When to train a time traveller
Adrien watched as Kagami snatched Felix away and nudged Marinette to look in the same way. It looked like a good turn of events, but Adrien was worried about Felix's intentions, he still wanted to protect his friend Kagami, well aware that he used to be her crush.
Perhaps Marinette was the only one who found this most recent turn of events slightly too fast and too intense to be satisfying, she felt rather disconcerted by the fact that Kagami chose to take Felix to ice cream and wondered how much that was due to the boy's likeness to Adrien.
That day Felix truly strived to be less like to Adrien in his appearance and Marinette finally relented not to follow them and try to protect their friend. In fact it was her who stopped and pulled Adrien to the side.
"Do you think it is a good idea to talk to Fluff now?" She asked quietly. "With what we planned for this evening, it might be useful to know what the rabbit kwami thinks about his chosen."
"I always thought it was the kwami who had chosen me, not master Fu, but I guess I was wrong, it is us, the guardians who chose the wielders." Adrien replied quietly while his eyes followed his cousin and Kagami as they walked through the crowd.
"I was choosing temporary wielders even before I became a guardian, master Fu let me." Marinette shrugged. "Besides we have an advantage of knowing in advance who will be chosen because we have already met the wielder."
"Exactly." Plagg cut in as they were finally away from the crowd or any company. "And believe me, kid, it was me who chose you, not master Fu." The tiny black cat smirked and watched the boy carefully, he wanted, no, he needed the boy to believe that.
"But it was master Fu who sent Wayzz to take our miraculous when we fought Feast sentimonster." Marinette countered. She clearly remembered that night and the letter that shattered to her core, but Adrien looked as if he saw a ghost as the memories overwhelmed him.
"The guardian has more knowledge that us kwami and he can overrule our choices, Marinette." Tikki chirped in. "And a wielder can use us against our will as well as disown us if they want to do so."
They walked into the bakery, picked up a few treats, Marinette took a few carrots from the kitchen and they were in her room, pretending to do homework with a bunch of treats and carrots on the side.
"So, Bunnix suggested that we should consider giving her the rabbit miraculous." Adrien smirked. He was excited to be a guardian and he wanted to give a miraculous to his friend. He was certain that they would need her in the future, because they saw how she will help them with Timetagger.
"But Bunnix also said she got the miraculous when Alix will grow up to be something like six feet tall?" Marinette was feeling a slight headache from the whole issue, Alix was definitely not six feet tall yet.
"Well, she said to talk, not to give her the miraculous." He shrugged.
She hesitated at first, it was the time travel miraculous, but this was just a small talk, like guardians to the kwami, it was not like she was going to wield it or do time travel herself. Marinette opened the miracle box and took out the watch. Besides, she talked to the rabbit kwami before.
"Hello Marinette, my guardian." The tiny rabbit greeted and bowed his head.
"This is Adrien, we are sharing the duties of a guardian." Marinette motioned for the boy who was giddy with excitement and anticipation of this talk.
"Hi Fluff." The boy smiled excitedly.
"Your future wielder asked us to discuss with you when we should let her have the rabbit miraculous." Marinette suddenly became aware how odd the sentence was.
Adrien stared at her too. Fluff was not impressed.
"Oh you mean the girl who will wield me in the time you refer to as ancient Egypt?" The tiny rabbit was hopping all around the room and jumped high and in slow motion, since he was able to float. "Or wait, did Egypt happen to you before?"
"Egypt happened." Adrien confirmed.
"Egypt still exists?" Marinette was confused.
"Oh good, I'm not supposed to reveal anything about the future." Fluff hopped around nervously and then finally settled down and accepted a baby carrot that Marinette offered and nibbled on it determinedly. "So you actually know someone who was my chosen but is not my chosen yet?"
"Yes … Alix." Adrien and Marinette exchanged a look. "She is a girl from our class, in school, she goes to the same school as us." Marinette continued to explain. Fluff munched on the carrot with ears perked up because he was listening.
"And how do you know she doesn't have the miraculous right now?" Fluff inquired. "And how did you learn about her identity?" The rabbit continued. "And how will she be chosen? And how do you know I have chosen her? Or will you chose her? Have you chosen her?"
"Kwami are not supposed to ask these questions." Tikki warned. "It is the job of a guardian to help the kwami and chose their wielders."
"We have met Bunnix before … " Marinette tried to answer. "She came from the future and instructed us how to fight an akuma that arrived from the future too."
"You mean from the past." Adrien corrected. "She came to us from the past, she was hidden in that Egyptian piece in the Louvre, remember?"
