The Dupain-Chengs fall into illness, leaving Marinette to stay home. Alya learns something new about the cousins - and especially Adrien.
Marinette woke up for the first time to an eerie stillness.
Blinking blearily at the musical alarm she'd set on her phone, she tapped snooze and rolled back over in an attempt to fall back asleep for just five more minutes. Citron, however, began prodding at her shoulder.
"Citrooooon… go awaaaaaaay…" she whined, burying her head in her pillow.
The sentibeing seemed to huff, its body puffing up and deflating indignantly at the rebuke.
Tikki watched in amusement as the gelatinous blob gathered itself up and promptly dropped down onto the bed, right atop her groggy chosen.
"ACK!" Marinette choked out, squirming beneath the squishy mass. "Okay! Okay! I'm up!"
"Mama…? Papa…?" The teenager called once she'd gotten ready to go, hair pulled back with barrettes. "Are you awake?"
She glanced down the stairs to the bakery. Below, it was still and silent. No customers were waiting in the lobby, there was no steady hum of the ovens nor beeping alarms to signal loaves and pastries that needed taking out.
It was quiet. One might say too quiet.
With a confused noise, she turned to exchange a glance with her Kwami.
Tikki shook her head. "I guess they must not be feeling well."
"Oh no," she sighed, leaning against the kitchen wall. "If they're sick, I'd better stay home in case they need help. Heaven knows I can't ask Citron to look after them."
"That would be a horrible idea," the ladybug agreed quickly, watching as Marinette pulled her phone out of her purse to start texting. "Well, you don't usually take days off, and you're hardly ever tardy. The office will understand."
"Hey, Adrien, Felix," Alya spoke up during a break from their work.
The two boys looked up, Felix growing puzzled from her secretive grin and Adrien tentatively giving one back.
"You're a fan of heroes, right?" She inquired, mostly to Adrien.
Adrien's bright green eyes lit up, and a genuine smile appeared as Felix let out a quiet groan.
"Please," he pleaded, "do not get him started. He will talk your ear off for hours."
Both of them chose to ignore Adrien's quiet hiss of "Felix!" and the embarrassed flush that spread across his face, though his smile remained at the girl.
"Perfectly fine with me!" Slipping in next to him, she rested her elbow on the table as he pulled out a notebook from his bag. "What's that?"
Adrien flipped open the notebook, revealing pages on pages of notes - complete with sketches.
"It's my hero notes," he explained excitedly. "For as long as I can remember, I've loved comic books, and especially superheroes!" He paused, then with a more prominent blush, "I've always kind of wanted to be a hero, myself…"
Alya missed Felix's grimace and the frown that pulled at his mouth before he went back to his homework. "Really? Me too! Which one's your favorite?"
Adrien shrugged loosely. "Honestly, I don't know. They're all so exciting, I can't choose! Maybe Black Boy, or Photonik? Or one of those American heroes… like Spider-Man? I just love them all!"
"Wow." Wordlessly, she gestured to the book and he pushed it over to her. Alya's eyes widened as she flipped from page to page, taking in the small, neat writing and the sketches of particular heroes he seemed to like. "Adrien… this is… this is really good! Into the classics, I see?"
"Well," he laughed sheepishly, "Father seemed to like them too."
"That was one thing I wasn't expecting to find out," Felix commented offhandedly. "What a twist. The crotchety old man is a fan of superheroes."
"He's not that bad, Felix, you just have to…" here, the boy fumbled with his words for a moment before lamely finishing with, "... get to know him?"
"Adrien, you don't even know him that well." The other blond finally shut his book and turned, giving his cousin a meaningful look. "What's his favorite color? Or his favorite pastime, besides making your life miserable?"
"Uh…" Adrien cast his gaze down at the table before hesitantly looking back up. "... White?"
"See, you don't even know that." Felix sighed. "Really, for all we know it could be purple with how much of that color he seems to use nowadays. I mean honestly - a purple-inked pen? Has he ever heard of blue?"
"Wait," Alya interjected quizzically, making Felix give her a halfhearted glare. "Your dad is seriously that bad?"
Adrien slumped a little in his seat, his expression twinging for a split-second before his lips pressed into a line, defeated.
"My mother had to practically grovel at his feet to get him to let Adrien come to school with me." Felix's hard stare centered on her, and despite the chill she felt in the air from it she relaxed minutely, realizing it wasn't her he was angry with. "That man is more stubborn than a mule and twice as unpleasant. And here he has me play bodyguard with my cousin, to boot - as if I wasn't already planning on keeping an eye on him for my own peace of mind!"
"Felix, I thought we weren't gonna talk about that," Adrien murmured under his breath, ducking his head so his expression couldn't be seen. "It's embarrassing."
"Well, your father is embarrassing." With a snort, he rolled his eyes to Alya. "So yes, he is that bad. But when your only other friend is Chloe Bourgeois, of all people…"
"Chloe can be nice," the younger boy protested. "I know she can be mean, but she really is a good person deep down. You just have to be patient and get to know her a little better. She's… had a rough life."
Alya snorted. "Yeah, I'll pass. The gum incident on the first day was more than enough evidence for me that she needs a wide berth."
Awkward silence lingered in the air between them, something tense and unspoken practically engulfing them. Alya felt like she ought to move.
