Golden Eagle
Chapter IV:
A New Hero in Town
Alicia moaned and opened her eyes. She was back in her bedroom but now wore the onyx pendant around her neck. Her glasses were hooked into the pocket of her jeans and she groggily put them back on her face.
"Good morning!" said Dono, floating over to her "We did a lot last night,"
"So... it wasn't a dream? I really became a superhero called Golden Eagle?" Alicia asked.
"Yep and you totally kicked butt with Ladybug and Cat Noir!" Dono excitedly exclaimed.
Alicia smiled and yawned, stretching her arms above her head. She looked over at her alarm clock and the time fully woke her up. 08:23 a.m.
"Crud! School starts in less than ten minutes!" Alicia exclaimed.
"Oh, no! We better hurry! Got something I can hide in?" Dono asked.
Alicia raced around the place, brushing her teeth and getting changed all at the same time. Dono carefully put what he thought she'd need in her messenger bag before snuggling down inside to wait until he was needed.
Everyone at Collège Françoise Dupont (and all of Paris) were abuzz about the new superhero. People were watching and rewatching the footage of Golden Eagle flying off before her Miraculous lost all power. Alicia kept her head down with her hair in her face as she made her way through the crowd towards her classroom. She kept her Miraculous tucked under her shirt and Dono was in the bottom of her messenger back, surfing the web on her phone.
"Hey, Alicia, glad to see Chloé didn't scare you away from our school all together," Marinette said.
Alicia jumped at Marinette's sudden appearance and quickly nodded.
"Oh... uh-huh," she mumbled.
Still uneasy about everything, she entered the classroom and took her seat behind Marinette and Alya. Alya was showing everyone around her any and all footage she could get about Golden Eagle. Most people were excited just because she could fly.
"Golden Eagle must feel like the freest person in the world flying over Paris," Alya said.
Alicia cowered away and retreated into her sketchbook. Last night had admittedly been the greatest night of her life. She had flown and fought evil and been brave! Alya was right. She really had felt like the freest person in the world. Miss Bustier entered and everyone quietened down for the lesson to begin. Alicia looked up and saw Alya slyly showing Marinette something on her phone under their shared desk. With her stomach tied into a knot, she looked back down at her sketchbook and inadvertently tuned out Miss Bustier's lesson.
After the fiasco last time she had lunch in the courtyard, Alicia retreated to a corner of the library where no one could see her. As she reached into her bag for her lunch, Dono came flying out and stretched.
"Wow, Alicia, your bag is cramp. We need a better hiding place for me," he said.
"Ssh! We're in the library so you've gotta stay quiet," Alicia hissed.
"Okay, okay. Just give me some food 'cause I'm starved," Dono complained.
Alicia looked into her lunchbag and looked around. She had a juice box, PB&J sandwich, some carrot sticks and a cookie for dessert. The lunch her father had packed made her remember the time before her parents divorced and her father would make her lunches like this every day. Dono took the little baggie of carrot sticks and began munching on them. Alicia pierced the top of the juice box with the straw and sipped the apple juice a bit before moving on to her sandwich.
"So... Ladybug and Cat Noir said that Kwami have to eat to regain strength after you depower. What do you eat?" Alicia asked.
"Hm... I prefer ice-cream to be honest. Yeah, yummy gooy caramel ice-cream!" Dono said.
"That'll be hard to find if we lose power in the middle of a fight," Alicia pointed out "But I'll try my best,"
"And that's all you need to do," the Kwami said, eating the last carrot stick.
At the end of the day, the class had science with Ms. Mendeleiev that Alicia soon found out didn't like people drawing rather than taking notes. The teacher stood her in front of the classroom before starting to rant.
"Miss Blaise, it's your second day and yet you've already gotten into trouble. Drawing is a waste of time that won't amount to anything! You're here to learn so stop this pointless scribbling!"
Alicia looked down at the ground, trying to hide the fact she was trembling when something inside of her clicked. She had defeated an akumatized supervillain! Surely this wasn't that dangerous.
"Drawing is..."