"Akuma? Are there akuma around currently?" Fluff ignored the previous statement, he was obviously not getting the answer he wanted.
"Not right now, no, there used to be akuma around. Back then I was choosing the temporary wielders to help us, Ladybug and Chat Noir." Marinette cut in, but then she remembered all the talks from the temple and how Fu never actually completed his training.
"Temporary wielders?" Fluff looked baffled with raised ears, wide eyes and his leg tapped nervously in the thin air.
"Yes, there are several temporary wielders who get to use a miracoulous for some time and then they return it to us." Adrien explained with a patient smile.
"For some time?" Fluff scratched behind the ear with his foot.
"Yes, when we had particularly nasty akuma that we could not deal with on our own, because we are also Ladybug and Chat Noir, we would get a miraculous and give it to a person who would then transform and help us and return the miraculous to us after the battle." Adrien spoke slowly.
"When … then … after?" Fluff scratched nervously behind his ear again. Marinette grabbed Adrien's hand. They looked at each other. Of course this was not making any sense to the kwami that provided the power of time travel.
"How on Earth do you think you would give the power of time travel to anyone … temporarily?" The tiny rabbit inquired. "This is not the temple nor the cave nor the Stone Shack, nor the ..."
"Pema, a monk from Tibet was using the time travel miraculous temporarily." Adrien beamed.
"Yes she did, but she belonged to the temple monks." Fluff was persistent to prove a point that neither of the teenagers could possibly comprehend, according to him.
"She only took us to observe historical events and to teach us, we were not supposed to alter history ..." Marinette trailed off.
"Except that one time when it apparently did not matter." Adrien added.
"Of course, Alix has to be a permanent wielder as soon as she gets you." Marinette beamed. "Because she will travel back through thousands of years. It is impossible for me to just give her the miraculous and then ask for her to return it after one battle."
Adrien scratched the back of his neck. He understood the concept completely, but the idea of giving a miracoulous to someone permanently straight from the first try was scary, not to mention that this was the time travel miraculous. The rabbit kwami looked satisfied.
"You know the identity of my wielder although you consider them a future wielder because you already met her, in the past ..." Fluff noted and hopped around some more.
"Yes, um, you see, we met Alix, she has this watch … " Marinette looked at Adrien rather scared where this train of thought is going to bring them. " … that she got for her fifteenth birthday. And it lit up and told her to take Ladybug and Chat Noir ..."
"And we knew what to do to set her, I mean future her, I mean Bunnix, the future superhero her … " Marinette trailed off. It made sense in her head but it stopped making sense when she tried to translate her ideas into words, because it already happened. She only hoped that Fluff would get it.
"Yes, okay, my wielder got a message, she has the message portal." Then he suddenly stopped in front of Marinette. "You're Ladybug." He jumped around and made one more circle, then stopped in front of Adrien. "You're Chat Noir."
"So you know the identities of our wielders too, why wouldn't they know one of yours?" Plagg sounded as if he just woke up because of some annoying noise and was not happy about it.
"They say they are guardians and wielders and my wielder is from their school. Yet they ask when to give the watch that was already hers for thousands of years." Fluff countered.
"Yes, she was in ancient Egypt due to an akuma, the Time tagger, and she got locked into a piece of stone, but she was older then than she is now." Marinette tried to explain.
"She is much smaller now than she was then." Adrien tried to clarify, it did not sound clearer to him. But Fluff nodded as if he understood.
"You mean she is ageing right now?" Fluff was incredulous.
"Cheese is ageing, kids grow." Plagg muttered. Tikki could not decide if she was irritated or incredulous. Fluff was nice, but confusing when he talked shop.
"We call it growing up?" Adrien looked at Marinette for some support.
"Tell me … about the watch she has, what do you know about it?" Fluff inquired.
"She got a watch for her fifteenth birthday. It got a little damaged on that day." Marinette was explaining.
"She destroyed a magic watch on the first day she got it?" Fluff was tapping the floor with his foot. It produced a loud noise.
"It wasn't her fault she … was racing and gave it to me for safe keeping." Marinette suddenly felt shivers go down her spine. "She was so upset that got akumatized into Time breaker because of that."
"What, the watch got broken and it hosted a butterfly?" Fluff scratched behind his ear again, it was an obvious sign that the rabbit kwami was nervous.
"An evil butterfly." Adrien corrected. "The butterfly wielder abused his powers."
"Even better, so that watch got broken and infested with an evil butterfly." Fluff hopped around again.
