The day Adrien Agreste was flung into the air, smacking face-first into a billboard of himself, was the day he realised he really didn't have a handle on the whole 'being an adult' thing.
Granted it was his first day as a superhero, and he'd only recently turned twenty years old. He hadn't expected to be perfect on his first outing as a superhero, nor have life figured out in his first year after adolescence.
However, he did not expect to be failing so badly, so grandly, so spectacularly, that he could've won an Olympic medal for how much he sucked. The fact that he was the only technical 'adult' in his new superhero partnership, yet was the one who was failing the hardest, wasn't doing much for his ego. Not that he had much of one of those.
He dropped to ground in a messy, yet unbroken, heap and pushed himself up with a groan. Sure, it hadn't hurt, not really, but being smacked in the head and sent flying by a giant akumatised rock monster had definitely disorientated him. If only for a short period of time.
So, yeah, ok, he'd forgotten what his kwami had told him in regards to his special attack. He'd tried to use it a second time after the first one failed. That was a rookie mistake. One he'd be forgiven for.
The other thing? He wasn't so sure his new partner would be so quick to let slide.
Speaking of his new partner...
The red-and-black suited heroine was mid-backflip when Chat landed back on the football field, baton out and fully prepared to take the battle more seriously this time. He winced when she barely dodged the rock monster's fist, but sighed in relief when she gave as good as she got, using her yo-yo to ensnare the akuma.
"Chat Noir!" she called out to him, and he landed by her side with a tentative smile.
"You called?" yup, that's right Agreste. Play it light and breezy, like you didn't totally insult her earlier.
His partner, who hadn't yet picked out a superhero name, fixed him with an ice-like stare that seemed too serious for her height and age. It was formidable. Chat never wanted to be on the end of it again. Oh god you HAVE to fix this before she outright hates you.
"Stick your baton through the yo-yo string," she ordered, digging her heels into the grass as the rock monster struggled to be released from her hold. "Once he falls, grab the paper in his hand. That's where the akuma is!"
Chat, wanting to show that he treated her seriously, complied. He wondered how, in between the time of him smacking into the billboard and landing back beside her, she'd managed to figure out where the akuma was. She must be smart. But then, that didn't surprise him.
He pressed one of the buttons of his baton, relieved to discover that it was the one which made his staff longer (finally a success), and stuck it diagonally through the rock monster's legs where it balanced in between the yo-yo strings. As soon as it was in place, the new superheroine pulled with all of her strength, gritting her teeth until the yo-yo string went taut and the rock monster's legs pinned together. With the baton in the way, there was no wiggle room. Eventually, the monster was going to fall.
Chat's eyebrows rose at the biggest show of strength he'd ever seen.
The rock monster tumbled to the grass with a roar, landing with a booming thud that rattled Chat's bones. He turned to his partner, whose lips were upturned in a smirk of triumph.
"Woah. Awesome."
The smirk left the superheroine's face, however, when she noticed him watching her. She scowled. "EARTH TO CHAT NOIR!" she snapped. "AKUMA!"
"Oh- right- yeah," he stumbled, shook his head, and then dived for the piece of crumpled paper that had escaped from the rock monster's fist. Hurrying over to her, he presented it with a bow. "The akuma, miss, for your cleansing pleasure."
"My- my what?" his partner blinked, then snorted with derision. "My cleansing pleasure?"
Chat turned red. "I didn't mean it like that."
"Oh, you didn't think I was mature enough to understand those kinds of jokes, right, Monsieur 'I'm older and better than you' ?" she scoffed, snatching the akuma out of hand and ripping it in half. Together they watched as the black and purple butterfly floated up into the sky, disappearing in the early spring breeze. "Don't worry. I'm sure the next time you meet your partner, she'll be everything you were looking for. She'll meet your high standards for suuuure . Me and my too-young self will be out of your hair for good."
Chat tried not to look hurt. Scratching the back of his head, he felt a sense of creeping dread settling in. What could he possibly say to make this better? How could he explain himself? Did she really want to quit because of him? "I promise I didn't mean to upset you-"
His ring beeped and he stared at it, bewildered for a moment. Then he remembered what it meant. He was running out of time. "Listen- umm- miss? I have to go but, can we talk another time?"
