Marinette sat on her bed, she was in pink pajama bottoms and a white shirt with Japanese cherry blossoms around the neckline. She had just finished drying her hair in the washroom and was currently mulling over the days events in her mind. A gentle tapping at her trap door signaled to the young blunette that her visitor for the evening had arrived. "It's open," she called to him, and watched as one leather clad boot made it's way down tentatively at first before he began walking down the ladder from her balcony.
She was still having a difficult time wrapping her head around the idea that Adrien was Chat Noir, she'd played it calm at school and then freaked out in her bathroom for the past four hours since she'd been home.
"Hi Marinette," Chat Noir greeted her.
"Hi," She returned the greeting, not looking at him. Chat stood watching her for a moment before he let his transformation drop and reverted back to being Adrien.
"Mari?"
"It was you the whole time," Marinette began.
Adrien nodded in agreement, a small smile on his face as her verbally affirmed, "Yeah."
"You said we had to talk?"
"You don't want to talk about this? I figure this is kinda weird for you. I always make you so nervous, and –uhh well—if I'm honest, Mari, I'm a little nervous around you too, it's not a—a bad thing, per se, really. I mean when I realized that you're Ladybug, it was a huge relief," Adrien admitted.
Marinette quirked a brow at him inquisitively, he felt his mouth go dry as he walked over to her and sat on the edge of her bed.
"Okay, maybe it'll be easier to just start from the beginning… although I – ugh. Rin can back up the beginning and explain things better than I can," Adrien groaned, running a hand through his hair.
"Rin, Rin, Rin, are you in love with Rin or something?"
"Gross," was the only thing Adrien replied with.
"What's gross about it? She's pretty enough," Marinette almost growled.
"Well yeah, I'm not denying that… but I'm not exactly hot for cougars," Adrien hinted.
This confused Marinette even more as she shook her head vigorously, making her look like she was trying to scare away an irritating insect.
"What?! How can she be a cougar? She's our age," Marinette spat out.
"Not exactly. She looks our age cause she ages slower than us but she's actually lived ten times as long as we have," Adrien replied.
Marientte gave him a perplexed look that clearly told him that she wasn't buying any of this one little bit. He braced himself but nothing prepared him for what he heard from her, "Are you drunk? High? Drunk and high? How could she possibly be 150 years old Adrien? Do you a have a secret mental illness you haven't taken medication for?"
Adrien blinked in response, and flinched at the questions. She wasn't going to believe him, this is pointless.
Suddenly Marinette screeched as she hugged her knees up close to her chest seeing Rin climbing up the side of her house and then up to the balcony.
"Well that's unusual, even for her," Adrien confessed as he looked to Marinette.
"Mari, I promise you, scary as she is she's the last one who'd ever hurt a human," Adrien assured the frightened bluenette.
Rin slowly made her way down the ladder from the open trap door, and Marinette realized she was in fact dressed in blue jean short shorts and a loose fitting pink midrift top, slung over her shoulder was a bag that looked to be quite heavy.
"Hi again Marinette," Rin greeted.
"How did you climb up so high?!"
"It's easy for me," Rin answered as she slid the back pack off her shoulders.
Adrien watched her for a moment before inquiring, "Uhh, what are you doing?"
"She seems like the type that needs visual confirmation. Trouble being most humans can't see me in my true form. Not without this at least," Rin answered.
She set up the machine that looked like an old fashioned movie projector. Seeing it prompted Marinette to ask her, "What the that thing?"
"This," Rin stated pointing at the contraption, "is a soul visualization machine. It allows me to be seen by non-spiritually aware humans without the use of a gigai."
Marinette could feel herself becoming cross eyed, none of this made any sense!
She decided she'd get to the bottom of this with a few questions, "How old are you? When were you born? Where are your parents?"
