"I am so sorry, Milady!"
The keening cry echoes over the rooftops of Paris during their evening meeting, arranged by a simple call using the bug-signal. While they had agreed after the New York debacle, for which he is still trying to work towards redemption, that their respective signals were to be used in emergency situations, this nightmarish offence that is likewise wholly his responsibility must classify.
He's spent the last few minutes trying to work up the courage to apologize while she wrested his Ladybug toy from its packaging and began to experiment with its accessories and dance it along the rooftop.
"It's not a big deal, Chat," she assures, shifting the little piece of plastic in her hand. It mimes a stroll down a rooftop ledge, stuck arm-joint creaking along with the warp of flexible material as little Ladybug tries, and fails, to raise her arm up and wave. The real Ladybug frowns, plucking up her little self and bringing it to eye level. "It's hardly something that you have to apologize for; you didn't design them."
"Still, I was the one who came up with this ridiculous idea. I should have known that a company like Hasbro wasn't right for this kind of thing," he wails, smacking his fist into the meat of his thigh and drooping. "I should have read the contracts more carefully- or – or something! You deserve better than that."
Tongue now stuck half out of her mouth, she's fiddling with the butterfly joint on little Ladybug's shoulders, thumb to the flexible hair, threatening to snap the wire-thin connection of a pig-tail with unpainted Ladybug hair-ties.
Speaking of hair, several strands had been torn from her pigtails during a rooftop game of tag before they settled in for a snack, chat, and review of their mass-market figures, and it suits her. Looking a little disheveled and liberated.
With a huff, she turns to favour him with an indulgent smile.
"Did our part of the proceeds go to akuma-relief charities?"
"Well," he demurs, undeserving of the positive reaction that she's begging, eyes shimmering like a warm stream in the sun, to be able to bestow upon him because she knows that the proceeds for preorders have already been deposited. They attended the Hasbro executive's photo-op themselves, after all. "Sixty percent of them did; the rest was divided up between some charities for the homeless and animal shelters."
Allowing mini-bug to rest on her thigh, she takes his hand, fingers interlocking.
Holding hands always makes him think back to one of his earliest memories when, on one of their rare excursions outside of the mansion, the guttural gravel rumble of car engines, shouts and hollers from drivers and pedestrians, rotten-egg stench from the Seine, and the people, throngs and throngs of bodies, had him looking up to his mother, his lip quivering. She smiled, and enveloped his chubby hand in her own to guide him across the street.
He hadn't let go, so neither did she.
In that moment, he knew that she'd never let him get lost.
As long as he held on tight, he was safe.
He just had to hold on tight.
He just has to hold on.
But, of course, she let go, and so did he.
"That was the only important part of the contract," Ladybug continues, dragging him back so that all that he can feel and all that he needs is the pressure of her fingers and the warmth that's starting to bleed through their gloves. "That's all that matters, Chaton. "
The flesh on the bridge of her nose scrunch, mask bunching up cutely as she scowls. "Except for how people are treating your figure."
"It's perfectly fine, Milady. He's a pretty worthle- ack!" The exclamation is more an expression of shock than pain as she bears down on his hand, bones flexing and groaning with the pressure of her grip.
"Bad kitty," she reprimands, letting him loose to shake the feeling back into his palm.
They sit in silence for a few moments, the radiating heat of her palm dissipating with the little ache that's nothing compared to the one in his heart – the one that's sitting about two feet to his right, ignoring him as she focuses on the stubborn arm-joint again, torquing it like a stuck winch.
He hurts her when he tries to take the blows, or when he rains them down on himself, and the apparent sulking petulance on her part, a rare demonstration of some childish affectation that doesn't suit his Lady, is her way of telling him that.
No one gets to hurt him – not really. Not when it matters. He sniffs, slicking the back of his forearm against his nose and averting his gaze to focus on the dingy rooftop brickwork for a moment while she pretends not to notice, gives him a little dignity.
No one gets to hurt him - not even himself.
Though he's more than certain she could unlock the secrets of the universe – most of which are to be found in the fathomless depths of her eyes – if only she applied herself, he still flicks a claw towards the quaking, frustrated fingers that are trying to wrench the shoulder into place.
"Ugh-" That's part uncertainty and part effort to clear the fiery lump from his throat as he tries to apologize, but doesn't have the words after too many manufactured concessions to his father. "Stuck joints usually get loosened up with some heat, like with boiling water."
The obstinate joint still refuses to move until she, rather selfishly if justifiably, Lucky Charms a battery-powered hair dryer in a spectacular burst of Ladybugs and lightning and loosens up the wiry thin arms that almost immediately fall limp, floppy. A whirring gust batters his sensitive ears, pinning them back, as she hits it from all angles, circling the joint, before plopping the hair dryer to the ground and finally arching little Ladybug's arm upwards to give him that wave with a malleable and spindly-looking limb.
