Marinette should not have been nervous. She should not have been worried about why Cat Noir hadn't showed up at the scene yet, or what he would think of her outfit. He'd seen her in the ugly suit dozens of times already; it was nothing new for him. She shouldn't have had mock conversations with him in her head, trying her best to appear witty and playful and nice. She shouldn't have felt any of these things, yet, here she was, constantly looking up at the sky, or down the nearest ally, waiting for him to come, to make some comment, to talk to her.
God, she was pathetic.
Another animal swooped overhead, and she barely dodged before its hooves clipped her in the head. The Akuma was so annoying. She wasn't sure how, or why, but it could make things fly, specifically animals. The Akuma must have transformed near a barn, because dozens of domesticated animals were whizzing through the sky, ramming into whatever was in their way. The Makara had been surrounded by at least four dozen cows and a few angry sheep. It didn't seem to notice them very much, except as a snack.
Cat Noir landed next to her. "Sorry I'm late, I-" he blinked as a pig soared in front of them. "Well, what do you know," he mumbled to himself. Marinette was finding it hard to function with him so close. She should have been irritated that he came so late, or determined to defeat the Makara. She still felt those things, of course, but they were overshadowed by embarrassment. What if she messed up in front of him? What if she said something mean and he never spoke to her again?
She inwardly groaned. Hadn't she said she would get over this? Wasn't it supposed to be easy to ignore him?
"Any news about the Makara?" he turned to her. The words all jumbled together in her head. No news. It's been covered by animals since we arrived on the scene, so no one even knows what it looks like. Do you think it'll have a weird effect like the last Makara? How about you take care of the Akuma and I'll handle the Makara?
"No-animals-it looks like a weird effect like last time-you're the Akuma?" Marinette could have died on the spot. Her cheeks burned and she was certain she hadn't felt this humiliated since Chloe spilled water on her white shirt in fourth grade, before she'd started wearing a bra.
"Are you ok?" he asked, "You look a little...sick?"
She certainly felt sick, like she was going to throw up. She had to clear her head-get away from him for a while.
"I'm totally fine!" she squeaked. Jesus, she was turning into one of those girls in TV shows she hated. "I'll take care of the Makara!" She ran off before he had a chance to respond. Her back felt warm as she imagined his gaze following her, and she tripped, landing directly onto a police officer.
"Hey, get off!" he growled. She jumped up, apologizing. She bit her lip and glanced back. Cat Noir was gone. It was disappointing, in a way. She wanted him to watch her, to see how competent and cool she could be. At the same time, maybe it was best he wasn't there to distract her and witness her oddly sudden bout of clumsiness.
"Marinette, shouldn't we be going towards the Makara?" Tikki questioned. Marinette shook off her odd feelings about Cat Noir and threw her yo-yo through the air. It wrapped around a flying pig, and she let it pull her through the sky, towards the Makara. She didn't see him, but she could hear Cat Noir's battle with the Akuma. She wished, not for the first time, that the Makara didn't exist, that it was only the Akuma which she and her partner had to battle. Everything would be so much easier with just the Akuma.
The flying pig joined the other barnyard animals as they orbited the Makara, and Marinette dropped onto the creature. It smelled horrible, and it had scales covering its body, but it was too big for Marinette to see much more about it. Unlike every other Makara, this one didn't only smell like old fish; it also stank like a wet barnyard. More pressing, there was no mysterious silvery liquid on its body.
It had been a source of much debate and conversation on the Ladyblog and the news. No one knew what exactly the silvery liquid did, but it had proven to affect anyone who so much as looked at it. The closer a person got to the liquid, the less energy they seemed to have, and if they touched it, they seemed to fall into a deep depression, almost unable to function normally. The symptoms only lasted a day or so, but it was still very odd. People all over Paris had theorized that the Makara had evolved, that now all of them would cause such unfiltered anguish. They were wrong. The Makara beneath Marinette's feet was slimy and scaly, like a fish, but there was no liquid. It was shockingly normal.
A few animals screamed in pain, and Marinette watched, horrified, as they were eaten by the Makara. This one, from the few seconds she saw its head, had a very eel-like neck, which could wrap around itself.
