Miraculous Tales

2) F̶u̶r̶r̶y̶ V̶e̶n̶g̶e̶a̶n̶c̶e̶: P̶a̶r̶t̶ 2

"This is taking an awful lot of time, Night Howler! Get their miraculous by tonight if you expect to keep your powers! Understand?"

"Yes, Hawkmoth," the akumatized girl answered. "Do not worry, once I gather my pack again, I will have something very special in store for tonight."

..........

Plagg's laughter filled Adrien's entire room. The poor boy rested at his desk with an ice pack on his forehead. The Ladyblog had been pulled onto his computer where a video of his entire encounter with the dog stampede had been playing.

Alya must've somehow gotten the whole thing on camera.

"One more time, one more time, AHAHAHAHAHA!!!" Plagg clutched his stomach on the desktop. "Three million views in under an hour, boy, you just went VIRAL!!" Adrien winced as he watched his head slam into the street sign for the seventh time.

"Yeah? Well, that's the least of my problems! How am I supposed to hide this from my father?" Adrien removed the ice pack revealing an imprint of the rectangular post. "HAHAHAHA YOU CAN SEE THE CREASES AND DENTS FROM THE METAL AND EVERYTHING OH MY GOD!!"

Plagg kept pounding his fist on the desk in endless fits of laughter, quieted down, then started all over again when the screen showed Chat hissing while hugging the lamppost.

Adrien let out a sigh of shame. "Chat Noir, hero of Paris, terrified of dogs and deals with trouble by scaling lampposts. I'm a joke," he mumbled. It wasn't that he was embarrassed for being scared. He was embarrassed for being scared and doing absolutely nothing about it.

He froze in fear and tried keeping himself safe when his lady needed him most. He let her down. And because of his cowardliness, she came to his rescue and the akuma had gotten away. He became a damsel in distress when he was supposed to be a hero Paris looked up to and relied on.

And the whole world saw it.

"Alright, Plagg, that's enough. You finished your Camembert, now it's time to meet Ladybug. Claws out."

Adrien was almost scared to face Ladybug, even as Chat, which was pretty bad. Chat was supposed to be the part of him that was wild and free. Chat was even hesitant to show his face outside and it wasn't even his actual face.

He wished with all his might that she didn't see the viral video, she didn't take him seriously as it was and if she felt she couldn't even work with him anymore...Chat tried his best to shake that thought out of his head- which he shouldn't have done because it hurt badly. To his relief, his messy hair and mask covered the bruise very well.

It was about one o'clock when he finally met his lady at the ledge of the bridge. Ladybug made sure to chide him for his tardiness. "You're late. You should've been here fifteen minutes ago." Chat hung his head low a little.

He took the long way to get there on the rooftops without using his baton. He tried to stay out of sight as much as possible and on top of that, his headache was seriously slowing him down.

"S-sorry, m'lady."

Her expression softened when she noticed his odd behavior. "Chat, what's wrong?"

"Nothing. Why do you ask?"

"Chat."

He knew there was no use in hiding it, she could see right through him. Well, not right through him, being his identity was still a secret, thank god for that.