His partner shrugged, turning her back on him. "Just go," she replied, walking towards the bewildered young man who'd been akumatised. "I'll handle the civilian."
"But-"
"Go, unless you want to reveal your identity to everyone."
She pointed to a place on the opposite side of the stadium, where a young girl was filming with her camera. When she saw the superheroes looking in her direction, she waved frantically.
The ring beeped again. Chat Noir glanced over his shoulder at his partner one more time before sighing in defeat. Picking up his baton, he leapt over to the stands and vaulted over the edge of the stadium, out of sight.
Funny. He'd been so thrilled to become a superhero. It'd been the most exciting thing that had happened to him in his miserable, boring life. The first time he'd ran, jumping as high as a building, he'd felt a sense of freedom so poignant that tears had formed in his eyes. The bars he'd kept around his heart had smashed to pieces, and the yearning he'd suppressed over the years had flooded back into his system. He'd felt breathless. He'd felt alive .
Now the bars had reformed, and he was trapped again. Only this time, it was so much worse. It was a prison of his own making, born of his own social ineptness and his knack for rushing into things without thinking.
He'd made his partner want to quit, got his butt handed to him, and made a fool of himself in front of all of Paris. Possibly even the world.
Thank god he had a mask hiding his identity, or his father would probably go full Rapunzel on him and never let him out the house again.
All in all, he didn't think he could've had a worst first day if he'd tried.
Adrien threw his bag on his desk chair with a grunt of annoyance, earning a loud "HEY!" from the kwami inside it.
"Sorry!" he winced, "I'm still not used to carrying a live...whatever you are around."
"Kwami- it's quite easy to remember unless you're an idiot," Plagg grumbled, following Adrien to the sofa in his room.
"Kwami. Right," Adrien nodded, flopping onto said sofa like a dead weight and trying not to go full-zombie. It had been a rough day.
The news was relentless. Everywhere and anywhere he'd gone, from classes to photoshoots, to meetings with his father's assistant, people were talking about the new superheroes and the new villain out to terrorise the city. Inexplicably, most seemed both impressed and excited by the superhero duo and how well they appeared to work together.
Most people hadn't been able to get a close enough look at the pair of them, Adrien thought, else they'd know that that was far from the truth.
For five minutes, Adrien was able to lie in blissful silence. Of course, it wasn't to last as Plagg, having finished the last of his cheese (of all the things this kwami ate, why did it have to be stinky cheese?) sought to bug him instead. "So, I have a question," he said, coming to rest beside Adrien's face. "Do you ever have any fun ever?"
Adrien huffed out a scornful laugh. What a tragically absurd question. "Not unless it's scheduled."
"Do you have, y'know, any friends? See people? I mean besides those boring photographers and assistants you were talking to earlier?"
Adrien knew where Plagg was going, and he rolled to the side, pressing his face into the sofa cushion with a groan. "I have a friend, she's just," he floundered, trying to explain Chloe's wild party girl phase with as few words as possible, "she's in Ibiza at the moment. I haven't seen her in a few months."
Plagg was quiet for a beat, and Adrien thought the matter would drop, but then he said, "Jeez, no offense kiddo, but your life sounds boring as hell."
"Tell me something I don't know," Adrien flipped over again, pouting.
It was true. His life was boring. In twenty years, he'd never made a decision without his parents there to guide him- not through his own volition. He yearned for freedom. It ate at his insides, made his skin itch, kept him up into the late hours of the morning. The only thing he'd been able to decide for himself was what to study at university, and that was probably because his mother had still been around to argue for him, before she'd disappeared.
His boring life had only gotten worse since that fateful day a year ago. One moment his mother had brought sunshine and warmth into the house- the next she was gone and Adrien had no idea why. No one did. Her disappearance burned a hole through Adrien's heart that grew bigger with each passing day, the same way his relationship with his father grew colder and more distant as time went on. Now she'd been gone for a year, and Adrien was lost. Lost and alone.
