Chapter 6: Despair Bear(Keith's POV)
It has been a week since he came to Paris through mysterious means. Adrien has accepted the lie he told in class on the first day of school.
Keith sighs, Blondie is throwing a party at her hotel. He has tried to get on her nice side, but so far the blonde just doesn't care about him. She only cares about Adrien, his friend.
Why, though? Adrien has shown disgust to his childhood friend all throughout the week and whenever Adrien has free time he goes hunting with Alya and Nino to find the missing Marinette. Still this party is dull. Adrien declined the invitation to come as he wants to dedicate all the free time he isn't hanging out with friends to finding Marinette.
The boy is lovesick and he can't see that. Truly living in the Mansion and never going to actual school and making his own friends has taken away the boy's ability to socialize properly.
He only came to try and make Chloe his friend. All this week she's shown that he's like him in a way. She only keeps Sabrina and Adrien close while she pushes away other students and is mean to them. Now Keith was never mean to students unless they started a fight or said something bad about him, but the pushing away part is so like him before Shiro, his 'brother', came into his life.
And it's hurting her. Blondie is confident but if you chip away at her confidence you'd probably find someone who has issues with her mom or dad. And the mayor really spoils her, same with the principal. He's heard the stories from the three friends of his about what Blondie's done.
Out of the corner of his eye he notices that Chloe stomps out of a hallway and into the party furious. And embarrassed. But mostly anger. Well now she's acting in character. Whatever inspired to throw the party anyway and to kiss his cheeks, and let anyone else do the same to her? Was it because of the fire department issue?
Mr. Dupain-Cheng had been nice enough to continue his baking lessons with his daughter missing. Someone had called the fire department and pulled the fire alarm. Since no one fessed up they all had to mop the floors. Blondie got off it because she threatened to call the mayor.
Come to think of it, Adrien had said something to her while they were cleaning and Chole had left in the same huff of anger as she did a few minutes ago.
Jeez, Chloe really loves Adrien to try and be nice to people.
Well might as well go and comfort her. But before he can do that a teddy bear attacks Sabrina and Sabrina starts to chase Blondie with a hairbrush.
Blondie ducks behind Kim and then the bear just moves to attack him. So being the brave person that he is, he quickly grabs Chloe and carries her bridle style away from everyone who was attacked by the purple teddy bear.
The bear follows them leaving everyone in the room.
"Chloekins you have been naughty and Despair Bear is not happy with you."
Despair Bear? That's seriously his name. He then puts Chloe on the ground and turns around to face Despair Bear. Luckily he stowed away his knife in case he would be caught in an akuma attack.
Keith fights the teddy bear(he's not going to use Despair Bear as that's a ridiculous name). He manages to cut a string off of the bear before Chat Noir decides to show up and tackle the teddy bear. He checks to see if Blondie is still behind him and she is. And she's looking at him in pure amazement.
Well everyone hates her, so of course someone saving her of their own free will would be a miracle to her.
"Keith get Chloe to the roof! I have a plan to unravel this teddy bear once and for all!"
Keith obeys and grabs Chloe by the arms and starts to race up the stairs and they break out onto the roof of the hotel. He turns around to see Chat Noir holding the teddy bear by the scruff. "Let's tie him to one of the umbrellas!" shouts Chloe to Chat Noir.
His green eyes show annoyance but he does as she says. Keith helps her tie the string he severed onto the umbrella. "Blondie keep spinning we have company!''
Keith fights Alya with his experience in hand to hand combat fighting galrans with his team. Alya gets some good blows in, but in the end his experience with hand to hand combat defeats her.
His mouth has started to bleed as another one of Teddy's bitten victims starts to swing blows at him. He punches Kim's face with a good right hook, making his face bruise. Keith then tries to dodge Kim's swings until one of his punches sends him flying into the water filled pool. He gasps for breath in the water and starts to swim upward towards the light.
His head breaks the surface and finds that the akuma has been destroyed. As everyone is staring with confused looks. He pushes himself out of the pool and flips over onto his back.
"Keith you should've just let Despair Bear get his revenge on Chloe. She made us clean the whole school without her. And she's the one who called the fire department!"
He stands up and holds his left arm, as Alya or Kim must have made it break or something when she hit it earlier and his jaw hurts. And all of the class seems to be nodding in agreement to Lila's statement.
"Well I couldn't do that! She was in trouble and I had to help. It's.."
"There's no reason for you to help her! Sure she threw this party as an apology but she got someone akumatized! That just proves that she will never be able to change, just like a bee who can't change their stripes. She will always sting us, no matter what!"
Rage boils up inside of him. Adrien even acted the same way and he won't defend her. And Chat Noir seems to have gone away. There's no reason for them to act like this!