Police officers shot at the Makara, and Marinette hoped they could see she was there. She ran forward, trying to get to the Makara's head. She had a theory that if she threw her yo-yo hard enough at the Makara's eye, it would hit the brain and kill it. Or, at least, it would hurt enough that it might stop demolishing Paris for a little while.
She carefully made her way across the creature's back. The scales were slippery, and it took all her concentration not to fall off its back. She threw her yo-yo when she saw the Makara's neck, and sighed in relief. She might not be at her destination, but at least she was anchored to the creature. A cow flew overhead and she dropped, wincing as a scale sliced her cheek. Who would have thought that the scales were so sharp? She stood up, using her yo-yo as a rope to help pull her towards the creature's neck.
"How can I help?" Cat Noir's voice seemed to appear out of nowhere. It shocked her so badly that Marinette did the most un-Marinette-like thing she had done in her entire life. She screamed, turned towards his voice, lost her footing, then fell off the Makara. She saw Cat Noir's eyes widen and his hand reached out to her, but he wasn't as fast as gravity. She slid off the Makara, the scales slicing at her face. The rope of her yo-yo got caught on her legs, and she suddenly found herself hanging upside down, legs trapped in her own yo-yo string, swaying side to side as the Makara moved through the city.
Why the hell are you here? Did you defeat the Akuma-what about the butterfly? Couldn't you see I was busy? Are you happy now? Go help the cops, I don't need your help!
She had so much to say, but seeing his bright green eyes and dark hair as he tried to figure out a way to help her stopped the words in their tracks.
"Why the hell-are you happy to help!"
He either didn't hear her, or decided to ignore her. He moved as quickly as he could to her yo-yo and grabbed a hold of it. Next thing she knew, his staff was in front of her, and he was urging her to grab it; he would pull her to safety.
I wouldn't need your dumb staff if you hadn't scared me into falling off the Makara. Get rid of the animals, they're a hindrance. Isn't there anything else you should be doing?
She reached forward and grabbed the staff. As he pulled her up, the rope around her legs loosened, and she freed herself, tightening the string of the yo-yo so it wouldn't have the ability to trap her again. She knew she should let go of the staff, that she should rely on herself and her own powers, that she should tell Cat Noir to go help the police. She didn't do any of that, for whatever reason. Cat Noir pulled her up until she stood in front of him.
"What happened?" He asked. "If you're sick, you need to leave. This isn't a joke-you could have died."
"I'm not sick!" Wonderful. The first coherent sentence she could manage around him, and this was it? His words struck a chord with her, though. She could have died. She needed to get a grip, to get rid of the Makara as soon as possible. Marinette looked at the Makara. Somehow, it was hard to act like the main character of a ridiculous rom-com when she was staring at a monster which smelled like a fishing pier lost a boxing match with a field of cow manure. "I have a plan. Try to get rid of as many of the flying animals as you can-the police need as clear of a target as they can get."
Cat Noir nodded and looked up at the sky. "If only you could make a giant net or something."
"What?"
"Remember when you were able to make that net before? I wish you could do it again, but bigger. It would make this a whole lot easier."
"I can!" Marinette tried to keep the excitement out of her voice. It was difficult. He had just saved her, and now she had an opportunity to pay him back that favor. "But it'll take a while." Before he could respond, she threw her yo-yo to the side and lowered herself to the ground as gracefully as she could with him watching. It wasn't that graceful. She hit the ground a little too hard and stumbled to get over the pain, but ended up walking straight into a wall.
"Are you ok, Ladybug?" a police officer came to check on her. She waved him off, intending to tell him she was alright, but she accidentally smacked him in the face. He glared at her through the nosebleed he now sported and spun on his heel, ignoring her. Marinette bit her lip. She was acting stupid. She ran forward and looped her yo-yo through the Makara's barely visible legs. She pulled at the yo-yo, wrapping it around a building. A few of the officers gave her disapproving looks.
"You'll destroy the building!" one of them yelled at her.
"Better than destroying the rest of the block!" she retorted.
"Untie it!" another officer demanded, stalking closer to her. She shook her head.
"No! We have a plan, and we need to keep it still for as long as possible! And if your ideas were so great, why isn't the Makara destroyed yet?"