Except... looking at the kwami sitting beside him, he realised he had the opportunity to not feel so lost or alone. He didn't know who chose him to be a superhero, or why, but he wasn't about to let it go any time soon. This was his chance- his chance to finally get away and experience freedom, to make choices on his own! He was twenty years old for god's sake! It was about time!
He frowned, remembering his earlier mistakes. "I made a real cat-astrophe out of today, didn't I Plagg? She hates me."
Plagg scoffed, rolling his eyes. "She doesn't hate you! She doesn't know you enough to hate you," he said and was it Adrien's imagination, or did Plagg sound like he was trying to reassure him? "I mean sure, you said that she was a 'special kid', but it's not like you meant it in a bad way!"
"I didn't! I swear! She's just... so small!" Adrien sat up with a burst of energy, almost knocking Plagg off of the sofa. "I thought she was younger than sixteen- I was trying to give her a compliment! Like of all the people in Paris, she had to be some sort of young prodigy to be chosen above, I don't know, like a firefighter or something. I didn't mean to sound condescending."
"You don't talk to girls much, do you?" Plagg laughed.
"Shut up," Adrien replied, flopping back down and running his hands down his face. This only made Plagg laugh harder.
"Oho! So, you do have a bit of life in you! That's promising at least," he cackled.
Despite himself, Adrien grinned.
The grin didn't last long, however, as he thought over his relationship with his new superhero partner. Staring out the window, he wondered where she was right now, what she was feeling. Was she still angry? Was she still hurt by his careless words?
He hadn't meant to upset her, but upset her he had, and was determined to fix it.
He only hoped that it could be fixed.
Marinette closed the lid of the little wooden box shut, placing it on her desk and falling back onto her chair with a whimper. "I'm sorry Tikki," she whispered to the air, which seemed to tighten around her. "I can't do this."
Gritting her teeth, she did battle with the tears threatening to fall from her eyes. Despite all her efforts, it was battle she lost, and silent tears slid down her cheeks. But she refused to cry properly, she already felt pathetic enough. The box stared at her. Judgement poured out of it, as if Tikki's soul was still imploring her to reconsider, to not let her mistakes get the best of her.
But it wasn't enough. Nothing Tikki said would be enough. Because Marinette wasn't enough.
It already felt awful that her partner treated her so patronisingly. But forgetting the number one rule of akuma (cleanse them before you release them) was too much for her to bear. She felt like an imposter, like a kid playing dress up at a convention. What business did she have being a superhero? She could hardly wake up on time in the mornings! She'd accidentally stolen about five of her classmates' phones! She once got lost on top of the Eiffel Tower- granted that had been when she was 4 years old- but STILL.
She wasn't made of the right stuff. Of that she was sure.
Wiping her eyes furiously, she slunk downstairs with a heavy heart. Everything felt wrong. Guilt weighted her footsteps the further away she got from the box containing the miraculous earrings, and the kwami now locked inside them.
Tikki had stayed up most of the night, talking Marinette through everything she thought she needed to know, helping her understand the weight of her responsibilities and the reasons why she was chosen. By the time the sun dawned over the horizon, Marinette's confidence had risen along with it.
Until she'd heard the news- the news of her utter failure. Now hundreds of akuma were spreading around the city. A plague of bad magic, turning people into statue-like versions of Ivan's akuma form. People were afraid, people were confused. They were looking to her and Chat Noir for answers. Why? She was the one who screwed up by not cleansing the akuma! And she didn't even have a superhero name yet.
Her new-born confidence had plummeted right through the floor, burning to a crisp in the deepest pits of hell where it belonged.
She approached the kitchen counter, grabbing some snacks to soothe her troubled soul. Her mother, who was reading a book at the table, frowned at her.
"Twelve macarons, pumpkin?" she asked, worry lacing her tone. "What's going on? Are you upset over what's happening in the city?"
"Mmm," Marinette nodded, pulling the snacks closer.
Sabine's frown deepened. "Are you ok honey, you don't look very well. In fact, you look pale."
