Chapter Text
The Akuma breaks in just as they’re pulling away from each other in the kiss, looking at each other in a shy manner.
It’s supposed to be a good moment: Marinette’s hair smells like coconuts, and her lipgloss is pretty and tastes nice, too. Her cheek is just as soft as he’d imagined, and her arms do a wonderful job going around his neck and bringing him closer to the kiss. He’s too tall. She’s too short. The angle is a little difficult, but something about it makes it feel more organic and natural. His nose bumps into her cheek. She laughs into the kiss and giggles about how her teeth are accidentally making contact with his lips because of it. The kiss is wonderful; something that makes his chest tight and his body warm, enraptured with his own girlfriend… but the Akuma comes from seemingly nowhere, shouting about how Lady Noire and Mister Bug have gotten away, about how they have to be around here somewhere.
“Oh, no way,” the Akuma recoils, finally coming across them both as they jump back in surprise. “What the— hey— how come these two get to kiss without any issues, and we don’t?”
The Akuma is…
Huh.
What is that? Adrien can’t even tell what he’s looking at. The Akuma— the thing— is shaped like a person, but it’s entirely made out of light. It glows. A glowing person, emitting light like something out of a cartoon or a fantasy movie. On their arm, something that looks like be a canon— Adrien wonders if it’s possible that this thing shoots something nefarious out.
Maybe it’s the reason why they lost their memories to begin with?
“Sorry!” Marinette squeaks out. Oh, god. They’re caught by the Akuma. “What—”
“That’s so unfair,” the Akuma grumbles. Crossing their arms, and doing their best with the arm-canon. “We got turned into this because of the employees. They didn’t like that we were kissing.”
Wait, seriously? They got transformed because of that?
Also, has the Akuma not realized that they’re the superheroes?
The only thing that changes in between transformation are their clothes… that, and Marinette’s eyes and ears and mouth, of course. And the hair. And his hair being styled a different way… but other than that, aren’t they identical? How come the Akuma hasn’t realized that it’s them?
“W-well, there were no employees here…” Marinette gestures. A thought crosses her mind; he sees it in the way her blue eyes flutter across the exhibit, an idea starting to form. “You scared them all away. Actually, I’m not sure— me and my boyfriend, we’ve been kissing for what feels like hours, I definitely had no idea that people had left this part of the exhibit after all. If you want, you could break the Akumatization, and you two could continue kissing?”
Oh.
Wait.
That’s a really good idea.
“As if! Well, we wish,” the Akuma replies. “Lady Noire and Mister Bug are still out there, looking for us.”
Adrien butts in before he can stop himself. “Oh. But they won’t look for you if there’s no Akumatization.”
“But if we do what Hawkmoth says…”
“You’ll… be able to kiss some more?” Marinette replies back, an unimpressed expression guarding her face. “You can do that right now.”
“You wouldn’t get it.”
“I kinda do.”
“You wouldn’t get it,” the Akuma replies. “We need to find the superheroes. They’re our only way to— oh! Oh! There they are!” The Akuma shouts.
Uh oh.
Adrien braces for impact, braces for another memory wipe, but the Akuma points at the walls, the electronic screens that show their superhero selves, and starts blasting away beautiful charges of light. Each blast decimates the boards, and Adrien grabs Marinette’s hands before she ducks and covers her eyes and complains about how much it hurts. They need to get out of here, stat.
And yet, he can still hear Marinette go: “Eep!”
“Lady Noire and Mister Bug are everywhere in this place!” the Akuma roars. “And two people kissing in the exhibit, god, that’s just not fair!”
Okay, okay, time to get out of here for sure. A quick trip into the gift shop to pick up their Kwamis— though Plagg and Tikki most definitely have heard all the ruckus— and they’ll be out of here. Which way to the exit?
“They’re blindsided by their rage of Mister Bug and Lady Noire to even care about us,” Marinette murmurs, taking it upon herself to pick up the pace. She’s running faster than he is, now. His shiny shoes can’t take the grip on the floor. “Huh, that’s interesting. They’re focused. Come on, let’s go up higher?”
Ah, but… “Won’t that trap us?”
Her smile is blinding. “The observation deck has all the tourists on it, doesn’t it? We’ll need a way to distract the Akuma while we work our magic. And, plus, we can use the Kwamis to jump really far if we need to trap the Akuma in the building. These elevators are slow— any minute we can save by making them take it all the way down is a good plan. Also, if we really do have to jump, I believe cats always land on their feet.”
