"Tikki, spots on!" Marinette panted, out of breath. Normally, she and Chat Noir could handle Hawkmoth's akumatized villains easily, but this one was much more difficult. With the power to control the air, Air Glider easily left Marinette breathless and gave Chat Noir a lot of opportunities to make puns of her predicament.
This time, Marinette had to recharge a second time, somehow not making it weird for Chat Noir to save her twice from Air Glider by whisk(er)ing her off to the other side of town, only for her to run back to the scene as Tikki ate a macaroon.
Marinette zoomed across the city of Paris to Chat Noir, still heaving in loads of air to recover from the exercise crunch she did not know she needed nor wanted to go through.
"Looks like you're breathless, bugaboo." Chat Noir winked, shielding her from an oncoming branch that was flying in her direction.
"Stop calling me bugaboo," Marinette pouted. "And it's not like I'm breathless for you, either."
"But you came back. Doesn't that mean you wanna help me?" Chat Noir nudged. "Bugaboo?"
Marinette groaned and launched herself at an opening to attack Air Glider.
"Come on, Lucy. You know those kids meant no harm in messing with your hang glider," Marinette said, trying to soothe the villain. "It's not their fault that they didn't know any better. Kids are kids. It's also not your fault that you had to make a faulty landing and forfeit the competition."
Air Glider scowled. "What do you know, Ladybug? It's not like you ever had a taste of defeat."
Marinette froze, leaving an opening for Air Glider to blast a gust of wind at her.
Marinette screamed as she fell into Chat Noir's open arms.
"Back so soon, bugaboo?"
Marinette groaned, both at Chat Noir's teasing and at Air Glider's accusation.
Air Glider wasn't exactly wrong, but she wasn't entirely right either. While Ladybug had never had a taste of defeat and always won in the end, Marinette, the girl behind the mask had tasted defeat over and over and over again.
She was still bitter about her failure of a confession to Adrien.
"Why is it that she's waving the broken piece of metal that's left of her hang glider and it's so obvious that's where the akuma is, yet it's so hard to get to it?" Marinette groaned, hopping out of Chat Noir's arms.
"Aww, bugaboo, I don't like the feel of the air that's coming off of you. Just cool it down a little. Let your stress get blown away."
Marinette couldn't help but groan and put her forehead into her palm.
"Look, I still haven't used my cataclysm yet and you still have your lucky charm. Let's try this again and see what happens."
Marinette looked up at Chat and smiled. "Let's do this," she said, smiling softly. Turning around to Air Glider, she threw her yoyo into the air. "Lucky Charm!"
A can of grounded pepper fell from the sky and into Marinette's open hand.
"Pepper?" Chat asked, taking a step from Marinette. "I may not be allergic, but that doesn't mean that I don't wanna sneeze."
"There's a lot of things you don't want, kitty-cat. I wish puns were one of them." Marinette chuckled, glancing around for a way to use the lucky charm. Her eyes caught onto the can of pepper, a large, curved pipe attached to the side of a nearby building, Chat Noir, and Air Glider herself. Almost instantaneously, a plan formed in her head.
"Chat, I'm gonna need you to get that big curved pipe from the side of that building over there," Marinette said, pointing. "Can you use your cataclysm? I'll take care of the rest."
"Anything for you, m'lady." Chat Noir said, bending to kiss the back of Marinette's hand before running off to the building.
Marinette turned to Air Glider, with high hopes of provoking her and timing everything correctly and little expectations of its success.
"Hey, Air Glider!" Marinette shouted. "If you're so powerful, why haven't you defeated us yet? I may have not won the battle, but neither have you!"
Air Glider's scowl deepened as she threw a large branch at Marinette, which she deftly jumped to dodge.
As soon as Marinette felt Chat's presence behind her once more, she put her final card down.
"If you're so powerful, why haven't any of your attacks blown us away?" Marinette provoked, quickly taking the pipe from Chat and spilling the bottle of pepper into it.
With a final scream, Air Glider sent the strongest gust of wind she could muster towards Marinette and Chat, the air flowing into the end of the pipe where the pepper was and leaving with the pepper to return to Air Glider.
"My eyes!" Air Glider screamed, sneezing as she dropped the pitiful remnant of her hang glider to cover her eyes.
Marinette took advantage of her weakness and ran for the pitiful hang glider remenant, quickly breaking it into two.
