Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Welcome to the Boulangerie Patisserie! How may I —“ Tom Dupain broke off his customary greeting as he looked up. A large, bald black man with an eyepatch and a leather trench coat was surveying him impassively.

“Tom Dupain.” The man stated in a way that gave Tom the impression that he wasn’t asking.

“Yes?” Tom queried hesitantly. There was something dangerous about this guy. Tom was both taller and heavier, but he had no illusions that he’d win in a fight if it came to it.

“Father of the late Bridgette Dupain-Cheng, who died in the a monster attack last year. Along with ten others including, we’re presuming, the hero known as Ladybug.”

“A lot of people died in that attack.” Despite his lizard brain warning him not to, Tom snapped at the man. His daughter was a sore subject. “Get to the point, buy something, or get out.”

The man stared at him a moment longer before pointing at the pain au chocolate in the case. As he paid for the pastry, he handed Tom a photo. “The name’s Nick Fury. I need to speak to you and your wife. It’s about your daughter.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Nick Fury just where he could shove that pastry when he glanced at the photo. The image there made his blood run cold.

The girl in the photo looked like Brigette. But her hair was cut into a stacked bob, and she had multiple piercings and a purple streak dyed into her raven’s wing black hair. Tom knew his own daughter. She’d never looked like that.

“How?”

Fury took a bite of the pain au chocolate. “Is there somewhere we can speak in private?” He asked.

—

Fury was still munching on the pain au chocolate when he sat at Tom and Sabine’s kitchen table. Sabine and Tom shared an uneasy look before turning back to the strange man.

“What if I told you that this reality isn’t the only one?” Fury said. “That there are hundreds of different realities that exist side by side?”

“It sounds like science fiction.” Tom said.

“A monster tore through the Pantheon last week.” Nick Fury said. “The statue of Marie Antoinette is now missing it’s head, ironically. And yet the idea of alternate realities is too much to believe?”

Sabine shifted in the chair next to Tom. All of Paris was on edge. Had been ever since Chat Noir had given an interview with Alya’s blog, apologizing and explaining that Ladybug had died in an attack. That was why they’d not been able to repair the damage then. Why their loved ones wouldn’t be coming back this time.

In the months since, he’d been seen wearing Ladybug spots. Presumably wearing the Ladybug Miraculous along with his own, fulfilling Ladybug’s duties.

There was something off in the images Tom had seen on the news. Perhaps he was projecting his own grief onto the Parisian hero. But there seemed to be something melancholy about Chat Noir. His fights with the akumatized villains  had an air of desperation. Of barely held-back hopelessness.

They all felt hopeless. The attacks were on the rise. Paris was spiraling.

Fury cleared his throat, reclaiming Tom’s attention.

“I work for an organization that deals with complicated situations on a superhuman level.” Nick Fury explained.

“Like the akuma attacks?” Sabine asked.

“There’s nothing complicated about a Doctor Doom wannabe sending monsters to attack a city.” Nick Fury grumbled. “When your mayor gets his thumb out of his ass and grants us jurisdiction to come in and clean up this mess, we will. Until then, Paris is stuck with the catbug and his little zoo friends.”

“What does any of this have to do with our daughter?” Tom crossed his arms, patience wearing thin. Or thinner, at any rate.

“One of those complicated superhuman situations happened recently. The eggheads we employ are calling it ‘The Singularity.’ Basically the reality next door ended.

“But before it did, a sorcerer from that reality named Stephen Strange was able to shift all the people in that universe into other realities to save them. Because your daughter is no longer alive in this reality, the version of her that existed there was pulled here.”

He pointed to the photo of the girl who looked like Bridgette. “She says her name is Marientte Baker. That reality’s version of your daughter.”

Sabine gasped, seeming to believe Nick Fury at last. She snatching the photo up to stare at it harder. “Why is she so thin?”

Tom looked harder at the photo. Sabine was right. This . . . alternate reality version of Bridgette looked underfed, hollow cheeked and sunken eyed. Collar bones sticking out beneath the ripped t-shirt for some band called The Rolling Stones, whoever they were.

In addition, she had a nose ring and an industrial bar in her ear.

“According to Miss Baker, she’s an orphan. She’s been living on the streets of Chinatown in the New York City of her world for a while now.” Nick Fury said. “We’ve been trying to put the displaced people back with their biological families, when possible.

“If you’re willing to take her in, we’d like to place Miss Baker with you.”

Tom felt a knot of certainty settle into his stomach. He glanced at Sabine, and saw the same determination in her eyes. They didn’t need to discuss it. This girl was theirs.

“When can she come home?” Sabine asked.

“You sure you don’t want to sleep on it?” Fury raised an eyebrow. “This won’t be easy. She’s a street kid. if your English or Mandarin are good, you’ll be able to communicate. Although she’ll have to relearn French. And some remedial education. In her world, the Vikings get the credit for discovering America, her math used a base 12 system. And apparently, I look like David Hasslehoff.

“None of that matters.” Tom said. “She’s ours. Bring her home.”

Fury nodded. “The cover story we’ll set up is that she’s your American niece. Her own parents died and you’re taking her in. That’s close enough to the truth that no one has to keep their story straight. It would explain to other people why she looks so much like your daughter, as well. And living on the streets would account for her lack of education.”

He paused, looking like he was debating whether to say something. “It might help if you thought of her as your niece, as well. She may be your daughter biologically, but Marientte grew up different than Bridgette.”

“We understand,” Sabine said with a decisive nod.

—

Later, as he walked out of the pastry shop, Nick Fury wondered if he should have told the baker and his wife about the kid’s spider-powers.

But Marientte Baker asked him not to mention them. So he’d respect the kid’s wishes. If for no other reason than to get the kid out of his inbox.

After all, he had bigger things to worry about. Like what else had come into their world from hers.

—

Marientte looked around the bakery, fighting the urge to turn invisible.

No! She promised Fury that she’d give this a chance. She couldn’t do that if her alternate universe parents thought she was . . . Any more weird than she already was.

A woman who looked achingly familiar, like a half-remembered dream, smiled too-brightly at her as she moved beyond the threshold.

“Hello! You must be Marientte! I’m Sabine.”

“Uh . . . Hello.” Marienette hitched the straps of her backpack higher. “Do you . . . Uh? D-do you want me to call you Mom? Or . . . A-auntie?”

“Sabine is fine. Whatever you’re comfortable with,” Sabine said. “Let me show you around. Tom’s in the kitchen working on the bread. He’s eager to meet you. But we didn’t want to overwhelm you.”

“Thanks.”

Marientte followed Sabine through the storefront, and the kitchen behind that. There she met another haunting, half-remembered face. Tom brushed flour from his hands before taking one of her smaller hands in his two massive ones.

“I’m glad you offered to come stay with us,” Tom said as if she’d had other options. “We’ll have the chance to get to know you over dinner tonight. Right now I’ve got to get this dough braided.”

“I’ll show you to your room,” Sabine offered.

Marientte nodded. There was a familiarity in this. She’d been in and out of enough foster homes to have been through this ‘showing the new girl around’ more than once. Although she’d always had a few things to carry around in a garbage bag before. Right now everything she owned fit into the backpack on her back.

Sabine led Marientte up a set of steps to the family dwelling over the bakery. Though the place was cosy, it was still bigger than anywhere Marientte had lived while in the foster system.

Up another set of stairs was an attic bedroom. Her’s now, she supposed. If it worked out.

Sabine followed her up, hovering anxiously at the trapdoor.

“It’s very . . . pink?” Marientte bit her tongue. She didn’t want to sound like she was complaining. Would Sabine feel like she was insulting the other version of her?

“You can paint it.” Sabine said. She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “You — we’ll get some boxes and . . . And decide what you want to keep. We can store the rest.”

Marientte hitched the backpack higher. “I don’t . . . That’s not.”

“It’s fine,” Sabine said with a tight smile. “I’ve been meaning to clean this room out anyway.”

Marientte nodded, face downcast.

“You could start with the clothing,” Sabine suggested, turning a critical eye on Marientte’s figure. “Bridgette loved to design clothing. She has—had quite a few outfits. Some of it might fit you.”

Marientte looked at the pink room uncertainly. She wondered if the clothing would match her aesthetic.

“Or, If you sew, you could remake some of it?” Sabine suggested tentatively.

A smile ghosted across Marientte’s lips. Finally! Something she and her alternate had in common. She was starting to wonder if they shared anything other than DNA (and not even that, once you factored in the spider powers).

“I actually do like to design clothes. Although I never really had money or space for . . .” Her wave took in the sewing equipment. “I did make a little money designing digital covers for indie bands. But as for clothes, I usually just refashioned thrift store finds when I could check out a sewing machine from the public library.”

“Well, now you have a whole wardrobe to play with.” Sabine said with a reassuring pat on Marientte’s shoulder. “Let me know when you decide on a color for your room, and we’ll go pick up some paint.”

With that, the Chinese woman vanished through the trap door.

Marientte sat her backpack on the fainting couch in the corner, and looked around with a sigh. Sabine and Tom seemed nice. And Fury assured her that visits from social services would be a thing of the past. Which meant no more worrying that she’d be yanked out of a placement because she hadn’t been able to hide her bruises from her double life as a spider-themed super hero.

She could make this work.

So why wouldn’t the butterflies stop fluttering in her stomach?

Leaving the trapdoor in place, and her backpack on the couch, Marientte crawled up the wall to the ceiling. She wedged herself behind a beam, then let her invisibility powers shift over her like a security blanket.

Hidden from the world, she finally let herself relax.

Chapter Text

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise — Blackbird, The Beatles

—

“You’re up early.” Tom said as Marientte walked into the bakery.

“I don’t sleep much,” Marientte said in the pidgin French, peppered liberally with both English and Mandarin, that she’d been leaning on like a crutch.

“I hope you eventually feel safe enough here to let yourself sleep more,” Tom said in the same pidgin dialect.

Marinette appreciated how her alternate reality parents didn’t shy away from the realities of her past. She hadn’t told Tom or Sabine much. There were some things she’d done to survive on the streets that she was still too ashamed to tell them. But based on some of the considering looks they’d given her, they’d made some scary-accurate guesses.

Tom clapped his hands together, effectively closing the topic and moving along. “You can get the dough out of the cooler for the baguettes.”

Marientte opened the industrial refrigerator and lifted the lid from a white bucket. The glutinous dough inside smelled faintly like grass and something sweet. She dragged the bucket across the floor. Although she could have easily lifted it, Tom didn’t need to know that.

Under his instruction and with his help, Marientte poured the dough into a cutter. Once the cutter divided the dough into smaller brick-like shapes, they put the dough bricks out to rest. Tom explained that once the dough rested again, that he would shape each brick into baguettes before letting them rise once more before baking.

“Isn’t about time you got ready for school?” Tom asked.

Marientte rolled her eyes, but with a good natured smile went back upstairs anyway. She snagged a day-old croissant from the family kitchen on her way up.

Her new bedroom was starting to take shape. She’d been reluctant to change anything, at first. But Sabine had told her that they were going to pack up Bridgette’s things anyway. So if she didn’t do something, she would be living in an empty attic.

She’d elected to leave the wall color, but removed Bridgette’s signature flower style icons. (Should she design her own spider-themed icon?  Or would that be a little too on-the-nose?).

Next she’d painted accent colors to tone back the overall pinkness. She’d painted the trim and wooden beams dove gray, coordinating with a thrifted gray floor rug, gray pillows and a blanket on the pink chase.

She’d also picked up paint samples in lavender and sage, two colors with gray undertones, and painted striped wainscoting around the lower section of the walls.

Along the way, she’d taken down the many, (sort of uncomfortably stalkerish) mementos of the kid that other-her had obviously had a crush on. (She had thought his name was Gabriel, until Sabine informed her that Gabriel was a clothing brand. Since then she’d taken to calling the kid Poster Boy in her head.)

She replaced the stalker shrine with band posters that seemed to be familiar to both worlds.

The Beatles were still here, although there were only four of them in this world. (And apparently they broke up at some point. What was up with that?) Still, the Abbey Road crosswalk poster went up on the wall.

In this world, there didn’t seem to be The Rolling Stones. So she’d had to frame her stones T-Shirt.

Instead of the Stones, there was some guy named Jagged Stone. She’d listened to Bridgette’s copies of his music, and it had been good enough that she elected to keep it, rather than packing it up.

(Thankfully it was on CD. She still hadn’t figured out how to get her Starkphone to work with this world’s cellular technology.  And anyway some of her old music had been in the cloud.  So she wasn’t entirely sure what she still had access to.)

Now she dressed by throwing on a Ramones t-shirt, striped tights, ripped denim shorts, her black canvas sneakers, a slouchy knit cap and a flannel overshirt. She threw the books she’d need into her backpack.

She spared an uneasy look at a semicircular pink polka-dotted box that tried to eat her hand the other day.

“No thanks! I choose life.” Whatever Secrets Bridgette was hiding in that box could stay hidden, as far as Marinette was concerned.

Downstairs in the bakery, Sabine handed her a lunch bag and gave her a tight smile - they weren’t quite at the hugging stage. Marientte could tell that Sabine and Tom wanted to get there. But every time she thought about it, the butterflies in her stomach started a mosh pit.

“Have a good day at school!” Sabine said.

Now she just had to figure out how to get to the remedial school in a new city, where she only half-remembered the language and she hadn’t swung from enough rooftops to have a general sense of where anything was.

Aaaaaaaand the butterflies were back.

“You could just homeschool me,” she laughed weakly. “In America It wasn’t just for fringe cultists, hippies, religious fundamentalists and antivaxxers anymore.  It was practically mainstream.”

Sabine’s mouth twitched like she was fighting a smile. “School, Marientte.”

Marientte turned, but the doorway was blocked by two dudes and a chick her own age. The three of them stared at her like the were seeing a ghost, eyes wide and mouths hanging open.

She recognized them from Bridgette’s photos. They were other-her’s friends: The kid with the glasses and ever-present headphones, the girl with the glasses and ombré red hair and the blonde kid from all the pictures on the wall.

Whatever sixth sense she’d gotten with her powers flared to life. She blinked in confusion, wondering what it was that tripped her spider-sense.

“What was Poster Boy’s name, again?” She asked Sabine in Mandarin, looking back to her for guidance.

“I’m Adrien. Who are you?” Poster Boy shot back in fluent Mandarin. He didn’t even have a foreign accent.

Marientte could feel heat creeping up her neck. “Well Frack!” She muttered in English. “Helloooo awkward Marientte. About time you showed up.”

Poster Boy’s eyes grew wider.

So he spoke English too? Double frickin-frack.

“Kids, this is Marientte Baker,” Sabine said in French.  An amused expression broke like sunrise across her face. “She’s my niece from America, come to live with us. Marientte, you’re going to be late for school.”

“Right. See you tonight, Sabine!” She shot the older woman a thumbs up straight out of the 80s, grateful for the chance to escape.  Then realized how lame she was being and cringed as she squeezed between the three others. 

Oh well, maybe they thought she was doing it ironically. 

—

“That was weird,” Nino said to Adrien as they slipped back out of the bakery, leaving Alya to talk with Madame Cheng.

Adrien nodded. It was weird.

“What were the odds that Bridgette just happened to have an identical twin cousin? That’s some Patty Duke level shit right there.” Nino added.

Adrien set his jaw. “I’m going to follow her.”

“Really?” Nino raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Little paranoid there, bud?”

“You said yourself that it’s weird,” Adrien said. “These days weird is a luxury we can’t afford.”

Nino huffed our a breath. “Fine, man. I’ll cover for you.”

“Have Alya do her reporter thing and find out what she can about this girl.”

“Sure, man.”

Adrien ducked into an alley and transformed into Catbug. Then he vaulted up to a nearby rooftop. From his vantage, he quickly spotted (heh) the girl.

She was studying a map on a kiosk, breaking off to check her phone. Finally, she took off at a dead run down the street.

In his transformed state, he easily outpaced the girl, arriving at the crossing first. She neared the crossing at breakneck speed. Too quickly to see the guy on the scooter park right in the crosswalk.

Catbug cringed at the impending crash. But instead of plowing into the dude, she jumped, twisted in the air. Like a gymnast on a vault, she seized the scooter driver’s shoulders and launched herself over him to land on the other side.

“Thanks Bub!” She yelled over her shoulder as she kept running. Meanwhile the scooter driver blistered the air with curses about stupid, rude Americans.

Catbug’s jaw hung open, too stunned to resume the chase. He ducked into the shadow of a chimney and detransformed.

Plagg and Tikki spun out into his hands.

“What was that?” Plagg asked rhetorically. “How did she do that?”

“It’s physically possible,” Tikki said, although she looked uncertain. “If she was a trained gymnast.”

Adrien shrugged. Too stunned to comment. “Let’s get to school. We’ll see what Alya finds out.”

—

Over lunch, the three of them sat in the back of the library, heads pressed together to whisper.

“I looked at online public records,” Alya said. “Marientte Baker’s story checks out. She’s actually more like a third cousin or something. Her parents died in a fire. She basically bounced around the foster system for a few years, then vanished from the record before Bridgette’s parents took her in. Which probably means she ran away.”

”So where’d she pick up the gymnastics?” Adrien asked.

Alya shrugged. “It’s not like hobbies would be a matter of public record.”

“Well, now we know,” Nino said.

“I guess I ought to tell some of the others from class,” Alya said. “The bakery is right across the street. Then they won’t be shocked when they see her.”

‘Like we were.’ Adrien looked down with a sigh. He hated this. The way he thought - inexplicably - that she was Bridgette. That half-second of relief and utter joy that somehow His Lady had found her way back to him.

Only to have this stranger with her face rip his heart out of his chest and dash it on the floor without even realizing it.

Irrationally, he hated. Hated the way this cousin looked like her twin. The way she looked through him with blank confusion and called him ‘Poster Boy.’ (But he couldn’t seem to hate her.)

He stood abruptly, drawing concerned looks from Alya and Nino.

“I just remembered that I left my physics book in my locker,” he pointed over his shoulder. He whirled on his heel and dashed for the exit.

“The lockers are the other way!” Nino yelled after him.

—

Marientte slid into a seat seconds before the tardy bell rang.

“Nice!” The girl next to her said in English.

“Thanks!” Marientte turned to see a dark haired girl smile back at her. The girl wore a t-shirt with a purple bulls-eye on it. She lifted her purple sunglasses to rest on top of her head, revealing eyes the color of the sky.

“I’m Marientte Baker.” Marinette put her hand out to shake.

“Kate Bishop,” the girl took her hand. “Where are you from, that you need remedial French?”

“New York. Chinatown.”

Kate’s eyes grew wide. “No kidding? I’m from The City myself. What brings you to Paris?”

“Orphan,” Marientte shrugged in a self-depreciating way. “My aunt and uncle offered to take me in. So here I am. You?”

“Laying low,” Kate popped her sun glasses down again, studying her purple-painted fingernails. “It was this, or my janky-style brother from another mother and his farm in Iowa with his million Amish kids. I’m not about that, so here I am.”

“Uh . . . Cool?” Marientte raised an eyebrow. She cast around for a graceful segue into literally any other topic. Thankfully, the professor walked in at that moment, rescuing her from her latest awkward conversation.

Marientte’s attention wandered sometime between learning ‘which way to the Eiffel Tower?,’ and ‘May I have a menu?.’ In her boredom, she started to hum fragments of Surf’s Up.

Suddenly, Kate poked her in the side.

Had the teacher called on her? What was she supposed to say? ‘Where is the Bathroom? Don’t shoot me, I’m Canadian?’

Panicking, she blurted out the first thing that came to her mind. “The hamburgers with cheese are very tasty in my pants!”

The entire class grew silent. The teacher blinked, owlishly at her.

Marientte’s face grew scalding hot. “Eh . . . Heh. . . Never mind.”

“Smooth,” Kate giggled.

Then, as if she’d never said anything, the teacher turned back to the board to discuss verb conjugates.

Kate poked her side again.

“What?” Marientte hissed.

“You were humming The Beach Boys.” Kate whispered.

“So?”

“So, they never released the Smile album. At least not here.”

Marientte dropped her pencil, turning slowly to stare at Kate. Kate returned her stare, unblinking.

“If I asked you which was the better movie, Raiders if the Lost Ark with Harrison Ford, or with Tom Selleck, which would you say?” Kate asked.

Marientte inhaled sharply. Kate was from her reality. Excitement zinged through her veins. She grinned at Kate. “Harrison Ford. The Tom Selleck version doesn’t have that scene in the bazaar where he shoots the guy.”

Kate grinned back. She held out her fist. “Alternate reality buddies?”

Marientte extended her own and bumped Kate’s extended fist. “You bet!”

Chapter Text

Help, I need somebody
Help, not just anybody
Help, you know I need someone, help — Help, The Beatles

—

Marinette and Kate carried their lunches down to the grassy quad so they could eat in the sunlight.

“Are you having as much trouble finding your way around as I am?” Marinette asked.

“More,” Kate wrinkled her nose. “I’ve been to Paris in our old reality. The geography is just weird here. There’s an extra arrondissement, and none of the landmarks are where they should be.”

“Maybe we should do the tourist thing?” Marinette suggested. “We could get a map and see as much as we can. Maybe get a feel for where everything here is? We could try to find the little Statue of Liberty and see where Jim Morrison is buried. I think he died in Paris in this reality, too.”

“I like that idea!” Kate grinned. “And we can figure out more of what’s weird in this world. After all, we’re going to have to pass history. We may as well not look like idiots while we do. Hey! Do you have a StarkPhone?”

“It’s an older model,” Marinette pulled out her phone and held it up apologetically.

“That’s perfect!” Kate said excitedly. “The older ones didn’t rely so much on cloud storage. I can jailbreak this puppy and download your music, if you’ll share with me, that is.” She trailed off, looking unsure.

“You can do that?” Marinette was intrigued.

“I didn’t have to figure it out for myself. There’s a couple forums on the darkweb for people like us,” Kate said. “Someone’s already figured out how to get them compatible and working again.”

“Oh thank God!” Marinette sighed in relief. “I’ve been using my alternate’s iPhone. It feels weird, you know? Almost like using someone else’s toothbrush.”

“I feel ya.” Kate nodded.

Marinette lay back on the grass, already feeling a little less lonely.

—

Chat Noir stumbled through the balcony doors into the residential suite that was Adrien’s. He collapsed onto the bed, releasing his transformation as he did. Plagg and Tikki spun out onto the sheets.

He buried his face into his pillow, glad that he’d be able to get at least a few hours sleep before school tomorrow.

At the sound of the slow clapping, his heart sunk.

Chloé.

‘So much for rest.’ He thought.

Chloé stood in the doorway of his bedroom, the light from the sitting room behind her casting an ethereal halo around her blonde hair. Pollen floated just above her shoulder, looking as unimpressed with him as Chloé did.

“When did you plan to feed your kwamis?” She asked.

She produced a tray with a silver cover. Lifting the lid revealed an assortment of cookies and cheese that lay on the tray.

“You are an angel!” Plagg zipped across the room to the tray and started to shovel runny, stinky cheese down his gullet. “My very own stinky angel from the cheese heaven.”

The smell of barnyard wafted Adrien’s way, stinging his newly-enhanced sense of smell. He groaned. “And I thought Camembert smelled no-gouda.”

“It’s your own fault,” Chloé chided. “You told my personal shopper to find, and I quote: ‘the stinkiest cheese sold in Paris.’ Did you know there is an actual law banning Époisse on public transportation? Utterly ridiculous!”

He rolled his shoulder, wincing at the stiffness. “Who am I to diss a brie?”

“Ugh! Can you not with the lowbrow and frankly juvenile attempts at humor?” Her eyes narrowed as she studied his appearance. “You’ve grown a tail now.”