She’s not serious, is she? “You thought of all of this?”
“You didn’t?” she teases.
God, he loves her. She’s so incredibly smart and quick to think— he’s still lagging behind, still trying to think, still trying to get over the fact that someone like her is his girlfriend.
His face burns scarlet. “You have a lot of faith in our abilities, even if we didn’t know what they actually were up until a few minutes ago.”
She’s laughing. Marinette is laughing. Plagg and Tikki both look nervous when they finally show up, hiding behind novelty salt-and-pepper shakers, though placate themselves with the way that Marinette smiles and laughs and giggles and skips over to them, joy written across her face, something smitten in her eyes.
“Oh, Plagg, this is so much fun,” she chuckles, stuffing a box of cookies into her bag without care. “How come no one told me that Akumas are this silly? This funny?”
Tikki smiles. “They’re usually not. We got very lucky this time around.”
“I guess so! The Akuma said they got evilized because they were kissing, and complained when they caught us doing the same.”
“Huh?” Tikki squeaks.
Plagg almost chokes on nothing. “You two were kissing?”
Adrien’s face burns for some reason when the two Kwamis look back and forth between the two of them.
“Yup!” She’s humming, looking at another madeleine to stuff into the zipper. When she comes across a lip balm, she pivots and says: “Hey, Plagg, you wouldn’t happen to know why I wrote ‘Funcle’ on the elevator walls before losing my memory, would you?”
Plagg still has a look of shock on his face. “You probably wanted to call him for help.”
“‘Him’? Who is ‘him’?”
“The only person that you could’ve possibly have written like that on the wall was your uncle, Master Fu. He’s the one who gave you us in the first place.
“Do you think we need it?”
“Hmmm… Definitely not.”
“We have a plan,” she murmurs, whispering close so that no one can hear it, just in case. “The plan is solid.”
“How do I deAkumatize someone?“ Adrien asks.
Tikki replies with: “You need to find the item that the Akuma is in and break it.”
The only thing on the Akuma is the arm blaster-canon that shoots out light, maybe Mister Bug has to break that? “Is that all I have to do?”
“No. There’s a butterfly that comes out— that’s the Akuma butterfly. You need to open your yo-yo and catch the butterfly with the open yo-yo.” Tikki does a bit of charades to help with the visual. “The yo-yo always aims where you want it, not where you throw it. Just keep focus and aim for the butterfly and you’ll grab it.”
“And then when we’re done, we can go back to kissing,” Marinette states, very plainly. Adrien tries not to drown in embarrassment again. Just as she pulls out a little rock from her backpack and slings it back onto her shoulders, she says: “Come on, time to go.”
It’s transformation time.
Light stitches them back together, and his sweater is replaced with a hard, flexible material. Marinette’s furry ears are back, and so is her tail, and she breathes a sigh of relief— something light in her eyes— when she makes eye contact again. In her element, it seems. That rock in her hands is still there, and she tosses it around in between her shiny, silvery nails.
Danger, it reads. Shouts. Screams.
He loves his girlfriend so much.
“I’ll get the elevator ready,” he says.
“I’ll follow. The Akuma is still in the exhibit, so I’ll get their attention.”
“Don’t get hurt please.” Right. Okay. This can work.
They run right back to the exhibit, faster now that there’s magic energy pulsing inside their veins. With the superhero mask on, everything looks clearer, more saturated, stronger. His vision is nothing bad on a good day, but now? Now, he feels completely alive.
Lady Noire throws the pebble into the exhibit, clocking the Akuma right in the head, just as Mister Bug passes her and makes it to the elevators. The pebble ricochets between the broken TV screens and the cement walls and back again the Akuma’s head, all of it sounds so hard that it makes Mister Bug wince, even as he forces the elevator doors to open by pulling it apart with his own hands and pays attention to his own task. “Hey, you! Finally, we found you both! You both really scared off the couple that was in here, you know that?”
“There you are!” The Akuma shouts. How they didn’t get a concussion from her mean right hook, Mister Bug will never know. “Didn’t you two lose your memories?”
Lady Noire bluffs like she was made for it. “What, you think your magic cancels out our magic? Our Miraculouses are the real deal, buddy. Maybe you gotta hit us harder than that.”
“Don’t say that,” Mister Bug grumbles to himself. “That’s a bad idea.”