The adults glared at her, but she was gone before they said anything else. She needed a spot to focus for a while. It had taken her quite a while to create a medium-sized net to capture an Akuma. How long would she need for a net large enough to capture an entire barn's worth of animals?
"Lucky charm!" she called out before closing her eyes. Last time, the light from her hands had given her a headache, and she did not want to relive that. She tried imagining what she wanted to create. Tikki had told her that the more she knew about what she wanted to make, the more clearly she could imagine the object in her mind, the faster and more easily it would be created.
Well, she had no idea what a net this large would look like in real life, or how it could possibly be strong enough to hold dozens of horses, cows, cats, dogs, and pigs. She didn't have time to figure it out, though. She could already hear the building crumbling under the force of the Makara's pulling. Her hands heated further, and her palms grew damp with sweat. Her legs started cramping, and she could feel a weight in her arms.
"Keep going, Marinette," Tikki encouraged cheerily. "It's almost done."
And then the heat dissipated. Marinette opened her eyes and blinked away the spots swimming in her vision. The building behind her crumbled. She didn't have time to study her creation. She needed to destroy the Makara. She ran back to the scene of the fight, eyes frantically searching for her partner.
"Cat Noir, here!"
She threw the giant butterfly net at her partner. Unfortunately, she had miscalculated, and it landed a lot further to the left than Cat Noir stood. He turned to fetch it, and Ladybug's entire face burned with humiliation. A few cops shot her irritated looks. It wasn't as if she missed on purpose! Like she would want Cat Noir to think she was an incompetent nit-wit.
Cat Noir grabbed the net and swung it. The hoop of the butterfly net grew to accommodate larger animals, and shrank to keep all the animals contained. The net kept expanding and stretching, somehow able to hold all the animals in place. The more animals he captured, the more visible the Makara. It had an eel-like neck, with an almost equine head. Teeth jutted out its bottom jaw, a few animals still speared on a couple of the larger teeth. The whole body looked like a lizard. It's legs were trapped in the yo-yo still. Marinette didn't dare remove the restraints. The Makara did not look happy, and she didn't want to risk it running around and possibly injuring the police officers on the ground.
Marinette ran to the Makara and grabbed one of the sole animals Cat Noir hadn't managed to capture yet. It had been a police horse, but now it looked more like a police pegasus. She steered it towards the Makara's head. Bullets whizzed by her, but the Makara moved its head too fast for any of the bullets to land near its eyes.
The Makara spied the horse flying towards it and snapped at it. Marinette jumped and flew through the air. For a few heartbeats, she had no control over what was going to happen. Either she would land on the Makara's head and possibly destroy it, or it would eat her. Thankfully, it seemed much more interested in the horse than on her. It swallowed the horse in one bite, and she landed on its head. She gripped at its smooth head with her fingers, arms, legs-anything she could possibly use to keep hold on it. The Makara swung its head around-not happy about its new passenger.
"Ladybug, what are you doing!?" Cat Noir called to her from the ground. She grit her teeth. She couldn't speak or she might bite her tongue off. She slowly inched her way towards the Makara's eyes, cringing when she heard Cat Noir land on a nearby lamppost. What was he hoping to accomplish? If he made one wrong move, she would die. She glared at him, hoping he would get the message and leave.
Of course he didn't. He had promised to look out for her, and it seemed he was going to do so, whether or not it got her killed. His staff elongated and he held it like a baseball bat. Her muscles tensed, her eyes shut, and then she felt the whiplash herk at her neck. Cat Noir had hit the Makara in the neck. Its head landed in a pile of rubble off to the side. The hit must've been hard enough to daze the creature, because it didn't move for a few seconds. A few seconds was all Marinette needed. She scrambled towards the creature's eyes, braced herself, and jumped. She brought both of her legs together, and used her weight to drive her down into the creature's eye. She had never experienced anything as disgusting as the feeling of the eye giving way to her bodyweight. The smell burst from the creature like a balloon, and she threw up on the side. Just her luck, her head had turned in the direction Cat Noir stood. She looked up, and he seemed green in the face. She tried to step out of the creature's eye, but she was stuck. She heaved again, but she didn't have time to empty her stomach again.
