"There's no way I passed," Marinette whimpered, her head hung in discouragement. Her and Alya made their way down the school's front steps. "I could barely understand a word on that test..."
"Girl, don't sweat it, really." Alya put her hand on Marinette's shoulder. "Ms. Bustier already said it was just a quick refresher to prepare us for the real thing later this week."
"But…that wasn't what she had us study for at all!" Marinette protested. "It wasn't even the same subject. What the heck does Egyptian history have to do with geometry?"
Alya pursed her eyebrows as they reached the bottom of the steps, joining the rest of the students at the front of the building waiting for their rides. She looked off to the side and back at Marinette. "You mean from last week's test?"
"Huh?" Marinette faced her friend. "N-no…?"
"Mari, we already had our geometry test, remember?" Alya put a hand on her hip.
"What? No, that's impossible!" Marinette argued. "I would know if we'd already taken it."
"Well, apparently you wouldn't, 'cause you specifically called me after school that day to tell me you got a perfect score."
"I did?" Marinette pressed her hands together in a short lived moment of joy, before it was drowned back out by her resuming confusion.
"What's up with you today?" Alya said, frowning. "Really, girl, you gotta start getting better sleep. Keep this up and you'll probably forget your own name."
Marinette sighed in defeat. "Yeah, you're right."
"Well, I was gonna ask you to come over and help me write my bit for the Ladybug special this week, but that can wait until tomorrow. You should rest today." She turned, making her way through the students towards the sidewalk.
Being recognized for her work on the Ladyblog, Alya was offered a featured time slot in a public tribute event to Ladybug and Chat Noir, celebrating a whole year of them saving Paris. It was going to be a televised event, hosted by the TV news channel, and was being held in front of Hotel de Ville. She remembered when Alya called her with the news last week, beside herself with excitement.
Her best friend stopped, realizing Marinette wasn't following her. They usually walked home from school together before separating their paths about halfway.
"You coming?" she asked.
"My dad is going to pick me up today, actually," Marinette told her. She had texted her father in between classes, asking him to pick her up from school. Her energy levels were so low, she knew forcing herself to endure a trip home by foot would be unbearable.
"That's probably for the best." Alya nodded, looking somewhat relieved. "Well, I'll see you tomorrow then." She began to turn away, glancing back at her one more time as she began walking. "Hey, you're still able to make it to the event, right? It's on Saturday."
"Of course, I wouldn't miss it!" Marinette waved as Alya slowly disappeared from sight after running up to Nino and pecking him on the cheek.
She edged closer into the quickly shrinking crowd of students, crossing her arms tightly and counting down the seconds until her father arrived. She'd barely survived this trainwreck of a school day, but it was finally over and she was so close to being home. She couldn't wait until she was snug in her room, where she could finally get some peace and quiet and some time to think.
Though, it's not like relaxing in her room would really be the same anymore.
"Hey, so Alya and I have been talking, and we were thinking of arranging a day with everyone this Thursday after school, and we could probably go get ice cream or something," Nino was telling Adrien, just a few feet away from Marinette. "It could be a fun way to take your mind off things. But I just wanted to make sure you were cool with it first."
"That sounds great actually," Adrien said, hesitantly. He squinted one eye a bit. "But…is there anyway we could move it a day? The funeral is on Thursday..."
"Oh, sorry, bro. I had no idea," Nino said instantly, eyes widening a bit. He put his hand on Adrien's shoulder. "Maybe Friday?"
"That would be perfect. Thanks for doing that for me, Nino."
Nino responded with his typical spiel about "bros always being there for their guys" as his family's car pulled up in front of them, honking. "I'll spread the word, then," he promised, trotting away with a wave. Adrien waved back, watching as Nino's car drove away.
His eyes fell on Marinette, who was staring forward, doing a double-take on what she'd just heard.
Marinette noticed his gaze on her and looked up at him, dumbfounded. "Funeral?"
"Yeah, it's officially this Thursday," Adrien informed, edging a bit closer to her. "It was decided this morning. They didn't want to waste any time." The last words were quiet.
"Wait…" Marinette blinked. Was she out of the loop here? "For who?"
Adrien's eyebrows twitched and he couldn't respond right away, visibly put off by her question.
"Are you dense?" Chloe snapped from beside them as her family's limousine pulled up behind her. "Who do you think?" She shook her head in disappointment and made her way to her family's vehicle. "Later, Adrikins." She threw Adrien a wave, which Adrien distractedly returned as Sabrina rushed to follow after her.
He looked away from Chloe and back at Marinette. His tone was low with awkward sounding, like he was answering an painfully obvious question. "My…father?" he answered.