Sometimes it takes someone pointing it out, to make you realise just how sick you feel. Such as it was with Marinette. As soon as her mother said she didn't look well, a wave a nausea hit her and she grew faint. Suddenly, she didn't just look pale, she felt pale. "I- I don't think I am ok," she stammered, clutching the kitchen counter. Boy was that an understatement.
Sabine reached up and placed the back of her hand against Marinette's forehead. "Hmm... you're a little warm. Do you feel like going to school today? Any big tests happening you can't miss?"
Marinette shook her head for both questions. She didn't feel like going to school, she felt like huddling under her bed covers like the huge coward she was. Forever. It was possible to live in bed, right? Didn't the grandparents from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory do that? Everything turned out okie-dokie for them, so why couldn't she do it?
To her immense relief, Sabine took pity on her and Marinette was able to spend the day doing exactly that- hiding away from the world.
For about half a day.
It turned out being a coward had its downsides.
For one thing, it was super boring. Marinette managed an hour or so of mope-napping before she couldn't handle it anymore. She had to get up and do something. A part of her regretted not going to school. At school she had Alya and Nino to distract her, as well as her classes. That being said, Alya would probably want to talk about nothing but the superheroes (based on the endless stream of texts she'd gotten yesterday).
Home was comfortable, but it was also quiet. And with the quiet came the endless array of thoughts, self-admonishments and crippling sense of failure that had her near tears numerous times.
This was intolerable. She needed to do something, anything, to distract her.
She didn't have enough energy to commit to any fashion-related projects no matter how much she loved them, and by lunchtime she'd already exhausted social media scrolling, so some good old fashioned daytime TV would have to do.
What she found, however, wasn't a trashy reality show or a repeat of a twelve-year-old sitcom.
Instead, as soon as she turned on the TV, she was flooded by image after image of the stone statues. She groaned, reaching for the remote. Really, all she wanted was one day, one day , to avoid it all. The statues weren't her responsibility anymore, and she needed to find someone better for the job.
Alya would be an amazing superhero. Marinette could totally see that. Luckily, Alya had been sneakily texting her throughout the day, and was planning to come by after school to check up on her and give her any homework she'd missed. Whilst she was over, Marinette could slip the miraculous box into Alya's bag. Alya would be the hero Marinette knew she could be, and she herself would go back to being an ordinary teenager just trying to get by. That would be the end of her superhero journey.
So why did the decision make her feel so hollow?
"We're live now, at the Arc de Triomphe, where some of the dozens of rock statues which appeared yesterday, have suddenly begun to move."
The news reporter gestured, and Marinette's ears were flooded with the sounds of screams, of metal crunching and roars similar to Ivan's when he was akumatised.
She dropped the remote, horror-stricken.
People all around the Arc were fleeing for their lives as several of the stone giants began to wreck the immediate area, picking up cars and throwing them as if they were toys, stomping so hard they left large potholes, looking terrifying in their enormity. The news reporter was saying something to an anchor, who was safe in the studio, but Marinette didn't hear a word.
It was chaos. Total, complete chaos. The worst thing, though, was knowing it was all her fault.
Finally, after a whole day of holding it in, Marinette tucked her knees into her chest, and sobbed. She wanted to change the channel, turn it off and pretend it wasn't real, that it was just a TV program, but she knew she'd already ran away from her problems.
"So far there has been no sign of the red-clad superheroine from yesterday, but luckily our correspondent Jacques was able to run into the so-called Chat Noir as he appeared earlier at a different scene, to help officers caught in the midst of a rock monster's attack. Let's watch"
Marinette watched as the clip began to play. She recognised her classmate Sabrina's father at the front of a crowd of civilians. He and the other police officers were firing guns at a rock monster, but the bullets had no effect.
The rock monster threw a street sign in his direction and he was struck in the side, falling to the floor.
She sat on the edge of the sofa, holding her breath and praying Sabrina's father was all right. It was perhaps the longest three seconds of her life.