"Hm?"
She gulped as she looked up at Ms. Mendeleiev's critical eyes. Her fingers squeezed her notebook until her knuckles were white and her pounding heartbeak throbbing in her head.
"Drawing isn't pointless," Alicia mumbled.
"Miss Blaise, as you are new, I won't give you detention but don't you ever talk back to me again! Now, sit down,"
With these strict words, Alicia returned to her seat and kept her head down. Her heart was racing. She couldn't believe she had spoken back to someone. It was unreal. The lesson continued and Alicia sat quietly, hoping not to be noticed again. Her dark brown hair fell like curtains either side of her face and obscured her vision of everyone else. Just as school was about to end, Ms. Mendeleiev assigned a class project.
"In teams of two that I will decide, you will devise an experiment to demonstrate a scientific phenomena of your choice and present your findings and reasoning as to why your experiment proves your point," she explained "As for the teams... Adrien will work with Nathaneäl, Nino with Ivan, Alya with Rose..." after going through the entire class, she finally came to Alicia "and that leaves Alicia to work with Marinette,"
Ms. Mendeleiev dismissed the class and the pairings split off to discuss their projects. Alicia started to put her things away when Marinette approached her. Cautiously, she closed her bag to keep Dono hidden.
"So, you want to come to my place to work on the project or would you prefer we go to yours?" Marinette asked.
"Uh... I... um... uhh..." Alicia stammered "Y-Your's is... is fine,"
"Okay, then let's go,"
Alicia pushed her electric scooter along as she walked with Marinette to the Tom & Sabine Boulangerie Patisserie. When they entered, she was met with the smell of freshly baked pastries.
"I'm back from school!" Marinette called.
"Welcome home, sweetie!" Tom called from the kitchen.
Marinette's mother was at the till, finishing the transaction with the only customer left in the store. Alicia saw how Sabine hugged her daughter and she began to miss her own mother. Bridget was a very loving and devoted mother who would do anything for her kids. Despite being a fashion designer, you could easily find her in sweats and an oversized T-shirt while gorging on ice-cream and rocking out to Jagged Stone. Sometimes, she was just a big kid and others she was a bad-ass businesswoman running her own fashion brand in NYC. Alicia felt her fists clench and she bit back the tears. Last thing she wanted was to cause a scene right there and then.
"C'mon, my room's this way," Marinette said, heading up the stairs "Oh, and you can leave your scooter folded behind the counter,"
Alicia did as she was told and followed Marinette up the stairs to the apartment above the bakery. They went up even more stairs and Marinette had to open a trap door for them to climb into her room. Alicia looked around and dropped her bag on the floor. There was a tiny 'oof' from Dono and she cringed in the hope Marinette hadn't heard him. Marinette showed no signs of having heard him and she put her school bag on her desk.
"So... What experiment do you wanna do?" she asked, turning to her.
Alicia jumped.
"H-Huh? Oh, um, I... uh... dunno," she stammered.
Marinette frowned and sat at her desk. She pulled a science book off of her desk shelf and began flipping through for ideas. Alicia looked around and spotted that several pictures of Adrien modelling his father's designs were pinned to her wall. A blush rose in her cheeks and she pretended not to have noticed.
"Wh-What... What about... uh..." she stammered "Um..."
"Yeah?" Marinette asked, turning around to look at her "Got an idea?"
"W-Well..."
Before Alicia could finish, she saw Dono waving for her attention from the corner of her bag. She tensed up and grabbed her bag.
"I-I... just need the toilet, sorry," and she dashed out.
Alicia burst through the bathroom door and quickly locked it behind her. She slumped down on the toilet seat and unbuckled her messenger bag. Dono came flying out and he looked out the narrow bathroom window.
"Dono, what's wrong?" Alicia asked.
"I can sense an akuma attack coming. We need to transform and go find it," he explained "Hurry!"
Alicia looked back at the door, wondering what Marinette would say to her sudden disappearance but she knew she had to go. She pulled her onyx pendant out from under her shirt and stepped back.