Marinette's gaze on him went completely still. His words echoed, refusing to settle in her brain no matter how hard she tried to process it. Adrien seemed to look back with disbelief too.
Finally she looked away from him, cupping the sides of her face in her hands. "Wait…what?"
Gabriel Agreste was dead? When did this happen? He was almost just as famous as Adrien, you'd think she would have seen news of it by now. How hadn't she heard of this? Did everyone at school know and she was the only one to somehow miss it? Of course. Leave it to her to miss something that big.
Adrien was left speechless at her reaction. Marinette snapped suddenly, covering her mouth and looking back up at him, wide-eyed with instant regret. What an insensitive way to react to someone's death, right in front of their loved one!
"I-I'm sorry!" she said right away. "That was...so rude of me…" She softened her tone, folding her hands together. "I...I'm so sorry to hear that Adrien, I had no idea…"
Adrien was eyeing her in clear concern again. But this time was much more intense.
"Marinette, you…" he said numbly. "You were at my house yesterday. We talked about it."
Marinette's eyes instantly went blank.
Another statement by Adrien that her brain refused to comprehend. Was that why Alya had asked her how yesterday had went? It must have been. This was all too much for handle. Her head was starting to hurt again. She couldn't think.
"Okay, seriously, Marinette. Something is wrong." Adrien reached forward and lightly grasped her arms, lowering his head to the same level as hers. Marinette's nerves shot up her whole body as he looked into each of her eyes, studying them suspiciously. "You must have hit your head on your way home last night."
"No!" Marinette said, pulling away from his grasp and taking a few steps back, holding her palms up. "I didn't. I just- uh, you know, didn't get too much sleep last night, and-"
"Lack of sleep doesn't cause memory loss, Marinette," Adrien interrupted, clearly not buying her excuses anymore. She had never seen his eyes so serious before. But there was something else in there too. Something unstable. "You really need to get yourself checked out. This isn't normal."
"Well, uh," Marinette's voice quivered nervously. She turned away from his eyes. Even if she could think of any words, they'd just be frozen in her throat.
Her attention was temporarily grabbed by a small black car came into view, driving up to the side of the road and slowing to a stop in front of them. They each glanced at the Agreste's bodyguard through the opened window of the passanger seat, who sat with his usual scowling demeaner at the wheel.
"Look, your ride's here!" She piped up, thanking the heavens for the excuse to divert the conversation. "Guess you have to go, huh. Talk about this later?"
But Adrien shook his head stubbornly. "I'm not leaving you alone. Not when something is clearly wrong. I mean it, I'm really worried about you right now."
Marinette looked around the empty clearing, not realizing that all the other students had cleared out until that moment. She wondered how long the two of them had been alone.
"You sure you don't need to sit down or something?" Adrien suggested, holding out his arms out slightly, ready to offer help. "My bodyguard can wait."
Marinette stared, frantically brainstorming for words that would save her in this situation, when she heard a sound she recognized instantly. Her family's car pulled up behind the Agreste's, the worn-out motor spurting and growling unpleasantly. The old, tiny vehicle looked especially pathetic in comparison to the one in front of it. If she wasn't so relieved to see it, she probably would have felt humiliated.
"No need!" Marinette chirped, pointing as her father's large arm poked out of the driver's window to wave at her. "There's my dad." She passed him, rushing to her ticket out of this situation. "See you tomorrow?"
"Just-" Adrien reached and took her arm gently, just under her elbow, stopping her in her tracks.
She turned to look back at him. His expression now looked more defeated and pleading.
"Please, at least mention this to your parents," he urged, his eyebrows pointed up in desperation. "I...couldn't stand if something happened to you, too."
Something in Marinette suddenly melted. The heaviness in his words sent a wave of pity over her.
She didn't pull away this time. She softened her face and her voice.
"Okay," she finally agreed.
There was no way she was actually going to, but she had to tell him something. She couldn't bear to see him so hung up over this, especially since his father had apparently just died. She couldn't imagine what he could be going through right now.
He accepted this and slowly released her arm, his face crossed with confliction.
She did it. Finally, after all this time. She had the Ladybug miraculous.
Nathalie knew it couldn't have been a coincidence when she spotted the superhero swinging away from Agreste mansion when she was escorting Adrien's friends out, minutes before Marinette Dupain-Cheng appeared at their doorstep. Why she had been on their roof was beyond her. Maybe she had suspicions of the identity of Hawk Moth.
Well, in either case, it didn't matter now.