The creature started to dissolve. Its body gradually disappeared in particles of water vapor, and the rancid smell was quickly replaced by the fresh scent of an ocean breeze. Now that there was no more solid Makara to hold her weight, Marinette felt herself start to fall through the air. Cat Noir ran forward, grabbed her, and slowly lowered the two of them to the ground with his staff. When they touched the ground, he hastily stepped back. Ladybug looked down at her suit, dreading what she was about to see. From her waist down, she dripped in Makara blood. Her left forearm still had a bit of her vomit on it.
Marinette closed her eyes and almost fainted from the sheer mortification of it all. She could just die.
"Are you...alright?" Cat Noir asked. It felt like that's all he'd said to her all day. "You killed that thing with your-"
"Don't," She held up a hand, eyes still closed. She couldn't bear to look at him right then. She didn't want to know what expression he had on his face. "Just thinking about it makes me sick. Where's the Akuma? I want to go home, and I have three minutes left before my transformation runs out."
Cat Noir expedited the rest of the routine. Cataclysm. Purification. Quick scolding by the police about the destroyed building. He told her to go, he would check up on the Akuma victim before he left.
She had never left a Makara attack scene faster than she did that day.
"Come on, just a few minutes," Nino held out a bag of ice. "Your face looks awful."
"Gee, thanks," Marinette mumbled, ignoring the ice pack her friend held out. "Quit moving. We'd have been done half an hour ago if you didn't keep fiddling."
"Can't help it," Nino shrugged. Marinette glared at him and he apologized sheepishly. "I'm not used to all this modeling stuff. You know who is, though?"
"Don't even start," Marinette glowered, poking him with a needle. Nino yelped, and she didn't feel bad-not even a little bit.
"Alright, alright, I won't even start," Nino mumbled. He held still as Marinette continued inspecting her work. She mumbled to herself, shaking her head and slightly and pining different parts of the pants and jacket she had him model.
"This is wrong," she huffed, pushing her bangs away from her face. "All wrong."
"I think it looks great. Can I take it off now?"
"You're my model," Marinette complained, helping him out of the heavily pinned garments. "Models don't get to complain."
"Yeah, well this model does." Nino swatted her hands away from his pants, saying he could take care of those himself. She didn't seem very embarrassed by the whole procedure, but it sure bothered him. "I don't see why you're so unconfident about this, Marinette. It's not really like you. Watch, you'll submit the whole thing and win first place-I guarantee it."
"That's not what I'm worried about," she admitted, carefully placing the clothes in a garment bag. She bit her lip and faced him. "Adrien Agreste is a bad guy, Nino. You just don't know it yet."
Nino sighed. "Come on, Marinette, give the guy a chance. You don't even know him."
"I know enough," she mumbled, rummaging through her piles of fashion magazines. She whispered something like a 'thank you,' and then shoved an Agreste magazine in his hands. He took it from her and flipped through it. "Page 18," she told him, slumping in her spinny chair.
"Hey, I like this," Nino said, studying the clothes on the page. It wasn't what he usually would have expected from Agreste Industries (and the only reason he knew what to expect from them was because Marinette wouldn't shut up about them, ok?). "It's unique, and I like the vibe I get from it. I'd buy it. Why don't you like it?"
Marinette opened her design notebook and held open a page. It was signed and dated for about three weeks before the magazine was published. The design on the page was just a rough sketch, but even Nino, who had no design knowledge at all, could tell that her design and the one in the magazine were uncomfortably similar. Nino took the notebook from her hands and compared the designs side by side.
Both had leather jackets, both had straight-leg dark wash denim pants. Marinette's shirt was unfinished, but it had the same neckline as the one in the magazine.
"If you look at the designer, you won't see Marinette Dupain-Cheng," she said as Nino handed the notebook and magazine back. "This isn't the first time this has happened, either. All the contests I enter promise two things: money and notoriety. I always get the money, and I never get the credit. So far, I haven't complained because I earn hundreds of euros from the contests. This time, I'm pissed. I didn't enter anything-my design was stolen from right under my nose."
"You can't know that Adrien is the one doing this," Nino argued.
