Project: Halloween 2017

Unusual

Written By: ml-writings (tumblr), chatbug (AO3)

Summary: The miraculous cure isn't perfect and everyone suffers after effects of being akumatised, and on Halloween, the heroes suffer the effects of their own miraculous.

Tags: Halloween, cat and bug appearance changes, akuma abilities, classroom antics

Word Count: 1443

I walked into class on Monday about a week after my birthday and fell into my seat. Nino came into the classroom after me and I noticed that he had a little storm of bubbles following him, and he looked really annoyed. He sat down next to me and put his head on the table. I reached over, curious and popped one of the bubbles floating above his head, and he yelped in pain.

"Dude!" Nino complained. "Those are connected to me, I can feel that!"

I started to say something, but Nino cut me off. "I barely got out of the house because my mom was freaking out. I need some normal now" He put his head back down on the desk.

"Got it." I said, understanding. After I'd started being Chat Noir I'd been seeking normal a lot. We sat together in silence for a couple of minutes until Mme Bustier walked into the classroom and gave Nino a sympathetic look before starting class.

Over the next few months more people became plagued by the aftereffects of being akumatized. There didn't seem to be any pattern to the order it happened in. Ivan started to grow slightly when Kim mocked him about a week after Nino's bubbles appeared, and Nathaniel's drawings started to move on his paper a couple days after that.The only problematic ability in the class was how Alix would sometimes split or talk over herself when she got excited, which could end up being really loud and annoying in class.

Ladybug and I talked about it after patrol one evening. We decided that there wasn't anything we could do about it since the Miraculous Cure didn't work, except for how none of the abilities seemed to be anything too excessive, and no-one was actually becoming ill. The only problem that we thought might appear would be that people would no longer be able to hide that they had been akumatized. We vowed to make sure that the status quo wasn't completely destroyed. While there were some people whose abilities could be a benefit, like Alya who could sometimes subconsciously post something on the Ladyblog without even looking at her phone, some people with odder abilities, like controlling pigeons, could be considered weird and insane, and that was something we wanted to avoid because it wasn't their fault.

I woke up excited. My class was having a party to celebrate the American holiday 'Halloween'. The basic idea revolved around getting candy and wearing costumes, and Father allowed my request to go as Kuro, and I'm so excited to see what all of my classmates came up with!

I jumped up off my bed and tripped over something and onto my face. I looked behind me to see what I'd tripped over and saw an honest to goodness fur tail attached to me. I ran into the bathroom and saw that the scleras of my eyes were green, and I had little blond ears on my head.

"Plagg!" I yelled and he came up next to me, snickering into his paws.

"You didn't think the side effects were just for the akuma victims did you? You have my power, used with a miraculous. That's how they got their side effects, and that's how you got yours."

"What?!"

I woke up to Tikki poking me through my blanket. "One minute." I groaned and Tikki nudged me again.

"You have to get up early today Marinette, you have to get your costume ready!" She said, and tugged off my blanket, making bright light shine into my face. "It happened!" She squealed and flitted off across the room, coming back to hold my hand mirror up to my face. I saw antennae and the hint of a shell on my back and fell into my cat plush.

"What's wrong with me?" I complained, and Tikki shook her head.

"There's nothing wrong with you." She said, "It's normal for people who use miraculous magic to develop side effects, that's what's changing the akuma victims. It was just a matter of time until you developed yours, you should be happy!"

"But what about the party? Adrien's gonna see me and think that I'm a weirdo and then,"

Tikki cut me off. "It's a halloween party, the whole point is that you're in costume, right? If you modify your costume I can promise that no-one will even think about it."

I nodded and jumped off my bed to run over to my sewing desk so that I could modify my dress. Luckily I'd designed it in a crimson red, so my antennae and wings would match it without much difficulty.

I got to school a couple minutes after the bell and opened the door to see that all my classmates had been turned back into their akumatized forms. I stumbled backwards, slamming the door closed and fell onto the person that had been about to enter the room behind me.

"Akuma!" I yelled and the person I fell on got up to look through the door.

"They're just all in costume," He said laughing "You were right to be careful, but falling backwards might have been a bit much.", leaning down to help me up. Adrien. I fell on Adrien. And he was wearing a cat costume.

"I'm so sorry!" I squeaked and he shook his head, making his ears move in a way that seemed a little bit too lifelike for them to be just costume pieces. I looked to his eyes and saw that his scleras were green like Chat's too, and his tail was moving slightly behind him when he leaned down to offer me a hand up. I took a deep breath. If this wasn't a weird dream and it is all still here in the morning I'll call Chat and clear it up.

"It's fine, I should have been watching out." He pulled me up and we walked into class.

Alya waved to me from her seat where she was playing with Nino's bubbles. "Everyone decided that since they were stuck with abilities that we were all going to go as our akumasonas. Cool right?"

"That's great!" I said and sat down next to her. "It's amazing that you guys managed to " replicate the costumes, spandex is always really hard to work with."

"We did it through the Ladyblog, I did an article with the idea and a fashion house picked it up. Are you not up to date, I posted about it last week." Alya said.

"I'm not completely up to date." I said, trying to recover. "You post a lot!"

"I guess I do, I'll take that as a complement." Alya said. "By the way, what are you? I saw your dress a couple days ago but the antennae and shell are new."

"I'm still a witch." I said, twitching. I'd forgotten that Alya had already seen my costume. "I just thought that I'd add a few special touches so that it doesn't look like every other witch dress out there."

"That's my girl," Alya said. "Always going the extra mile."

We kept talking for a few minutes until we heard someone playing music out of their phone behind us. Alix had decided to start playing Just Wanna Be With You, of course using the Sharpay version, moving fast enough to double herself. They both jumped up on the table and acted out the parts, making the whole class laugh, especially when at the end she said eww and fell off the table into Kim's arms.

The next day when I woke up my antennae and wings were still there.

"Tikki, can we transform? I need to talk to Chat about this before I go to school." I asked, and Tikki nodded. I transformed and left through my hatch to call Chat at our spot on the Eiffel Tower.

He came about 10 minutes later, and my jaw dropped when I saw the real ears and tail he was sporting, along with how his eyes were now slit like a cat's.

"ADRIEN?" I yelled and scrambled backwards, almost falling off the tower. Chat reached his hand towards me to help me up, and then rubbed the back of his neck, something I've seen him do a thousand times in class.

"Yup. I guess my costume wasn't as good as I thought it was. I'm sorry that you had to find out this way." He said, and I pulled him into a hug before he could finish his sentence.

"I'm so glad it's you." I said. "Though I didn't think we'd find out because of a dumb American holiday."