"I was born on February 17th 2006 in soul society," Rin replied without batting an eye, "I'm one hundred and fifty one years old. I usually live in soul society with my mother, Tama, my brother Tomoya and my sister Sora…. And I literally just realized all of my family members have an 'a' in their name except for myself. I don't know who my father is. I'm 5' feet tall, I weigh 90 pounds. I hold the rank and title of eighth squad Lieutenant within the guard squads of Soul society. I'm sworn to defend both my world, and your world from evil spirits that threaten to upset the balance of souls. I'm a Pescatarian, my favourite food is strawberries, I despise meat, never cared for the taste or texture, I can't swim and my best friend didn't drown in a tsunami… he died sacrificing himself to that our worlds could be safe from a villain worse than Hawkmoth… one who wanted absolute power over both worlds… and set into motion events that lead to Adrien being born."
Marinette face palmed as she looked at this white haired girl, "I can't stand liars."
"Then I'll show you I'm not lying," Rin replied as she turned the soul visualization machine on. She then took a small green ball from her shorts pocket and popped it into her mouth, her soul form separated from her gigai and Rin stood before her, wearing her former hair style of various strands of hair gathered within pearl like beads then pulled into the same half up hair style she wore at school with the large silver and pearl barrette keeping her hair out of her face.
She was dressed in her modified sleeveless shihakushō with shortened hakama and a rose coloured obi, on her right arm was her 8th division Lieutenant's badge, and on her left wrist the same pink woven bracelet she always wore.
"This is me, the real me as I was born," Rin's soul reaper form stated while her gigai sat down cross legged on the floor.
Marinette blinked a little before shaking her head harshly and asked the only logical thing that she could think to ask, "So, you're like Casper the friendly ghost?"
"Less desperate for friends and I can fight better than Casper. Although I suppose 'ghost' is a pretty accurate term for what I am," Rin replied.
She kept her eyes to Marinette as she continued, "There's two worlds, the material world also known as the human world where we currently are, and the world of soul society where I was born. In both of these worlds there's two types of spirits, wholes, and hollows. Whole spirits are just people who are deceased and have not yet crossed over to soul society. As a soul reaper, I help them go to the soul society but if I don't reach them in time or they die with a deep regret that causes an injury to their emotional heart, they become a hollow. A hollow is essentially a spirit whose heart is no more, and to compensate for the emptiness they feel they feed on souls. You sometimes hear of someone who was completely healthy dropping dead for no reason?"
Marinette nodded.
"That was a death by a hollow attack," Rin informed her as she resumed, "as a soul reaper I can cleanse these hollows, help them find peace, protect humans from having their soul devoured, and the purified hollow gets sent to soul society, although if the hollow intentionally caused harm and sadness to those around them, people like rapists, murderers, even thieves, they go to hell and cannot be purified. The thing about soul reapers though is that not all of us are good. Some of us turn bad and 151 years ago, there was a war in soul society which began because one soul reaper did become evil. His name was Sosuke Aizen, and his intent was to have absolute power, to rule both your world and soul society. We were able to imprison Aizen for 150 years, but before he was captured he fathered twin boys. One was raised in soul society, and was my friend from infantcy, he was adopted by a greater noble clan, and raised as Mamoru Kuchiki, the friend I lost last year. The other, was sent here to earth, in Paris France, to be raised as a human under the name Alexandre Agreste. Adrien is Alexandre's descendent and the only one who was able to help me destroy the hogyoku."
"Hogyoku?"
"The Hogyoku is how Aizen hoped to rule over both of our worlds and achieve absolute power," Rin explained.
"That's why Adrien knows me. When Aizen escaped Prison last year, Mamoru, myself, and a handful of other high ranking officers intercepted him. Mamoru was always very strong, but his Zanpakuto, the weapon that gives a soul reaper their power, wasn't truly effective on hollows, or really useful in combat. He relied heavily on his skill in kendo and he was more skilled than myself, his physical strength, agility, and his skill in empty handed combat as well as kido. In this battle, however, it was his Zanpakuto's ability that lead to our victory. He was able to use his Zanpakuto to separate Aizen from the hogyoku, and sacrificed himself to save both of our worlds…. He could separate them, but we both knew the hogyoku must never again fall into the wrong hands. We couldn't chance it. It had to be destroyed… so I sought out Adrien, going by something Mamoru had once told me, I figured Adrien would be able to destroy it… and once we awakened his own soul reaper power he was able to. The hogyoku has been destroy for a year as of the end of August this past summer."