"I can, though," she said. She told him the story of meeting Adrien at the park. "He was the only one there who could have seen my work. Aunt Marie warned me about him, actually-his dad had stolen her designs years ago which won him his first internship. She's never gotten over it. I can't have the same thing happen to me." Her eyes were hard, but Nino had known her long enough to look past that. Marinette was a girl full of pride. She'd always been talented, hardworking, and willing to fight for what she wanted. Since her mom and uncles had started training her in martial arts and initiated her into the family gang, Marinette had been one kick-ass girl who had everything under control. Now, she didn't. And Nino could see it worried her.
"It'll be alright," Nino tried to soothe as she saw him to the front door. "I promise, it will be."
Marinette snorted, but didn't bother contradicting him.
Ladybug fell again. Cat Noir reached towards her, but Ladybug would have none of it. She stood up, threw her yo-yo in the air, and swung away. She almost would have looked heroic if she didn't run into a few police officers like a couple of bowling pins.
Adrien usually liked the Ladyblog. It was updated regularly, and had very high quality videos and pictures. Also, it had a very interactive fan-base. Usually, he loved reading the comments people had. Not this time. He winced as he read people's thoughts of the video.
Maybe she's having a rough time at home? There were only so many nice comments willing to give his partner the benefit of the doubt, and this was one of them.
If she can't handle the stress, she should give that power to someone else-someone who can do better than her.
Reply: And who could be better? You?
Original poster: Yes, actually. I'd actually stick around after the fight to make sure the victim was alright, and talk to the police and the media.
Reply: neither of them stay to talk to the medie
Reply: she usually stays for the victims. Maybe something happened and she can't stay longer anymore.
The thread went on for a while, and Adrien had to force himself to read a new thread. They didn't know anything. Fighting an Akuma or a Makara seemed easy on a screen-he knew, he'd thought it was easy, too-but in real life, it was different. When you knew your life could end or be irreversibly changed, when you saw the creature and smelled it and felt it-it was different. Adrien had never known fear before he'd battled a Makara. Akuma were their own demons-they weren't easy to takedown, but they certainly seemed so when compared to a Makara. And, they were more rewarding. They turned back into humans. Makara didn't. They were just...monsters. They appeared, destroyed, and then were defeated.
Sometimes, they left things behind. The street filled with puddles of the headless Makara had been blocked off to the public, much like the block filled with slime from Mylene's Akuma. It was simply too powerful a force for regular citizens to deal with, and no one knew how to safely dispose of the substance.
Adrien shuddered as he remembered the day he'd seen the Makara's neck. He'd gripped onto his staff, Ladybug stabilizing it from the Makara's back. He'd been searching for its head-for a weak point. Instead, he'd stared into a black hole. At least, that's what it had seemed like. The neck hadn't been very wide, but it seemed bottomless. He could feel the breath exiting the creature, could smell the rancid fish odor which accompanied all Makara-but there was no head. It was like a living, inanimate object. Some of the liquid had sprayed in his eyes and a feeling so intense he didn't even know the word for it had coursed through his body.
He wasn't sure if he would ever be able to explain why it had affected him so deeply, or how. It was just a feeling of such despair, such emptiness. Adrien had felt the chill to his bones, and a whisper in the back of his mind. He could just jump, or lean too far, and he would be down there, in the creature's neck. He could be lost, and be at peace.
The only reason the voice hadn't overwhelmed him was because of Ladybug's unsteady grip on the staff. It had moved, and the voice's spell over him had broken, and he jumped down.
Adrien hadn't walked away from that battle completely the same, and come to think of it, neither had Ladybug. He watched the next video on the playlist. Ladybug was trying to swing her yo-yo at a lamppost, but had gotten startled at Cat Noir's presence and missed. She hit a police officer in the head, and she had cried out and started cursing out the young superhero.
Adrien bit back a laugh. It was funny, sure, but he could also tell how embarrassed Ladybug was. She hadn't been like this before that strange, headless Makara. He hoped she would get over it. He relied on her. He was trying to be the best superhero he could be, of course, but she just seemed to have an easier time coming up with plans and following through with him than he did. It was probably because of her extra month of experience fighting on her own.
Cat Noir reached towards Ladybug as she tried to apologize to the cop. The video didn't have audio, but Adrien knew what Cat Noir was going to say.