“What!” Thoughts of passive aggressively annoying Chloé with his puns fled his mind. Adrien darted out of bed and to the full length mirror that was hung next to the closest. He craned his neck to look over his shoulder. A black tail stood straight out, the fur bottle-brushy with alarm.

In that moment, Chloé grabbed his chin and turned it so she could look into his face. “This has gone on too long, Adrien! The kwamis told you! No one person is supposed to hold the cat and the ladybug at the same time! Now look at you! You’ve got . . .” She gestured to all of him, her wave taking in his cat eyes, the ears sticking up out of his mop of blonde hair and his new tail.

“What will you look like after the next Akuma attack? Will there be whiskers?”

Adrien pulled away from her, hunching in on himself. “Exactly who am I supposed to pass the ladybug to, Chloé? Bridgette isn’t here, and it’s my fault—“. He broke off, turning away so that she wouldn’t see him fall apart.

Tikki was suddenly there, patting his shoulder and making soothing sounds.

“We’re all worried for you, Adrien.” She whispered. “And our worries aside, it’s easier to keep the miraculous out of Hawkmoth’s hands if we spread them out.”

Adrien had to admit that the kwami of luck had a point. But who could possibly be worthy of Bridgette’s miraculous?

Chloé sighed. “I’ll figure out something to hide your furry problem,” she muttered. Her version of a peace offering. “There must be something. I mean, how do some of the better class of mutants disguise themselves when they walk around in public?”

Adrien grit his teeth. Occasionally, Chloé said things that reminded him of who she used to be.

But, he told himself, by and large she was much better these days.

Well, some better at any rate.

His changes had been physical. But hers had been on the inside. He supposed she couldn’t help but mature, taking care of the hot mess his life had become.

She’d breezed into the mansion one day with a crew of hotel staff and packed up his stuff without warning.  When Nathalie moved to stop her, she’d pulled his father’s assistant aside. 

“Nathalie, let’s make one thing clear: Adrien and I know what Mr. Agreste gets up to in his spare time.  We don’t approve. But we’re willing to let it go for now if he’s willing to let Adrien go.” Chloé kept her voice light.  But she’d mimicked her mother’s stance:  steel-straight back and arms crossed.  

“That won’t be possible,” Nathalie said.  

“Won’t it?”  Chloé raised an eyebrow.  “Do you think the house of Gabriel will continue to stand when everyone from Milan to New York to Saville Row knows what Mr. Agreste is doing?”

”No one is going to take the word of two children over that of a respected designer.” Nathalie dismissed her with a scoff. 

“If those two children are his own son and the daughter of the world’s most respected fashion icon?  They may not.  But they’ll wonder.  Maybe some of your investors will get a little nervous.”

Nathalie looked sour at that.  “I’m going to call Mr. Agreste.”

”You do that,” Chloé said, already turning to direct her staff.

Later, when his body started to change she found the contact lenses to hide his eyes, clippers strong enough to deal with the retractable cat’s claws at the ends of his fingers and a mew (heh) wardrobe to disguise the other changes.

All the while railing at him for his chronic idiocy.

Maybe Chloé was an angel. Only not the choir and halo kind. But the kind with a flaming sword. After all, men rightly feared those kind of angels.

“I can try not to activate the Ladybug and Chat Noir transformations at the same time.” Adrien now said to placate her. “That should slow the rate of the changes.”

Chloé huffed.

“And I’ll . . . consider finding a new Ladybug.”

The three kwamis and the blonde girl exchanged hopeful looks. Adrien wished he felt as positive about the decision as they seemed.

—

Marinette sat up in bed, gasping. She stared into the darkness, disoriented.

Safe. She was in another reality where she had parents. People who said that they wanted her.

She held a hand to her chest as her heart rate slowed and tried to remember the details of the nightmare.

All her fears thrown together in the blender of a mind that just would never shut up: Sabine and Tom eaten by symbiotes. Being back on the streets. Forced to do what she must to survive. Going to school only to find that she’d forgotten her pants. Dr. Doom adopting her and making her go live in Estonia or Latvia or whatever country he’d kicked Dracula out of so he could rule. Then having to learn to speak in that stupid capslock-y way he did and to only refer to herself in third person.

She dragged her hands down her face. Intellectually, she could see that it was silly. (Especially the Doom dream. What even was up with that? Doom didn’t know who she was.)

The cotton of her PJs stuck to her sweaty body, making her feel clammy and uncomfortable.

Marinette stumbled out of the loft bed and zombie walked to her pajama drawer. Once she exchanged her yoga pants and oversized t-shirt for a fresh change of clothing, she padded down the stairs to the kitchen and over to the fridge.

Glass of milk in hand, she stared at one of the Dupain-Cheng family photos on the fridge. Sabine and Tom looked younger there. Losing their daughter had added lines to their eyes and gray to their hair.

The kitchen light snapped on. Marinette held her hand before her eyes to shield them.

“Oh, you’re up!” Sabine said.

Marinette looked away, taking a sip of her milk. “Bad dreams.”

Her mo—Sabine nodded in understanding. Her eyes cut to the photo Marinette had been staring at. “Bridgette was so proud of that outfit.” The older woman’s smile was wistful.

The milk seemed to curdle in Marinette’s stomach. “I’m sorry.” She wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for.

Sabine’s smile was soft. She took Marinette’s face gently in her hands. “Do you know what I see when I look at you, Marinette? I see Tom’s smile and my Mother’s eyes.”

She grasped Marinette’s hand, touching each finger one at a time.

The oddness of the gesture wrung an uneasy laugh from the girl. “What are you doing?”

“Counting your fingers,” Sabine said. “I’ll count your toes next.”

“Okay? Why?”

“To see if they’re all there. Someday if you have a child, it’ll be the first thing you do.”

The answer stole Marinette’s breath away. Her eyes started to prickle. Sabine dropped her hand and pulled her in for a hug.

They stayed that way for a long time. When they finally broke apart, they each had to go change their damp shirts.

Chapter Text

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
— Sympathy For the Devil, The Rolling Stones

—

Considering that she lived right next to a public school filled with teenagers (a Petri dish for negative emotions if ever she saw one). Marinette was surprised that she hadn’t been caught up in an Akuma attack before now.

She knew about them because Tom and Sabine sat her down with one of those government-issued videos about the necessity of regulating negative emotions.

It was called “Akumas and You,” and it reminded her of those stupid videos she had to watch in health class narrated by Captain America that were all about puberty. It was about as helpful, too.

She and Kate had just gotten out of the metro station and were halfway to the bakery for a study session when her spider sense kicked in. Seconds later they heard the screams.

As someone with a history of swinging from the rooftops, she instinctually knew that they had A Situation on their hands.

She pushed Kate in the direction of the metro station (the video said that they were designated akuma shelters). “Get back underground!” She yelled at her friend. “I’m going to go make sure my p— Tom and Sabine are safe! I’ll text you when it’s all clear!”

Kate looked like she might argue, but was quickly swallowed up by the crowd streaming into the metro and away from the danger.

She darted into an alley, stowed her backpack and then spider-climbed her way up the side of the building. Once on the roof, she parkoured her way over to her balcony and dropped in through the trap door.

Marinette found her costume where she’d shoved it under the mattress. Slipping into it was like donning an armored skin (exoskeleton. They were called exoskeletons). The web shooters that Spider-Man himself gave to her went on last over each wrist.

She checked the level of the web fluid inside. There would be enough, but she would definitely need to break into the school’s science lab in the near future to make more. Thank god Parker had given her the recipe.

She spared a moment’s glance at the mirror. The Red Arachnid struck a determined pose, dressed head to toe in a form fitting black suit and head-covering mask. Red piping ran down each leg and along the jacket and hood. The bottom of the black sneakers and the spider on her chest were also red. The white eye-coverings under the shadow of the hood were the only break from the red and black.

“Long time no see,” she told her reflection. The servos in the mask allowed the eye coverings to shift and tilt along with her own facial expressions, giving the mask a more human-like feel.

Inside the costume she felt more fully herself than she’d felt since coming to this reality. Under the mask and hood she was everything she wanted to be as Marinette: confident, graceful, invincible. “Looking good, Tiger!”

Her spider senses shot tingles up her back, an early warning that someone was coming up the stairs.

She shot like a bullet out the trap door, closing it seconds before Sabine or Tom could check on the noise coming from her room. Then she was over the balcony and swinging out into the streets.

She tracked the akumatized villian by following the obvious trail of destruction. The monster looked like the demented love child of The Joker and Mr. Steed from The Avengers (the other Avengers).

He wore an obnoxious purple three-piece-suit, with an orange shirt and tie. His skin was pale white, and hair was AstroTurf green. He had an orange and purple umbrella, and a British-style bowler hat.

She landed atop a nearby light pole just as Catbug took a swing at the monster.

Or — no. Not Catbug. The hero’s vivid red spotted pattern seemed to be missing from his suit. Instead of Catbug, he was just . . . Cat. (Chat in French. Spelled like one is having a talk with friends, but pronounced like one has just returned from doing one’s business in an old tyme privy. Because? French.)

Wait. Not just Chat, either. The video had called him Chat Noir. So apparently they were both members of the color-themed fursona hero club.

The monster opened his umbrella with a pop, and pointed it at Chat Noir. The black clad feline hero bounced off the bumberchute and sailed past her.

On instinct, she shot a web at the passing hero, stopping his backward momentum and cradling his fall.

Then she glided down to the ground.

“So this is Ladybug!” The monster said in French.

“Uh?” Nooooo? I . . . Ladybug?” Marinette stammered in French as she pointed to the symbol on her chest. “Eight legs, no spots. I feel that you may have missed a science class or two there, Pal,” she muttered in English.

By now, Chat Noir had untangled himself from the web and moved to a defensive stance at her side, telescoping his baton out into a staff. He spared a glance at her, then back to the monster.

“The akuma is in the umbrella,” he said out of the side of his mouth in flawless English. “Lets do our best to rain on his parade.”

Marinette favored him with side-eye so epic that George R. R. Martin probably still wasn’t finished writing it. “A dad joke? Really?”

“Nooooo! That was a Bond one-liner!” Chat protested.

“There is literally no difference!” She said flatly.

“Meow-ch! The Itsy-Bitsy spider has some venom in her bite!”

So Catbug was one of those jokey-type heroes. Like Spider-Man, actually. She could deal with that.

Turning to the monster, Marinette thought back over what the video said about akumas. The monsters were created when a magical evil butterfly infected an object somewhere on the victim.

How weird was her life that a magical evil butterfly wasn’t the strangest thing about it?

Right. Moving on.

According to Chat Noir, (he of the cheesy dad jokes) this particular monster’s power was in it’s umbrella. That should be easy enough to deal with.

She cast out a jet of sticky web fluid, ensnaring the umbrella.

“You must be into fly fishing!” Chat Noir quipped. “What say we wrap this up and then go out for French Flies?”

“Two fly puns in a row? Weak! Anyway, I’m not into picking up guys I met on the web.” Marinette yanked on her line, but the akumatized villain held fast.

“Annnnnd It has super strength. Great.” She grit her teeth.

Before she could release the line, the monster pulled from his end, sending her flying through the air. She landed in the bushes bordering a park.

“That usually works,” she said with a groan as she crawled from the shrubbery.

Then a hero that Marinette recognized from her reality as the girl Hawkeye helped her to her feet. “Are you alright?” She asked in English as she brushed leaves from Marinette’s costume.

Marinette looked closer at Hawkeye and realized that she knew the other hero. “Kate? You’re Hawkeye?”

The new girl wasn’t exactly hiding her identity behind the purple shooter’s glasses.

Then again, groups like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four didn’t do the whole double-life thing the way the X-Men and the loose affiliation of Spider family did.

Kate squinted at her. “You’re one of the Spideys. Not sure which one. Great costume, though.”

Marinette looked the new hero over. She wore a purple suit, black combat boots, and a utility belt and carried a bow and quiver of arrows. “You too,” she said.

A screech in the direction of the akumatized villain reminded her that she was supposed to be engaged in a battle. “We’ll talk after.”

While the two of them raced to engage in the fight, Marinette outlined their goal. They arrived to find Chat Noir fencing with the monster. Him using his staff, while the monster used the umbrella.

“Who are they, again?” Kate pointed with her chin to Chat Noir and the monster as she searched through the supply of arrows in the quiver on her hip.

“Rum Tum Tugger there is the French Black Cat. Only he’s not a cat burglar. Unless you consider his dad jokes a theft of good taste.

“The monster is called an akumatized supervillian. Watch out for his umbrella.” Marinette summarized.

The monster spared them a polite smile. Still fencing with Chat, he doffed his bowler hat at them. “Please allow me to introduce myself,” he said in English.

Marinette leveled a flat, unimpressed look at bowler hat guy. She put her hands on her hips. “If you’re about to tell me that you’re a man of wealth and taste, I’m going to punch you.”

“I got this, Scrappy. Take cover!” Kate pulled an arrow from her quiver and launched it through the umbrella. “Eat my explosive arrow!”

Marinette ducked behind a tree. There was a boom and a rain of debris. When she looked back, the monster was on the ground, singed but alive. A butterfly with black wings that crackled with purple lightning fluttered away.

Chat Noir pointed at the butterfly “Now, Tikki!” He cried out in French.

A little red creature darted up from Chat’s pocket. Which — how? His pockets looked about as functional as the pockets on a pair of skinny jeans.

The red creature snapped up the evil bug like a fish after a dragonfly. After a moment, it burped out the insect. Now the butterfly’s delicate wings no longer crackled with electricity, but were solid white.

Then the little red creature darted back into Chat’s pocket.

“What was all that?” Marinette tilted her head to the side as she slipped back into French.

Char Noir looked at her in confusion. “Don’t you have a Kwami?”

She held both hands out to the side in a Gallic shrug. “Uh? No? Should I? I don’t suppose you get them at the pet store?”

“Then how did you transform?”

“I . . . didn’t?”

Chat looked in exasperation at Hawkeye.

Kate scratched the side of her head with the blunted tip of an arrow. “Don’t look at me, Panthro. I don’t know what a Kwami is, either.”

Chat looked back and forth between them like he was watching a tennis match. “Then neither of you are miraculous holders?”

“Well, I think my bow is pretty awesome, but I wouldn’t call it miraculous.” Kate said.

“How? Where did your powers come from?” Chat spluttered at Marinette.

“A poorly-regulated science experiment.” Marinette said. She had the feeling that his questions were about to get even more personal.

As nice as Chat Noir seemed, she wasn’t ready to tell him everything. “It was nice to meet you, Dad Jokes. And your little red Kwami, too. But I need to . . .go iron my dog.” She pointed over her shoulder, awkwardly.

Behind Chat, she could see Kate make a dash for the cover of the trees.

“Wait!” Chat Noir put his hand out, as if to stop her escape. She shifted invisible, then swung away.

As she returned to the alley where she’d stowed her backpack, she saw a swarm of ladybugs clean up the mess from the fight.

Marinette was pulling her backpack from behind the dumpster where she’d stashed it when her spider sense clued her into someone stepping into the alley.

“So, Marinette Baker, which Spider are you?” Kate asked. She’d covered the purple jumpsuit with a leather jacket, and she’d obviously stashed the bow and arrows somewhere.

“How did you know it was me?” Marinette pulled the mask off.

“I’m a man of wealth and taste? Sympathy for the Devil? Obviously whoever is under that hood is from my reality. And so far, the only person in Paris that I’ve met from that reality was you.”

“It could have been someone else,” Marinette stuck her lower lip out in a pout.

“Could’ve been. Wasn’t.” Kate grinned. “Come on, Spidey. What was your Spidey-name?”

“I was—am The Red Arachnid.” Marinette dug through her bag until she found the change of clothes she’d stashed in case she spilled something on herself. From now on, the costume was going in the bag too.

She pulled a skirt on over the costume bottoms. Then added an oversized hoodie over the top.

Kate let out an unimpressed grunt. “You guys really ran out of spider-themed hero names, didn’t you?”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “Oh you’re one to talk, Hawkeye. What is the name of your mentor? Oh yeah! Also Hawkeye.”

The two of them resumed their walk to the bakery. “You don’t draw a mustache on the Mona Lisa, and you don’t mess with a classic!” Kate said.

Marinette let them in through the side-entrance and led her up to the attic room.

“Hey!” Kate snapped her fingers and pointed at Marinette. “We should form a team!”

“Don’t you think we’ve got enough on our plate just trying to assimilate into this reality?” Marinette asked dubiously.

“It’s either that or form a band, and we can’t play instruments.”

“I can play guitar a little,” Marinette said. “My ex was in a band.”

“We could be the Avengers!”

“I thought the Avengers were in New York? And don’t you need more than two people to be a team? Otherwise you’re just a partnership. Like Heroes for Hire?”

“So we’ll start with a partnership.” Kate said as she flopped onto the fainting couch. “And if that Black Cat guy wants to join, then we’ll become a team.”

“I think Catbug has his own team,” Marinette said, thinking back to the video she’d watched.

“Also, there was more than one chapter of the Avengers. I was part of the West Coast team. And there was a Great Lakes team. Although I don’t think they were affiliated.” Kate ticked off the teams on her fingers.

“The Great Lakes Avengers?” Marinette blinked. “That was an actual thing? I thought it was a joke, or a meme or something.”

“That was an actual thing,” Kate nodded. “Squirrel Girl was on it.”

“Wow! Weird.” Marinette stretched out on her stomach on the rug. She folded her hands under her chin. “What could we do? Catbug and his team seem to have the situation with Hawkmoth mostly under control. And it’s not like you and I could fix those butterflies. Or do that reset thing with the ladybugs.”

“So?” Kate said. “This Hawkass guy—“

“Hawkmoth,” Marinette corrected.

“Yeah, him. People get hurt when he Frankensteins up his monsters. And yeah, maybe Catbug fixes it. But if you have the power to help someone and you don’t, even in the moment and even if the bad stuff gets erased, do you know what that makes you? It makes you a dick! And we are not dicks!”

Marinette rolled onto her back. “This version of the ‘With great power comes great responsibility’ speech is way, way different than Parker’s.”

“So you’re in?” Kate raised her eyebrows.

Marinette folded an arm behind her head. “Yeah, I’m in. Wooo Janky, Broke-Ass, Paris Avengers!” She raised her other fist in the air.

“We should celebrate. Hey! We could go to Disneyland this weekend!”

“Lets make that a team motto. Bad guys of Paris, tremble in fear! For we are here to kick ass and go to Disneyland!”

Kate giggled. “Congratulations, Paris Avengers! You’ve just taken down Galacticus. What are you going to do now?” She said in a game show host-style voice. “We’re going to Disneyland!”

The rest of the afternoon was filled with laughter, as the duo made plans for their new team.

—

The shutters closed over the picture window.

Hawkmoth stalked across the floor of his sanctum. White butterflies swirled around him in lazy clouds as he moved.

Across the room, an old man in a tattered red shirt sat manacled to a chair, his head down. He might have been sleeping. Turtles were known to spend so long at rest that trees would grow from their mud-caked shells. Some cultures even speculated that the world existed on the back of a resting turtle.

Hawkmoth wasn’t fooled. He grasped the old man’s chin, pulling it up and shoving the ancient text into his face.

“Nowhere in this book does it say anything about Ladybug having the abilities of a spider!”

The old man blinked at the book, then up at Hawkmoth. “The powers of the miraculous adapt to the holder.” His voice was rusty from disuse. “Hippolyta’s powers did not resemble La Coconelle’s. Joan of Arc’s powers were different from that of the Scarlet Pimpernel.”

Hawkmoth closed the book with a snap, his mouth twisted in rage. “This new Ladybug will not stand in my way!” He turned on his heel, striding to the glass life support tube that held his wife in stasis.

He stared at her placid face, her eyes closed in a dreamless sleep. “I’ll have the Ladybug and Cat miraculous. Then nothing will keep me from reuniting my family.”

Not even the possibility that the wish granted by the United Miraculous of Luck might take a life to save a life.

The old man might prove useful after all.

Chapter Text

It's no surprise to me I am my own worst enemy
Cause every now and then I kick the living shit out of me
Can we forget about the things I said when I was drunk
I didn't mean to call you that
- My Own Worst Enemy, Lit

—

Chloé glanced up from her novel as Adrien, Nino and Alya walked into the suite through the door, carrying the pizzas.

“Oh good. Now that Harry, Ron and Hermione are here, we can get started,” she said.

“That must mean you’re Draco,” Alya shot back. “Blonde, stuck-up and constantly whining to daddy.”

“At least Draco had class,” Chloé sniffed.

With a sigh, Adrien pinched the bridge of his nose. “Guys! Can we just focus on the business at hand?”

“Eat first. Then we talk. I think better on a full stomach.” Nino sat the boxes on Adrien’s kitchen counter and opened them, sending the smell of cheese and tomatoes around the room. “One rhene, one margharita, and an extra cheese for Plagg.” He announced.

Plagg cheered, then phased through the pizza box. The sound of loud, obnoxious eating issued forth from the cardboard container. Chloé reached out to open it, then seemed to think better of the idea. She patted the box, then moved the other two pizzas further away.

“Let me get the plates,” she said. “The least we can do is eat like civilized people.”

She dished up the slices, then the four of them sat on the couch, their respective kwamis, minus Plagg, sat on their shoulders to listen to the strategy session.

Alya opened her phone and consulted her notes. “These new heroes called themselves Hawkeye and Red Arachnid?”

“I first thought they were miraculous holders,” Adrien nodded.

“But there aren’t a spider or a hawk miraculous,” Tikki put in. “Not in our portfolio, anyway.”

“Well I know that now!” He said in a defeated tone.

“I think the real question is: where did they come from? And why are they only involving themselves in the struggle against Hawkmoth now?” Wayzz asked.

“I don’t think they’re French natives,” Adrien said. “Their French is just the worst. And they kept slipping into English.”

“British?”

“Americans, if I had to pin it down. Although their accents were different from one another.”

“You said they had powers?” Wayzz pressed.

Alya looked down at her phone. “It’s all over social media. Red Arachnid fired these webs from her wrists and turned invisible. Someone on Twitter said that the web dissolved after a few hours.

“There’s already speculation on the ladyblog message boards that she’s super strong. How else could she pull off those acrobatics without yanking her arm out of her socket?”

“Hawkeye shot trick arrows. Not sure if she’s got powers,” Adrien said.

“You don’t think they’re working with Hawkmoth?” Nino asked. “Like Volpina? You said Hawkeye wore purple. And she did have ‘Hawk’ in her name.”

“One of my readers posted that: ‘Hawkeye comes from a character in a series of early American novels. The name is used to describe someone who is a skilled sharpshooter. Presumably because they have eyes like a Hawk’s.” Alya looked up. “That lines up with the bow and arrow she carried.”

“You have some scary smart readers,” Nino breathed in wonder.

“Red Arachnid and Hawkeye can’t be akumatized villains. Hawkmoth can’t make more than one at a time,” Tikki said.

“Plus, they helped me fight against the akuma.” Adrien rubbed his chin. “And the akumatized villain thought that Red Arachnid was the new ladybug.”

“Maybe we could use that,” Chloé suggested. “If Hawkmoth thinks that you handed off the Ladybug Miraculous to the Red Arachnid, he wouldn’t focus all his attention on you in a fight.”

“I couldn’t do that to her—them! Them! I couldn’t do that to them!” Adrien winced. Where did that come from?

“You could ask first,” Trixx said tentatively.

Alya nodded at Trixx’s suggestion. “From the video I saw posted online, these new heroes seemed like they were on our side. And could hold their own against a super villain. If they want to help, we should let them decide.”

“Dude, you can’t keep doing this on your own,” Nino said. “You get a beat down every fight. All it would take is one bad day and Hawkmoth has both of your miraculous.”