"You also got hurt protecting her, your mouth is bleeding, you're holding your left arm and you've got bruises. And what do you get for that? Nothing, nothing at all!" Lila sneers.
Something inside him snaps.
"I don't care if she says thank you or gives me a reward! I don't care about rewards for saving people! And I don't care that she's mean, cruel and selfish! I just want to be her friend because I don't see all of that. I see a woman who is smart at figuring out solutions to problems, I see her trying hard to be nice and kind, I see a confident young lady who deserves people who actually try to be nice to her instead of treating her like how she treats you! And maybe she changes, maybe not. But I'm willing to give it a chance! So if you all are going to be stupid human beings than I won't be friends with all of you anymore and my only friend, if she will have me will be Chloe! Because at least she doesn't berate me for saving her! We're done here."
He walks away and leaves stunned people behind. Chloe really is like him. He knows that after spending a week in her class, but people really do hate her for no reason other than she was mean to them. Got out of cleaning up after herself and has caused some akumas! Everyone disgusts him. Lila more so because he could tell immediately from Alya that she's hiding the truth about her connections because no teenager has that many and Lila hasn't provided proof of her connections.
But whatever. He's just a misguided teenager to the class now. Who probably has anger issues. And goes about saving people who in their eyes doesn't deserve to be saved.
Whatever. He won't talk to Adrien at all, because deep down he hates the teen for not showing a little more kindness to Blondie unless he apologizes cause he knows the boy isn't that great at social stuff yet.
"Keith! Wait up!"
He looks behind him and sees Blondie.
"Hello Blondie,"
Blondie gasps for breath, and shows her hand to him giving him one finger to say one minute.
"Thanks for what you said back there and for saving me from my butler's wrath. I shouldn't have fired him, but he showed in front of everyone and they laughed at me,"
"Really I wasn't paying attention. I was more focusing on my own internal struggles instead of enjoying your Apology Party."
"It's fine, I didn't want to hold it anyways. It was all Jean, whatever his last name is, idea. But um, I was surprised when you cradled me in your arms to escape him."
"I was thinking quickly, you were in trouble and I was just helping you."
"But even the superheroes don't want to save me half the time. They pretend but I know they don't like me. They only save me because they have to."
"Well I don't hate you. I mean sure you're mean, but we all go through that phase where we're mean to everyone. I did when I was younger.."
"You did!?"
"Yep. My mom left me and my dad after I was born. So I started to push people away and be mean to them. I was the loner at school. But one day a man I like to call my brother helped me out of that phase. I was still a loner and didn't make friends but he and my dad were the only ones I needed. My brother also helped me to work to my potential so I stopped getting into fights and making things hard on my classmates. He disappeared a few months before my father died. And now I live with my cousins the Agrestes."
After a week it's been surprising to know that the lie has become easier to tell to people.
"I figured, after all you and Adrien were buddy buddy before today and you had fencing lessons with him on Friday.,"
"He was your childhood friend yet he didn't stick up for you! He makes my blood boil whenever I think of when he could have been nicer to you. But I will forgive him and if he apologizes I might even be friends with him again."
"Well I guess now we're friends. And Sabrina's not my friend either. She joined the rest of the class and went home down the elevator."
"Too bad. Guess that means tomorrow I should ask if I can switch seats. I bet Sabrina's going to ask too."
"Heh probably."
"You know I think whoever gave the miraculous to Ladybug and Chat Noir should give one to you. Because you are smart and handled yourself well under pressure from that bear."
"Well they should give one to you as well. You fought well for being the same age as me. And you even slashed Alyas cheek and gave Kim a bruise. I bet they won't forgive you."
Keith laughs, "I bet."
They start laughing together at the thought of Alya or Kim getting their revenge on them and start walking down the stairs, arms embraced on each other's shoulders.
Master Fu's POV
He watches uptop of the stairs. That Keith boy is something. Even Marinette couldn't forgive Chloe of her trepasses. Perhaps it is time to give the boy that replaced one of the best miraculous holders a miraculous of his own and Chloe one as well.
He got here because he followed an akuma as apparently Hawkmoth was so sure that Chloe would end creating negative energy and he is glad he did so. He watched humans with no powers help Chat Noir defeat an akuma. He was worried he wouldn't be able to find Chat Noir another partner as he almost lost to an akuma three days ago.
But now he has two candidates in mind. Chloe definitely gets the bee miraculous and Keith the tiger. As the bee represents Chloe's sometimes stinging personality and the Tiger has the power of exaltation, which means to lift up and happiness and Keith definitely exalted Chloe and made her happy.
Ah, those two would make great superheroes.