"What happened?"
Ladybug had scrambled for an answer, but nothing she'd said made sense. Something about the Akuma, and getting distracted by her apology? He just didn't understand. He'd told her she was stuttering, and that if she calmed down for a second, he would hear her out, but she'd just squeaked, threw her yo-yo in the air, and swung away. She'd been so weird lately, and she wouldn't even tell him what was wrong.
Adrien's pedicab Adrien came to a stop.
"Thanks," he said to the Gorilla. He waited. Gorilla didn't talk much, but he was trying. The least Adrien could do was wait for him.
"No problem. Have a good day at school."
Eight words which made his whole morning. Adrien smiled as he walked through the hallways and entered his classroom. The smile died as soon as Marinette's eyes landed on him. He wasn't sure what had happened, exactly. He'd known they weren't friends, but she'd come over to say hi at his photo shoot at the park the other day. She'd seemed like they were fine, like they could become friends. Next thing he knew, she hated his guts. He didn't even know why.
He shivered. Her blue eyes seemed positively glacial as they stared at him. Her deskmate, Alya, said something to her which took over her attention, and she stopped staring at him. Adrien sent Alya a silent word of thanks. Nino looked at him and shrugged. Adrien didn't blame him for Marinette's continued hostility. He knew how stubborn Marinette could be-he'd seen it first-hand. Nothing Nino could say or do would change her opinion of him; he'd have to do that on his own.
Kim turned around in his seat and looked at him. He didn't say anything, he just looked. Chloe was still telling him about the newest child her favorite celebrity couple was having, and didn't seem to even notice Kim's attention. Adrien noticed, though, and it made him uncomfortable.
"Hi?" he questioned. Chloe didn't stop talking, now moving on to the father's sister and how awful she'd been acting lately.
"Are you a bad person?" Kim asked bluntly. Chloe stopped talking, and Adrien blinked.
"Of course he's not a bad person," Chloe looked at Kim, irritated that he'd interrupted her retelling of the last week of gossip.
"I try to be as good a person I can be," Adrien said, confused. "Why?"
"I've been hearing that you and your dad aren't nearly as honest as you portray yourselves as."
Adrien's eyes wandered to Marinette, who was now watching them with furrowed brows. He'd never imagined she'd be a gossip. That just went to show what he knew about her. She stood up, and Adrien internally groaned. Not again. He looked to the front of the classroom, where, once again, the teacher seemed to need to use the restroom just as soon as she might be needed. The door closed behind her, and Adrien felt dread fill his stomach.
Marinette stood next to Kim.
"Why are you questioning him?" she asked Kim. Adrien looked at Chloe. She didn't seem very surprised, but Adrien was. Of every possible thing which could have come out of Marinette's mouth, this was not what he would have predicted.
"I'm just curious," Kim defended. "You've made it pretty obvious you don't like him. I just want to know why."
"No," Marinette narrowed her eyes. "You said you'd heard he was a bad person. Who did you hear it from?"
Kim's face seemed to pale a little, and he looked to the side, "Oh, come on, why are you after me? You don't like him, go after him."
Marinette scoffed and rolled her eyes, resting her hip at the desk just by Kim's head. "He's Nino's friend, and Nino asked me to play nice."
"This has been you 'playing nice'?" Adrien blurted out. Marinette turned to face him, and Adrien felt like the main character in a horror movie who'd just coughed when a monster was about to walk right by him. Kim was shaking his head and turned back around in his seat, probably glad to no longer be stuck in this conversation. Chloe was staring at him like he was an idiot.
"Yes," Marinette grit out from behind her teeth. "This has been me playing nice. I haven't talked to you, I haven't come after you, and I haven't made you apologize."
"I don't even know what I've done wrong," Adrien explained, but his voice was overpowered by Chloe's:
"He doesn't need to explain himself to you, Dupain-Cheng,"
Adrien groaned and dropped his head in his hands. He knew she meant well. He knew she was trying to come to his rescue and show him she would always be on his side. He just wished she hadn't said what she just did. Chloe had made this entire interaction so much worse. Adrien dared to look at Marinette through his fingers, and he saw the exact moment she exploded.
