I do not own any of Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir.
Adrien cursed.
Slipping into your old house shouldn't be difficult, but it was for Adrien.
He knew the home like the back of his hand, which definitely helped, but not much when your childhood home was not only paparazzi-proof, but anyone-proof.
The Gorilla no longer tailed him (he hoped), but instead guarded the back entrance to his home. Fortunately, he was most likely either passed out or playing with action figures.
The next biggest obstacle was Nathalie. There were security cameras she watched outside of the house, and inside Gabriel's workrooms. Luckily for him, he knew that right now, Nathalie is scheduled to consult Gabriel about any e-mails he's gotten and what, if any, changes should be made for tomorrow's schedule. This only took about fifteen minutes, so he had to hurry.
Adrien took his key and slipped it into the lock, hopefully as quiet as possible.
Though the heavy door let out a small creak in protest, The Gorilla who slept behind it let out a large snore to cover up any evidence of him being there.
Perfect.
He left the door open. He was not leaving without his dad's prototype costume, something Gabriel had scrapped and forgot about, as soon as he made it.
-:-
"I'll be right there to help with customers, Maman, let me just take this batch out of the oven first."
"Alright," Sabine said, from the other room.
Marinette grabbed the oven mitts off of the counter and smiled. She was so glad her mother was still using these oven mitts, she had made them for her parents on their anniversary.
She put them on and opened the oven, reaching in to grab the tray of cookies, which smelled heavenly.
She didn't finish taking them out when a scream erupted from the next room over, startling Marinette to no end. She scrambled and, amidst her panic, burned her upper arm on the edge of the oven. She hissed in pain, and began to go through every bad scenario in her head.
I have to keep Maman safe!
-:-
Good thing Lila blabbed about that conference before I left. ("Blabbed" being: screamed after Adrien as he walked out of the workplace when he quit, because Lila "didn't want to do this alone!")
Things couldn't have been timed better. First, he could retrieve the "sleuth suit," as he called it, then steal his baton tomorrow. He figured that someone might be suspicious of him, but he knew they were all too dense. Besides, nobody would see any motive in him "borrowing" his weapon, though it wasn't technically his anymore.
He sneaked past Nathalie's office, noting the open door and empty room.
Later, he'll need to delete those surveillance tapes.
Walking down the hall, he counted the doors on the right while trying to silence his footsteps. As he reached the seventh door, he heard Nathalie conversing with Gabriel behind the shut sixth door. He couldn't help but listen in for a second… or two.
"Can you believe it, Nathalie? The plan worked perfectly, better than I had hoped!"
"Yes, it was brilliant, sir."
What plan? Wasn't father always too busy designing?
"She's either the best liar on the planet, or everyone's just as massively naive as she is."
Adrien leapt at the sound of shuffling papers and went into the next room. Whatever that was about, he can't make time to care. There were racks upon racks of clothes in the room, all his father's designs, all organized by color. A heaping mass of designs that couldn't fit on the racks or have yet to be placed on one were stuffed into bins in one corner of the room.
He ignored the newer-looking designs, instead digging through a row of black fabric, frantically searching for the outfit he had in mind.
He pulled out the next clothes hanger, giving the fabric that hung off it a long, hard long.
This is it.
He smiled.
-:-
Quickly, she scanned her surroundings and decides to take off a single oven mitt, then bring the now-empty cookie tray with her.
She burst into the next room.
"Who's there?! Maman?! Maman!" No sign of Sabine, except for the mess on the ground and the doors swinging shut. Marinette bolted out the front doors of the bakery, already spotting the abductor.
Her mother was unconscious in his arms.
It seems that people noticed. Everyone was shutting their doors and probably notifying the police, because the streets had already cleared. Not a single person could be seen, all cars were parked, and all you could hear was the cooing of pigeons.
Marinette wanted to scream at him to stop, that she was part of Team #1, the best investigative team in Paris, or to clock him on the head with her yoyo. Instead, she silently followed him with her smoldering hot cooking tray-shield, waiting for the perfect time to strike.