"Dono, wings out!"
Alicia's onyx pendant turned gold and the chain turned silver as Dono went spiralling into it. With her clothes turning to Golden Eagle's yellow bodysuit, she reached back and tapped her shoulder blades. The pair of glider wings sprouted and flapped for a moment when the quiver materialized between them. Alicia's dark brown hair was pulled back and tied into a ponytail. The thick-rimmed glasses on her face were replaced by her mask and she opened her bird-like golden eyes. The brown belt snapped around her waist and the oval dock on her right wrist materialized with her bow shrunk and docked inside. Her white scarf wrapped around her neck and the transformation was complete.
"Sorry, Marinette, but Golden Eagle's needed," she said and she climbed out the bathroom window.
Marinette knew Alicia had anxiety issues but how long could she stay in the bathroom? Tikki climbed out of her bag and sat on her partner's shoulder.
"I don't know what to do, Tikki. I want to be friends with Alicia but she hardly talks to me," Marinette said.
"Just give her time. Remember how nervous you were before you became Ladybug? Alicia's new to school, to the city, to the country! I bet you'll become great friends as soon as she settles in," Tikki reassured "For now, let's find a subject for your project,"
As soon as Marinette turned on her computer to search, a news alert came up about an akumatized villain attack. Feeling guilty for skipping out on Alicia, Marinette quickly transformed and left to go fight it.
Golden Eagle landed on the rigging of the Eiffel Tower and looked down at the people below. Her instincts told her this was where the akuma was going to strike but she had no idea how. Using Eagle Vision, she surveyed the crowd below and spotted a black butterfly heading for a gloomy university student who was covered in paint and feathers.
"No, wait!" she yelled.
She jumped down to try to stop it but as the guy looked up at her, the akuma entered the joy-buzzer in his hand. Golden Eagle landed just as the man was akumatized and a new villain stood up.
"Hoohoohoo! Prankster's the name and pulling pranks is my game!" he chuckled.
"Great, I never liked clowns," she muttered.
Prankster was dressed in a red court jester outfit with blue skin and a domino mask. He reached into a "bag-o'-tricks" secured to his belt and took out a comically oversized mallet. It may have been yellow and covered in red stars but it didn't look fun. Frantically, Golden Eagle dived out of the way as Prankster slammed his mallet into the ground. She pulled out her bow and it changed into a *compound bow. She drew back a silver arrow and aimed for Prankster's hands to try to knock the mallet away from him.
"Where the heck are Ladybug and Cat Noir?" Golden Eagle thought "Wait... can't their Kwami tell when there's an akuma attack coming like Dono? Crud!"
Prankster hit her arrows right out of the air with his mallet before clumsily swinging it around. Laughing, he hit one of the legs of the Eiffel Tower and laughed even harder as the structure began to slide out of place.
"Double crud," Golden Eagle muttered.
Prankster threw his mallet at another leg and collapsed laughing as metal beams started to fall from up high. Finally, Ladybug and Cat Noir arrived.
"Yikes! We look away for five minutes and this happens!" Cat Noir complained like a disappointed parent.
"We've got to stop it from falling!" Ladybug exclaimed "Cat, use your staff and jam it between the tower and the ground. Eagle, fly up there and try to push it the other way!"
Cat Noir jabbed one end of his staff into the ground at just the right angle before extending it to push against the direction the Eiffel Tower was falling in.
"Golden Wings!"
Golden Eagle flew up and pushed against the tower, her glowing wings flapping furiously. She looked down and saw Cat Noir struggling to keep his staff steady. Ladybug better have had a plan because with the use of Golden Wings, Golden Eagle only had a few more minutes.
"Ladybug!" she yelled "Do something! Can't keep holding up the FLIPPING EIFFEL TOWER for much longer!"
"Working on it!" Ladybug yelled back "Lucky Charm!"
*Bow Facts: a compound bow is one with mechanical aid for pulling back the string (typically wheels on either end). Golden Eagle's bow's base form is a takedown bow (one made to fold away into three or so pieces).