"No more evil-doing for you, little akuma," she said, quickly capturing and purifying the akuma. Marinette threw up the empty can of pepper with a shout, "Miraculous Ladybug!"
"What happened?" Air Glider- now Lucy- asked, her voice a little sluggish as she just woke from her trance.
"You were akumatized, but it's all fine now, thanks to m'lady." Chat said, casually resting an arm on Marinette's shoulder.
"Let's get you home, Ms. Lucy," Marinette smiled gently, wrapping an arm around her waist and preparing to zip off with Chat before his miraculous beeped.
"Guess that's my cue," Hhe sighed. "Until we meet again, bugaboo."
"Au revoir, Chat Noir," Marinette chuckled, waving to him before they both set off their separate ways.
-o0O0o-
That night, a few hours later, Marinette was on a video call with Alya who was gushing about Ladybug and Chat Noir's encounter with Air Glider.
"Oh. My. Gosh. Girl. You cannot believe what happened today." Alya said, her excitment overflowing and spreading to Marinette like a contagious disease.
"What is it?" Marinette asked, if only to please her best friend.
"Marnette and Chat Noir fought against another akumatized victim: Air Glider!"
Marinette laughed. "It's almost like you were there."
Alya huffed. "What, I can't take credit for my website and its loyal contributing bloggers?"
Ever since Alya made the hard decision to leave Paris to go to the London Film Academy in the United Kingdom with Nino, it was decided that the Ladyblog, with its strong reputation for being the number one source of all Ladybug-related content, would be open to posts from other bloggers in order to stay alive. In the meantime, because Alya had yet to return to Paris and catch her own footage, she started another blog, this time about Chat Noir. She called the blog "NightChatters", a play on Chat Noir's nocturnal traits and feline qualities as well as wordplay with cat and chat and Chat.
"Seriously Alya? You might as well have gone with Chatblog and the world would still be content." Marinette laughed, thinking back to a previous argument they shared on what the blog should be named.
"But then it'll look like I'm copying!" Alya whined.
"It's common knowledge you're Ladyblog's creator anyways!" Marinette laughed.
Alya pouted. "Then it'll look like I'm milking off of my past success."
With that, Marinette shook her head. "You're unbelievable."
"No. You're unbelievable!" Alya sighed. "Girl. I still don't know how you managed not only to follow Adrien through high school, but to college as well and still manage to fail saying, 'Oh, by the way, I really really love you and I've loved you since high school but never had the courage to tell you.' Like. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!"
Marinette groaned and slumped into her chair. "Things are... complicated, Alya. You wouldn't understand.
Alya screamed and went on a rant of what went wrong and what Marinette could've done, much to her agony, while Marinette's mind wandered among itself.
Marinette couldn't find the courage to confess to Adrien. There was much to confess. Her feelings and devotion towards him. The fact that she lowkey stalked him to college even though it was a coincidence they both ended up being in the same college. The fact that she knew he was Chat Noir.
Ever since their battle against Scarlet Hawk Moth on Hero's Day, Ladybug had been getting closer to Chat Noir, much to his amusement and confusion. On that day, Marinette saw Adrien transform into Chat Noir by accident all because she opened her eyes a split second before she was supposed to. She managed to surpress her surprise, anguish, happiness, and devestation during that battle, but the moment she got home, she freaked. Nothing was ever the same after that day, despite her rejecting Chat Noir as Ladybug then her sudden change into being interested in Chat Noir as Ladybug.
It shocked her at first to think that the person she fought with and could depend on with her life and the person she loved and admired were one and the same, but after thinking about things and looking much more closely than before, the semblances between the two personas were extremely obvious. She now laughed at her past self for not recognizing him and laughed at those who still haven't realized who Chat Noir is, especially with Adrien's newfound global popularity.
"Um, hello? Earth to Marinette?"
Marinette jumped from her slump and laughed apologetically. "Sorry, Alya, I was lost in thought."
Alya sighed with a melancholic laugh. "Anyways, I've gotta get going, girl. I've got a project I need to work on and a homework date with Nino. Good luck with Adrien!"
Marinette smiled and waved at the camera. "Good luck with your project!"
Alya waved back with a grin before hanging up. Marinette sighed and slumped back into her chair.
She really was going to need more than luck when it came to Adrien.
And Chat Noir.