Be Myself

Be Myself - Chapter Nine

"Marinette, I..." Adrien muttered, staring into her eyes as the akuma begun to fly away.

"Not now Adrien - the akuma needs capturing! I'll grab Ladybug, you focus on making sure the akuma goes nowhere!"

"Wait, you know...? Never mind, alright Marinette, hurry!"

With that, Marinette sprinted out of the classroom, to the bathroom stall. She transformed into Ladybug, and ran back to the classroom.

"Chloe, are you alright?" Ladybug asked her, trying to spot the akuma. A now detransformed Chloe was sitting in the classroom.

"Wait, why am I here?" Chloe asked. "We were arguing and..."

Ladybug stared at her in shock.

"Ladybug, the akuma!" Adrien yelled at her.

"Right!" As Ladybug caught the akuma, Adrien turned to Chloe.

"Chloe... what's the date?"

"That's a strange question – it's the 8th of January." Immediately the entire room stopped what they were doing and turned to face Chloe. Adrien looked incredibly sad, and took one of Chloe's hands into his own.

"Chloe... that's almost six months ago. For six months you've been akumatised by Hawk Moth, making Paris hate Marinette for some reason. Even doing the same to me. What's your problem? Why do you hate Marinette so much?"

Ladybug quickly realised this was not the time to get involved, so she ran back to the bathrooms and detransformed. As Marinette, she rushed back to class. By now everyone was coming to their senses and realising what had been done. When Marinette entered the class, almost everyone was already there.

As soon as Marinette took a step forward, she was tackled by Alya.

"Girl! I missed you so much! I'm so sorry about what happened, I literally couldn't control myself."

"Don't worry Alya, its alright." Alya's worried expression turned into one of deep anger.

"No its not. Chloe needs to pay for what she did to us."

Marinette looked at her friend, confused. "But Chloe wasn't in control either! She was akuma-"

"I don't care what she was or wasn't! She needs to pay!" Alya yelled, catching the attention of everyone else. To Marinette and Adrien's dismay, the class started following Alya's example, booing and jeering at Chloe, going as far as to throw food on her jeans and hair.

Chloe burst into tears and ran out of the classroom.

"No, Chloe!" Marinette called after her.

"Wait!" Adrien begged, but both were drowned out by the cheers and celebrations of her classmates at the evil joy they gained from seeing their classmate suffer.

"This isn't right." Marinette muttered, before leaving and trying to find Chloe.

A few minutes later, Adrien had reached his limit. "This is ridiculous." he growled, before leaving the classroom to turn into Chat Noir. Hopefully a scolding to the students will clear their heads.

"Chloe? Chloe!" Marinette yelled for her, leaving the library. She sighed.

"And that was the last place in the school. Maybe she went home." She turned, about to leave, when she spotted another upward flight of stairs.

"No... don't tell me..."

Marinette rushed up the roof stairs, and burst out the door for what feels like the millionth time, and screamed from the top of her lungs:

"CHLOE?!"

"... M – Marinette?"

Hiya again! For a while I debated between Chloe and Adrien over who would be the one in the final verse. Adrien was my first choice, but I slowly started feeling like Chloe would be the better fit and now here we are.

I'm really enjoying writing this, but its almost over! Only a few more chapters remain, I hope you've all enjoyed reading my short story.

But for now...

Peachy out! 😊