What she hadn't anticipated was the face behind Ladybug's mask being a classmate of Adrien's, and, therefore, still a child. One that was always so skittish and scatterbrained and seemed to doubt her own self worth over the smallest inconveniences. How could someone so frantic and fragile like her possibly handle the responsibility of being one of Paris's only protectors? It wasn't right, entrusting the fate of all of Paris on the shoulders of a girl who hasn't even graduated high school. She could only imagine the effect it had on the poor teenager.
She was doing a double-service. After what happened to Gabriel, it was up to her to continue his work, and she'd been dedicating most of her hours to studying the ways of the different miraculous as recorded in the grimoire.
Upon decoding the writing and putting theories together, she learned the different abilities of the miraculous, particularly the peacock miraculous, the one entrusted to her. She discovered its powers extended further than neither her nor Gabriel had anticipated.
It was a long shot. She had just learned these abilities existed and had no time to prepare before her first attempt would have to be made.
She remembered the fear that was struck into the eyes of the teenager when she'd locked the two of them in her boss's bedroom. Acting quickly, she'd ordered Duusu to transform her by the kwami's personal command.
"Duusu, spread my feathers."
The sound of Nathalie slamming the door shut still rang and echoed through the room as brilliant blues and purples began taking her over from head to toe. Marinette Dupain-Cheng was frozen, gaping in shock as Duusu changed her into the mysterious, menacing form of Mayura. The sight of girl's terrified face sent a pang of sympathy. But that didn't matter. She had no other choice.
"You're…you're Mayura?" Marinette gasped.
Mayura, fully transformed, said nothing, as she looked down at her fan in her hand. She turned it in her hand once, adjusting it comfortably into her palm and positioning her thumb against the opening edge. She only had one chance. If she failed, it was all over.
She closed her eyes for a moment, preparing. Then, like flipping a switch, she opened them abruptly and fiercely, fixing them on Marinette and swinging her weapon to chest-level and flicking it open.
Marinette startled, stumbling backwards. "T-Tikki, spots-"
"Sleep." Mayura waved her fan in a swift, swaying motion, sending a feathered aura of blue and white towards the teenager. It hit her dead-on, dissolving into thin air in shimmering clouds of dust.
Marinette's eyes fluttered close and her muscles went limp instantly. She teetered in place temporarily before her head dropped. Her legs collapsed, and Mayura darted forward to catch her with one arm, moments before she hit the floor.
"Duusu, fall my feathers," she forced out, panting in exhaustion as she detransformed.
Duusu gaped in awe of the unconscious Marinette in Nathalie's arms as soon as she soared out of the peacock-shaped pin.
"Whoa," she breathed, tilting her head. "Is she…dead?"
"No. She's just asleep," Nathalie answered, kneeling and turning Marinette over to rest the girl's back against Nathlie's knees. She cleared her black hair out of her face, revealing the two pure black stones in her ears. She slid each of them out of her piercings and cupped them in her her palms.
She brought them up to look at the black jewels, glistening perfectly even in the dark room. She closed her hand, squeezing them.
"Finally, Gabriel," she whispered. "We've done it."
"Marinette!" A muffled, distressed cry came from the student's coinpurse. A bright red, spotted kwami burst itself out of it, spinning around until she had taken in her surroundings. She gasped when she found her holder in her sleeping state and zoomed over to grab her face. "Marinette, wake up!" She begged. When she got no reply, she turned to Nathalie, clutching her webbed hands together in fear. "What did you do to her?"
Nathalie observed this unfamiliar kwami in front of her, ignoring its panic. "You must be this 'Tikki.'"
"Tikki?" Duusu chirped, blinking at her fellow kwami Tikki spun to face her, quickly taking her focus off of her holder to gape in surprise at the blue creature.
"Duusu!" She exclaimed, stunned.
"Tikki!" Duusu screeched in excitement, flying into the ladybug spirit and clinging to her in pure joy.
Nathalie slung Marinette's arm across her shoulders as the two kwamis reunited, and lifted her limp body off the floor, carrying her bridal-style.
"W-wait!" Tikki cried, shimmying out of Duusu's embrace. "Where are you taking her?" she demanded.
"Don't worry, Tikki." Nathalie reassured, though her voice expressed no tone of comfort. "Your Marinette will be fine. In fact, she'll be better off without you."
Marinette woke with an unusual ringing in her ears and an odd feeling in her head.
She stirred, her elbow knocking against the hard surface she was on as she rolled over. Was she on the floor? Maybe she had fallen asleep doing homework again.
Opening her eyes felt impossible as she weakly pushed herself to a sitting position, almost dropping back down immediately from the wave of lightheadedness that hit her as soon as she was upright. Her pajamas felt stiff, and she realized upon finally forcing her eyes open that she was still in her day clothes.
