Chapter 8: Adrien - Que signifie-t-il si quelqu'un le découvre ? (What does it mean if someone finds out?)
"SMOKE BOMB!" The Ninja yells, disappearing in the smelly cloud of reddish smoke, and I take my leave as well. In all the chaos, it's easier to slip out the front door and around a corner to transform back.
"Geez, could that kid get any weirder?" Plagg says, coming out of my ring.
"Which kid are you referring to?" I reply.
"That Ninja kid! I've never heard of him before! And that smoke bomb!" Plagg shakes a bit. "How does he not barf?"
"If you ask me, it smells just as bad as your camembert." I tell him.
"Don't you dare talk about camembert like that!" he says as he flies under my over shirt. "Anyways, we need to go! The longer we wait around the sooner Danny might figure it out! Plus, you have to get me some cheese for that comment."
I start running as fast as I can to the bathroom. "Your cheese can wait; right now, we have a secret Identity to save!"
I dart through the crowd as they start to file back into the convention hall, stopping just before the bathroom door to catch my breath. I slowly open the door and peer inside. No sign of Danny, maybe I still had a chance of keeping my identity as Chat Noir a secret. I walk inside and over to where I was standing before, trying to make it seem like I had been here the whole time.
The door came to a close and everything was quiet. I check the stalls one last time before I let out a sigh of relief. Though, it may have been a bit too soon.
"So…. Where were you?" I hear Danny say from nowhere, causing me to almost jump out of my skin.
I put my hand on my chest and exhale. "You better not do that again, you scared the life out of me," I say, hoping to change the subject.
"Sorry," Danny says, appearing on top of one of the stalls as his human-self. "Just seemed appropriate. But I still want to know where you were, because I've been here for a while, since I left to be exact."
"Wait…. How?..."
Danny jumps down from on top of the stall and transforms back to Phantom. Then, right before my eyes, splits into two of himself, and the one on my left turns back into regular Danny. I think I feel my jaw drop.
"That's how." they say in unison, before merging back together as one Danny. "Now, care to explain why you left?"
I blush a bit, knowing that he probably saw me transform into Chat. "Well," I say, scratching the back of my neck. "I guess it can't be helped." I pull open the side of my overshirt and let Plagg fly out.
"Adrien, you know you're not supposed to do this, right?" Plagg complains.
"Oh, now you're the voice of reason?" I respond. "Besides, I can't really help the fact that he found out."
"Yeah, sorry if I ruined anything," Danny says, walking over to Plagg. "But I'm a bit confused. What are you?"
"What am I? You're more of an anomaly than me!" Plagg flies up to Danny's face and pokes him on the nose.
I grab him before he starts anything and push him back inside my overshirt. "That's Plagg. I guess you could call him the source of my transformations." I hold up my hand. "He does it using my ring."
Danny laughs a bit. "And I'm guessing, based on how you tried to stop me from finding out, that nobody knows about this?"
"Not even my partner," I reply.
"Wow, that's rough. How do you even know you can trust each other?"
"We both have the same duty - to protect Paris. There was one incident with an enemy who disguised herself as one of us, but while I was fooled, Ladybug was always skeptical."
"That's some bond, especially considering you've never seen each other without masks."
"Yeah," Silence falls between us, but not for long. The bathroom door swings wide open, revealing two teenagers covered in various items from the food court. The taller one looks familiar, but it's hard to tell when he's covered in slop.
"Uh, sorry. Are we interrupting something?" he asks, stopping whatever conversation he was having before.
"No no, you're fine." Danny replies.
"Good," the shorter boy says, walking over to a sink. "'Cause we weren't gonna leave anyway."
"Howard!" the tall boy chimes in, following him. "Have a little respect at least."
"Nope," Howard looks at his friend. "Cunningham, you gotta remember that at a convention like this, other bathrooms would be WAY more crowded. We're lucky there's only two other guys in here."
The taller boy looks to Danny and I while he turns on the sink. "Hey, you guys are from the hotel!" he exclaims. "You were in the elevator!"