“It would give you more time to find a replacement Ladybug.” Chloé gave Adrien a pointed once-over. “Not that you need to take anymore time. You’re looking more and more like a furry every day.”

“A furry? Ewe have goat to bee kitten me.” Adrien said between bites of his pizza.

“You’re impossible!” Chloé scoffed. “But speaking of your furry problem,” she conjured a pen from the depths of her purse, handing it to Adrien.

Once he had it in his hands, Adrien realized that it wasn’t a pen, but some kind of device.

“It’s an image inducer,” Chloé explained. “Some mutants use them to hide their appearance. You click the button on top to activate it. Now you don’t have to wear those uncomfortable contact lenses anymore. The guy who programmed it thinks it’s for a life model decoy to fool the paparazzi.”

“That’s a great idea, Chloé!” Nino said.

“Try not to sound too surprised. All my ideas are great,” Chloé wrinkled her nose as if Nino had offended her.

—

Part of the problem, Adrien thought sourly as he put his fencing mask on, was that he was never intended to be the next guardian of the miraculous box.

That role was always supposed to go to Bridgette. Kind, sweet, good judge of character and excellent at reading people Bridgette.

Not the guy who, thanks to a sheltered upbringing and limited chances for social interaction, never quite got the hang of peopling.

What did he know about handing out a miraculous? Much less one so important as the Ladybug? Get this wrong, and he may as well give the whole ball of wax over to Hawkmoth. Or the whole phonograph of kwamis, as it were.

Fu made it look easy. (He wished he knew where Fu was.) Find a kid nice enough to help him, even when it cost them something personal. Then chuck the miraculous through the kid’s bedroom window?

Surely there was more to it than that.

He stepped to the line and extended his épeé. Across from him, Kagami struck an offensive pose.

He regarded her in her dragon-red uniform. She was an excellent fighter. Extremely competent at everything, really. Her own high standards demanded nothing less.

Someone like that might make a good Ladybug.

Suddenly, Kagami lunged. The tip of her sword popped him on the mask right between the eyes.

Startled, he jerked back, lost his footing and fell.

“You’re distracted.” Kagami stated flatly as she pulled her mask up.

“Yeah,” Adrien said, pulling his own mask off. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Stop,” She frowned at him. “Your problems outside this room have no place here.”

“You’re right,” Adrien huffed as he rolled to his feet. He rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Sorry.”

The gym doors slammed open, drawing their attention.

“This is a bad idea!” Bridgette’s cousin, Marinette exclaimed as she walked into the gym.

She was followed by another girl who looked vaguely familiar. Adrien wondered if she might be a fellow model that he’s seen on a runway somewhere.

Both of them were kitted out in fencing gear. The other girl gripped her épeé as if she was an experienced fencer. Marinette held hers like an oversized knitting needle. She waved her free hand in the air expressively as she spoke rapid English. “I’m telling you, Kate! If you put a sword in my hands, you’re going to be charged as an accomplice when I accidentally stab someone to death!”

The girl-who must be Kate- rolled her eyes. “Will you relax! No one is that clumsy.”

“I am! I’m going to trip and ram this sword right through someone’s spleen and they’ll take me to jail and then I’ll never get to adopt a hamster and name it Hugo. And it’ll be your fault, Kate! Think of poor Hugo! You’re putting him out on the streets!”

Clumsy? The girl who flipped over a scooter like it was an Olympic sport? She was joking, right?

“You’re such a drama queen!” Then Kate spotted Adrien and Kagami. “Bonjour! Excusez is moi? Would you tell my friend here that no one dies in swishy poke?”

Marinette glanced their way. As soon as she spotted Adrien, she jumped in surprise. Then gave him a startled half-wave. The move was so very Bridgette that he felt a phantom pain somewhere behind his sternum.

“That hardly ever happens,” Kagami said dryly.

“See, hardly ever!” Kate rolled her free hand palm up toward Kagami. “And you wanted to sign up for swimming! You’re more likely to drown than to kill someone with a sword.”

“Hardly ever is not never!” Marinette muttered. “This is no way to fill my athletics requirement. At least if I’m swimming, the only person I’d drown is myself.”

Adrien felt sorry for Marinette’s friend. “If it helps, I can show Marinette the basics. Kagami would love to fence with you Kate. Was it Kate?”

“Oh!” Marinette started as if stung by a bee. “Introductions! Yes! Right! Good! This is Kate and I’m Marinette,” she pointed to each of them in turn.

“I got that,” Kagami said.

“Adrien and Kagami,” Adrien pointed to himself and Kagami. “So how about it, Kagami?” He turned to her with pleading eyes. “Will you fence with Kate?”

Kagami sniffed at Kate doubtfully. Perhaps it was the way Kate called fencing ‘swishy poke.’ “I’ll fence with you If you’re competent. I don’t like to waste my time.”

Kate scoffed. “Waste your time? I’m going to be the one to take you to school, Ace. And you gon’ learn!”

Her boast pulled the hint of a smile, a bare lift of one corner of the mouth, out of the stoic Japanese girl. “We’ll see.”

The two girls crossed the room to an empty strip, leaving Adrien and Marinette. An awkward silence descended on the two of them, made all the heavier by the Bridgette-shaped elephant in the room.

“They’re going to be a while,” Marinette sighed at last. “Kate really is very good. I’m sorry, by the way,” she said to her shoes.

“For what?” Adrien furrowed his brow in confusion.

“For calling you Poster Boy the other day when we met. I recognized you from all the pictures that my . . . my c-cousin had in her room.” She winced, looking uncomfortable. “There were kind of a-a lot of them.”

Blood rushed to Adrien’s face while the pain behind his ribs intensified. “Bridgette loved fashion,” he rasped.

Marinette nodded, looking at her shoes.

“What was she like?” The raven-haired girl rested the blade of the sword on her shoulder. Her expression took on a faraway-unfocused cast. “Tom and Sabine have told me a few things. But I think it’s hard for them to talk about it.

“I know we look alike, in that funhouse mirror sort of way.” She held her bottom lip between her teeth.

“We didn’t really talk that much,” Adrien said with an uneasy cough. It hadn’t been until after Bridgette’s death that he found out about her massive, debilitating crush on him.

All that time, he’d been looking for his Lady in the face of every stranger. Meanwhile she’d sat right behind him every day, hoping to be noticed and looking at him with eyes of love.

It’d been painful to admit that, for all the time they spent together in their respective identities, they never really knew one another that well at all. If he thought too hard about it he’d be tempted to crawl into bed and never get out again.

Marinette’s hand rested on his shoulder, dragging him back to the present. She patted his arm in a comforting way, a commiserating smile on her face. “I wish that I could have met her.”

‘Me too.’ Adrien thought. “I guess your family didn’t get together that often?” He asked out loud.

“You could say that. My . . .” She swallowed convulsively, tucking a strand of short purple hair behind one ear. “My mom and dad died when I was little. I’ve been in foster homes for as long as I can remember.”

Adrien winced. Time to steer the conversation away from such heavy topics onto something safer. “How does Paris compare to New York?”

Her expression morphed into something wry. “It’s like a different world.”

Adrien wondered what was so funny. But before he could ask, she’d already continued.

“I used to enjoy standing up on top some of the tallest buildings in The City — that’s Manhattan — and looking out across the bay into Brooklyn. Here there aren’t that many really tall buildings. Just the Eiffel Tower.”

“We’re really proud of our history,” Adrien said. “You can’t preserve the past if you keep tearing it down to build newer, bigger buildings. Quite a few Parisians even hated the Eiffel Tower until it was at least 70 years old.”

“You guys are really proud of a lot of things.” Her face grew animated, eyes wide as she waved her hands around while she talked. “I’ve never seen so many regulations on food: Wine, cheese, bread! The government enforces a rolling closure of all the bakeries in summer.”

“That’s just so the bakeries don’t all close at once. What would we do without our baguettes?” Adrien crossed his arms at his chest, his melancholy forgotten. He smirked, letting a little Chat creep into the expression. “Our food is the best! I’ve seen American Cheese. I’m not even sure you can call that cheese.” Plagg certainly didn’t, a fact he’d expounded on at length. Picky cat.

“Most Americans don’t call that stuff cheese, either,” Marinette shuddered theatrically. Adrien chuckled. He was enjoying himself. When was the last time he’d really just enjoyed spending time with someone aimlessly? Without thinking of the Miraculous in any way?

“But you can’t beat the pies back home —pizza, I mean.” Marinette continued, oblivious to his mental detour. “Big wide slices you had to fold in half. If you’re ever in Manhattan you should have a slice at Lombardi’s.”

Her voice rose to carry across the room. “But don’t tell Kate I told you that!” A sly look crossed her face as she worked a thick, exaggerated New York accent into her voice. “She’s convinced that the best pies in the city come from Joe’s. What a moron!” She pronounced New York like Noo Yawk, and moron like it was two names, Moe and Ron.

Kate stumbled mid lunge, allowing Kagami to slip past her guard and score a hit to her shoulder. The American ripped her mask off, scowling at Marinette. “Whatever she said about me is nothing but lies!” She shouted, pointing at the half-Chinese girl. “Lies and slander!”

Kagami raised her mask, looking unimpressed.

“Fuggedaboutit!” Marinette put her hand under her chin, then flicked it out.

“Fuggedaboutit!” Kate copied the move with a grin, then put the mask back on, saluted Kagami and slipped back into en garde.

Kagami raised an eyebrow, but lowered her mask and returned to her defensive stance.

“You’ve certainly got an interesting friendship.” Adrien said with a touch of envy at how unguarded the two girls were with each other.

“Knowing Kate has really helped with the homesickness. Some of it is just . . . things no one else would get unless they’re from the same place.”

“Fellow New Yorkers?”

“Something like that.” Again she smiled like she was enjoying her own private joke.

Adrien plucked at his fencing glove listlessly. He’d made some really good friends in the couple years since becoming Chat Noir and running away to go to public school. Cemented them when they’d all taken up their own miraculous.

But only Ladybug could have understood him in that way that came from the shared experience of holding two halves of the same miraculous.

“What about the heroes? How does Chat Noir compare to the heroes in New York?”

“I’m not the best judge,” she said. “I think I’ve seen Catbug once from a distance. New York is bigger. I think it had hundreds of heroes and some really weird-ass villains. There’s a guy who’s whole schtick is that’s he has stilts!  Calls himself stilt man.”  She pulled a face.  

“We’re all kind of used to it, so it’s not too strange to see some of the heroes out doing the grocery shopping, or going for a jog in Central Park.  One of the Captain Americas even did volunteer work at the homeless shelter that I crashed at.”

Marinette shut her mouth with a snap, eyes cutting over to Adrien to gauge what he was going to say to that.

Adrien schooled himself against reacting. If she wanted him to pretend he hadn’t heard her, he could do that. After all, he wouldn’t have wanted to drag up the situation with his evil father to a virtual stranger, either.

Marinette looked at the épeé uneasily, and sighed. “I’m just going to wait for Kate to finish her match. I really shouldn’t be trusted with a stabby thing.” She put the sword down.

Something about the defeated slump of her shoulders tugged at Adrien’s heartstrings. He shook off the bleakness that threatened to pull him back down.

“Don’t give up before you’ve even given it a shot,” he said. “Most beginners work on footwork for a long time before they ever touch a sword. Why don’t we start there?”

She looked relieved that they’d managed to move past the verbal minefield that they’d stumbled into. “Alright.”

Chapter Text

TThey're forming in a straight line
They're going through a tight wind
The kids are losing their minds
The Blitzkrieg Bop — Blitzkrieg Bop, The Ramones

I want to be the smile
I want to see the change
I want to be your friend
From the start and once it starts
It never ends

I want to be your pal
I want to be around
I want to be your friend
When you are down

I want to be the sunshine
On your smiling face
I want to be the boat

No, I want to be ocean
Where all we do is float
Under the sun on the rolling sea

Oh, I want to be the sunshine
No, I want to be the moonshine

I want to be the night time lullaby
When you're so afraid

— The Friendship Song, Carbon Leaf

—

“I don’t get it.” Kate rolled onto her stomach in the grass. She propped her chin on her hand as she watched Marinette run through 24 form. “You’re convinced you’ll stab someone with a fencing épeé, but you’re good at Kung Fu?”

“It’s Tai Chi. I’ve been doing this since I was a kid,” Marinette said as she pushed her right hand out slowly in a striking motion. “One of my early foster parents thought Tai Chi would help with my . . . All of me really. The balance and coordination issues, the stress from overthinking, self defense.”

“So it’s not just a bunch of fitness for grandmas?” Kate plucked a piece of grass, and wound it around her finger. “You’re a Spider. How do you have balance and coordination issues?”

“Believe it or not, there was a time before I was bitten by a genetically modified spider. And although my balance is better since I got my powers, my brain still hates me. So I still stumble all over myself a lot. Especially when I’m in my civvies.”

“You do carry yourself differently out of the costume,” Kate said. “What’s up with that?”

“There’s something psychological about wearing the costume,” Marinette shrugged as she shifted into Parting the Wild Horse’s Mane. “It’s like a different part of my brain takes over. I’m definitely less stumbly. Less anxious. It’s . . . I guess it’s like how some people will stutter when they talk, but not when they sing.”

“I totally get that. It’s a little like how I just know I can hit every shot when I have a good carbon fiber compound bow.” Kate said.

Marinette turned in Kate’s direction. “Was the version of you in this reality ever in the Olympics?”

“Ha! I wish!” Kate rolled onto her back, pulling her purple sunglasses down over her eyes. “I’m pretty sure this universe’s version of me was some reality TV star that died after a bad botox injection. There but for the grace of Stephen Strange go I.”

“Then, do you think you want to take theatre as an elective?” Marinette asked.

“Reality tv is not acting,” Kate said in a flat tone. “What about you? Your alternate was into fashion design. Do you think you want to do that?”

“I don’t know.” Marinette hated that she sounded whiny. She broke from practice to sit cross-legged next to Kate. “I mean, I could. Back home that was certainly something I might have gotten into if my life had been stable.”

“But?” Kate prompted when it looked like Marinette might not continue.

“But if I started designing clothes, would I be taking over too much of Bridgette’s old life?” Marinette made a sour face. “She had a lot of promise. Winner of the Gabriel Agreste Young Talent award. Designed an album cover and iconic accessories for an internationally famous rockstar. Would I be trading on connections I didn’t make?”

“This reminds me of how I felt after I lost my mom.”

Marinette put her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry.”

Kate beetled her eyebrows. “About my mom? Why?”

“Just — I’m sad because you’re sad?” Marinette shrugged helplessly.

“Then say ‘That Sucks.’ Because what else is there to say? It happened a long time ago. I’m not telling you just to drag up old trauma.”

“Oh — okay?” Marinette said uncertainly.

“I thought my mom was a good person.” Kate continued. “She traveled the world doing charity work. But she wasn’t a saint. Even if I saw her that way for a while after I thought she died.

“I’m sure alternate universe you was awesome,” Kate continued. “But she was still you. Which means she was probably still a hot mess, not miss perfect. You weren’t even in this universe when she died, so it has nothing to do with you.

“Yeah,” Marinette picked at her cuticles.

“Look, If she had been alive, you would have been sent to some other alternate universe, and then we wouldn’t have met. So don’t feel guilty because you’re alive and she’s not.” Kate held a hand to the side. “That’s just the cards you were dealt. It sucks, but you can’t control it. So why waste time on guilt?”

Marinette pursed her lips in contemplation before speaking again. “I’m not really sure I like the idea of being involved in the clothing manufacturing business, anyway. So much of the industry is fraught with ethical issues and exploitation.”

“What would you do different?”

She shrugged. “Dunno. I really like the idea of upcycled clothing. Taking things that are destined for a landfill and turning them into something beautiful and desirable again.”

“Why don’t you start a YouTube channel?” Kate suggested. “You could make videos showing how you remake your fashions. Then other people can wear your designs, and you haven’t gotten involved with shady clothing industry issues. It would be a way to spread your socially-conscious message, and you could eventually build a brand from that. Maybe even monetize it?”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Marinette brightened. “It’s unique to me, at any rate. Not sure that’s what I want for my life long-term, though.” 

A comfortable silence stretched between the two girls. Finally, Kate spoke.

“This universe’s version of Iron Man got in touch with me about us using the Avengers name. Well, his lawyers did anyway. They were much more reasonable than Captain America. Back home, the red, white and blue stick-up-his-ass usually only called me to tell me to stop doing something or other.”

Kate put her hand up like it was a sock puppet. “You’re too young to be a super hero, Kate! You and America can’t strand a super villain in a world of nothing but shrimp, Kate!” She spoke in a falsetto imitation of Captain America’s voice. “You can’t fund an Avengers team with a reality tv show, Kate! You can’t let Gwenpool adopt a baby land shark, Kate! Please don’t point that rocket launcher at the reactor, Kate!”

“If he’s like that, I can see where Iron Man would seem more reasonable.” Marinette inhaled slowly before asking. “Did this reality’s Iron Man launch a car into space, too?”

“No, he seems more interested in clean energy and nanotechnology than in going to Mars,” Kate said.

“That makes a lot of sense, actually. Did he want us to stop being Avengers?”

“He offered us his legal team to help with liability insurance, lawsuits from crackpots, that kind of thing. He also said that if we’re going to use the Avengers name, we have to show up if they call an Assemble.”

“They’re not asking for much, are they?” Marinette asked.

“I think Fury might have vouched for us,” Kate shrugged. “Can’t think why Mr. Eyepatch would do that.”

Marinette chewed her lip thoughtfully. “It can’t be a coincidence that he happened to put a couple heroes in Paris. According to the papers, the mayor keeps refusing UN intervention against Hawkmoth.”

Kate tilted her sunglasses up to look at Marinette. “That makes a scary amount of sense. Anyone ever tell you that you have a devious mind?”

“Consequence of overthinking things. Which is how I end up accusing you of orphaning a baby hamster when you suggest we take fencing together.”

When the silence again stretched comfortably, Marinette rolled to her feet and resumed her form.

After a time, students began streaming into the park from the school one block over.

“Huh. Looks like our lunches overlap.” Kate noted.

Marinette made a grunt of acknowledgement, but otherwise focused on her breathing, letting one movement flow into another.

“Isn’t that your buddy from fencing class?” Kate asked. Seconds later, her spider senses alerted her to Adrien and his friends from that day at the bakery approaching.

Marinette frowned as she looked back toward the school and confirmed what her spider sense was telling her. What was it about them that set her extra sense off?

Maybe they were mutants? That would explain things if she was picking up on their extra abilities or something.

If so, she decided that it wasn’t any of her business unless and until they decided to come out of the x-gene closet.

“Hi Marinette!” Adrien waved. “You practice Martial Arts?”

“Kate was shocked, too,” Marinette said. “But it’s really just muscle memory. I practice the moves slowly. And I make it a point not to spar. So the chances that I hurt someone else are low.”

She waved to his friends. “Hi again! I don’t think I learned your names before.”

“Alya and Nino,” the girl with the ombré hair pointed to herself and the boy with the glasses.

“And this is my friend Kate,” Marinette said.

“Would you mind if I joined you?” Adrien asked. “I haven’t practiced forms in a while.”

“Fencing, Mandarin, English and martial arts? Isn’t that spreading your time a little thin?” Marinette raised her eyebrow skeptically.

“Also modeling, piano, basketball, skateboarding, freestyle climbing, plus a couple of other languages.” Nino piped up, slinging a companionable arm around Adrien’s shoulder. “Our friend Adrien is a poster child for that overscheduled life.”

“I’ve dropped most of those activities.” Adrien pushed Nino’s arm off his shoulder. “Since I’m not living with my dad, he doesn’t get to control my schedule.”

“Still, you’re like a Swiss Army knife of random skills,” Kate said.

“Rich white boy problems, right?” Nino laughed. “He’s also one of the best gamers I’ve seen.”

“Is that a fact?” Kate sat up, a devious glint in her eye. “Ever play laser tag?”

“Not in a while.” Adrien took up a place next to Marinette, falling into the motion of Carry The Tiger Over the Mountain.

Nino’s resting mellow face turned almost feral. “You two up for a game?”

“We were going to hit the arena this weekend,” Kate said.

“We were?” Marinette paused mid-guesture Off Kate’s look, she sighed. “Oh, I guess we were.”

“Alya, you in?” Nino asked.

“Any activity Chloé will avoid is an activity I’m here for!” Alya said cheerfully.

“She’s not that bad!” Adrien protested.

“Fine! You can go shopping with her. I’m going to laser my boyfriend’s face off!” Alya said.

“No, I’m in,” Adrien shook his head.

“Thought you might be.” Nino smirked.

—

Paris was no stranger to giant monsters wreaking havoc. Which is not to say they’d become blasé whenever an akumatized villain inevitably appeared and started playing disc golf with parked cars.

The mayor had refused UN intervention. But he’d diverted funds into akuma shelters, warning sirens and initiatives to train new psychologists for the citizens of Paris. Both to boost mental health, and council former infected villains and their victims.

Adrien heard the sirens from his open balcony doors as he tried to study for his upcoming physics test.

He sprinted to the balcony, Plagg and Tikki beside him. To his surprise, he saw a 75 foot cat roaming the streets, batting at a fleeing scooter like it was a mouse.

Adrien’s jaw dropped. The cat looked half-wild, like it spent a part of it’s time dragged backward through mud and was not happy about it.

“That’s something you don’t see every day!” Plagg’s little green eyes grew wide.

“A giant cat? That’s not like Hawkmoth,” Tikki observed, rubbing her chin with her little fingerless hand. “Unless he’s taken up clicker training recently.”

“That’s all we need.” Adrien rubbed his eyes, then looked again.

On the street, the scooter’s passenger flicked out a thin line and pulled themselves rapidly into the air. They shot past the cat’s face, causing the animal to focus on them and forget the scooter and it’s driver.

‘Red Arachnid,’ he guessed. Now that the person was closer, he could clearly see the black costume, hood and the red spider on the chest, confirming his intuition. He looked back at his schoolwork half-heartedly.

As if he needed further proof that his dad didn’t care. He was sending Akuma to interrupt Adrien’s study time.

“Plagg?” He called out.

“Nope! Nopenopenope! The spider has it under control!” Plagg argued, turning his back and putting his nose in the air.

He sighed. How had he ended up with such a lazy little Kwami? Oh well, he now had options other than bribing Plagg with a metric ton of cheese.

“Tikki?” He asked.

The little red Kwami beamed at him. She giggled. “Let’s go!”

“Suck up!” Plagg stuck his tongue out at Tikki.

Adrien transformed, then tucked Plagg into a pocket and swung to the parapet across the street where Red Arachnid had taken shelter. The spider-themed hero was watching the giant cat through a pair of binoculars.

“Looks like the spider is now a spy-der!” He said in English, since that seemed to be Red Arachnid’s favored language.

“Good to see you, Dad Jokes.” She looked up from her binoculars. “Are you Chat Noir today?”

“When I’m like this, you can call me Monsieur Bug.”

“Monsieur Catbug Noir.” There was a lightness in her voice. The eye coverings of that weirdly expressive mask tilted up. Adrien had the feeling she was laughing inside the costume.

He grinned, tipping an imaginary hat to her. Just then Rena Rouge landed bonelessly next to him. “I missed the memo about the black and red dress code.” She said as she straightened from her crouch. “Do we all wear pink on Tuesday?”

“Ha!” Since getting out from under his father’s thumb, he’d felt freer to joke around. He appreciated that his friends would join in. “Hawkmoth is really bugging me today! Here he is interrupting my mothamatics homework.”

Rena Rouge rolled her eyes. She turned to study the giant cat. “This akumatized villian has no opposable thumbs. How is it supposed to take your miraculous?”