That's when Chat Noir appeared, and Marinette's gut twisted in guilt. It was wrong, she thought. She didn't like him. She didn't want anything to do with him, or being a superhero...
But he was there and she wasn't. To her, that spoke volumes.
Her nails bit into her palms. She should've been there.
No! She argued with herself. No, I shouldn't have been there. I wouldn't have been able to work well with a guy who thinks I'm just a dumb kid. I would've made another mistake. It wouldn't have ended well...
Chat was stalling for time, fighting the rock monster, which gave the police enough time to evacuate all the civilians from the area. Marinette had to admit, no matter how rude he was, he was good at this. It seemed like he'd learned from yesterday's mistakes.
"Chat Noir!" The correspondent waved him over after the rock monster fell on its back, unable to get back up again. Interesting...Marinette thought. A weakness that could be exploited. "What do you know of these unexpected monsters and where is your partner from yesterday?"
Chat look dishevelled to say the least. His green eyes were wild from battle and his broad chest rose and fell heavily as he regained his breath. Marinette's heart beat quicker. She wondered what he would say to the correspondent.
But he didn't speak to the correspondent. Instead, Chat took the microphone from the reporter and turned to the camera. He spoke directly to it.
To her.
"Miss, I don't know where you are right now, if you're caught in the mess unable to transform, if you're hurt, if you're fighting someone else or if you decided you didn't want to do this anymore. Wherever you are, if you can hear me, please don't give up your miraculous because of me. I'm sorry that I upset you. I'm sorry I said such stupid things about your age. I'm an idiot. I don't know...I don't know what I'm saying even now. But this city needs you, way more than it needs me. And maybe this is selfish but I need you too. You were amazing yesterday...I can't do this without you. I'm sorry."
He spoke desperately, truthfully. And long after Chat handed back the mic from the reporters and ran off, even as the news flicked back to real-time events, Marinette sat there. Frozen. Rocked to her core.
I'm sorry that I upset you.
This city needs you, way more than it needs me.
I can't do this without you.
Before she knew it, she was running upstairs, back to her room.
The box was just where she left it. Pulling it into her bag and running back into the living room, Marinette felt both a sense of adrenaline and confusion. She had no idea was she was going to do, but she knew she had to do something .
A loud boom split the air in two. People began screaming. The ground trembled.
Marinette's stomach dropped to the floor when she heard a loud, deep, inhuman voice. A voice shouting. "KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIM!"
The wheels in her brain turned as she tried to figure out what was happening. Ivan was akumatised again. That's why the other rock monsters were sentient now too.
Oh god.
Ivan was akumatised.
And he was right outside their bakery.
Marinette hurried down the stairs, out of her apartment and into her parents' bakery, blood pounding in her ears. Please be ok, please be ok, please be ok.
The bakery was empty. The windows were cracked, pastries were scattered on the floor where people had dropped them. But there was nobody in sight. Where were her parents?
Without thinking, she ran outside.
There they were. Her parents. Both outside, both in the danger zone as they tried to free a person trapped behind a car. That person, Marinette realised with downright horror, was Alya. Alya, who'd come to check up on her.
She was about to call out to them, when things got much, much worse.
A loud thud shook the ground beneath her feet and Marinette stumbled, tripping forwards on to her knees. She scrambled back to standing but wasn't quick enough.
A hand was reaching for her, a big, rock-like hand. Ivan.
"LOOK OUT!"
A body collided with hers, sending her sprawling to floor. She hit the pavement awkwardly and her bag went flying off her shoulder.
The bag with her miraculous in it.
The bag with Tikki in it.
Pain shot through Marinette's side as the air was knocked clean out of her. She watched, helpless, as her bag skidded out of reach, under piles of broken cars and debris that the rock monsters had thrown in their anger.
She sat up with a groan. A trickle of blood fell down her forehead and she winced. Wondering who saved her from Ivan's wrath, she searched for her mystery rescuer.
It was Chat.
Chat Noir had saved her, had pushed her out of harm's way. Now he was captured, taken by Ivan in her stead to be carried off. Most likely to Hawkmoth.
And all Marinette could do was watch.
Helpless.