"Of course he does!" Her entire face was red, and Alya was creeping closer with a phone in hand. "Just because he's rich doesn't mean he gets to take advantage of people who don't have the money to defend themselves! Why are you even in this conversation?"
"He's my friend, and I get to stick up for my friends like you stick up for yours!"
"Everyone knows you don't have friends, Chloe," a voice called from the back of the class. Marinette, Chloe, and Adrien turned to see who'd spoken. It was Lila. Didn't she know this was not the time to provoke them? "You just have minions you bought with-"
"Stay out of this, you buffon!" Marinette snapped. Chloe stood and backed her up:
"It's pathetic that you're so jealous of us you'll try to discredit facts about us, in front of the very people who can tell you you're wrong."
"And don't think we don't know about all the lies you've been spreading about us," Marinette's eyes narrowed, and Chloe nodded in agreement. Adrien didn't want to say anything. He really didn't want to. He knew it would be safest and most comfortable for him to stay silent as the three girls fought it out and forgot about him. He just couldn't, though. He couldn't sit there while Lila took the brunt of Marinette's anger when he had been one of the reasons it was so intense in the first place.
"Come on," he tried to sound soothing. "You don't know that-"
"Don't tell me what I do or don't know!" Marinette growled at him. "I know plenty, and I have proof. If you weren't such an idiot, or if I wasn't so broke, you'd have figured out exactly how I know what I know!" She took a deep breath, glanced behind her, and slowly untensed her body. "But whatever. Who cares. I'm going back to my seat, where I'll be playing nice until you decide to apologize."
She stormed off, and Chloe slumped next to him in a huff. His best friend turned to him.
"Did you have to question her?"
"Well, did you have to butt in when I could have handled it?"
Chloe shook her head. "You don't know her. When she's angry, she won't go easy on you. I was protecting you."
Adrien looked at Marinette as she studiously ignored him and tried to drink more coffee. It seems she ran out, because she slammed the mug on her table and lay her head on her arms. Alya rubbed her back, talking to her softly. Sure, he hadn't known her as long as Chloe had, but he couldn't help but think she didn't look very angry. Just very sad.
The teacher walked back in the room, took a look around, and nodded. Then she went straight into her lecture about the newest book everyone had supposed to have finished the night before. He saw Juleka pull up the Sparknotes version of the book on her laptop and leaned forward to see what he was supposed to know.
Class went by slowly. Adrien couldn't help but to feel guilty about whatever it was that Marinette thought he'd done. He didn't know her, of course, but she didn't seem like the type of person to make groundless accusations against someone. He would have asked Chloe, but that seemed like a very bad idea, and Adrien had a maximum of two bad ideas per day. He'd already used up his two that morning. Maybe Nino would know. Adrien watched the clock, wishing that would make time move faster.
"Do you know why Marinette hates me?" Adrien asked. Nino turned with a start.
"Wha-oh, hey," Nino slowed down and walked next to Adrien as the two of them went to the cafeteria.
"Hey," Adrien greeted slightly impatiently. "Do you know why Marinette hates me?"
"Ok, I wouldn't say she hates you," Nino tried to placate. Adrien rolled his eyes, and Nino stopped talking for a bit. The two of them sat at a table. Chloe and Sabrina would join them soon enough. "She thinks you and your dad have been stealing her designs." Nino said. Adrien's jaw dropped.
"What?"
He sat still as Nino explained what Marinette had showed him, and her story of the park, and even that her aunt had told her to be careful of him.
"Also, her aunt had-" Nino cut himself off, glancing at Marinette. "Sorry, that was a bit personal. I'm not sure if I can tell you that." Adrien shook his head.
"No, that's ok. I just can't believe she would think that…" Adrien trailed off. Why wouldn't she think that of him? She didn't know him, and she'd had proof, just like she'd said that morning. She was right-someone was stealing her designs and not giving her the proper credit. The fault in her logic, however, had been in who she'd placed the blame on. It wasn't him. Adrien was a model, not a fashion designer. But, he was determined to get her to know the truth; he wouldn't be able to stand it if such an honest (brutally so) person thought he was a liar and a thief.
He'd prove it to her. He'd show her he hadn't stolen her work. And then, maybe they could be friends.