“It’s not an akuma-thingy,” Red Arachnid said. “It’s a Mane Coon cat that a mad scientist enbiggened with a . . .” She snapped her fingers in the air, seemingly at a loss for words. “What’s the opposite of a shrink ray?”

“An enlarging ray?” He guessed, lifting an eyebrow behind his mask.

“That’s the thingummy.” She pointed to him with one hand, holding her other index finger over the nose area of her mask. “He calls himself Egghead. The scientist, not the cat.
Hawkeye and I discovered him while tracking some stolen Pym Particles as a favor to Ant Man.”

“A mad scientist?” Rena Rouge scratched her head, plopping down on the ledge to watch the cat rub it’s face against the corner of a building. “That’s new.”

“Maybe for you,” Red Arachnid said absently.

“Why blow up a cat?” Rena Rouge wondered.

“Yeah, that was an accident.” Red Arachnid tucked her hands behind her back, ducking her head. “We had Egghead cornered when Hawkmoth sent one of those butterflies after him. Right in front of my partner and I. Rude!

“He rejected it. Told Hawkmoth that he — Egghead, not Hawkmoth — could get his revenge on us constumed-types in his own way. And to prove it, he embiggened his cat”

“I don’t think that’s ever happened before,” Rena Rouge said.

“Ladybug rejected an akuma once while she was in civilian form,” Adrien said. “Lila grabbed it for herself. Remember Chameleon?”

“What happens if no one accepts the butterfly?” Red Arachnid asked.

“If it can’t find someone to infect, presumably Hawkmoth recalls it,” Rena Rouge said.

“Let’s hope he does that,” Adrian muttered. “But be prepared to fight a random akumatized villian in addition to a giant cat.”

Red Arachnid pulled a phone from somewhere in her suit.

Adrien blinked. Where had she managed to stash that? Her costume looked too form-fitting to include pockets.

“Hawkeye?” She said into the phone. “I’ve got a visual on the collar tag.”

“Lay it on me, eight eyes-in the sky!” Hawkeye’s cheerful voice issued from the phone’s speaker.

“The cat’s name is Mittens. There’s a phone number on it’s tag.” She rattled off a string of digits.

“Wait! So this Egghead guy blew up his cat and set it loose to rampage through Paris but left it’s identification in place?” Rena Rouge threw her hands out to the side incredulously.

“Because what if Mittens becomes lost?” Adrien snarked.

“Mad scientist reasoning is not like your and my reasoning.” Red Arachnid said. “Most of the sane ones don’t think: you know what would make the world better? A 75 foot cat! Most of them don’t even think about making the world better. That’s the problem!”

The longer she spoke, the more her voice climbed in volume. “They’ve lost touch with basic skills like getting out of the rain, eating on the regular and not genetically modifying spiders just to see what happens!”

Adrien and Rena Rouge stared at Red Arachnid. Adrien coughed, uncomfortably.

“RA, you still five-by-five?” Hawkeye asked over the phone, a concerned note in her voice.”

“Yeah,” Red Arachnid said with a cleansing breath. “Just — I have issues.”

“Relatable. How about you keep Mittens busy? Try to steer her to a park or something. I’ll track down Egghead and retrieve the shrink ray and the Pym Particles.” Hawkeye responded. “Then we can get things back to normal.”

“I’ll contact the police, get the word out through social media for everyone to evacuate the area, and set up an alert for a potential akuma.” Rena Rouge said. “The mayor’s office should probably be aware that the damage from the cat is not going to be fixed with the magic bug reset.”

“We could lure Mittens to the Trocadéro,” Adrien suggested. “When Carapace and Queen Bee get here, have them coordinate the evacuation with the police.”

“Too bad we don’t have any really, really big catnip,” Red Arachnid said as she hop-stepped from the ledge.

“Not the best idea, considering my new cat tendencies,” Adrien muttered to himself in French as he followed her, swinging out on the yo-yo string.

He admired Red Arachnid’s acrobatic grace as she glided through the air at the end of a slender web. She landed in front of the cat.

It crouched on it’s haunches, tail lashing. Then it scrambled forward, slashing the air with razor sharp claws, each the size of his arm.

Red Arachnid didn’t so much dodge as she simply proved herself a master of the art of effortlessly not-being where the cat was aiming.

It was like she had a sixth sense telling her how and where to move seconds before even his enhanced reflexes could figure it out.

He landed on the cat’s back. Mittens flopped over, twitching from side to side in an attempt to dislodge him.

Adrien rolled free, dodging a swipe from the larger cat. Red Arachnid scooped him up by the waist and swung further away.

“We can’t keep dodging like this!” Adrien said.

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking!” Her whole head turned as she scanned the area. Then she pointed with her chin. “There!”

Adrien followed her gaze to one of those temporary art exhibits set up in the park bordering the Eiffel Tower. This one was a large, metal, spherical cage.

“It’s a giant cat toy!” He said.

“Just get in the buckyball, Catbug!” She huffed in exasperation.

He vaulted into the cage through a hexagonal opening on one side, Red Arachnid close on his tail.

Mittens fell on the giant steel ball, trying to shove her paw in through one of the openings. Adrien and Red Arachnid flung themselves against the other side to avoid the knife-like claws.

The giant cat let out a growl of frustration. It batted the ball across the ground.

Adrien screamed as inertia trumped gravity to throw him against the side of the cage. Red Arachnid seized him by the yo-yo string wrapped around his middle and pulled him back to the center of the ball. She’d formed some kind of a nest out of spider web. The two of them were still turning topsy-turvey, but at least they weren’t being battered around anymore.

“Why did you suggest this?” He cried out through clenched teeth.

“Better than being eaten!” She called back.

Mittens yowled in frustration, then sent the steel cage hurtling through the air.

Red Arachnid slid down the web to the side of the cage. “Help me snag the tower when we pass!” She shouted at Adrien.

He dropped next to her in a controlled tumble. As the top of the Eiffel Tower soared past, she sent out her web. He copied the move with his yo-yo. The two lines held fast.

Red Arachnid braced against the side of the cage with her feet. Adrien wrapped his own legs around a steel beam to keep from being pulled out of the giant ball.

“I’m going to throw up!” He screamed at her.

“Don’t!”

“That’s helpful!”

The steel cage wrapped around the spire of the Eiffel Tower like a tetherball around a pole before stopping.

Mittens pulled herself up the side of the tower, batting at the ball, but was unable to gain purchase.

“I think . . . we’re all right.” Red Arachnid gasped out between breaths. She pulled her mask up to expose her mouth. Adrien noticed that her lips were painted carmine red.

“Mittens is too focused on us to go anywhere. And she can’t reach us here. Just as soon as Hawkeye gets back, we’ll shrink this problem down to size.”

Adrien sighed in relief. “I thought you were in Seine. But your plan wasn’t as Eiffel as I first thought,” he grinned at her.

Red Arachnid spluttered, then laughed helplessly. “Now I know we’re going to be alright. You’re making Dad Jokes.”

She tied off the webbing tether, then started securing the ball to the side of the tower with more webs.

Up close, he could see that the webbing came from some kind of device attached to her wrists.

Interesting.

“That should hold for a few hours. After we take care of mittens, I can lower this cage to the ground.”

“You have to admit, for a cat, Mittens was a fur-midable opponent.” Adrien said.

Red Arachnid stared at him, chewing on her exposed lower lip thoughtfully. She nodded as of she’d just come to a decision. “Okay, I’m going to regret this.” She stood balanced at the lower curve of the ball, hand fisted on her cocked hip and a smirk on those exposed lips. “Buuuuut what do a tick and the Eiffel Tower have in common?”

“What?” He asked, bemused.

“They’re both Paris sights!”

Adrien groaned theatrically. A warm feeling infused him, starting somewhere in his heartular region and spreading. When was the last time he really enjoyed the job this way?

It was back when it was just him and Ladybug. He frowned at the memory, feeling like he’d just been plunged into an ice bath.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Red Arachnid tilted her head sideways, dropping down to settle next to him.

“I just— I miss my partner,” he rasped. “This feels like the first time I’ve laughed in a really long while.”

“When did you lose her?” She said gently, touching his shoulder.

He crossed his arms, hunching inward. “A year ago.”

“That sucks.”

His vision swam. He raked away the sudden tears. “Yeah.”

Red Arachnid kicked her feet in the void below them. “You know,” she said tentatively, chewing on the corner of her mouth. “A wise person once told me that this thing we do. It’s a game with high stakes. When we lose, we lose big. But we also get to win big.”

“Today is an easy win. We need to celebrate those when we can get them. And I think that your partner would have agreed with me.”

She raised her arm, an invitation for him to take comfort in her presence. “Come here!”

“Why Miss Spider! You don’t even know me!” He held a hand to his chest, his lips curving in a watery smile.

“We both just wrestled a giant cat together. I’d say that counts as a bonding experience.” She said. “Sooooooo friendly hug? You look like you need it.”

With a last sniffle he scooted next to her, resting his head on her shoulder. “This isn’t a trick to lure me back to your web, is it?”

She tilted away. “Was . . . Was that your way of asking if I bite?”

Warmth bloomed across his cheeks. “I would never be that crass, Miss spider. I am a gentleman bug.”

“So glad to know. For a second there, i worried that I was stuck with an alley cat,” She said tartly.

“I’ve had all my shots, and I’ve never tried catnip.”

She hummed as if she didn’t quite believe him. “Did you know there’s a spider that looks like a ladybug?”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding. It’s called the Ladybug Mimic Spider, and it’s adorable! The spots are a defense against birds, since birds won’t eat ladybugs.”

“A sneaky Red Arachnid,” he chuckled. “You know, you remind me of my old partner, a little.”

“In what way?”

“She was a quick thinker, too. When she felt like joking, she could run circles around me.” He grinned in fond remembrance. Bridgette rolling her eyes, an affectionate smile and a quip prepared just so she would get the last word in before swinging away.

On the heels of that happy memory came a bitter one: her annoyed face when he made a joke to lighten the mood while planning the best way to take down a super villain and release the akuma. “But I think more often than not, I just exasperated her.”

“Why was that?”

He sighed, taking in all of Paris with a wave. “When we started doing this, it was like an amazing adventure. I didn’t always know when to joke and when to be serious.”

She patted his shoulder where her hand rested against it. “When I was a new hero, I took things more seriously. Almost too seriously, if we’re being honest. But I was so afraid that I was going to screw up.”

“What happened?” He asked.

“I screwed up.” She smiled lopsidedly. “Kind of a lot, actually. My life is a trainwreck, if we’re being honest. Which seems to be something most spider-themed heroes have in common. Eventually I learned not to take everything - especially myself—too seriously.

“Humor has it’s place, even in tense situations. Pet—um, Spider Man where I’m from was one of my first mentors. He never shut up! It worked for him, actually. He kept his enemies mentally off balance during their fights. Made them so angry or flustered that they lost their edge.”

The sudden chime of her phone ringing out startled a scream from both of them.

With another shaky laugh, Red Arachnid answered her phone. “Tell me you have good news, Hawkeye!”

“I’ve neutralized Egghead, and I have the shrink ray!”

“Great! We’ve got Mittens at the Eiffel Tower.”

“I’ll be there in half a second!” Hawkeye said.

“We’re in the giant Buckyball stuck to the side of the tower.”

“What’s a buckyball?” Hawkeye asked.

“Looks like a cat toy.” Adrien put in.

“I see it now! Wow! You guys are high up there!”

Red Arachnid pointed out an ant-like person running up to the tower. “That must be her.”

“Shrinking the cat, Now!”

The oversized, wild-looking beast that had just been crouched beneath the Eiffel Tower suddenly shrank to the point that neither of them could see it.

Red Arachnid clapped her hands together. “That’s that! Hawkeye can be the one to talk to the press, since this whole Avengers thing was her idea.”

“The Avengers! Like those guys in America?” Adrien’s eyes widened.

“Earth’s mightiest heroes.” Red Arachnid held out a hand to help him down with her. “Now with a Paris branch. Coming soon to a city near you! Ask us about franchising opportunities in your area.”

Chapter Text

I knew you before the west was won
And I heard you say the past
Was much more fun
You go your way, I go mine
But I'll see you next time
— It’s All Been Done, Barenaked Ladies

—

Nick Fury looked up from his paperwork as André Bourgeois stomped huffily into his office, his face scarlet.

The Frenchman slapped a newspaper onto Fury’s desk, he slammed a fist down over the photo of Red Arachnid catching a bus in a net made of her web as it fell into the Seine from a bridge.

“What is the meaning of this, Monsieur Fury?” Bourgeois spat.

Fury scanned the headline. “Avengers in Paris.” Then he raised an eyebrow at Bourgeois. “It looks like a couple heroes claiming to be Avengers are helping out in Paris. Did you really come all the way to New York to waste my time with this?”

The other man scoffed. “And I suppose you have nothing to do with it.”

Fury stared at Bourgeois, saying nothing. Eventually, the other man shifted uncomfortably. He stepped back, crossing his arms.

“Despite what you might think, I don’t control the Avengers. S.H.I.E.L.D. works alongside them, but that’s the extent of our involvement. If a couple freelance vigilantes calling themselves Avengers decide to operate in Paris, that’s your problem.”

Bourgeois spluttered. “Then who should I speak to?”

“You might try Tony Stark. At one point, his company funded the Avengers. He may have some insight as to who you should speak with.” Fury turned back to his paperwork in clear dismissal of the arrogant civil servant. “He owns the giant building with his name on the side. You can’t miss it.”

Bourgeois hovered for a few minutes, then stomped away, slamming the door behind him.

Fury waited until he finished the form in front of him before picking up his phone.

“Hill, get Stark on the phone.”

—

“I cannot believe that you and this . . . spider person sat on the side of the Eiffel Tower and made jokes when you could have been asking her to put spots on her costume!”

Chloé rubbed her temples, glaring balefully at Adrien across the café table where they had all gathered. “Is this what an aneurysm feels like? My brain is literally going to melt from dealing with your ridiculousness!”

“Oops?” Adrien shrugged helplessly. He picked up his milkshake. “It slipped my mind? We were having so much fun.”

“Fun.” Chloé said in a frosty tone.

“Look Chloé, we distracted a giant cat and nobody got akumatized.”

“Speaking of which, what happened to Mittens the Hellcat?” Nino asked.

“Nadia Chamack adopted it for her daughter,” Alya said. “I don’t know who to feel sorry for, Mannon or Mittens.”

“My point is: yesterday was an easy win. We should enjoy those when we can.” Adrien forced the conversation back on topic.

“Did your spider-friend tell you that?” Chloé scoffed.

“We can’t change it now.” Alya rolled her eyes. “I’m sure we can ask Red Arachnid Saturday.”

Adrien paused, drink halfway to his lips. “Saturday?”

Nino, who had been watching the exchange like it was a tennis match, burst into sudden laughter. “You have no clue, do you? Show him, Alya.”

Alya turned her phone where Adrien could see it. “I finally got a good look at Hawkeye when she spoke with the press yesterday. You didn’t tell me that she’s our new friend Kate Bishop.”

Adrien squinted at the phone. There was Hawkeye, wearing the purple jumpsuit with the bow and arrow rig strapped across her back. A pair of shooters lenses covered her eyes, and she had a bandage over her nose. A second one had been slapped on the side of her chin.

Like Kate, Hawkeye was pale with dark hair. Could she be Kate? “Maybe that’s Kate? I mean, she looks a little familiar? I can’t tell.”

“Are you sure you don’t have face blindness?” Alya took her phone back. “It’s not like she has the magic that keeps us from being recognized in the suits.”

“So if that’s Kate, then Red Arachnid is Marinette,” Nino concluded. “She has to be! You told us that she did some freaky parkour gymnast move over some guy on a motorcycle!”

“It was a scooter.” Adrien said absently as he watched Alya scroll through images of Red Arachnid swinging through Paris. “How can you tell anything about her? She’s covered head-to toe.”

“She’s also BFFs with Kate, and her French sucks. Process of elimination, Kitty Boy,” Alya said with a wink.

“She’s Bridgette’s cousin?” Chloé leaned across the table to spear Adrien with a meaningful look. “Forget having her pose as Ladybug. Just mail the earring box to her and be done with it. Problem solved!”

“No! Problem not solved!” Adrien made a chopping motion with the blade of his hand. “What if she’s not the right person for the Ladybug? Remember my cousin, Felix? Would he have made a good Chat Noir?”

“She’s already an experienced hero! Fu chose you with less of a resumé,” Chloé shook frustration-clawed hands at him.

“You and she spent a half hour singing Kumbaya in a giant hamster ball,” Alya put in. “She can’t be that bad.”

Nino suddenly blinked, then his eyes widened in realization. “Dude! Ladybug’s cousin is also a bug-themed hero. How ironic is that?”

“Not that ironic, if my theory is correct,” Alya muttered.

Chloé drew her tiny cup of espresso up to her lips for a dainty sip. “This ought to be good.”

“So, I ran across this group on a message board,” Alya plowed on, ignoring Chloé. “Most of them were connecting over obscure music and pop culture. They called themselves the Friends of Jagger.”

“Jagger? Don’t you mean Jagged?” Nino asked. “Like Jagged Stone?”

“Jagger apparently refers to a guy named Mick Jagger, who fronted a band called The Rolling Stones.” Alya tucked a strand of hair behind her ears.

“Never heard of them,” Nino said.

“I had to lurk, because if I asked questions I would give myself away. But they talked about things that I’ve never heard of. Historical events, bands. They called this ‘the bad alternate universe where Biff Tannin is the President of the United States.”

“Who is Biff Tannin?” Chloé asked.

“According to IMBD, Biff Tannin is a movie villain from an obscure science fiction film from the 1980s called Back to the Future. It started Eric Stoltz.”

“What does this have to do with Bridgette and Marinette?” Adrien drummed his fingers on the table. The hidden cat claws made a plinking sound on the countertop.

“Alternate realities!” Alya put her phone down with a smack. “I’ve been following this rabbit hole all over the internet.
There seems to be a lot of people out there who want to file share episodes of some tv show called “Dog Cops” or figure out how to make their “StarkPhones” work again. What if Marinette isn’t a cousin from New York. What if she’s a Bridgette from New York who got spider powers instead of ladybug powers?”

The other three stared at Alya. She sat straighter, glaring at each of them in turn. “I know it sounds like something from my comic book—“

“Alya, please don’t ask Marinette if she’s the alternate universe version of Bridgette,” Adrien said quietly. “I think that would be hurtful.”

Alya sighed. “Fine! But I’m not going to stop digging. And we are going to ask her if she’s Red Arachnid when we see them Saturday! And then we’ll commence Operation Mimic!”

Adrien raked his fingers through his hair. “Operation Mimic?”

“It’s a spider that pretends to be a ladybug.”

“I know what it is!” Adrien sighed. He was already dreading this Saturday.

—

“Where are we going?” Marinette asked as Kate led her out the side entrance of Tom and Sabine’s bakery.

“It’s a surprise!” Kate said. She pulled Marinette down the sidewalk to the next door and into that building.

“Welcome to the Paris Avengers Secret Headquarters!” She flung her arms out, waving her hands around. “Complements of Tony Stark.”

Marinette snorted. Then realized that Kate was serious. “What? Really? Headquarters?”

“It’s a little out of the blue, but we can’t keep operating out of your room!”

“Where did the money come from?” Marinette raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You haven’t even been able to scrape together the money for your private investigator’s license. So how are you paying for a building?”

“I’m not,” Kate said. “This is all Avenger-y money. We’re being officially sanctioned! The big boys in New York apparently like the street-level, hearts and minds heroics we’ve been doing in their name. They gave us the building as a tool to help. After all, what if Wolverine comes to town and needs a place to crash sometime?”

“Wolverine attracts stabby ninjas like ants to a picnic. He can find an Air B&B!” Marinette muttered.

“I think he’s banned from Air B&B for that very reason,” Kate said. “At any rate, Stark bought this place for general Avenger and us-specific use. It’s perfect! Common space is on the first floor. Kitchen and bathroom is on the second floor. Bedrooms are third floor. I’ll get the attic room and we can make a door through the wall to your room above the bakery.” Kate walked up the stairs to the second story kitchen.

“There’s a chimney between the two buildings!” Marinette said.

“Well, then you can scale the wall when you need to come over.”

“Or I can just use the front door like a normal person going to visit my friend.” Marinette rolled her eyes. “This is a lot of house for a team of two. Especially since you’re the only one who lives here.”

“It’s not just me.”

As they reached the second floor landing, Marinette nearly collided with a tall sandy-haired man who looked like he’d just been in a bar fight. His face and arms were covered in bandages. He wore a t-shirt that proclaimed that he was “bootylicious” and a pair of ratty purple sweatpants. He carried a full coffee pot in one hand and a cold piece of pizza in the other.

Marinette stared, wide-eyed as the man drank from the full pot of coffee. Just then a dog darted across the room, grabbed the pizza from the man’s hand and wolfed it down.

He looked down at his empty hand in distress. “Aw, pizza no!”

“Is he . . . high? O. . . or drunk?” Marinette whispered behind her hand.

Kate rolled her eyes. “No, he’s just an idiot who left his hearing aids out.” She signed to Clint with sharp movements.

Clint handed her the coffee pot, then dug a set of flesh-colored hearing aids from his pocket. He settled one behind each ear, twisting the clear rubber earpiece into place.

“Now that we can all hear one another: Marinette, this is Clint Barton. The other Hawkeye. Clint, this is Marinette Baker, she’s Red Arachnid.”

Marinette shook Clint’s hand. “I thought you lived on a farm with a bunch of Amish kids.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “Is that what Katie said? That was the guy from this world. I went to visit his family and see if I fit in.“ He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t think I’m as well adjusted as the family man version of me.”

“Aw Jeez, Clint. That sucks!” Kate said.

Clint scratched his armpit. “Eh. It is what it is. Family-man wasn’t around that much, either. They decided to think of me as weird uncle Clint who grew up in a circus. . . I’m free to visit.”

“You grew up in a circus?” Marinette jumped on the opening to change the subject. “What was that like?”

“It was a crime circus. So, lotta getting out of town ahead of the law.”

“Oh.” Marinette looked down at her feet.

An awkward silence fell between them. Out of the corner of her eye, Marinette watched Kate purse her lips and rock back and forth on her toes. “Soooooo . . . Clint is here to mentor us.”

“Us?” Marinette looked back Clint uncertainly. “No offense Mr. Barton, but I’m not really an archer.”

“I read your file, kid. The real one, not the squeaky clean one that Fury had his computer wizards put out on the internet.”

Marinette blanched, and swore in Mandarin.

“And I’ve seen all nine seasons of Firefly, so I understand what you said.” Clint looked amused.

“Good, then we don’t have to waste time translating it with entertaining hand gestures.” She snapped back.

“Look,” he sighed. “I been a street rat like you were, kid. The things you did to survive — I would have bet you aren’t proud of them, even without that colorful example of profanity there.”

She clenched her jaw. “No, I’m . . . I’m really not.”

“I’m not proud of my past either,” Clint said. “I didn’t bring it up to shame you. Not when I did some of the same things. I ain’t the best at talking, but if you want to talk to someone who been there, well . . .” He held his hands out to his sides.

“And as your new mentor, my first piece of advice is that you should keep up with some of those questionably-legal skills. Think of them like arrows in a quiver. The boomerang arrow sounds silly, until you actually need an arrow that comes back to you.”

“I’ll . . . think about it.” Marinette said quietly.

“Yeah, do that.” Clint took the coffee pot back from Kate’s unresisting fingers. “Good talk. I’m going to go have some pizza.”

Once they were alone, Kate put a comforting hand on Marinette’s shoulder. “Hey, no judgement.”

Marinette squeezed the fingers on Kate’s hand. “Thanks.”