No one ever hurts ma famille and gets away with it.
She delivered a blow to the back of his head, and he promptly fell to the ground.
Marinette heard the team arriving just as she plucked the mind-control device off of the man's temple. His villainous form diminished into his civilian self: long, spindly limbs, grey suit and hat.
Her arm burned like hell.
-:-
Adrien snuck into Nathalie's office, making sure to step on the carpeted parts of the floor. He hoped it could muffle his steps enough, because Nathalie had the eyes of a hawk and ears of a bat. She could detect almost anything, and he knew from experience.
He had reached the computer and began to get rid of the recordings, when he heard a steady click-clack noise working its way around the room next to him. He cursed silently and prayed that Nathalie wasn't walking down to her office.
There was really no suitable place to hide, her desk was made of glass and open on the bottom, there were no cabinets around big enough for him to fit in, and little to no other furniture bulky enough to crouch behind. Actually, almost the whole house was decorated as coldly as Nathalie's office was.
Adrien picked up the pace, panicking, and after ridding of the evidence shuffled his way out of the room and down the hall as carefully as he could.
A door down the hall opened.
-:-
"Hey, you're from Team #1! Marinette Dupain-Cheng, right?"
Marinette turned around, and two girls stood there, looking at her.
One was tall and had long, blonde, pigtails, and the other was shorter and had a black bob.
"Well, yeah," she said. "Who are you?"
"Oh, I'm Aurore, and this is Mireille! We just wanted to say that you are super cool in action."
"Oh, thanks. It's nice to meet you. Do you think I could, uh, get this bandanged?" Marinette said, pointing to her burned arm.
"Oh my goodness, yes!" Aurore said, and Mireille took her over by the ambulance that had parked on-scene.
Someone had begun to patch her up when Mireille and Aurore spoke again.
"So, we can't help but wonder… what are you doing here, exactly? Shouldn't you be at work?"
Marinette looked down at the ground, not wanting to be reminded of yesterday's disasters.
"I got fired."
"Oh… we're sorry. We didn't mean to intrude. That's probably what the conference today is about, then."
"Conference?" Marinette echoed.
"Well, yeah. It's tonight. And they never schedule conferences just out of the blue like that."
Drats, she thought. Well, that ruins my plan. She was a bit ambitious in the idea of getting back to "akuma hunting," and wished to get her yoyo back tonight. Looks like that's not happening.
-:-
Adrien ducked behind the first potted plant he could find. It happened to be tall, and very round, but not very leafy.
He tried to even out his breathing, in hopes that Nathalie wouldn't be able to hear him or the rustling of the leaves.
The sound of her heels came to a stop.
Adrien's heart leapt to his throat. Everything was too quiet.
"Is anyone there?"
He stood very still, hoping it would make Nathalie believe that she was being paranoid.
Even if he didn't suffer a heart attack today, he's had enough stress for a week and figured he could maybe just go home and hibernate after this.
The sound of her steps started up again and he sensed her turn into the room next to him.
He didn't waste any more time on the ground, and sneaked past the Gorilla, softly closing the back door.
Then he booked it.
A/N: so, hi! I don't know if this story is confusing or not, but if I need to do any explaining I will be glad to in the next chapter. Sorry that this chapter is so incredibly boring, I have been distracted and don't think it's my best work. But, on the bright side, today was my last day of school, so I have more time to write! Huzzah! Also, I wanted to apologize about my rant in my last story, I plan on deleting it. I was sleep deprived, hungry, I had a killer migraine, and it was almost twelve in the night. If I can't seem to keep my personal stuff off the internet in that state, then I wonder how much of a handful I'll be drunk… ANYWAYS, I also wanted to thank everyone who has posted reviews and read my stories. It means a lot to me! Stay safe, everyone!
Next chapter there's a possibility you'll see:
•a heist
•a meeting
•and disarray