"That's why we seem to be so close. I had to train him. It was nothing more than business and something that needed to be done. He's also the only one whose ever known this side of me in your world until now," Rin concluded.
"So in the chat room?"
"I was looking for Adrien, yes, but when Chloe started cyber bullying you, I couldn't stay silent. That crap kills humans, those ones usually become hollows within minutes. I wasn't going to sit by and watch it happen. If I did I couldn't look my own reflection in the mirror," Rin admitted.
Marinette slowly nodded in understanding, "But, if the Hogyoku was destroyed, why are you here?"
"I'm on a new mission, for now that's all I can tell you. I'm not sure how things are going to go and there's no sense frightening you without just cause. Just know should the worst come to pass, you, Adrien, and the new miraculous wielders will not be in the battle on your own," Rin replied.
Her gigai got up from her seat on the floor and walked over to Rin, the soul reaper pulled a red glove with a blue and white flaming skull symbol on it before pressing the glove against the gigai's forehead. The green pill popped out of the gigai's mouth and Rin seamlessly inhabited the gigai again with ease.
"This is a gigai, a faux body. I use it so I can interact with non-spiritually aware humans… and also to recover my powers. Making a substitute soul reaper is never an easy task, no matter how powerful the creating soul reaper is. I haven't been able to use my blade for a year now but slowly, by keeping in this gigai and giving myself weekly treatments, my reiatsu levels are climbing back up, soon I'll be back in fighting shape, until then, I'll offer any support I can give without leaving this gigai," Rin stated as she began packing the machine up and prepared to leave.
"Umm, you could leave through the door, ya know?"
Rin quirked a brow at Marinette before inquiring, "and how would I explain that to your parents? Hi Mr. DuPain, Mrs. Cheng, oh no! No cause for alarm, I'm a classmate of Marinette's. You didn't see me come by? Well I snuck in."
Marinette gave a slight giggle, "They weren't home when you first came here just say I let you in."
Rin sweat dropped at the suggestion before giggling herself and nodding, "Alright." She slung the backpack onto her back before heading out of Marinette's room.
"'I'm on a new mission' I'm getting tired of hearing that," Adrien grumbled.
"So you were telling the truth, she isn't our age," Marinette spoke.
Adrien nodded in agreement, "Yeah. I feel bad for Justin. He's going after a girl old enough to be his great-great-great-grandmother."
Marinette made a grossed out face at the idea, and then looked to Adrien, "So that's why you saved her today? You know she isn't at her full strength."
Adrien nodded, "and I'm the cause of that. As a soul reaper, I have basically the same powers I do as Chat Noir, but this all happened before I had the miraculous so I couldn't use my Chat Noir Cataclysm, I had to use the one I get when I'm a soul reaper. Rin said that means I not only have the black cat miraculous, I have the black cat spirit as well… which makes me a true black cat… apparently the last one was Alexandre."
He dead panned, "Uhh, ironically my full name is Adrien Alexandre Agreste."
Marinette blinked before joking, "uhh, guess your parents like their A's?"
Adrien gave a smirk and a slight shrug before asking, "So, are you okay now?"
Marinette hesitated before nodding a little, "I wonder how Chloe's going to react to us tomorrow though. I mean after the Akuma she didn't seem to remember anything about us being Ladybug and Chat Noir."
"Cause she honestly doesn't. Rin took care of it. She has this little device that replaces memories, it's usually used to conceal the existence of hollows after a hollow attacks someone in a building and leaves damage behind but she used it to erase Chloe's memory of us at the akuma attack… unfortunately there's no way to predict what her memory gets replaced with so when she started saying that we both jumped off the cliff after Rin before Ladybug saved us and Chat Noir acted like an idiot….. well that was just lucky," Adrien revealed.