“We’ve all got shitty pasts. I don’t think anyone who willingly puts on tights to fight crime is exactly stable. Whatever you did, you’re still my friend.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat down. As much as she didn’t want to talk about her past, it was out there. (Thanks Clint!). She needed to tell Kate something. Otherwise her friend would probably imagine that she’d sold drugs or worse.

Best to do it fast. Like ripping off a bandage.

“I stole shit,” Marinette nodded jerkily. “Breaking and entering. Penthouses where rich people lived. With my powers it was easy. Mostly I took small, easy to carry stuff. Trophy type things that wouldn’t be missed and I could sell for quick cash.”

Kate simply listened, her expression open and free of condemnation.

“I looked for the kind of things that didn’t have sentimental value. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just wanted to have enough money to eat.

“Lifted a few wallets, too. Ran some street hustles. And,” she looked down. This was the part she really, really wasn’t proud of. “I got into relationships sometimes just to get off the streets.”

She tucked her hands into her pockets. “The ex-boyfriend who taught me to play guitar? Luke. I met him while he was busking and I was running Three Card Monte scams on tourists in Times Square. was with him for a . . . a lot longer than I should have been.

“Eventually he figured it out. Told me that he would have helped me no matter what. That I didn’t have to build a life with him based on lies.” She smiled bitterly, feeling her eyes well with tears.

“The irony is, Sabine and Tom told me that Bridgette hated lying. She was apparently at war with some girl in her old school because the kid was a pathological liar. Meanwhile, here I am, her alternate. And I’m the biggest liar that I know.” Her breath hitched and she wiped snot on the elbow of her sleeve.

“Luke found me a spot in a women’s shelter.” Marinette continued. “Food and a roof over my head in exchange for helping out around the place and teaching some Tai Chi. Despite what I did to him, he looked out for me. Who does that?”

Marinette shook her head, as if she still couldn’t believe how well her ex had treated her.

“I had to talk to the shrink on staff and work on myself. Turns out I was a liiiiitle toxic.” She held her finger and thumb inches apart. “I . . . I’m trying not to be, now. It helps that I want to be more like Luke: to look after other people, instead of wondering what they could do for me. That’s why I created Red Arachnid.”

She dashed away the tears collecting on the corners of her eyes with another muttered curse.

“I was going to sit for my GED. I thought maybe I could get into college. Get a big-girl job. Maybe a place of my own, or something. Show Luke that I’d been worth all the shit I put him through. I- I hope whatever reality that he ended up in, th-that he’s okay.”

She sighed tiredly. “So. . . Yeah. That’s my tragic backstory.”

Kate shook her head. “Look, you did what you could with the frankly shitty hand you were given.”

Marinette laughed. Because what else could you do? “Massively shitty.”

“And whatever help Luke gave you, you were still the one who saved yourself. That’s a step that even some heroes never figure out: Knowing when to save yourself.  I think Clint told me that.  He’s actually pretty smart, for a dumbass.”  Kate said with a fond look on her face. “You know what isn’t massively shitty?”

“What?”

“Ice cream!”

“No, ice cream is the prescription for suckage,” Marinette said. “You want to go looking for the magic ice cream guy?”

“Nah. I’m not looking for true love or anything.” Kate said. “Let’s go to Berthillion.”

“Ice cream is my one true love, anyway.” Marinette nodded.

With that, the two girls were out the door and down the street, happy to leave the gloom of Marinette’s confession behind.

Chapter Text

I Miss You (But My Aim Is Getting Better)

Ain't nobody hurt you like I hurt you
But ain't nobody love you like I do
Promise that I will not take it personal, baby
If you're moving on with someone new

— Happier, Ed Sheeran

—

“DOOM WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS!”

Carapace dropped to the avenue before Le Grand Paris hotel. In the street there were a half-dozen robots that looked like the dictator of Latveria fighting against Red Arachnid, The Hawkeyes, a guy who was honest-to-god-on-fire and a guy who looked like Ivan back when he was akumatized.

“So . . . Is it just me? Or is an actual leader of an actual country attacking the mayor’s hotel?” He asked Red Arachnid when she swung past. “Hi. Good to meet you. I’m Carapace.”

“We’re doing names right now? Ok, Donatello, I’m Red Arachnid.” The spider-themed hero waved awkwardly. “Those are Doom Bots. Doom sends them out whenever someone annoys him and he doesn’t want to deal with it himself.” She threw webs up between the street and sidewalk to catch flying debris.

Carapace set up his energy shield to help her.

“So a grown-ass adult who is in charge of other grown-ass adults also dabbles in being a supervillian?” He scratched his head. “This is a thing that happens?”

“More often than you think, kid.” The giant rock guy said. “At least Doom is honest about being a bad guy. Most dictators hide it behind big fancy words.”

“Rock guy is The Thing. The flying guy is The Human Torch from the Fantastic Four. They’re here to help,” Red Arachnid explained.

Carapace tried to imagine what it would be like if the mayor randomly sent out attack drones.

Given the way Chloé and her mother behaved, and the number of times the mayor had been akumatized . . . Yeah, it would probably not be much different than this, come to think of it.

“Why are they attacking the mayor’s hotel?” Carapace asked.

“We’re not sure,” guy Hawkeye (Hawkguy?) said as he ran past, launching an arrow behind his back without looking. “Either because Audrey Bourgeois wrote an editorial about his dress sense, or the mayor said something mean that got back to him in diplomatic circles.”

“For a guy who wears an iron tuxedo, Doom sure has thin skin,” The Human Torch joked.

Between the banter, the heroes bashed the doom bots down to scrap metal.

“Looks like that’s the final Doombot,” The Thing said at last.

“That’s it?” Carapace scratched his head. “What if he sends more?”

“He usually doesn’t,” Hawkguy said. “Most of the time he’s just trying to prove a point.”

“What’s that?”

“That he’s perfectly willing to send murder bots after you if you annoy him.” The Thing said.

Carapace considered that. “Fair point.”

“So that’s done. Hawkeye? What’s there to eat in this town that’s not snails or duck’s liver?”

“I think we could find something. Turtle boy, you want to come along?” Hawkguy said.

Carapace’s miraculous beeped at him. “Thanks, but I think I have to go.”

“Maybe next time.”

Reluctantly, Carapace watched them leave. Getting to hang out with half the Fantastic Four would have been awesome.

“Next time!” He promised himself.

—

Marinette looked at the converted barge tied up in the river. It was painted like an old VW “shaggin’ wagon” style hippie van. There were trees growing out of the hold, fairy lights glowing from the rails and music drifting from the open air terrace.

Kate glanced from the barge to the address typed into her phone like a confused turkey. “I think this is the place.”

“Who lives here?” Marinette wondered.

“Some friend of Alya’s,” Kate shrugged. “She said that after band practice they party. Sounded like fun.”

“Well, we deserve to celebrate, after the Mayor decided to show us some love.” Marinette buffed her nails on her shirt.

“Yeah, funny how he changed his tune when he was reminded that he lives in the same time zone as an unstable mad scientist/wizard/dictator/genius.” Kate grinned like the cat that ate the cream. “As the French say: c’est la vie.”

“Hey guys!” Alya waved to them from the deck of the houseboat. “The band is just getting started!”

Kate waved back. “And as they say in New Orleans: laissez les bon temps rouler!”

Marinette followed Kate onto the boat and up into the terrace.

Alya met them and pushed a couple of drinks into their hands. “I’m warning you now, everyone here went to school with Bridgette. They know about you. But you’ll probably get a few stares today.”

Nerve-butterflies swarmed in Marinette’s stomach. She took a drink from the cup to settle them. It was weak wine, thankfully. “I appreciate the warning,” she said.

As Alya drifted away, Marinette scanned the terrace for any familiar faces. A few people gaped openly at her. A few more stared from the corners of their eye.

She spotted Adrien behind a portable keyboard with the rest of the band. And just in front of him on guitar — was Luke. Marinette felt like her heart was going to stop. She swallowed convulsively, sending her drink down her windpipe. Then coughed and spluttered it back up and all over her Black Flag t-shirt.

Kate produced salt, club soda and a couple of napkins from some pocket, which was probably a portal that only former heiresses seemed to have access to, and set to dabbing up the mess. “You alright?” She whispered to Marinette.

“Yeah,” Marinette coughed out. “Wine burns when you cough it out your nose.”

“I could have told you not to snort wine,” Kate sounded amused. “Why did you decide to abuse alcohol in this way?”

“The guitarist with the green in his hair. It’s Luke!”

Kate looked back at the stage in a totally not-subtle way. “Dayum! You broke up with that?”

“More the other way around,” Marinette said miserably. “And a whole other universe away. But he looks just like him!”

“What do you want to do?” Kate asked.

“Run away?” Marinette danced from one foot to the other. “Crawl back in bed and pull my blankets over my head and maybe tomorrow will look better. I could duck into the bathroom, make myself invisible and no one would ever see me leave.”

Kate looked like she might consider letting Marinette go, then shook her head. “You should stay.”

“What? Why?” Marinette’s yelp drew the attention of a couple of people lounging nearby.

“Because that’s just a Luke-alike, not actually your ex.” Kate grinned at her own pun.

“Seriously?” Marinette groaned. “A pun? Right in front of my salad?”

“It’s an older meme sir, but it checks out. Come on! If you leave, everyone is going to wonder why.” Kate chivvied her. “You don’t have to make this weird. Or weirder, anyway.”

Marinette pasted on a fake smile, and allowed Kate to propel her across the terrace.

Alya raised an eyebrow at them. “Did Marinette freak out because people were staring?” She whispered to Kate loud enough that Marinette could hear it.

“Something like that.” Kate smirked. “How’d you guess?”

Alya’s expression was oddly knowing. “Bridgette used to freak out all the time.” She waved her hand as if pushing the topic away. “No matter. Let me introduce you around.”

Marinette wondered how she would keep everyone straight. There were Ivan and Mylène, Rose and Juleka. She’d already met Nino and Adrien.

“And this is Luka, Juleka’s brother,” Alya said.

Luka smiled at her and jerked his head in greeting. “Hey.”

“HI LUKE - A! LUKA, I MANT - MEANT! HI LUKA!” Marinette shouted. She made a face at herself. “I mean,” she said in a calmer tone, “it’s nice to see you again. Woah! Did I say again? Silly me! I mean, how could it be nice to see you again, when we’ve obviously just met, right? Is anyone else hot in here? Whoo!” She took a drink of her wine before something even more embarrassing came out of her mouth.

Kate blinked at Marinette’s verbal diarrhea. “Oooookay, we’ll just be over here!” She pulled Marinette away and leaned her against the boat’s railing. “That was a train wreck.”

“Ugh!” Marinette put her head on Kate’s shoulder. “Brain, why must you hate me so?”

“Look on the bright side, you probably just came across as . . . Having a really artless crush.”

“And that’s somehow better?” Marinette whined.

“You don’t want everyone to think you’re inept because Luke-alike reminds you of your alternate universe ex, do you?” Kate asked.

“No?”

“Then it’s better that everyone just thinks that you have pants feels for him, and that’s why you’re acting so weird.”

“You are so comforting right now,” Marinette said sarcastically.

“I try,” Kate patted her head.

Marinette hung back by the rail, listening to the music while Kate mingled. Some of the band’s songs had a strange familiarity to them. A stanza of a song here, a leitmotif there. Just enough familiarity to remind Marinette of Luke’s work. Just enough to make her really believe that Luka was this world’s version of Luke.

During the break, Luka came to stand next to her. He looked every bit as good as she remembered him with his stupid face and his guitar strap slung carelessly over his shoulder and his band t-shirt and his gentle, sweet smile.

Cool without even trying.

The two of them stared at the passing boats on the Siene in awkward silence while Marinette fought off a blush.

“Alya tells me that you’re Bridgette’s cousin?” He asked at last.

“Yeah,” Marinette forced the words out past a lump in her throat. Look at that! One syllable. Progress.

“Your heart song is like hers, only sadder.”

“Do you hear melodies for everyone?” Marinette wondered if he had some form of synesthesia.

“Not everyone is as clear as you are. Bridgette was,” he said.

She smiled at him. This time it felt genuine. “You remind me of someone I knew back where I used to live.”

Understanding dawned in his eyes. “Someone good?”

“He probably saved my life. If I could talk to him again, I’d tell him that.”

Luka turned his attention to his guitar, plucking out a melancholy tune. “You remind me of someone good too.” He said almost too softly for her to hear.

Unable to resist, Marinette clasped his shoulder. “Thank you, Luke.” For everything.

If he noticed that she once again hadn’t gotten his name quite right, he didn’t show it. Instead Luka smiled at her.

“Hey Luka!” Juleka called from across the barge.

“Your melody? It’s getting happier. Hang in there, Marinette.” He turned and walked away.

Marinette stared out at the water with a bemused smile. That exchange felt like closure. She held up her glass in silent toast. ‘To you Luke, wherever you are. I hope your reprise is happy, too.’

Someone else came to stand next to her at the railing. Wasn’t she just little miss popular tonight? Under the cover of drinking her beverage, Marinette glanced over to see Adrien there. For some reason, he seemed nervous; biting his lip and shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“Hey, A.” She turned to him. “I thought you gave up all your extra hobbies.”

“I like to help out my friends when I can,” he said. “And I like playing the piano for fun. I gave up playing Liszt and Chopin.”

“Have you played any Guaraldi?” She asked.

“Is that . . . Who is that?” His forehead wrinkled in confusion.

“He wrote the Charlie Brown music,” Marinette grinned. “That peppy jazz piano you hear in all the cartoons. You know: bum da dum da dum dum dum . . . Dum da dum dum.” Marinette stopped abruptly, realizing that she’d been making jazz hands and swaying. Adrien was staring at her in confusion.

“Must be an American thing,” he scratched the back of his neck. “I’ll look it up.”

“You should. It’s fun. Plus, Snoopy dance! You can’t be sad when you’re doing the Snoopy dance.” Marinette cleared her throat uncomfortably while she searched for another topic the way a drowning man searches for a life raft.

Adrien’s eyes darted around the terrace, never landing on any one spot for more than a few seconds.

Awk. Ward.

In case this conversation crashes, exits are located above the wings. Your seat cushion doubles as a flotation device.

“Thanks for the fencing lesson the other day, by the way,” Marinette blurted.

“You’re welcome!” Adrien looked pleased and also a little relieved to have something to say. “I hope you stick with it.”

“I might,” She hedged noncommittally. “I need something to fill my athletics requirement. I doubt I’ll ever be a contender for the Olympics, though.”

He glanced back across the terrace where Kate was in an animated conversation with Juleka, Luka and Mylène. “You and Luka seemed to hit it off. I’m glad you’re making friends.”

Marinette again felt the blush rising on her face. Darn pale complexion. “He reminds me of someone I miss.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“A little of both, really.” She shrugged. “I’m not really great company right now, A. I guess I’m a little too nostalgic tonight.”

“Why do you keep calling me A?”

“Adrien and Agreste both start with an A. Unless you don’t like the nickname.”

“No!” He said hurriedly. “A is good. Great! It’s great! I have a friend nickname.” He smiled a funny little smile, sounding pleased. “It’s okay if you’re not being great company. I don’t need great company. . .” He made a face as he mentally reviewed what he’d just said. “That came out wrong. I meant —“

“It’s fine,” Marinette threw him a verbal seat cushion flotation device.

He sighed in relief and turned back to watch the passing boats with her. The two of them stood there in stiff silence until Adrien was called back to practice.

By the time Kate collected Marinette to leave, she was still wondering what that weird conversation was all about.

—

Adrien waited until they were a couple blocks away from the Couffaine houseboat before rounding on Alya. “You invited Marinette to band practice!”

“And Kate.” Alya nodded. “It was a chance to talk in a more intimate setting. I thought maybe we could ferret out whether Marinette is Red Arachnid or not.” (Read: whether she was from a different reality or no.)

“Is that why Nino pushed me into talking to her?” Adrien crossed his arms over his chest. “Did you put him up to that?”

“Yeah,” Nino nodded. “I would have talked to Marinette myself, but she was putting out all these weird ‘do not approach’ vibes.”

“She was?” Adrien asked.

Nino straightened his hat. “I figured since you’re socially awkward . . . and she’s socially awkward . . .” he held his hands parallel to one another and perpendicular to the ground, making slashing motions first on his left side and then his right. “That putting you two together might shake loose some information.”

“Instead it gave us all secondhand embarrassment.” Alya shook her head. “We’ll just have to try again on Saturday.”

Adrien sighed. Sometimes he wished his friends were a little more subtle.

Chapter Text

Do you have the time to listen to me whine
About nothing and everything all at once
I am one of those
Melodramatic fools
Neurotic to the bone
No doubt about it
— Basket Case, Green Day

—

Adrien watched from the shadows behind a second floor potted urn as his father left his atelier. Gabriel Agreste stretched, concealing his mouth with a yawn.

The movement revealed the outline of the butterfly miraculous within the folds of his cravat.

So that was where he hid it.

Gabriel scratched his back. Then readjusted his clothing and turned toward the stairs, and his room.

After his father had closed the door behind him, Adrien slipped through a side door that led to the basement, avoiding the security cameras along the way.

He was pleased. He hadn’t really expected a different result tonight than any of the other times he’d snuck back into the mansion to spy. But you never knew. One of these days, Gabriel might make a mistake. It only took once.

Of course, the same could apply to him. Adrien wasn’t blind to the danger he took on by coming back into the mansion on a regular basis. This was the belly of the beast. Getting caught here would mean increased possibility of Hawkmoth’s victory.

But the potential reward of stealing back the butterfly and peacock miraculous outweighed the calculated risk he took sneaking back.

He slithered through a door behind the boiler and down a tunnel that he suspected dated back even before the nineteenth century when the old beau arts mansion was constructed for a successful architect.

The tunnel snaked ever lower and lower still into the limestone bedrock beneath the city. Down past the basement level, down past the sewers and metro. He came to another door that bore signs that the lock had been cataclysmed. A second padlock (that only he had the key to) secured the door.

He unlocked the door, replacing the padlock behind him as he entered the tunnel. The faint smell of damp earth and mold assaulted his nose, while cool air gusted across his cheeks and throat like a slap. Just as it did every time he ventured into the catacombs.

Even with his new cat-eyes, Adrien couldn’t see in total darkness. The light he’d brought cast sinister shadows among the dry stacks of parchment-brown bones. Curled femur ends reminded him of rolled up scrolls while empty eye sockets yawned open from rounded skulls.

He had no fear that he would run into anyone within these winding tunnels.

And if he did run into one of the gendarmerie who patrolled the catacombs, one look at the half-cat man he’d become would likely scare them away.

During the day, the catacombs were a morbid tourist attraction. At night, only the bravest or most foolhardy souls ventured down here.

He’d gotten the idea to move about the city unnoticed by Hawkmoth this way from Plagg. During WWII, Char Noir had led a cell of La Résistance from the tunnels, crypts and underground rooms of the catacombs.

It was only a matter of befriending the Cataphiles (heh) who roamed illegally through the Paris underground, hanging out with one another or spelunking through half flooded or partially collapsed tunnels, holding parties, staging concerts, painting the underground galleries and even putting on performance art.

The Cataphiles were only too eager to share what they knew with Chat Noir. Knowledge that Paris’s hero himself patrolled the catacombs served to keep vandals away and insured that novice Cataphiles adhered to the unspoken moral code that was sacrosanct among the underground society.

Now Adrien could and did come and go wherever he pleased, whenever he wanted. He only wished he’d known of these secret passages and their entrance below the mansion back when he was fourteen. Past-Adrien would have appreciated the freedom.

He came to another door, this one opened into a ghost stop for the metro station below Le Grande Paris. He entered that door and activated his image inducer before traversing the basement levels of the hotel.

Plagg and Tikki would be waiting anxiously (though Plagg would pretend to be bored) to hear what he’d found.

He wished he could risk taking them with him. But if he was caught, there was always the chance that Chloé, Alya and Nino would find others to carry on as Chat Noir and Ladybug in his place.

For tonight, his team was at least one step closer to retrieving the butterfly and peacock. And tomorrow, they could work on Alya’s spider-focused side project.

—

“No using your powers,” Kate told Marinette as she dressed for their ‘training’ exercise (shooting their new friends in the face). “No wall crawling, no invisibility. No using any other powers you may or may not have told me about.”

Marinette pulled a black t-shirt on over her head. “You know I can’t turn the spider sense off, right?”

“Is it going to tell you to duck my lasers?”

Marinette thought about it as she did the wriggle-hop dance into her black jeans. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Then you’re going down, itsy-bitsy!” Kate made finger guns at Marinette.

Marinette smirked back at her friend. “We’ll see, Katie-Kate.”

Kate made a sour face. “You’re hanging out with Clint too much.”

“We binged Game of Thrones together, that’s all! Can you believe that the author finished the novels in time for HBO in this reality?”

“Yeah, it was cool that the ending didn’t suck.” Kate reapplied her lipstick at Marinette’s vanity while Marinette slipped on some black canvas sneakers.

—

By the time the two girls made their way to Laser Paris Adrien, Nino and Alya were already waiting outside for them.

As they walked up, Adrien pulled down his sunglasses to watch them over the tops of the lenses. “Are your shoes Gabriel?” He asked Marinette. “I think I recognize them from the line several years ago.”

Marinette grinned as she came to a stop next to them and held her foot out. She’d had a fit of inspiration when she’d seen the black canvas shoes at a thrift store. They’d been covered in splotches of paint, but were otherwise in pristine condition.

With some embroidery floss, she’d turned the white logo into a detailed butterfly with blue and gold wings. Each of the paint splotches she’d repainted into a flower.

“DIY is so punk, and I like to re-style old clothes,” she said.

Alya kneeled to get a better look. “They’re amazing! Is all your work this transformative?” She jumped to her feet to examine Marinette’s shirt.

Adrien realized that it was one of the ubiquitous Gabriel tri-stripe shirts. Only she’d removed two of the striped bars and bleach-stenciled a raven with spread wings perched on the remaining stripe.

“Have you thought of selling these?” Alya asked.

Marinette shrugged. “Kate’s been after me to, but I’d have to have an online storefront. And I couldn’t take commissions. I prefer to work with thrifted clothes, so every piece would be one of a kind. I’ve got some ethical issues with the clothing business as a whole.”

“Sweatshops?” Adrien guessed. Having been in the clothing industry since his diaper days, he’d been aware of the problems endemic in the whole system. But father had shut down any of his questions. ‘When I’m gone, you may run this company as you see fit. Until then, I shall run it as I see fit.’

In hindsight, it hadn’t been too surprising that father was a super villain.

“And environmental concerns. Dyes and bleaches that cause pollution. The amount of dead stock that goes into landfills. Even unsustainable farming practices that go into producing raw materials. Not to mention the negative body issues the industry forces on both sexes.  It’s just a lot of toxicity all around.”

Marinette tucked her hands into her pockets. “But starting a brand is more than I want to think about right now. And this is something that I do for fun. If I make a job out of it, that takes away the fun aspect. I’m not sure I want to do that. Especially since I’m trying to assimilate to the new reality.”

“Changing countries? I imagine it’s like a different world,” Nino said.

“Something like that.” Kate’s cough sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

Adrien looked back at Marinette’s shirt with a pang of nostalgia. He’d worn that particular style of shirt every day when he was fourteen. It had been one of his favorite of the Gabriel designs.

He’d been wearing one the day he met Plagg.

As the others went inside, he hung back to talk to Marinette.

“Why a raven?” He asked, pointing to the bird.

“It’s a blackbird.” Marinette tucked a strand of purple hair behind her ear. “Like the Beatles song.”

He wasn’t aware that there was a Beatles song about a blackbird. He wasn’t that aware of the Beatles, for that matter.