"No, the butterfly was in her skates and the watch got fixed due to Ladybug magic." The girl continued. "Then, on a different occasion the watch activated once with a message, Alix approached the two of us and it was the time we fought Time tagger akuma in the Louvre."
"It was an akuma that was able to travel through time and he dumped your wielder in the ancient Egypt." Adrien tried to clarify.
"So my wielder already knows your identities." The rabbit kwami concluded.
"Yes she does." Adrien confirmed, because of the stunt Bunnix did at the Tvi studio few days ago.
"No she doesn't." Marinette replied at the same time, because the Alix they knew from class did not know their identities yet.
Fluff tapped the floor with one foot really quickly.
"I mean, Bunnix knew when she came from the future a few days ago." The boy clarified.
"But Alix we go to school with doesn't." The girl explained.
"So she has a watch." Fluff concluded and stressed the word 'a'.
"Yes, but it is not this watch." Marinette held up the rabbit miraculous she took out from the miracle box.
"Are you the Chat Noir that will cataclysm the miraculous that holds me?" Fluff looked at Adrien.
"Bunnix mentioned something about that to me, as Chat Noir." Adrien felt awkward, he felt guilty for a mistake he was yet to make. "I thought we were not supposed to know the future." He protested if only to change the subject.
"You already knew that. My wielder has to be of certain age and strength to become the master of time." Fluff spoke solemnly. "But I conclude from your story that for you, she is still just a small girl in school with you and haven't completed the training in the temple."
"Oh, but the temple is in China, we can't send her there, and for seven years … " Marinette trailed off. "We can send her there." She concluded and looked at the box. "Using the horse miraculous." She turned to Fluff. "And you can take care about the time."
"Good, then I can take her to master Shi to train her." Fluff concluded.
"We did not meet master Shi in the temple." Adrien spoke and Marinette nodded to support his claim.
"You have been trained in the temple in this time we are currently in, right?" Fluff was hopping around again and nibbled on Marinette's homework worksheet before she gave him another baby carrot.
"Right." Adrien confirmed. "Sort of." He added and looked at Marinette. "The temple was destroyed for about one hundred seventy years and then it got restored when we defeated the sentimonster that destroyed it." Adrien looked at Plagg, the kwami was lightly offended, but silent.
"Well, master Shi lives in another time?" Fluff offered as an explanation. The tiny rabbit knew well how the concept of time was confusing for most of the people. "And perhaps she can travel to this time to train your classmate?"
"Of course." Adrien scratched the back of his neck. This guardianship duty was something rather complex, or was going to be, never mind.
"So, when should she go there?" Marinette asked. "And when she should go?" There were two whens there for a reason, she needed to know the moment she needed to pick up Alix and give her the miraculous and she needed to know at which time to tell her to go.
"She shall be summoned. The watch she already has will tell her when to go. If it works like you just said. You, the guardians, and the wielder of the horse miraculous just have to be prepared to send her to the Cave of Protection." Fluff nibbled on the next carrot after that.
The two guardians were rather confused. But it started to make sense, they needed to wait for Alix to get her signal, then they needed to put her in the right place and practically any time was the right time, sort of, if they got it correctly.
"Each time travel miraculous wielder was trained in the same way." Fluff mentioned while he jumped around, his last carrot was only half eaten. "I believe the girl that you are talking about was trained in the temple five centuries ago by master Shi."
"Why didn't you tell us that in the first place?" Marinette muttered. "This whole conversation seems like a total waste of time, right now." She checked her clock, her homework was not going to write itself and she had plans for the evening. Fluff, the master of time, just took one more carrot.
"So we just have to send her to the right place?" Adrien asked and got confirmation before they fed the little rabbit kwami more carrot and put the watch back into the miracle box. "Say hi to Nooroo and Duusu." The boy added just as he was ready to let Fluff get sucked back inside the miraculous.
"I can tell them anything, but their health is low because of the abuse of the miraculous by their former wielders. It is far easier to fix a broken miraculous that got damaged in a battle than a kwami broken by their wielder." Fluff warned.
"Thank you Fluff." Adrien smiled worriedly and let the watch rest in the miracle box. Fluff got sucked back inside and he turned towards Marinette, his fellow guardian. "So … we just have to watch Alix?" He knew it sounded far more simple that it actually was.
"Preferably without revealing ourselves as Ladybug and Chat Noir." She added.
"And we have to find how to treat Nooroo and Duusu." The boy fiddled with his ring.
"For all of that, we need Max." Marinette concluded.