"There we go. She's perfect." What she's really saying is that he's perfect and maybe that love is enough.
Seemingly satisfied with her victory, as if Ladybug triumphing over any obstacle, including her miniature self, had ever been in question, she proffers the little figure to him. When it drops into his palm, she winks and ribs him with an elbow, forgiveness and apology alike.
That, though, is not enough.
"But look at her hair, and – and her face!" Chat's lament seems to have no effect on her, save for the little tremulous giggle. It baffles and boggles that she doesn't mind this. She tucks the loose hair behind an ear, still grinning down at the toy, making light of the insult in his hands.
"It's not exactly the most flattering colour combination, I'll grant you," she hums as she starts to gather up the remaining foil-wraps for their homemade tuna sandwiches with butter before the mayo because it kept the bread from getting soggy, she said.
And little Ladybug is blue in more ways than one. Blue hair! Why blue hair and not the lustrous raven tresses that he's admiring out of the corner of his eye even now while she stuffs the trash, other than him, into a recyclable paper bag?!
But worse yet, the skin tone.
Clearly, Hasbro had not attempted to make use of the face-printing technology that was the staple of their Black Series and Marvel Legends lines, because the expression on little Ladybug is a lopsided mess. Paired yet mismatched splotches of pink mar her cheeks, a sickening contrast that highlights the white, pale, chalky and Caucasian, of her base skintone, and the blue pupil-less, off-center eyes.
Affronts to good taste are not uncommon in advertisements and media campaigns; Adrien Agreste can attest to that reality easily enough when even his pasty-white-bread self is airbrushed into oblivion to create a cherubic counter-point to the noir tones of certain outfits, but for a half-Asian super heroine?!
This is not what the promotional shots looked like!
It's an abomination and feels so racist that he should go crawling into an ally somewhere to start spitting and hissing like a cat in the night.
God, what has he done to her?!
"You're really not... upset?" he asks as his thumb traces over the blob of shapeless, smooth plastic that doesn't capture his Lady's cheekbones and obliterates the jaw and chin structure.
"Not in the least, Chat." She shrugs with a little hiccupy laugh, winking at him to boost his spirits, he knows. "What does it matter if my figures are a little off-colour?" A playful wink does improve his mood somewhat. "In more ways than one."
He has to wonder whether she understands and appreciates the depths of the insult that has his skin flaming, heated blood efflorescencing under his actually pale cheeks. The thought that his offence on her behalf is somehow patronizing or itself dismissive has him stuffing little Ladybug back into her packaging for the trip home while Ladybug rises to the increasingly-frantic warning klaxon of her Miraculous.
A languorous stretch of her arms above her head and limbering of back muscles with a smooth, acrobatic twist leaves him dry-mouthed, sliding his tongue along his lips to savour the last remnants of the treats that he'd been enjoying on their rooftop picnic non-date.
Regardless, though, as he bundles up his figure and bids his Lady a somewhat forlorn good evening before parkouring his way over Paris on his way back home, he resolves to fix this.
Somehow, Chat Noir is going to ensure that his little Lady is just as beautiful as his human one, at least after he's finished throttling some Hasbro executives and designers, while also ensuring that the advertising representative from Figma knows in no uncertain terms that this debauched massacre of good taste is not to be tolerated from that company when they release their version in a few months.
Yes.
Something must be done.
He only wishes that his brain wasn't so fixated on self-recrimination for the abomination that he's carting around in his pocket that actually developing a course of action seems impossible.
What is he going to do about this mess?
It's only as he slips into his room and dispels his costume, looking towards his shelf of action figures, a display that had grown and shifted as his renewed interest led him to pull out some of his old Transformers and arrange them in an artful diorama, that he comes up with the solution.
A hasty bust of vigour has him flying towards his computer chair to call up one of his favourite action figure reviewers who creates custom collectibles, embarking on a mindbogglingly complex journey that takes him to all four corners of Youtube as he's exposed to a whole new world of hobbies and enthusiasts.
But the answer is right there in the pixels of his computer screen as he grins and whips out a pad to begin taking notes from a beginner's tutorial.
He's going to transform his little Lady.
Adrien Agreste has the money to bump himself to the head of the line for custom figures from any artificer of articulated art on the internet, but Chat Noir's apology must be hand-crafted.
Or hand-painted.
And maybe he can give Marinette her Ladybug figure too if the prototype pans out.
After all, Marinette is such a good and supportive friend that she deserves no less than the best he can offer.