Off his confused look, she continued. “You know: Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Take these broken wings and learn to fly?” Her voice cracked a bit when she sang, but the melody it carried was pleasant. “All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise . . . Nothing?”

“Sorry. I haven’t heard it.”

“Well, you should,” Marinette said. “I was listening to it when I worked on the shirt. I guess I was inspired.”

He smiled softly at her. ”Then I’ll have to give it a listen. “Would you make something like this for me? Maybe a cat theme? I could pay you.”

“It’d need to be black,” Marinette said, her eyes taking on a faraway expression as she mentally planned out a design. “Like the AC/DC song. Nine lives, cat’s eyes.”

Another band he’d have to check out.

Her gaze sharpened as she returned to the present, giving him a tentative half smile of her own. “Yeah, okay. I’ll do it for the cost of materials.”

He let a little Chat bleed into his vague, public smile turned into a genuine smirk. “Thanks, Marinette!”

Her eyes suddenly widened, and her expression became fixed and rigid. “Shit!”

“What?” Adrien looked over his shoulder, half-expecting an Akuma to come up the streets. But there was nothing.

With an exasperated sigh, Marinette pinched the bridge of her nose. “C-could you turn around?”

‘Adrien lifted an eyebrow.

“J-just . . . Ugh! My brain hates me!” She slapped her forehead into her hand before holding that hand up and revolving the index finger. “Would you just please turn around? I can say this to your back easier than I can to your face.”

“O-Kay?” Adrien turned his back to her. “Is everything alright?”

“It’s like this: I’m a total mess, Adrien,” she groaned out. “And I don’t want to date anyone.”

“I didn’t mean to give the impression —“ Adrien started to turn back to her, but Marinette grabbed his shoulder in a surprisingly firm grasp and pushed him back.

“No!” She shouted quickly. “D-Don’t turn around yet, please. Otherwise I’ll never get this out.” She huffed.

When Adrien stopped pushing against her hand, she continued. “Y-You’re nice . . . T-To me. And I haven’t had a lot of that from anyone in my life. And you’re . . . C-c-cute.” She sounded like she was forcing the words out through gritted teeth. “Apparently that ticks all my boxes. Because five minutes ago I was fine. And now I think I might have a tiny crush on you.”

Adrien didn’t know how to feel about that, really.

“You . . . have a crush on me?” He asked craning his neck to see her.

“Yes.” She looked about as happy as a wet cat.

“But you don’t want to date me?”

“It’s not personal. I just don’t want to inflict myself on . . . anyone really. At least not until I get my shit together.”

“So why even tell me?”

“Because my brain hates me.”

“You mentioned that.”

“Yeah? Well, It’s a revelation that took a lot of intense therapy,” Her laugh sounded bitter. “I’m telling you because while I work through these feelings, I’m going to be weird. Or at least, weirder than I am being right now. So just . . . Please keep being my friend.” Now she sounded tiny. Scared.

Adrien shook his head at the irony of all this. “Can I turn around, now?”

Marinette let go of his shoulder. When he turned, she looked miserable. She hugged her arms to her chest, eyes on her painted shoes.

“Marinette, I’m a disaster too.” He ducked to capture her gaze. “I didn’t go to public school until I was fourteen. I’m no good with social cues, and Nino tells me I’m kind of oblivious about some things.” (everything.)

“Weren’t you some kid supermodel?” Marinette raised an eyebrow.”

He scoffed. “That was all an image my father expected me to play. All I’ve ever really wanted was to have friends. But I’m not the best at making them.”

He looked at his own shoes. “A few weeks before I started public school, I met this amazing girl online.” Adrien had long ago decided to frame his love for Ladybug in these terms. It wasn’t true, but it was mostly accurate. “I didn’t know it, but she went to my school. And without her realizing that we already knew each other online, she started to like me.”

He couldn’t look up into Marinette’s sympathy-filled eyes, which he knew would be just like Bridgette’s. Doing so might break him.

“It was . . . Not a good situation. Online, I kept telling her how I felt and pushing for us to meet. But she wasn’t ready. Partially because she had a crush on a guy she liked from her school. . . Who was me. And I just never realized that I felt that way about her face-to-face, because I had feelings for her online.”

Marinette worked her jaw. “That’s messed up, A.”

“It gets worse,” Adrien rubbed the back of his neck. “She was Bridgette. Your cousin.”

Marinette raised her eyebrows, blinking. “Really? That’s . . . Wow.”

“Yeah,” Adrien said. “I’m not trying to make things more uncomfortable for us. I just wanted you to know. I may be working on getting my stuff together too.”

He winced. “So after hearing all that, if you still want to be friends, we can be friends. We’ll just both be kind of weird together for a while.”

He held out an arm to her in invitation, his face hopeful.

Marinette blinked at him for a moment. Then linked arms with him. “Well then. Come on, weirdo. You can be on my team. Let’s go shoot at our other friends.”

—

Later, the five of them ended up pushing two café tables together to sit around.

“What even was that?” Marinette was scowling at Adrien.

“I . . .” Adrien looked like he had no idea himself. He shrugged and took a drink of his wine.

“I mean, you totally went off book there!” Marinette scoffed. “One minute you had my back and the next, you’re chasing lasers like a damn cat!”

“Go easy on him!” Nino put in. “He was . . . hypnotized into chasing a laser pointer once! And . . . And the post hypnotic suggestion stuck!”

Marinette raised a skeptical  eyebrow. Then, instead of calling bullshit on that obviously made up story the way Kate expected her to do, she just looked away.  “You could have warned me,” she muttered.

“So Kate, I’ve got to ask. Is this you?” Alya held up her phone to display a photo of Hawkeye from the press conference. Kate admires how smoothly she pivoted that conversation.  She could’ve changed her name to Jiffy, because she was so smooth she could’ve been peanut butter. 

Kate leaned over to squint at the photo. “Got my good side, I see.”

The group grew silent as Nino, Alya and Adrien stared at each other wide-eyed.

“Was there a follow up question, Ladyblogger?” Kate asked, sipping her Americano.

“I . . . Did not think you would confess, actually.”

Kate shrugged. “Being an Avenger is a full time gig. I don’t have many friends or family outside the job. So a secret identity would be pointless. I used to run a team that was funded by filming our exploits for a reality tv show.”

“Being a full time hero is an option?” Adrien leaned forward.

“I wouldn’t recommend it at career day, but yeah. It can be done.”

“Red Arachnid hasn’t revealed her identity,” Alya noted.

Kate was suddenly conscious of how everyone around the table was not looking at Marinette. They were all not looking very loudly.

“Just because Red Arachnid is an Avenger does not mean that she chooses to reveal her identity,” Kate said slowly. “That’s really a personal choice. It’s not that easy having everyone up in your business. Most people in New York were blasé about heroes because there were, like, 2,000 costumed heroes living in New York.”

“How many?” Nino whispered in awe, jaw dropping.

“Not all at once!” Marinette scoffed. “The Daily Bugle estimated that there had been around 2,000 costumed heroes active in New York since 1950. That included people who retired or died or maybe suited up once or twice before they hung up the tights.”

“You gotta understand, guys,” she continued as she stirred her coffee. “Paris has 2 million people? New York has four times that. It’s not just one city. It’s five separate cities all mashed together. And that doesn’t even include the ‘burbs or Jersey.”

Marinette seemed to be couching her experiences generally. Being very careful to only say things that an average New Yorker might observe.

Kate nodded along. “The Avengers are based out of New York. S.H.I.E.L.D. Is there, The Fantastic Four, the Defenders, The New Warriors. Heroes for Hire. A couple of the mutant teams. New Inhumans popping up every day. Seems like anyone who has powers goes to New York.” She should know. She’d looked it up to make sure things were the same in this reality.

“If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere,” Marinette sang a line from an old song.

“What is it like having that many heroes all running around?” Adrien put his chin in his hand.

“There’s a lot of unspoken and overlapping turf,” Kate said. “Spider Man operates out of Queens. Misty Knight works out of Harlem. If it was weird and extrademensional, you called on Dr. Strange. If Captain America calls an Avengers Assemble for help with Red Skull, you help, because Nazis suck!

“Big things usually get handled by the Avengers or the Fantastic Four. X-Men take care of mutant issues. Thor does whatever other realm-y thing Thor does, plus handling Loki’s drama. And we all just kind of pray that Hulk stays out of town after that time he broke Brooklyn.”

“Didn’t it always seem like certain bad guys went after certain heroes?” Marinette mused as she tapped her fingers on the the table. “I mean, The Hand always went after Daredevil. What’s up with that? Why would an organization of evil ninjas specifically target one guy in Hell’s Kitchen?”

Kate hummed at that. “And Spider-Man always fights the guy with the arms?”

“Dr. Otto Octavius.” Marinette said.

“You remember his actual name?” Kate laughed. Spider-Man just called him Dr. Octopus, or Doc Ock.”

“Before he turned to crime, Dr. Octavius had a pretty entertaining YouTube channel. Then he started robbing banks.” Marinette waved her (non robotic, non octopus) arms expressively. “It was weird! Imagine going to stop a robbery just to find Bill Nye the Science Guy standing in the vault. Only he’s built himself extra prosthetic arms and a death ray.”

Then she seemed to remember that she was supposed to be a civilian and maintaining a veneer of plausible deniability. Her eyes cut over to Adrien. Then she hastily picked up her drink. “Or so I’ve read.” She put the cup to her lips. Probably to give her mouth something to do other than talk.

“Smooth,” Kate said.

“What can I say, Kate and Barrel,” Marinette said laconically into the drink,.“I’ve got moves like Jagger.”

“Jagger?” Alya perked up. “As in Mick Jagger? So you are from an alternate reality!”

The entire group fell silent as Marinette’s face grew pale.

“Well frack!” She put her head down on the table.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, I feel I gotta get away
Bells chime, I know I gotta get away
And I know if I don't, I'll go out of my mind
- The Kids Are All Right, The Who

Adrien lay still on the bed, arm bent behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

His scattered, confused thoughts chased each other round and round in a circle. Bridgette had been Ladybug. Ladybug was the Yin to Chat Noir’s Yang. Marinette was Bridgette from another reality. Marinette was probably Red Arachnid.

What did that make Marinette to him?

She admitted to having a crush on him. But also said she didn’t want to date him.

Would she always feel that way?

Did he even want her to change her mind?

He’d been content to ignore this thing between them before finding out that she was more than just Bridgette’s cousin. Could he still be happy with that decision, knowing what he did now?

The yin to his yang.

Alya’s ill-timed realization as to Marinette’s status as an interdemensional traveler had broken up their group hangout. Marinette had been reduced to an incoherent mess, repeatedly beating her head on the table and cursing in Mandarin until Kate had dragged her off.

Now Adrien wondered how to find a sense of normalcy with her, or even what that meant.

Tikki floated into his vision. “Adrien?” She peered down at him, a frown on her face. “Are you alright?”

He sighed. “Do you want me to pass your miraculous to Marinette?”

The little red kwami settled on the pillow next to him, nuzzling his cheek. “I suppose that depends on whether she’s right for the miraculous, and if she would even want it.”

Adrien turned to look into her fathomless blue eyes. The same blue as Ladybug’s. “Isn’t it inevitable? She is Bridgette.”

Tikki chuckled. “Nothing is inevitable, Adrien. Marinette might have something of the same spirit as Bridgette, but that doesn’t make them interchangeable.”

Off Adrien’s questioning look, Tikki elaborated. “Marinette seems to have had a very different life than Bridgette. That life experience can translate into her making different choices. And what are humans, except the sum of their choices?

“The question is whether those choices make her suited to the Ladybug.”

Adrien mulled that over. “Do you believe in soulmates?”

Comprehension dawned in Tikki’s eyes. “Not in the way you’re thinking.” She smiled kindly at him. “The Egyptians came up with that idea when they saw that humans tended to prefer their opposites.

“I suppose it’s a comforting idea,” she mused. “That somewhere out there is one person meant just for you. But that’s not how things work. You can be happy with many different people, Adrien. As long as they share your values and work with you to achieve mutually desirable goals.”

“But, you and Plagg are two haves of the same miraculous, aren’t you?” Adrien wrinkled his nose in confusion.

The little god hummed in agreement. “We’re also two
components of the same concept: making and unmaking. ‘Every act of creation starts with an act of destruction.’ - One of my Señor Bugs said that.

“In a very real sense, Plagg is as much a god of creation as I am. But humans aren’t a personification of an idea the way we are.

“Bridgette and yourself were suited to one another because the two of you were suited to the miraculous you carry,” Tikki explained. “Your goals aligned: in as much as defeating Hawkmoth could be a life goal.”

“It bothers me that My Lady and I kept missing one another,” Adrien confessed. Finding out everything he could about Bridgette after she’d died had become a form of self-torture he was particularly proficient in. “All that time I searched for her. And she was sitting right behind me every day in school, just hoping Perfect Adrien would see her for who she was.”

“That’s because your values didn’t align,” Tikki patted his cheek in comfort. “Having similar values can be just as important as having the same goals. But you were both looking for something else in a significant other than your partner could be.

“For Bridgette, Ladybug was a duty. One she nearly turned down, at first. She had hopes and dreams for a future as a designer. When she imagined a boyfriend, it was in that life.

“You valued being Chat Noir for —“

“Freedom.” Adrien finished. “My life with my father was a fancy cage. If I could, I would have left Perfect Adrien behind me and been Chat Noir all the time.”

“And now you have a tail,” Tikki sounded intrigued. “I wonder how much that subconscious desire to be Chat is feeding into the changes the miraculous is having on your body.”

She shook herself, as if shaking off a train of thought to return to their previous topic. “You framed your attraction to Bridgette within the boundaries of love for the girl wearing the mask.”

“She was so brave and sure when she was Ladybug. I fell for her when she told Hawkmoth that she’d stop him from hurting the people of Paris.” And he wanted Ladybug to fill that lonely void in his life. Someone who would love him and give him time and attention the way his father wouldn’t. Looking back now, he realized that was a lot of expectations to put on one person. Especially when he didn’t even know who she was.

“Bridgette was very brave and good,” Tikki agreed. “But she could also be neurotic and insecure when it came to your civilian self. And jealous and petty when it came to girls like Lila or Chloé who would demand your attention. Strip away the mask and her flaws were more obvious.”

“That’s why we missed one another,” Adrien said. “I wanted the super hero. Bridgette wanted the civilian boy.”

“Until the two of you could reconcile both halves of yourself, you would continue missing one another.”

Adrien sighed, wondering if that ever would have happened.

“Whether Marinette is also your type remains to be seen,” Tikki continued. “It would be a mistake to think that she’s Bridgette just because she’s an alternate universe counterpart. She seems more self-aware. More accepting of all sides of herself. More upfront with her flaws. That may be a result of the therapy she mentioned.”

“She’s not interested in dating, though.” Adrien said.

“For now,” Tikki replied. “But that can be a good thing. It means you have the chance to really get to know her without seeing her through the rose colored glasses a new relationship can give you.

“Maybe someday she’ll be ready for more. And maybe she’ll want that with you. But in the meantime, don’t sit around waiting for her.

“You could be just as happy dating Kagami, or any number of other girls if the both of you put the right work and honest communication into your relationship. Or you could be just as happy and fulfilled dating no one. A relationship doesn’t have to be the end all and be all. You can do like Marinette, and focus on personal growth for a time.

“Who knows?” Tikki’s laugh sounded like the tinkling of bells. “If you’re not looking, maybe love will fall into your lap when you least expect it.”

Adrien nodded thoughtfully.

“Whoever he dates better be accepting of hairballs,” Plagg muttered tiredly. “Now, stop talking and go to sleep!”

Adrien and Tikki traded wry looks. Then Adrien rolled over, shutting his eyes.

—

Alya stood up from the park bench, her face resolute. She turned to the bakery. Then changed her mind and sat back down.

“That’s the second time you’ve done that,” Nino said. “It’s not like you to chicken out.”

“I’m not chickening out,” She grumbled. “I’m just not sure what to say.”

“Start with ‘I’m sorry I blurted out your secret that was none of my business in a group setting?”

Alya leaned against his side, resting her head on his shoulder. “What then? I don’t know her. Will she forgive me?”

“There’s no way to know.” Nino said. “Until you make the effort, it’s like Schrodenger’s apology. It’s both accepted and not-accepted.”

Alya took a deep breath, then stood and turned toward the bakery.

“Good luck!” Nino called after her. “Text me when you leave!”

She walked to the private entrance to the Dupain-Cheng family home and rang the bell next to the intercom.

“Hello?”

Alya recognized Sabine’s voice over the speaker. “Madame Cheng, It’s Alya. Is Marinette home?”

There was a pause. Then: “she’s in the kitchen with Tom. Come on up.” Sabine buzzed her in.

Alya climbed the stairs and navigated the hallways of the Dupain-Cheng home from memory.

All three members of the household were gathered in the kitchen in a scene so familiar, it made Alya’a heart ache.

Sabine sat at the counter balancing accounts, while Tom and Marinette stood in the kitchen, streaked with flour and elbow-deep in a baking project.

“What are you making?” Alya asked.

“We’re recreating a New York specialty,” Tom told her with a quirky smile. “A filled donut made with croissant dough.”

“They’re called cronuts,” Marinette said. “We’re making them for a road trip I’m taking with Kate.” Her smile to Alya was forced. A reminder that she was still upset.

If Alya asked where Marinette and Kate we’re headed, Marinette might think she was prying for the sake of the Ladyblog. Best to keep to neutral topics.

“Are cronuts something you miss from home?”

“I preferred a bagel and schmear, but Kate’s brother Clint likes these.”

“We’re going to try them out, downstairs,” Tom said. “If there is demand, we may add them to the menu.”

Sabine made a face, which Alya interpreted to mean she wasn’t in favor of the idea.

Alya looked from Tom to Sabine. She didn’t want to break up the family night that she seemed to have landed in the middle of. But she didn’t want to apologize in front of them, either. Especially if they didn’t know that Marinette was from another reality.

Marinette seemed to sense her dilemma. She pointed up her stairs to the trapdoor. “Did you want to . . .?”

“Yeah!” Alya said in relief.

Bridgette’s room had been as familiar as her own at one point. Now upon climbing through the trapdoor, Alya looked around at the changes with interest. There were still familiar touches here and there, but the room definitely had a unique stamp on it.

The reporter examined the band artwork that had been hung in place of Bridgette’s fashion posters (read: pictures of Adrien), pausing In front of a framed t-shirt with a band logo that portrayed a pair of parted lips with a tongue hanging out. “Music is important to you,” she noted.

Marinette straightened the frame. “When I had nothing else, I still had my music. I even brought it to this reality.” She looked down with a slight quirk of her lips.

Alya sighed at that. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to just blurt my theory out like that. I was just so excited.”

“I had a theory, too. I guessed that you were a mutant.” Marinette raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t going to say anything, because it’s not my business.”

“It’s just fascinating, you know? There are whole other realities out there with other versions of us living different lives! I’ve been reading about your reality on message boards! You can’t blame me for being curious.” She worried her bottom lip. “But I was wrong to let my curiosity overrule my common sense. I’m working on doing better.”

Marinette crossed the room to her window. She stared out across the rooftops of Paris. “There are parts of my reality that I miss” she whispered. “But there were parts that were pretty awful.” She folded her arms over her chest, hugging her own shoulders. “And now it’s gone. I’m here because this reality’s version of me is not. I’m sorry she died. But I’m done feeling guilty.”

Her eyes seems tired when she looked over her shoulder at Alya. “What do you want with me, Alya? I’m not here to satisfy your curiosity.”

“I’d like to be friends,” she said. “Bridgette and I were ride-or-die, bring-a-shovel friends.”

Marinette shut her eyes, looking so very done.

“I know you’re not her!” Alya blurted out. “But you and Kate seem cool. I think we might have a lot in common.”

“I don’t know if I can trust you,” Marinette said. “I want to, though.”

“I understand.” Alya looked away.

Marinette held her hand up. “I am willing to give you guys a chance,” she said. “Just . . . not right now.”

Hope blossomed in Alya’a chest. “I’d like that.”

The two girls smiled tentatively at one another. Marinette held out her hand, both literally and symbolically bridging the gulf between them.

It was a start.

—

“Net arrow, putty arrow, taser arrow. Why do we even have a boxing glove arrow?”

Marinette knew her plans for the day were doomed the moment she saw Kate sorting arrows on the hood of her purple Renault.

“I thought we had a mission in Frankfurt?” Marinette held up the bag of pastries that she had packed. “Tom and I learned to make cronuts for the occasion.”

Clint, who was just walking out the door of Avengers headquarters, beelined toward Marinette and the bag. “Cronuts? Gimmie!” Before he could reach it, Kate grabbed his arm.

“Kaaaate!” He whined, flailing for the pastries. “Cronuts!”

“We gotta go, Barton!” She told him. To Marinette, she said: “we got a call from Clint’s brother Barney. He’s in some kind of trouble in Budapest.”

“Man, it’s always Budapest,” Clint grumbled. “I just wanna go back to bed.”

“Clint’s got a brother?” Marinette blinked. “Did this brother grow up in the crime circus, too?”

“Yep.” Clint said, popping his p. He reached the bag with a last, desperate flail. Before Kate could stop him, he stuffed an entire cronut into his mouth.

Cream filling and flakes dribbled out the sides of his mouth as he stuck his tongue out at Kate. “We gotta go pull my brother’s rear out of the fire.”

“What’s your age again?” Kate wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“Do you actually call your brother Barney the Carney?” Marinette asked.

“Well, we will now!” Kate put her keys in Marinette’s hand. “You’ll have to handle Frankfurt alone.”

“But I can’t drive!” Marinette said, staring uncertainly at the keys.

“Sure you can!” Kate patted her shoulder. “Just think happy thoughts, Tinkerbelle.”

Before Marinette could argue further, a sleek sports car pulled up. A redhead in sunglasses rolled down her window. “Get in, losers, we’re going shopping!” She pointed to the backseat. A guy who looked like sad hobo Jesus with a metal arm already sat back there.

“Let’s not leave the work wife waiting, Katey-Kate!” Clint tucked the pastry bag under one arm and rubbed his hands together. Then he grabbed up his bow and jumped into the car.

“Don’t call me that!” Kate shouted at him. “This is going to be either the best day ever, or the ninth circle of hell. I’m not sure which.” She rolled her eyes as she scooped up the rest of the arrows and climbed in the passenger seat. “See ya!”

“Have fun stormin’ the castle.” Marinette said, waving goodbye to the group.

Once they were around the corner, she stared at the car parked in front of her in exasperation. “Now what am I going to do?”

“Hi Marinette!”

She glanced up to see Adrien walking up the street toward her. He stopped, tucking his hands in his pockets as he surveyed her expression. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah.” She sighed, letting her head fall back. “I was supposed to go with Kate to Frankfort on an errand.”

Adrien tilted his head sideways.  “You’re driving to Frankfort on an errand?”

”Yes?”

”Frankfort Germany?”

Marinette looked confused. “Yes? It’s just there and back. The plan is to be home by dark.”

Adrien shook his head.  “I forget that for Americans, driving 570 kilometers is nothing.”

”Yeah, America is really big and spread out,” Marinette said.  

“You said that you were going to Frankfort.  Did something happen?”

”Kate and Clint got called away and left me holding the bag. I don’t think they realized that I haven’t qualified for a full license, so I can’t drive to Frankfurt.”

“You don’t have your licen—“

“I’m not eighteen yet,” She cut him off. “Not for a few more months. And anyway, I didn’t need a license when I lived in New York and the guy who set me up with an identity in this reality thought that I should be responsible and actually earn my license. So I’m going to have to log the requisite hours behind the wheel with an adult driver before I qualify.”

Adrien winced at her exasperated tone. “Are you still mad that we found out about you being from an alternate reality?”