But then, Felix cleared his throat. "Moving off of Bourgeois, what was your purpose in bringing up the topic of superhero comics?"
"Oh, right!" She brightened, and at the mention, some of that unease seemed to fade. "I was wondering if either of you have any clue about those two heroes that show up every time we have a… what was it she called it? An 'akuma'?"
Felix's entire form stiffened for but a second before his composure smoothed out, hand protectively going to Adrien's shoulder, and for the first time she could see, curiously, matching rings on their left hands. Interesting… and peculiar.
"What about them?" He inquired.
"Well," said the girl, adjusting her glasses as she leaned in and her voice dropped low, "I feel like there's something awfully fishy about the way they just… appeared one day. And the akumas just don't make sense. One of them, yeah, the loser of the weather contest, and then there was that girl that got turned into a weird lion-human hybrid thing, but then there was that weird guy in the park? Mr. Ramier? And then Nathanael chased Chloe around with a hairdryer for an afternoon…"
"You heard what he said. He wants…" his nose scrunched up as he added air quotes with his fingers, "Miraculous. Whatever those are."
"Aren't they magic jewelry or something?" Adrien wondered, making both of them turn to him in surprise.
"How do you know about that?" Alya demanded, leaning in.
"I… I just figured," the blond blushed, twisting a ring around on his finger. "I mean, they don't seem to have any striking features other than their items, but I doubt they carry around a staff and a yo-yo regularly. That's too obvious. It can't be their masks, either, because those aren't attached by strings or glue; they don't seem to come off at all." Adrien smiled victoriously. "So it has to be something easy to hide - thus, jewelry!"
"I'm… impressed," Felix said slowly. "You actually pay attention to stuff like this…"
"I've done a lot of thinking about it." With a laugh, he turned back to his notebook. "I've always wanted to be a superhero, and I've watched so many different shows about them I've had a lot of time to think about what I would want to be."
Flipping to a specific page, he showed them a rough sketch of a blond boy in a black uniform - looking strikingly like Paris's dark-clad cat hero.
"That isn't Cat Noir specifically," he explained with a huff as he intercepted Alya's mouth opening to say it. "But I've always wanted to be a film-noir type of undercover superhero, like Batman! He uses his wealth to keep the streets of Gotham safe from criminals!"
"You want to be Batman," Felix deadpanned. "Not Superman?"
"Superman is cool too," he added with a small smile. "But I like the secretive dark aesthetic of Batman better. Maybe a mix of both? Like, Superman's charisma with Batman's ability to hide himself in the dark?"
"Interesting. You know, I'd have pegged you for a goody-goody Clark Kent type," Alya mused, studying the sketch with a keen eye. "You're really intense about this kind of thing. It's cute!"
His cheeks flushed and he shyly looked away.
"Marinette likes heroes too," she whispered playfully into his ear. "You should hear her talk about them."
"Really? She does?" His head shot up and there was a twinkle in his eye, of the "I'm about to make a new hyperfixation friend" variety.
"Once she gets back, you'll have to discuss it together." With a wink, she turned to Felix with a grin. "Sorry for hijacking your cousin, de Vanily."
"You've just doomed me to an hour of nothing but superheroes," he flatly answered. "Just what I needed."
"Oh c'mon, I think it's cute." She laughed, cupping her chin in her hand. "You should see Marinette talk about fabrics! Oh man does she have opinions. Don't even get her started on the impracticalities of pleather versus leather."
"I think she would get along with Father," Adrien added slyly. "Surely he would let us bring a couple of friends over, right?"
"That's like taking a toy from a puppy's maw," Felix noted with a heaving sigh. "I wouldn't count on it, but maybe Mother could convince him to allow one or two."
"Yeesh." Alya winced. "He really is that bad."
Felix and Adrien gave her exhausted looks.
Marinette slumped over her worktable with a heaving sigh, Tikki hovering in concern over her.
"Maybe you should take a break…" She slowly broke the quiet.
In the background, Citron nodded its gelatinous head.
"What else am I gonna do? Mama and Papa are sleeping, and all I can do is wait for school to end so Alya can bring me my homework. I'm bored, Tikki. There's not even an akuma to fight."
Tikki stared back at her. "I'm surprised you aren't asking me to transform just to get out of the house."
"I need to stay here just in case my parents need me," the teenager responded, finally looking up from the worktable.
Citron shook its head and grabbed a quilt from the chaise, something Marinette had attempted to finish, and put it across her shoulders. The girl looked back in confusion, until the sentibeing patted her arm and gestured up.
"You… you want me to get up?" She questioned slowly.
Citron nodded, and once she stood up the blob engulfed her wrist with its appendage and firmly tugged her along.
Marinette jolted in surprise as she was pulled across the room to the chaise lounge. For such a slippery-looking thing, Citron's grip felt like she was encased in concrete as it finally sat her down on the lounge chair, the quilt flopping off of her shoulders behind.
"Citron, I can't just-" she began to protest.
The sentibeing firmly fixed her with an invisible look and turned around, grabbing the plate of sandwich that she'd made herself and setting it on her lap. Citron put its hands on its hips and looked at her expectantly.
Marinette blinked. Then a weary smile spread across her face and she laughed, "Okay, fine, I'll take a break. Just for a few minutes…"