“Fine,” the Akuma replies, and Mister Bug imagines that they’re loading up their canon arm because Lady Noire’s ears perk up and her stance goes a little bit more ready. Knees slightly bent, arms up, like she’s ready to duck and run for cover. The tell-tale sign of a canon starting to charge up another beam of light. “We can make that happen.”
“Handsome, please get that elevator ready,” Lady Noire murmurs.
He calls her over. “It’s here! Let’s go!”
The elevator is much faster this time around. Lady Noire is busy wiping the lipstick off of the walls, so that no evidence is left behind. On the observation deck, Mister Bug is already shouting out to everyone to be careful because there’s an Akuma coming up the elevator, to be careful because people will lose their memories. It’s easier to go down the stairwell than try to go by the elevator, but this will be over in a flash.
He calls out his Lucky Charm.
Out comes out plastic wrap.
“Oh, so these things make no sense,” he says, to no one but himself. The exhibit lied… hmmm. The red and black polka dots on the thing is kind of cute, if anything, but definitely not helpful. He looks around, trying to figure out what to do with the wrap… spotting two columns, one right beside one another, the size of Lady Noire where she can easily pass through. Perfect. Oh, perfect. “Kitty, I’m going to need you to lead the Akuma through here, but make sure to duck.”
“Blind them with the tape, when they reach up to take it off their face, we crack open the arm?”
“You read my mind.”
“You’re on easy man to follow along to,” she laughs. “Perfect.”
Just like they’ve planned, the Akuma is completely enraged. Pinholed vision right on them both, they don’t notice the tourists who are on the other side of the observation deck, hiding and making their way down the stairs— Lady Noire is busy getting their attention by waving almost a bit too dramatically, leading them on a wild goose chase around the observation deck. The thing is a circle, and she’s a runner, and so the Akuma chases her in what must be an amusing sight. Lady Noire, grinning to the point of hysterics, having fun playing a very dangerous game of tag?
God, he loves his girlfriend.
Just as he thinks she’s about to do a few more laps, she pivots; right into the space in between the two columns, and somersaults the other side, ignoring the plastic wrap.
The Akuma is not so lucky.
There’s the tell-tale slap of plastic wrap coming into contact with a face, a groan, a shout, and Mister Bug has his yo-yo out to crack open the arm. He aims for the canon. The yo-yo makes it. Another crack and his yo-yo has sliced clean through the side of the canon, shattering it into little pieces; out comes a disoriented butterfly, trying to fly away.
He opens his yo-yo.
He aims for the butterfly.
All the while, Lady Noire is cheering. “Too easy! Too easy!”
He dissolves the icky, gooey black sludge off the butterfly with his purification spell, leaving them with an Akuma that is slowly morphing back into two real people. When he tosses his plastic wrap back up into the sky to heal the building— all those electronic screens the Akuma had blasted through, the elevator doors that he’d ruined, the lipstick they’d smudged against the walls— all disappears and everything’s okay again.
Lady Noire jumps into his arms and kisses him, just as magic cleans the air and fixes everything. He’s kissing right back as their memories come back, retaining the ones that they’ve just made. Memories of earlier, when she’d been upset at him for being on a date. Memories of him stammering at her because he’d brought her coffee and he didn’t know if she’d like it. Her smile. Her offering to throw away their trash. Memories of her high-tailing right back from that little hallway, grabbing his hand and whispering that they had to get out of there, because there was an Akuma, which meant trouble.
Memories of Lady Noire getting upset at him. Memories of Lady Noire wanting to call her uncle because she wasn’t feeling good because of the news.
Marinette is Lady Noire.
Oh.
Oh.
Marinette Dupain-Cheng, his classmate, is Lady Noire. She’s not his girlfriend at all.
She pulls away with a gasp, eyes wide. “Uhm—”
“Do you want to date?” he blurts out, holding her waist tight. “Please?”
“Not so fast,” she tells him, though she gives him another kiss. A breathless one. One that sinks his brain in water with how he feels like he’s floating. “You still owe me an explanation on why you didn’t want to date me but you were willing to date… well, me.”
He does have a lot of explaining to do, and he’ll do it— but there’s an employee making their way up the stairs, shouting that even the two of them are the heroes of Paris, they don’t get to kiss in the building, either. Maybe they should go somewhere else and talk about it.
He wants nothing more than to set this right.