Marinette crossed her arms. “It’s one more thing putting a crimp in my day.”

Adrien looked like a kicked puppy. She cursed herself mentally for putting that expression on his face.

“Urgh! You guys knowing is just . . . “. She spread her hands, like she could catch the right word with them. “It was easier when you thought of me as your friend’s cousin. Because I’m not Bridgette. We don’t even have the same last name. Or even the same genetic structure,” she muttered.

“I get that,” Adrien said quietly. “That doesn’t mean we can’t all still be friends. If you’re willing to give us a chance.”

Marinette raked one of the purple streaks of hair behind her ear. “Of course I’m going to give you a chance, A! I’m just mad. People get over that shit.”

She raised an eyebrow. Adrien had no social skills, was not living at home and averse to interpersonal confrontation. If he thought she was upset enough to drop his friendship like that . . . She was getting a clear picture of what his home life had been like. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

He glanced at the car. “What are you picking up?”

Marinette grimaced. This was going to be a fun conversation. In the same way that a root canal could be described as fun. “Who, not what. I’m picking up a toddler, actually.”

“The hell you say.”

Despite her mood, Marinette barked in laughter. “She’s a mutant kid. Her birth mother has already given her up for adoption. We’re just transporting the little tyke from the mutant safe house to her new family.”

“Is that . . . legal?” Adrien’s eyebrows looked like they were considering a move up into his hairline. “Because it sounds a little sketchy.”

“Legal? Probably not.” She pulled her beanie down over her ears and tucked her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket. “Look A, it’s like this: the kid isn’t In the system. No documentation. She’s in a safe house for a reason. If the kid went into the system, she’d disappear. Fall through the cracks somewhere and end up either in a lab or on the streets. Kid’s birth mom can’t take care of her. But there’s good people who can and will.

“I trust the people who set this up. The way I see it, why get the federalies involved?”

”The what?”

”The federalies. You know? The po po? The man? Smokey? Five-O?”

“I don’t understand a word of that.”

”The authorites, A.  I meant the authorities.”

“Then why are you getting worked up over not having a license?” Adrien tilted his head. “If you get pulled over, you have bigger problems than not being a legal driver.”

Marinette blinked at that. A slow grin spread across her face. She shook her head at her own idiocy. “You’re right.”

Adrien moved to the passenger side door. “I’m coming with you.”

“Yeahbuhwha?”

“It’s an 11 hour round trip without stops. Longer when you factor in fuel stops and whatever time we spend in Frankfurt,” Adrien said. “Someone is going to have to take care of the toddler at least part of the time. Feeding and diaper changes and stuff. One of us can drive while the other does that. Besides, I just turned 18 and I do have a license. We can trade off driving.”

“You want to join me in questionably legal humanesque trafficking across international borders?”

“As long as it’s for a good cause.”

“And you didn’t have anything else planned for today?”

“I’m a moderately well-off retired former model.”

“You just confessed to being a rich idiot with no day job.”

He looked down. His smile could’ve brought daylight to several small planets. “It’s the weekend and I have all my homework done. All I was going to do is hang out with my friends. You’re a friend. Ergo: let’s go!”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re weird, A.”

“We established this.” He rattled the door. “Come ooooooonnnn! Let me innnnnn!”

Marinette laughed as she unlocked the car for him and got behind the wheel. She pulled a pair of sunglasses over her eyes. “In the words of the immortal Dean Winchester: Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole.”

“Then pick some music from your world. Something I haven’t heard before.”

“Alright,” Marinette thumbed through her playlists. “We’re going to listen to the Hamilton soundtrack.”

“I’ve seen the play actually,” Adrien said. “In London’s West End.

“Not like this, you haven’t,” Marinette said as she plugged her phone into the A/V cable. “In my reality the musical was called President Hamilton.”

Chapter Text

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
— The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost

—

“Wow! Even when he didn’t get shot, in your reality he just kept self sabotaging,” Adrien said.

“That’s the fatal flaw that makes Hamilton so compelling as a subject for a musical, I guess. He was a prolific writer and he had all these thoughts. But he had no filter telling him which ones he should have kept to himself.” Marinette nodded.

“So what else is on that phone?”

“I have A Very Potter Musical. But before we Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts, I could go for a burger and fries. If we can find a drive-thru.” Marinette scanned the road for an exit.

“You mean frites?”

“No. Fries, Seasoned. As in ‘Five Guys Burgers and Fries.’ Which is a thing in this reality. I know. I found the franchise in Paris already.”

“I like Quick.”

“Don’t you blaspheme my burger church, A.”

—

“You expect to just eat while driving?” Adrien sounded scandalized. “Why do Americans always rush?”

“America is a huge country, A. And not every road trip is about the journey. Sometimes it’s about getting there and back as fast as you can. If you want to get anywhere, you can’t be taking two-hour lunches the way the French do.”

“But you need to stop if you want to savor your food!”

“You actually don’t,” Marinette said. “That’s the unique thing about hamburgers. They’re very portable for multitasking.”

“Look!” He pointed to the cars lining the roadside, where motorists had stopped to picnic. Some sat on the ground on a blanket. Others had folding chairs and tables set out with their hampers. “They’ve got the right idea! You won’t cause an accident if you stop to eat! But you’re stuffing food in your mouth while steering the car with your knees!”

“Yep! I sure am! Watch me go!”

Adrien stared at her as if she’d just said she was going to desecrate Liberty Leading The People by painting a shirt over Marianne’s bared bosom.

“I’ll even rip open the end of the ketchup packet and dip my fries in that.” Marinette smirked at him.

He sneered at the mention of ketchup. “You’re enjoying torturing me like this.”

“Yes. Yes I am.”

“Well, I suppose I must follow the path of yeast resistance!” He sighed.

Marinette groaned. “That pun was a salt with a deadly weapon!”

—

“I actually think I could have gone into theoretical physics,” Adrien said. “The subject is fascinating.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“I’m the son of a fashion icon,” he sighed. “People look at me, and all they see is that I’ve been modeling since I was in diapers. I’m just not sure I could get into a decent program, even if I earn a good score on my Bac.”

“You think Dr. Bruce Banner doesn’t have to make people look past who he is? Anything worth having is worth fighting for.”

Adrien pursed his lips. “You have a point.”

“I think history is my favorite subject, I just wrote a kickass paper on gender studies and the Salem Witch Trials. I called it ‘Why Cotton Mather was just the worst.’ Of course, my reality ended before I could turn it in.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“You don’t need to. Just know that he was the literal worst. And I did all that work for nothing. Even if I recreated the paper here, It’s not like anyone on this side of the world even cares about the Salem Witch Trials.”

She looked disgruntled, but immediately brightened up. “But hey! Now I get a whole new reality’s worth of history to learn. And there’s a whole museum of amazing French fashion right across the street from the Louvre.”

“Think you might want to go into archaeology?” Adrien asked.

“Like Indiana Jones?” Marinette made a pushing motion, as if she were literally shoving the idea away. “Not sure. I have more options here than when I was homeless. But it’s like when you go to a restaurant and the menu is too big. It’s so hard to choose. All my options look good. Do I look into being a costume historian, or become a psychologist and help people the way I was helped? Or do I become a baker like Tom and Sabine?”

“I understand what you mean.” Adrien said in sympathy.

—

“All I’m saying is that people are too harsh on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Temple of Doom was just as bad.” Adrien tossed his burger wrapper back into the bag.

Marinette made a see saw motion with her hand, humming doubtfully. “They’re both flawed in different ways. Temple of Doom is weird. I mean, it opens with a musical number. Then all those uncomfortable food scenes, the cave full of bugs. And that scene where they ripped the guy’s heart out. It’s like Spielberg and Lucas wanted to make us all squirm.

“Not to mention that Willie Scott is pretty much useless unless you need a fog horn,” She continued. “But Crystal Skull’s flaws are bigger. I could overlook the nuking the refrigerator scene if they didn’t make the macguffin aliens.”

“Indy is at his best when he’s punching Nazis,” Adrien nodded.

“Agreed.”

—
“You’ve never seen Hocus Pocus? That’s like the best movie to watch on Halloween!” Marinette slapped the steering wheel incredulously.

“That’s the thing. Halloween is an American holiday.”

“No it’s not. It’s Celtic! And according to Tom’s horrible dad, the French are a Celtic people. So technically it’s your holiday too.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Princess. But pumpkins and sexy witch costumes are as American as they come.”

“Are you telling me that no one takes their kids trick-or-treating or sits out all night in the pumpkin patch waiting on the great pumpkin?”

Adrien raised an eyebrow. “You have never in your life sat in a pumpkin patch.”

“Well no.” Marinette said. “I used to dress up and go down to the village — Greenwich Village — and watch the parade every year.”

“As a sexy witch?” He grinned.

“I prefer creative costumes. I made a newspaper dress one year and covered it with a trench coat. I was a news flash.”

“A sexy news flash?”

“I’m going to hit you now.”

—

“Your Mandarin is flawless.”

“Then how can you tell that I’m not a native speaker?” Adrien wrinkled his forehead.

Marinette gave him the same flat, unimpressed look that Plagg did right before the kwami called him an idiot. “You’re a blonde white boy, A.”

Adrien’s face flushed. “Well, Yeah. But if we were on the phone, what would give me away?”

“Your speech patterns are too formal. No slang. To be fair, I don’t sound like a Beijing native either. Or even someone from the Asian Quarter here, for that matter.  Where I grew up, half the neighborhood spoke either Cantonese or Fuzhounese in addition to Mandarin. A lot of the slang I learned was a blend.”

”I suppose it would be like going to Quebec and conversing with the locals. Or the differences between English and American English.”

”Exactly!” Marinette nodded.  “As they say: two countries divided by a common language.”

He blinked, considering what she said, then nodded. “My father wanted me to know Mandarin so that I could conduct business when overseas. I doubt I would encounter slang in a business setting.”

“So your dad was a real tiger mom, huh?”

“Father needed to act like he cared in order to be a tiger mom. Sometimes I think he treated me more like staff.”

Marinette pulled a face. “If you ever want to swear at your dad like a Garbage Street gutter rat, I can totally help you there.”

“Thanks,” Adrien said dryly.

“I can also swear in Yiddish and Puerto Rican Spanish.”

“And yet your French is terrible.”

“My French swearing is not. That’s one of the first things I learned. French is a beautiful language in which to say f-you.”

“Glad to see your priorities are in order.” Adrien rolled his eyes.

—

“It’s actually a common misconception,” Marinette said.  “I wasn’t on the streets, sleeping on a grate to stay warm.  Homelessness can look like a lot of things.  For some people, it’s sleeping on the streets.  For some people, it’s crashing on a couch if they can find one.  A surprising number of homeless are employed full-time.  In a place like Manhattan where living expenses are high, the working homeless are common.”

“I don’t think I’ve given it that much thought.” Adrien looked away, his cheeks staining red.

“Not many people do.”  Marinette stared over her knuckles at the road.  “It’s not a comfortable subject.”

”But I’m living in a friend’s hotel.  That doesn’t make me homeless.”

“The difference is that you have a choice, A.  You can go look for an apartment at any point.  The homeless lack resources to change their situation.”

”That makes sense.” Adrien said.  “I’m sorry.”

“If your conscience is bothering you, don’t apologize to me.  Do something about it. That’s what Jiminy Cricket is there for.”

”Do something?  I don’t — where would I even begin?”

“You’re still a minor celebrity, right? So use that fame.  Volunteer at a soup kitchen.  Make appearances for charity.  Start a non-profit. That’s a beginning.”

”Would you help?” Adrien asked.  “You’ve been on the inside. If you’re directing my effort, I feel like it wouldn’t be wasted.”

Marinette chewed on her lip, her eyes darting around.  Then she nodded. ”Yeah, I’ll help.  Tom and Sabine donate the bakery’s day old bread to the local shelter.  You and I can be the ones to deliver it.  Beyond that, we’ll start thinking of other ways to contribute.”

”Thank you,” he smiled. “It’s nice to have a partner.”

—

“I wasn’t just any model. I was the Agreste dressed model in Paris.” He grinned toothily, wriggling his eyebrows at her.

Marinette held her nose. “ . . . Wow . . . How long have you been sitting on that pun?”

“Since the moment we met.”

“And you bust it out when we’re miles from home and I could leave you on the side of the road? Bold move.”

“You wouldn’t do that. You like me.”

“Against my better judgement.”

“You liiiiike me.” He leaned against her shoulder, batting his eyes at her. He had long, thick eyelashes that any woman would kill for. How was that fair?

She pushed him back into his seat. “I do. Not sure why, but I do. Try not to let it go to your head, A.”

—

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but . . . I think I like that you’re from another reality?” Adrien made a face, as if he hadn’t realized what he was thinking until the words were out there.

Marinette tapped the steering wheel. “Friendly advice, Copernicus: if you have to start a sentence with ‘don’t take this the wrong way,’ it’s probably one of those things you shouldn’t say out loud.”

“Sorry,” Adrien said.

“Eh,” she waved it off. “But now that it’s out there, why is my being from a different reality so great?”

He stared at the road for a long time, eyes unfocused as he explored the thought. “I have all this baggage that comes with my name. People expect me to be . . . Something I’m not. Bridgette, your—“

“Cousin.” Marinette prompted.

“Right. Your cousin. She was completely flustered around me. She couldn’t get past the image. But to you, I’m just another guy. It’s . . . nice.”

“If anything, I think It helps that you’re showing me that goofball side of you,” Marinette smirked. “You being a big dork helps me feel more comfortable. It’s ok for me to be a hot mess, because I know you’re not judging me.”

“Except for your taste in restaurants.”

“And we’re back to this. You’re French. You don’t get to be a burger snob.”

“That’s precisely why I get to be a burger snob.”

—

“That’s it,” Marinette shook her head. “That’s the last Dog Cops episode on my phone.”

“But . . . But what happened to Sergeant Whiskers?”

“You want a spoiler, or do you want to wait and see if someone else posted the next episode to file share?”

“I’ll wait,” Adrien leaned his head back against the cushion and sighed. “Why don’t we have that show in this reality?”

“Beats me,” Marinette said with a shrug. “It seems like it’s a thin thread of decisions that steers us down one path or another. I mean: in my world, something made my parents move to America. And there I didn’t even end up with the same name as this reality’s version of me. Two roads diverged in a wood, and all that.”

“Two roads diverged in a wood?” Adrien raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a poem. Most junior high kids back home have to learn it. Back home being America, not the other reality. Although for all I know, Robert Frost wasn’t a thing here.”

“Junior high is . . . Le Colège.”

“Yeah, that thing. I take it you never heard of Frost.”

“No, we don’t study that many American writers. When I was homeschooled, I studied Baudelaire, Hugo and Verlaine.”

“Hugo, I know. Kate and I even went to the museum in his old home around the corner from the bakery. I’m not familiar with the other authors.”

“How does the Frost poem go?”

“It’s called The Road Not Taken. Last lines go like this: Two roads diverged in a wood and I — I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.”

“You’ve given this some thought.”

She looked at him incredulously. “It’s kind of all I think about.”

He pulled a face. “Yeah, I guess it would be.”

Chapter Text

It may sound absurd, but don't be naive

Even heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed, but won't you concede
Even heroes have the right to dream
And it's not easy to be me
- Superman (It’s Not Easy), Five For Fighting

—

Mayura opened her eyes and turned to Hawkmoth. “CatBurglar says that your son is not in his quarters at the hotel. The miraculous are also not there. He must have them with him.”

“Have CatBurglar stay where he is. Eventually my son will return. When he does, we can take him unaware.”

“Consider it done.” Mayura nodded.

Hawkmoth turned away. Soon. All his goals were within reach.

—

Marinette and Adrien stared through the windshield at the door of the townhouse that was a safe house.

“Okay, here we go.” She breathed deeply as she reached for the door handle.

“Should I stay here?” Adrien seized her hand. “What are they going to think when a random stranger shows up with you?”

“They’re expecting you, so you’re not really a random stranger.” Marinette said. “I texted the Szardoses when we left. They’ve already done the background check. If you stay in the car, it’ll make them nervous.”

Adrien gave her a tight, uncertain smile as they got out of the car. The woman who met them at the door opened it just wide enough to let them pass through, then closed it behind.

The foyer was painted neutral beige. There were hardwood floors and a table where a child’s backpack stuffed with crayon-marked schoolwork had been abandoned.

“Mrs. Szardos,” Marinette shook hands with the woman.

“Miss. Call me Amanda.” The woman said. She slipped back into the ext room, returning with a diaper bag, car seat and a toddler balanced on her hip.

It was immediately obvious that the child was a mutant. She had lavender toned skin and pink hair. When she turned to look at him, she blinked faceted eyes that resembled amethysts.

“This is Jewel,” Amanda patted the girl on the back. “You should have an easy trip back to Paris. She’s a quiet little girl.”

As if to underscore Amanda’s words, Jewel stuck her thumb into her mouth.

“I’ll call Mr. Wagner when we’re an hour outside Paris,” Marinette said.

“Thank you,” Amanda said. She handed Adrien the car seat, and Marinette the little girl and the rest of her things. As Adrien turned to go, Amanda caught Marinette’s sleeve and whispered in her ear.

With his enhanced Chat hearing, he was able to catch what would have been too quiet for a normal human to hear.

“Be careful as you drive back. There has been an unmarked van circling the area, today. It could be nothing. But . . .”

“I’ll watch for it.” Marinette set her jaw in a grim line.

“My turn to drive,” Adrien said as they walked to the car. He held up a hand to forestall Marinette’s argument. “You can take care of Jewel and we don’t have to make as many stops.”

She scanned the street, looking for potential trouble. “Good idea.”

—

They were being followed.

Adrien frowned into the rear view mirror at the unmarked black SUV. Did bad guys really drive those things?

Marinette was looking back, a frown on her face. “I count three of those vehicles. Pardon my French, but —“ Here she made an impressively florid display of her multilingual cursing abilities.

“None of that was actually French,” Adrien smirked at her despite the imminent danger they were in.

“I know.” Marinette pulled a pair of black wrist cuffs from her backpack and strapped them on. She followed with a length of black cloth. As she turned to the toddler sleeping in the backseat Adrien caught a glimpse of the red spider emblem among the folds of what he realized now was a costume.

“I think my plausible deniability was just tossed out the window,” he said, watching through the mirror as Marinette wrapped the costume around Jewel.

“Couldn’t he helped.” Marinette said. “My uniform should protect Jewel if they start shooting at us.”

“You think they’re going to shoot at us?” Adrien screeched in alarm.

Marinette’s expression was grim. “Not if I can help it. Try to keep the car on the road.” She rolled down her window.

“What are you going to do?” Adrien looked back through the window. The front unmarked SUV was gaining.

“Probably something dumb,” Marinette muttered, jerking the black spider mask over her head. “You can always count on a spider to do the dumb thing. It’s practically in our DNA. With great power comes great stupidity.”

With that, she crawled out the window of the car.

“Plagg!” Adrien shouted at his kwami.

“What?” The little black cat kwami floated into view.

Adrien jerked his head toward the roof, where there was a thumping sound as Marinette dragged herself across it. “Get up there and tell me what she’s doing.”

Tikki, looked from the roof to Adrien. “I’ll go keep an eye on the baby.” She said with false cheer.

Plagg rolled his eyes, then phased his head halfway through the roof of the car.

“Your girlfriend can bend light around herself!” Plagg said. “Nice trick!”

“Not my girlfriend!” Yet.

“Potato, tomato!” Plagg said. “She’s shooting one of those web things from her wrist. . . It went under the front car that’s chasing us. . . She’s yanking on it—holy camembert! She’s strong!”

Adrien watched through his mirror with one eye as the front SUV flipped into the one behind it.

The third car whipped around the wreckage, sped up and rammed the back of their vehicle.

He clenched the wheel with white knuckles. The car behind them pushed them into a spin. Adrien’s stomach dropped away as he felt the car go over the rail and drop.

“Plagg! Transform me! Now!”

Adrien felt the wash of the transformation over him, but he was too busy pulling Jewel out of her carrier and wrapping himself around her to shield her.

It took a moment for him to realize that the car was no longer falling. Nor was it sinking into the river.

Adrien looked out the window. Marinette hung from a rope-like web attached to the underside of the bridge. She had another web extended from her other hand, holding the car in place.

She didn’t even look like she was breaking a sweat.

Adrien fashioned the spider suit into a makeshift sling to hold the toddler. Then he grabbed their bags before crawling out the window and up the web.

The girl under the mask tilted her head to regard him in his transformed state.

“Huh. That . . . makes a lot of sense.”

“Does it?” Adrien laughed nervously.

“Yeah. Now I know why my extra sense went haywire around you. Thought you were a mutant, or something.”

“No,” he said. Thinking of his new tail. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“Put a pin in that. We’ll address it later.” She sounded distracted, looking down at the car. “Can you get off my web? I think I need to drop this.”

“Right.” Adrien extended his baton, riding it like an elevator up to the bridge underpinnings. There was a splash below. When he looked back, Marinette had dropped the car into the river.

She crawled up the web to sit next to him on a bridge truss, staring down at the rapidly-sinking car. “Kate’s going to kill me.”

Above them, there was a screeching of tires and a honking of horns. The eyes on her mask narrowed to angry slits. “Stay here and protect Jewel, I’m going to go see what those jerks want.”

Before he could argue, she crawled to the edge of the bridge.

More quickly than he expected for a person hanging upside down on the underside of a bridge, Marinette lunged, grabbing hold of something and flinging it down.

She shot a web after it, snagging the thing she’d just flung — what Adrien realized was a couple of people — and reeling them back in.

When they were within her reach, she tied them to a truss with her web. It reminded Adrien of a spider wrapping up it’s prey.

He thought of the way he’d taken on cat traits.

“The spider thing is just a theme, right?” He said uneasily. “You don’t drink blood like a spider, do you?”

She paused in what she was doing to stare at him. Although he couldn’t tell because of the mask, he thought she was giving him her ‘you are an idiot’ stare. “Yeah, I drink blood. And I bite the heads off of my partners after mating.”

She stood upright, hanging by her feet, upside down from a truss so that she was glaring chin-to-forehead with one of the people she’d tied up. Then she crossed her arms.

Adrien wasn’t sure what he expected the guys in the unmarked SUV’s to be like. People who looked like Agent Smith? Mirror shades and three piece suits and earpieces?

These guys wore track suits and looked vaguely Eastern European.

“You can’t have the kid!” She snarled at them.

“Bro!” One of them said in English. “You are not Hawkeye!”

Wait, what?

“Wait, what?” Marinette uncrossed her arms. “All this was because you were looking for Hawkguy?”

“You drive purple car, Bro.” He said as if that explained everything. “Ivan say Hawkeye in Frankfurt today, driving purple Renault.”

“No.” Marinette said slowly. “The Hawkeyes went to Budapest with Black Widow and a guy who I think might have been The Winter Soldier.”

At the mention of The Winter Soldier — whoever that was — The thug’s eyes widened. “Bro!”

“Yeah, I think he might’ve assassinated my favorite historical president. Good luck with that! Stupid tracksuit Draculas,” she muttered. Abruptly, she jerked her head back toward the thug. “Weren’t you in jail? I distinctly remember that your whole gang was arrested in a walk-up in Bed-Stuy.” She poked his chest repeatedly with her index finger.

“New reality?” The thug shrugged. “You are Spider-Man, yes?”

“Yeeeeesssss.” Marinette drew the word out slowly, tapping the same index finger on her chin. “That is me. I am Spider-Man.” She nodded to herself, as if deciding something. “And I need your pants.”

—

Adrien shifted on the cold, hard plastic seat in the Paris train station, waiting on Marinette’s contact so that they could hand over Jewel.

