Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Marinette had spent the past hour refreshing every trending page of all the social media platforms on the internet. She even went so far as to read Alya's guide on her to surf the dark web to make sure that the words "Marinette Dupain-Cheng" and "Ladybug" weren't in the same sentence.
Only when her right index finger started cramping up did the teen decide that she was safe, for now.
While she took a moment to pace around the room, she came up with a few of her own whacky theories on why she wasn't on the frontpage of every major news outlet in France.
Damian Wayne clearly has evidence to blackmail her but the question was what could it possibly be and how he got his hands on it. It couldn't have been anything she said to him, they've only known each other for less than 48 hours!
She was always careful about what she had to say around her classmates, one of them being Alya, the amateur journalist whose mother happened to be the owner of France's largest television network. Marinette has been walking on eggshells around her since the end of middle school.
No way her parents could have told him, her doting father thinks that his only daughter has an incurable phobia of six-legged pests and her mother is convinced that Marinette isn't trying hard enough in becoming a confident young woman like Ladybug.
That could only leave things down to Chat Noir but the cat could never betray her trust, it just wasn't his style.
So, he must have figured it out himself! He has enough money to hire a private investigator. As soon as that thought crossed her eyes, she closed the blinds to her windows. She even glued some Christmas wrapping paper on the entrance leading to the balcony above her.
The next thing you know, she was standing in the mess that she had made tearing apart her room to check for secret cameras and listening devices like she was an Italian mob boss in waste management.
Having found nothing, she finally fell onto her bed and screamed her head off into her pink pillows.
"How does he know?!"
It was time to stop ignoring her kwami and get her guttural instincts in check. Damian Wayne knows her biggest secret. He could ruin her life with a single sentence out his mouth and in her own opinion he already had by knowing she was Ladybug. She needed to warn Chat Noir that she had been compromised, she didn't care if Robin was going to strike back at her later.
"Okay Tikki, Spots On!" she yelled auspiciously with her fist raised with her face buried in the blankets.
After a brief moment of silence, Marinette groaned and mumbled into the pillow.
"It's now or never Tikki. Come on, Spots On!"
At this point her hand was cramping up. Raising her head, she whipped her head around, expecting to see the red and black kwami materialize before her.
"Okay, she groaned." I'm sorry that I ignored you Tikki, I wasn't really ready to tell Chat about Robin. I wanted to handle things all on my own and clearly it wasn't the brightest thing I've ever done but we really need to find him."
As her apology hung in the air, a sense of worry began to fall upon her. It was completely normal for the kwami to be quiet and in her own world but she was always ready beforehand. Maybe her inactivity was just to teach her to listen.
Marinette sat up and rubbed the back of her neck.
"You're starting to scare me Tikki," she laughed nervously. "You were right, I was wrong so let's be friends again and transform, okay?"
The deathly silence was enough to get the teen to spring up to her feet and start calling out her name a bit more loudly before she descended the staircase and began peeking around corners for her.
This was definitely one of the kwami's temper tantrums, at least she was half sure of it. As the search for the magical being continued around her house continued, her fear intensified.
WHERE WAS SHE?
Did she run away? Was she trapped in the cookie jar again? Her thoughts came to a halt upon the most unfavorable probability, maybe she was kidnapped. Wherever she was, Marinette knew that it had to do with Bruce's billionaire son.
Without Tikki she couldn't transform into Ladybug, meaning the city was currently being unprotected from the unseen danger that was the winged menace. If she was any random lowlife thug, she would totally take the time to cause mischief. Forget telling Chat Noir about Hawkmoth's return, she needed to figure out hot to tell him that she lost her own kwami, that's if she can even find him now. Her only way of communicating with him was through the yo-yo compact she used when she transformed.
Marinette now has bigger fish to fry with Damian Wayne. Come rain or shine, Tikki was the only thing on her mind.
