.
I raised my eyebrows, for it was unusual for Marinette to break character. "You deserve a long vacation after this is all over," I said as I did the traditional air kisses. I had to tamp back my inner Chat desire to planta real one on those soft lips of hers.
"Or at least a long weekend," she agreed. "You cut it kind of close," she chastised. "We're on in five. And where were you last night? I thought I'd find you at home-"
I started, for in the pre-reveal days, I had kept Marinette pretty much in the loop on any late-night carousing I might do as Chat. Rather guiltily I realized I'd never texted her I was out with Carapace. And as I started to explain myself, I also realized I had yet another secret that, technically, was not mine to share.
Oh, Hell, I thought. Screw the secrets.
"I ran into Carapace," I said softly as I pulled her away from the stage entrance and over to a small copse of trees. "He had news and afterward we went to celebrate."
Marinette looked at me, and her smile widened. "Hot damn!" she laughed.
"Wait..." I said, confused. "You knew?"
"More like suspected. Alya texted me a few days ago about the merits of peanut butter-and-pickle sandwiches-"
"Eeew," I replied, grimacing.
"-exactly! And we managed to sneak in lunch together yesterday-"
"So that's where you wandered off to," I accused, arching my eyebrow higher. I'd snuck into her workspace at Chateau Le Blanc as Chat to surprise her with lunch only to discover she'd gone out. Fortunately, her fellow designers – all well aware of who Marinette's boyfriend was – enjoyed the chicken pot pie I'd picked up from the Bakery.
"–nothing fancy, just onion soup and a baguette at the café in the lobby."
I rolled my eyes. I'd been several stories above her and missed her completely.
Marinette smiled a bit more. "She when green at, of all things, the smell of the coffee being roasting and made a mad dash to the washroom."
My eyes widened. "I take it lunch was short."
Marinette nodded. "But not before Alya managed to snarf down three ham-and-cheese croissants in addition to two bowls of soup."
I nodded. "That's not like her at all."
My girlfriend laughed. "It wasn't hard to start to wonder if she was eating for two." She looked at me after first glancing at the stage. "Cap told you? Directly?" She lowered her voice. "As Chat?"
"Yeah," I said, glancing up myself. "This might not be the best time to discuss it," I whispered.
Marinette started to reply; at that moment, the thick plywood and plastic-covered background for the runway burst into a million pieces of shrapnel; instinctively, I hurled myself at Marinette, only half hearing the tearing of the fabric of the shirt she'd spent all night creating. Covering her as best as I could, I turned my back to the falling debris, ignoring what felt like a million tiny needles as they impacted my back.
Breathing hard and blinking to clear the dust from my eyes, I hurried the two of us away from the stage and the screams, eyes darting for any kind of cover the two of us could use to transform. "Left or right?" I yelled over the increasing din of destruction behind us.
"Right!" Marinette cried as she pushed away from me and made a mad dash to a small gazebo that was still standing.
I waited long enough to see the pink flash had gone unobserved by anyone else before running left and to the loading dock for the Grand Palais; bolting down the ramp, I transformed at the bottom and leapt upward and back into the fight, scrabbling my way across the stonework of the building. Up, up and higher up I tossed myself in an attempt to gain some altitude and, hopefully, some perspective on what we were facing.
Running along the edge of the glass rooftop, I crouched at the edge and looked down at what was left of our big day. Piles of rubble were everywhere, but thankfully there was no evidence of anyone injured. The screams had faded away as those working the shoot had scattered from the scene. Perhaps the only good thing to come from Hawkmoth's incessant attacks was a pretty standard get-away-as-fast-as-you-can mentality from our fellow Parisians.
My feline ears caught a whisper on the wind and I turned just in time to see the graceful form of my bespotted partner as she landed softly next to me. "I haven't seen so much as a whisker of an akuma," I replied to the unspoken question. "I was about to go do a more detailed inspection. Would you care to join me, Milady?"
Her unexpected pause caught me.
"...Milady?" I prompted, hands immediately going to her arms. "What's wrong?"
She wordlessly pointed across the plaza, and I followed her finger to see a particular blue-and-feather themed costumed figure proudly standing on the gargoyle of a building across the street from the Grand Palais. Mauyra had to have caught sight of us, for she playfully waved her fan in our general direction before leaping up and over the apex of the roof, scurrying down the other side as fast as she could go (even in those insanely high heels of hers).
"Lovely," I groaned. "That can only mean-"
The massive crash from what was left of the stage had me snap my wild mane back in that direction. This time it took mere seconds for my masked feline eyes to pick out the several-story-tall sentimonster; it looked a bit like a top heavy wedding cake, or at the very least as though someone had haphazardly stacked bolts of fabric one upon the other with no rhyme or reason. A thimble-esque hat sat upon the uppermost layer, and it had definitely begun to move toward our spot on the Grand Palais.
"Is it a two-fer or a three-fer," I asked as we backed up a bit.
"I don't follow," Ladybug replied as she snagged an overhang to pull herself up to the next tier of the cupola.
I followed her on the baton. "The two-fer would be an akuma inside that sentimonster. A three-fer is Mayura trying to tempt us to split up."
My partner nodded. "That had crossed my mind," she said. "But we both know she's too much to handle alone." She narrowed her eyes at the incoming sentimonster. "God, I hate these things. Finding the akumatized object is child's play compared to the amuck."
"I completely agree," I said, turning toward her again. "So, let's take out this-"
"Chat! Look out!" Ladybug cried.
Running purely on instinct, I vaulted up and into the sky, twisting around to face the sentimonster as I rose. A bolt of what looked like an ugly plaid from another century sailed through where I'd just been standing and smashed one of the elegant panes of glass in the cupola, raining shards down into the space below. I heard Ladybug zipline away to the right as I came down into a pounce-crouch with my ring hand extended, palm first, at the critter.
I don't know how I knew I could do it, but I found myself watching in detached amazement as a tiny ball of Cataclysm destruction formed and shot away from me, nailing the sentimonster on the thimble. I didn't have time to digest it turning to dust before I'd managed to get off three more of those beauties, taking out several sections of the creature before it hurled another part of itself at me.
A carefully aimed shot and the resulting dust blew away ten meters in front of me.
By that point, I'd leapt to a new position, following Ladybug's path. Sliding down my baton to street level, I landed next to a stunned but smiling Ladybug. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she asked as she spun up her yo-yo.
I flipped around to face the sentimonster and hurled a half-dozen more Cataclysms at it; in seconds, I had reduced it to a pile of ash, up from which the small amuck feather started to fly away. Ladybug nabbed it with her yo-yo as I stood up next to her.
"That it's a two-fer?" I replied as we began to sprint after Mayura.
"No," she laughed. "Whether to be excited you have that new ability or terrified to the core."
"Terrified," I replied honestly. "Completely, totally, terrified."
Ladybug chuckled. "Let's see if we can make Mayura feel the same."