She struggled to focus on her wall clock, but eventually was able to learn that it was currently sometime past 3AM. She wasn't surrounded by a clutter of notebooks and textbooks like she'd tended to make when studying. What was she doing on the floor? She hadn't fainted or something, had she? It would explain the weird feeling in her head and the ringing in her ears that only seemed to be growing more harsh. She flinched a bit, pressing a hand to her ear, as if that would actually do anything to help block the sound.
But something felt unfamiliar as her ear was sandwiched between her skull and her hand. Doing a double take, she felt down her ear until blinking at the realization that her earlobe was bare. She quickly felt the other one, and that earring was gone too.
Panic was quick to set in, and she kept repetitively pinching her earlobes as if she were just imagining that her earrings were gone. When had she taken them off? She was too out of it to remember anything from yesterday.
She clumsily brought herself to her feet, nearly tripping over to the wall and switching on the lights. She squinted as the light blared into her eyes.
"Hey...Tikki?" She called into her room, approaching her vanity as she awaited her kwami's answer. She rummaged through her scattered necklaces, bracelets and cosmetics, squinting harder than she already had been to try to make out the tiny black earrings through the frenzy of clutter. Nothing.
She moved her search to her computer desk, lifting up her keyboard and observing the surface from every angle. She realized Tikki hadn't answered and called her name again.
It wasn't until she was on her hands and knees underneath her desk that she realized something wasn't right. Halting her investigation, she stood back up with the support of her desk chair, raising her head to look up at her bed. She made her way up her stairs immediately, expecting to find Tikki sleeping, nestled in her bedding. But once she'd reached the top, her heart dropped to find nothing. Still, she moved her pillows and blankets around in the hopes that Tikki would still somehow be there. But she wasn't.
Marinette's breathing was less than stable at that point. "Tikki!" She begged to the air, rushing back down the stairs. "If you're playing a trick on me, you need to come out now. You've had your fun!"
She knew that was an unrealistic assumption. Tikki wasn't exactly the prankster type, especially when Marinette was in clear distress. But what else could she be doing? She'd never disappear without saying anything.
After checking her patio and finding nothing there, Marinette was quick to fly out of her room, throwing open the trap door and rushing down the steps. She blinked, adjusting her eyes to her darkness as she made her way down the many staircases of her home.
From there, she frantically searched her entire house, checking in every little crevice and corner, all the while desperately calling for her kwami in hushed whispers.
The last place she was yet to check was the bakery. She let a sliver of hope creep in at the possibility that maybe Tikki was just trying to sneak snacks in to satisfy her sweet tooth.
"Tikki...," she mumbled, exhaustedly walking into the bakery and switching on one of the lights. She couldn't keep track of how many times she'd called her name that night. "If you wanted sweets you could have just asked me."
Her voice quivered as she spoke and she knew her words were only to put herself at ease. It didn't work. It was obvious she wasn't here, and that something was wrong. And even if she was here, that wouldn't explain why her earrings were missing.
It was no use, she realized as she switched the light back off and exited the kitchen way she came.
Her feet brought her to the bottom of the first set of stairs, numbly stepping over the first couple steps, until her body couldn't handle the panic anymore. She slumped down onto her knees, her breaths thickening to the point where they were almost sobs.
Her hands once again found their way to her ears, pinching the loose, wobbly skin that felt so out of the ordinary, not being accompanied by jewelry like she was used to. She hugged herself, letting every possible scenario flood into her head of what could have happened to Tikki and the miraculous.
She grasped at her head, pulling at her scalp with more force than she'd meant to, and trying to remember what had happened the day before, or anything that happened recently at all. All she could draw were blanks, but she didn't accept that. She dove deeper, driving herself into her own head so much that she was nearly shaking. She had to remember what happened.
Then suddenly, a quick flash of bright blue filled her entire vision, sending a stabbing pain through her head, her ears now ringing so hard they were buzzing,
She gasped, flinching violently and panted, staring blankly in shock as the pain slowly faded. She froze for a moment, stunned, before leaning sideways, clinging tightly to the railings, cramming one hand over her mouth, and letting panic take over her senses completely.
What on earth had happened to her? And most importantly, what had happened to Tikki?
Heya! Hope you're enjoying :)
Just stopping in to say I edited the last chapter and added all of the line dividers that I forgot to put in, so sorry to anyone who read that chapter and was confused with the timing! oops
Also HUGE thanks to everyone following/favoriting! It means so much! The story's only gonna get more crazy from here so stay tuned!