'Now I remember where I saw him, he was a part of that class on the tenth floor! The one with the purple hair!' I think, smiling at him. "Yeah, I remember waving to you!"
The conversation stopped suddenly when we all heard a *THWUMP!*. We all turned to find Howard on the ground in front of a sink, covered in water. It looks as though he just swam in the sink.
He looks up at us and scowls a bit. "CUNNINGHAM! I'm too short for the sink!"
I hear a stifled chuckle come from his friend, soon turning into a full on laugh. Danny tries to hide a smile behind his hand, and I find myself starting to smile as well. It doesn't take long until danny and I both start laughing. Howard looks at us upset, but Danny offers him a hand up.
"Sorry dude, but that's way to funny." he says, helping Howard to his feet. "By the way, I'm Danny. Sorry for the late introduction."
"Oh! And I'm Adrien," I join in, managing to stop my laughter. "Nice to meet you."
"Same to you," The other boy says, reaching for the soap dispenser. "I'm Randy. Randy Cunningham. And that's Howard."
Howard, instead of replying, puts a hand on his chin and circles me with a puzzled look on his face. He stops back in front of me, eyeing me up and down before finally speaking.
"You look a lot like…" he starts. I get worried again. Has someone else figured out my secret? Howard snaps his fingers, making me jump a little. "That French model my sister likes."
I let out a big sigh of both relief and despair. "Yeah, thats me." I reply.
"Wait, you're a MODEL?" Danny asks, shocked.
I turn to him and nod. "I'm surprised you didn't notice sooner, considering my father's show right next door."
"Well, Heidi's going to be happy to hear about that," Randy comments. "Doesn't she have some posters of him?"
Howard hangs his head and sighs. "Yeah, she carries them around with her EVERYWHERE. She never lets them go."
"Wow, dedicated fan, I guess." Danny says, turning to me. "Dude, doesn't that freak you out at all?"
"No, that's nothing. You should see the girls back in Paris," I tell him. "My dad was reluctant to let me go to school because of them."
"Oh, well, at least there aren't any girls with shrines dedicated to you in their lockers, right?" Danny asks. I just stare at him, and he gets what I'm trying to tell him. "That bad, huh?"
"Yeah," I lean on the edge of one of the stalls. "It's that bad."
Randy turns off the water to his sink and starts towards the hand dryer, but is stopped by Howard when he almost climbs in the sink again. Randy, with cat-like reflexes, grabs Howard by the legs and stops him from falling in.
"Sorry Howard, your pants are wet now." he says, bringing howard to the floor.
"Aww, Cunningham! These were my only pair of clean pants!" Howard replies.
"Uhh, define clean," Danny cuts in.
"Wait, Howard, you did bring more than one pair of pants with you out of Norrisville, right?" Randy asks.
'Norrisville?' I think. 'Isn't that where the Ninja said he was from?'
"Pshh, Cunningham, who do you think you're talking to here? I may not have any clean pants, but I still have pants."
Randy puts his head in his hands. "You do realize that you have to share a washing machine with everyone else in the hotel room with us."
Howard's face suddenly changes. "EWW, I'll pass on that. If my stuff gets mixed with Bash's… I'd rather not go there."
"I don't even wanna know." Danny says in disgust. "But, my family has a penthouse suite if you want to take your laundry there. Well…. So long as you don't mind a few ecto-plasm stains here and there."
"Ecto-what now?..." Howard questions.
"Ghost goop. As long as you're not wearing any fur you have nothing to worry about."
"Well, anything's better than getting in a fight with Bash over who's sock is who's." Randy chimes in, patting Howard on the back. I don't know who this Bash kid is, but he doesn't sound too friendly.
"Mine's always open, too, since it's just my father's assistant Natalie and I in our room." I say, hoping that Danny was joking about the ecto-stains.
"Great! Let's go!" Howard says as he starts to walk off.
"Now?" Danny asks.
"Yes, now!" Howard adds, and with that, I can only guess we're off to one of our suites.
CHAPTER END