He pulled Marinette’s borrowed knit cap lower over his ears. Something about sitting with his back to the waiting room had his hidden tail puffed out bottle-brushy. But they stood the least chance of being recognized this way.

In the sling and hidden under a burp cloth, Jewel continued to sleep peacefully. Despite Tikki’s reassurances that the little girl was fine, Adrien was starting to wonder if that Amanda lady had drugged the kid or something to keep her peaceful.

Participating in this caper hadn’t been his brightest decision.

‘So what did you do with your weekend, Adrien? Well, Nino, so glad you asked. I volunteered for some questionable mutant trafficking. Then got into a car chase with some interdemensional, vaguely Carpathian mafia. We stole their pants, along with their wallets and called the police on them. Then we hitchhiked to a train station and used their stolen credit cards to buy tickets to Paris, where I prayed that I wouldn’t be recognized. Because the last thing I need is a tabloid headline that reads: Former child model has mutant love child with baker’s daughter.’

It sounded like the plot line to a 2000 stoner comedy starring Aston Kutcher.

“Wow! And I thought I was the only one who worried myself into an ulcer.” Marinette sat next to him, offering up a sack with two bottled orange sodas, two ham and butter sandwiches, two packets of cheese and crackers and two macaroons.

“Trying out the nationally-approved fast food?” Adrien smiled weakly.

“It’s what the food counter had.” Marinette put the mobster’s wallets into the empty food sack and tossed it into a trash can. “What’s got you foaming at the mouth?”

“Just imagining what the tabloids would make of this,” he chuckled.

Marinette bit into her sandwich, making a face as she chewed. “It’s not the worst thing that could happen.”

Adrien raised an eyebrow. “I suppose you would know.”

Her expression was wry. “Lack of Dog Cops aside, my life is better here. In my old reality . . . Let’s just say that I didn’t exactly get this stick-like figure with the help of a personal trainer.”

He sighed. “Today was not the worst thing that happened to me, either. Not even in the top ten.” He bit into his sandwich. The sweet butter and the salty ham melded in his mouth. Suddenly, he realized how hungry he was. It felt like that hamburger he’d eaten on the trip out was a million years ago. “I actually enjoyed spending today with you.”

“Right up until the tracksuit Draculas came after us? Me too,” Marinette said. She picked at the label on her drink. “How long have you been CatBug?”

“I’ve been Chat Noir since I was fourteen. MonsIeur Bug is more recent. You?”

“Twelve when I got my powers. But it took me a while to decide that crime fighting was for me. I got kind of lost, for a bit. It took some time to find my way.”

“You act like you know what you’re doing.”

“Street smarts!” Marinette waved jazz hands. “You want to know a secret?” She leaned in.

“What?” Adrien also leaned closer.

“I don’t think any of us really know what we’re doing. Even Captain America is making this up as he goes along. The adults are just better at hiding it.”

“I don’t know if that’s comforting or not.” Adrien frowned.

“You act like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, A. I guess it would feel that way to you after you lost your partner.” She patted his shoulder. “Don’t take it all on yourself. The world is always going to need saving. It’s ok to let someone else save it for you on occasion.”

“That seems selfish.”

“Everyone is allowed to be a little selfish. It’s what makes us human.”

“Did someone tell you this stuff?” Adrien asked.

“After becoming Red Arachnid, I had a few different spiders show me the ropes. We’re kind of a big, dysfunctional spider support group.”

“A spider web.”

“Annnnnd now I’m going to have to kill you,” Marinette said in complete deadpan. “Sad, really. I was just starting to like you.”

Adrien laughed through his nose. “I suppose Plagg filled the role of mentor for me. That’s a weird thought.”

“Plagg?”

As if called, the little black kwami popped his head up from Adrien’’s bag.

“Look at you!” Marinette cooed at him. “You’ve got little kitty ears!” She stroked the crest of his head.

Adrian wondered if it was wrong that he felt a little jealous of the Kwami.

Plagg leaned into her touch, purring. “I approve of the way you stole those guys’ pants. You’re alright for a spider,” he said.

“And you’re a cat, which means you must be a little shit.” Marinette said in the same adoring voice as before.

Adrien laughed while swallowing his drink, and snorted orange soda out his nose.

Ow.

Plagg shrugged. “Well, you’re not wrong.” As if to underscore his point, he took a halfhearted swipe at her fingers.

Marinette giggled as she scratched that spot above Plagg’s tail. He arched against her hand. “That’s okay. A-holes are some of my favorite people. I’m sometimes a little bit of a shit myself.”

Adrien wiped his mouth, still laughing. “And this is Tikki.”

Tikki rose from the makeshift baby carrier with a tiny giggle. “Pleased to meet you, Marinette.”

Marinette held out a finger for Tikki to take into her tiny hands and shake. “Pleased to meet you too, Tikki.”

“Plagg helps me transform into Chat Noir, and Tikki controls the Ladybug transformation.”

She looked from Tikki to Adrien. “I’m guessing Tikki worked with your partner?”

“I did,” Tikki looked sad.

“And your partner must’ve been— oh jeez!” Marinette‘s eyes widened in realization. “I bet I know what’s stashed in that diary-shaped box that nearly took my hand off, and what it says. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. We . . . we’re lost too.” Adrien gave her a crooked half-smile. He opened his crackers, and picked out the cheese for Plagg. Then he handed his macaroon to Tikki.

Marinette copied his actions, distributing her cheese and cookie to the kwamis.

“Did it get easier? Dealing with your parents death?” Adrien asked.

Marinette shrugged. “I dunno. There wasn’t really a . . . a getting past it. Just . . . Just figuring out how to live in the wreckage.” Her eyes focused on some faraway point in her past. “I’ve been through a lot of therapy. My therapist used to tell me that I can’t blame my trauma for the way I am without acknowledging the good that came from it as well. But I’m not there yet. I still have a lot of anger that I am working through.”

Adrien chewed his lip in thought. “That’s an accurate way to look at it. Hawkmoth is here because something happened to my mother. Now I’m living in the fallout. And I can’t—“ He broke off with a sigh, raking his hands through his hair.

Marinette twisted the cap off of her soda and took a drink. “Kate said that we’ve all got trauma. No one sane does what we do. At least we’re in good company.”

“There is that.”

“Entschuldigen Sie mich,” a soft voice broke into their conversation. “Fraulein Baker?”

Adrien glanced up to see Errol-Motherfrakking-Flynn standing hesitantly to the side, looking like he’d just stepped off the set of Footsteps In The Dark.

He blinked. Then rubbed his eyes. This was par for the way his day was going. He was hallucinating a sword-fighting matinee idol from the golden age of Hollywood.

“Herr Wagner?” Marinette stood.

“Ja!” Herr Wagner sketched a bow, handing Marinette what Adrien assumed was documentation. “Forgive me if I do not look like myself. But my appearance does scare people.”

“You’re not the first person I’ve met with an image inducer,” Marinette said. “Amanda let me know to expect it. And it helps that my extra senses are telling me that you are who you say you are.” She handed his documents back to him.

“Wunderbar!” Herr Wagner said. “If you don’t mind.” He held his arms open for the child. “This is just a stopover. We plan to take the railway all the way to Northern Scotland.”

“She’s been sleeping all day.” Adrien murmured as he put the sleeping toddler in Kurt’s arms. “I’m a little worried.”

Not-quite-Errol-Flynn looked into the little mutant’s face. “Amanda appears to have put her in suspended animation. I’ll have a word with her about that when I see her again.” He pulled a familiar, pen-like device from his pocket, and clipped it on the girl’s shirt. Instantly, her appearance changed to that of a brown-haired girl with a lily complexion.

“Good luck!” Marinette waved.

He nodded to both of them again, then slipped away in the crowd.

“That’s over,” Marinette sighed. “You ready to go home?”

“Yeah,” Adrien said without any real enthusiasm. “I’ll walk you back to the bakery.”

“Oh that’s cute. The pampered kitty wants to protect the street spider.”

“Humor me,” Adrien sighed.

“Only because I know you only live a block or two away, and you can parkour back to the hotel.”

—

Marinette was nearly asleep when her spider sense triggered with a jolt. She bolted upright in bed, heart hammering.

Acting on pure instinct, she threw open her trapdoor and shot out onto the rooftop.

A little red dot zipped her way. As it neared, she realized that it was Tikki, carrying a pair of earrings and looking frightened.

“Tikki?”

“Marinette!” the little red kwami threw itself into her hands. “It’s Adrien!”

Chapter Text

You called me strong, you called me weak
But still your secrets, I will keep
You took for granted all the times, I never let you down
You stumbled in and bumped your head
If not for me then you'd be dead
I picked you up and put you back on solid ground.
- Kryptonite, 3 Doors Down

I raise my flags, don my clothes
It's a revolution, I suppose
We'll paint it red to fit right in
— Radioactive, Imagine Dragons

—

Marinette threw her costume on as Tikki explained the situation breathlessly.

Something had been waiting for them in Adrien’s room. Something made of shadows and evil intent.

How do you fight a shadow? Instead he retreated to the streets. He’d had enough time to transform into Chat, shove the Ladybug Miraculous into Tikki’s hands and tell her to hide before the thing caught up with him. He’d fought, but in the end, he and Plagg were captured.

There was more: Hawkmoth was Adrien’s father.

Marinette paused to stare at Tikki, mask hanging from her nerveless fingers. “Why didn’t anyone tell me that before now? Why didn’t Adrien go to the police?”

“Who would believe him? It would have been the word of an teen-aged boy against his estranged father. A father who is a pillar of Paris society.”

“He’s not won yet. He needs both miraculous,” Marinette said, jerking the mask on. “I’m going to find Adrien.”

“Wait!” Marinette was halfway through the trap door when Tikki called out to her. “Put the miraculous on and transform!” The little red kwami begged, holding out the earrings.

She turned back. “What do I say to transform? In brightest day, in blackest night?”

“Transform me’ will suffice.”

Marinette reached for the jewelry, then stopped herself.

“No,” she shook her head. “You’re safe here. Until we know the situation, we shouldn’t risk it.”

“Wait!” Tikki shouted again. But Marinette ignored her cries, springing out the trapdoor and vaulting over the balcony railing.

The hotel where Adrien lived was only a few blocks away. Marinette couldn’t see any sign of him, or the shadow thing Tikki described.

Perhaps she would find a clue in his room?

She swung directly onto his balcony, and tried the French door. (Technically, all doors in France were French doors, weren’t they?)

It was unlocked.

The door opened outward with a creak. Marinette stepped inside — and almost walked into the point of a sword held by a woman in a bee costume.

She glared at Marinette. “What have you done with Chat Noir!”

Marinette held her hands up. “Nothing! I swear! Tikki told me —“

“Tikki? What have you done with Tikki?” Bee Girl looked livid.

“Uh oh!” Marinette has a feeling that this was going south faster than one of Loki’s schemes to take over Earth. “Look, I think there’s been a mistake.”

“You bet there has!” Bee Girl said. “One you’re going to regret!”

Marinette wondered if Bee Girl could fly. If she ran, would Bee Girl chase her?

“Woah! woah!” Rena Rouge was suddenly there, pushing the sword down with her flute. “Queen Bee, Red Arachnid is on our side!”

Queen Bee disengaged, putting her sword away. She crossed her arms, glaring at Marinette “Where’s Tikki? What happened to Chat?”

“I left Tikki somewhere safe,” Marinette explained. “She said that Chat was attacked by some kind of shadow creature.”

The two miraculous holders traded concerned looks. “Sounds like one of Mayura’s sentimonsters.”

“Who?” Marinette held up her hands in question. “I thought the bad guy was named Hawkmoth?”

“Mayura is his partner.” Queen Bee said with an eye-roll. “He uses akuma, she uses amoks.”

(Amuck! Amuck! Amuck! Amuck!) Marinette felt her right eye twitch. “Hey Lucy! You gotta lotta ‘splanin’ to do!”

“I beg your pardon?” Queen Bee raised her nose in the air.

“There seems to be a lot to this mess that you guys with the fancy jewelry haven’t filled the rest of the class in on. Now, we all want to figure out where Chat Noir is and how to get him back. So we need to work together.”

“What did you have in mind?” Rena Rouge asked.

She jerked her thumb at the balcony over her shoulder. “I think maybe you guys should come to Avengers HQ with me. Is the ninja-turtle guy around?”

“We can get Carapace,” Rena Rouge said.

“Good! Bring him! I’ll just . . . “Marinette patted her suit, realizing that in her rush to take off, she hadn’t bothered to even grab her phone. “Does either of you have a pen? I need to write down the address.”

—

Marinette landed on her terrace and climbed through the trap door.

“Tikki? I’m back! You can come out now!” She called out.

“Marinette?” Sabine’s concerned voice sounded at the floor beneath the loft bed.

Marinette froze, heart hammering in her chest. She peered over the edge of the platform.

Sabine and Tom stood in the center of the room, looking back up at her with concerned expressions on their faces. Tikki sat in Sabine’s hands, looking sheepish.

Then Marinette realized that she still hadn’t removed her mask.

“Uh oh.” Marinette said.

—

Kate and Clint stumbled through the door, leaning on one another. Clint was the only thing still holding Kate up. That was okay. She suspected she was all that held him up too.

“I think that went well,” she said.

“As well as any mission in Budapest ever goes,” Clint sounded just as tired as she did. A shower sounded great. But only if Clint didn’t use up all their hot water, first.

“Dibs on the shower.”

Clint sighed. “Aw! Shower, no!” He groaned.

They stumbled into the second floor living area, only to find Marinette sitting on a chair there, mask and hood pulled back, a little red creature flying in agitated circles around her head. Her parents sat on either side of her, looking worried.

Paris’s other animal-themed, costumed people sat on the couch across from her. They all had that look about them.

Like the Shitteth wasth about to go downeth, as Billy Shakes would say.

Alarm shot through Kate. This was going to be a three-pot-of-coffee night. She could already tell.

“Well, this doesn’t look good.” Clint said. “Did you decide to rent out HQ to a furry convention?” He joked weakly.

“We’ve got an assemble-level situation!” Marinette said. “Also, my parents know everything.”

Tom and Sabine traded hopeful looks over her head. ‘Parents!’ Tom mouthed. He flailed his massive hands adorably.

“We will be revisiting the subject of your side activities when Paris isn’t in danger,” Sabine said in a warning tone.

“Okay.” Marinette made a face. Then she seemed to remember something, and turned back to Kate. “Sidebar: your Renault is at the bottom of the river just outside of Reims. Which is totally not my fault!” She held her hands up in front of her like a shield.

What? “What happened to the car?” Kate screeched. “That was leased!”

“Wait! Wait! Back up! What kind of situation?” Clint stood straighter, holding out his hands as if trying to stop all the side arguments that Marinette was conducting at once.

Marinette held up here index finger to Clint, signaling that she’d get back to him when she finished arguing with Kate.

To Kate she said: “Long story short: we were attacked by your tracksuit mafia buddies from our old reality, who are now back in police custody. But not before they ran the car off a bridge. Also? We stole their pants. You’re welcome.”

“Congratulations?” Clint half-laughed, raising his eyebrows.

Kate rolled her eyes. Of course the stupid tracksuit mafia bros would find some way to follow Clint to this reality.

Whatever. That was a problem for future-Kate.

Sabine frowned at the whole exchange, while Tom was biting his lip and looking torn between being concerned, as befit his duty as a newly-accepted father figure, or to just laugh.

Because it really was funny.

Oblivious to this, Marinette continued.

“After we made it back, Hawkmoth - who, funny story, is Gabriel-motherfrakkin-Agreste.” Marinette glanced self-consciously at Sabine before continuing. “He kitten-napped Chat Noir. And by the way, in a crazy random happenstance Chat Noir is Adrien Agreste. Who knew?” She chuckled like she was barely holding onto her sanity.

Kate blinked. Sounds like she should have gone with Marinette and let Clint and his spysassin buddies figure out Budapest. She might have had more fun. “Small world.”

“Yeah, go figure.” Marinette said. ”Bottom line: Hawkmoth got his hands on half of a doomsday device.”

Clint pinched the bridge of his nose. “I feel like you buried the lead there, Street Rat. What is this doomsday device?”

“That’s not really what the Miraculous does,” the little red creature spoke up for the first time, tiny arms flapping in consternation. “The two miraculous combined can grant their wearer a wish. But at great cost. Adrien was wise enough not to use that power. But there were still side effects.

“Like him turning into a human cat,” Queen Bee said.

“You said that Plagg was the one who wiped out the dinosaurs!” Marinette said. “The wrong wish could be as devastating as . . . As . . . As —“

“As Thanos with the Infinity Stones,” Clint frowned. “I’m calling Tony.” He pulled his StarkPhone out of his pocket. “How am I going to explain this?”

“Let’s be honest, it’s not the weirdest thing he’s been involved in, if the rumors are true,” Kate said.

“We’ve got to get that miraculous back and rescue Adrien,” Marinette ticked off that short to-do list on her fingers. “And as much as I hate to say it: that has to be the order of our priorities. We can’t let a known terrorist have access to a component of something that he could use to wipe out all life on this planet. I just got here! I like this reality too much to let Hawkass ruin it.”

“How?” Rena Rouge toyed with her flute. “We’ve never been able to find his lair.”

Kate stood up straighter. This, she could help with. She’d been a private eye, for crying out loud! Granted, not a great one. But actual people had promised to pay her actual money to figure shit out.

“What do you guys know about Gabriel Agreste?” Kate asked.

“He’s always been super controlling,” Carapace said. “He used to keep Adrien over-scheduled so he wouldn’t have time to hang out with his friends.”

“After his wife died, he refused to leave his house,” Queen Bee said. “Adrien had to run away to enroll in school.”

Tom growled at that. Sabine tightened her hand into a fist, knuckles cracking. Mama bear and papa wolf instincts: activated! Child acquisition mode: Engaged! Level: Molly Weasley seeing a sad-eyed orphan in a train station!

Kate rubbed her chin to refocus on the task before her. “The lair must be in his mansion. Are there blueprints from renovation on file somewhere? Sometimes when old buildings are renovated, the new floor plan can allow for hidden rooms or passages.”

“I’ll look,” Rena Rouge did something complicated with her flute, turning it into a hand-held computer.

“It looks like there are permits filed to turn the entire attic into an observatory.”

“Suspicious,” Kate said. “Too much light pollution for really good stargazing in the heart of the city.”

“And . . . More permits to install heat and grow-lights in the sub-basement level.” Rena Rouge continued. “But they were filed a long time before Emilie Agreste was reported missing,” Rena Rouge looked up from her flute. “So is that a dead end?”

“It could still be significant,” Kate said. “When did the magic butterfly doo-hicky disappear out of the good guys’ hands?”

“Master fu said that the peacock and butterfly miraculous were lost when his temple in Tibet was destroyed,” Carapace said. “So, over a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“Maybe the lost miraculous fell into Gabriel Agreste’s hands after that, and he just decided to hold onto it as a trophy,” Kate said with a questioning glance at Marinette.

“It’s possible,” Marinette shrugged. “Some wealthy people will acquire trinkets they can’t show off, like stolen artwork or looted cultural treasures. Things they’d be arrested for if it could be proved that they have them.”

“My father was like that,” Kate said. “Keeping stolen artwork makes someone like that feel powerful. Gabriel Agreste could have been content just to keep the butterfly miraculous as a trophy. Then something could have happened to push him from just morally gray to straight up villain.” Kate said.

“Like his wife dying,” Carapace chimed in.

“If he studied miraculous lore for years, that would explain how he knew about the power of the combined Ladybug and Cat miraculous,” Rena Rouge said. “He seemed to just show up along with a giant head made of butterflies one day, demanding that Ladybug and Chat Noir stop terrorizing Paris and give up their Miraculous.”

“So he’s not just a terrorist. He’s also a gaslighting S.O.B., too. How did Adrien end up so nice when that was his dad?” Marinette asked.

“He takes after his mother.” Queen Bee flipped her ponytail over her shoulder.

“The point is, Hawkmoth uses butterflies to attack Paris.” Kate said. “He’d need to have access to a conservatory year round. I think someone at the Jardin des Papillons would notice if Gabriel Agreste walked out of the gates with thirty or forty butterflies stuffed down his shirt. So he must be raising his own.”

“Dude!” Carapace said. “He’s like an evil Batman with his own cave! A Hawkcave!”

“If I were looking for a hidden lair, I’d search both the attic and the basement,” Kate said in agreement.

Clint hung up his phone. “Iron man is on his way.”

“So this is it? We’re just going to throw everything we have at Hawkmoth and hope Paris survives?” Carapace asked doubtfully.

Marinette sat up, blinking. Her eyes tracked from the red creature to the other heroes. “Wait!” She stood up, pacing back and forth. “Yeeess . . . Yes! That might work. But no . . . Not unless we. . . Yes!” With a decisive nod, she turned to the group.

“I’ve got a plan. Well — twelve percent of a plan.”

“That’s more than I’m used to working with.” Clint sighed, then nodded. “What do we need?”

“We need a sewing machine, some Ketamine, fabric paint, some C-4, a map of the Metro tunnels and an inside man at the Agreste mansion.” Marinette’s expression turned manac. “Also, how many more of these miraculous do we have access to?”

“There are a few more in the miraculous box,” Carapace said. “And Adrien’s bodyguard would help us. Why do you want C-4?”

“To blow something up. Do you have a few more friends you can trust who would fight for us?” Marinette asked.

“I’ll get the word out on our class chat room,” Rena said, fingers flying over her modified flute.

“What are you planning, Street Rat?” Clint asked.

“I’m going to pull an old arrow out of my quiver,” Marinette said. “And then we're going to shove that butterfly pin so far up Hawkmoth’s ass he’ll think he got a couple new gold fillings.”

“The butterfly miraculous is silver, actually,” Tikki said.

“Whatever.”

—

The living room filled up quickly as kids from the school next door arrived. Rena Rouge handed out their Miraculous and explained what was needed when they walked in the room.

Once they were all seated with kwamis on their shoulder, Marinette led Kate and Clint out to stand before them.

Upon seeing them, nearly everyone in the room gasped.

Marinette wasn’t sure what shocked them all: the two semi-well known Avengers with her, her familiar face, or the way she’d modified all three of their uniforms to look like Catbug versions of the same costumes.

She waved self-consciously to everyone. “Uh, Hi! My name is Marinette Baker. I’m from another reality. And . . . I’m Red Arachnid.”

A girl with multicolored braids waved back. The rest looked confused and intrigued.

“Most of you knew the version of me from this universe. But you didn’t know she was Ladybug.”

There were more gasps from around the room.

“That . . . makes sense,” a boy with red hair said.

“Also, Adrien is Char Noir, his father is Hawkmoth, and Hawkmoth now has him and the Miraculous of destruction.” Marinette ticked the points off on her fingers as she quickly spoke, almost running the words together. “Did I miss anything?” She asked Kate.

“I think that summed it up nicely,” Kate said.

The sudden exclamations and murmuring drowned Marinette out. She looked at Clint, and shrugged helplessly.

Clint calmly took out his hearing aids and produced an arrow. Kate took one look at it and covered her ears.

He pushed a button on a remote. The arrow released a high pitched sound that caused everyone in the room to jerk back in surprise falling immediately silent. Then he shut off the sound maker and waved to Marinette to continue.

“We have a plan to stop him. But we need all of you. We’re asking you all to become Avengers.”

There was another excited murmur around the room. But this time, when Marinette held up her hand, the room grew silent.

“If you don’t want to be part of this, we understand. Any one of us could die, just like Bridgette did. But if this works, that’ll be the end of Hawkmoth’s reign of terror.”

“What’s the plan?” A red-haired girl asked.

Marinette gave them all a lopsided grin. “It’s a little hustle called the Kansas City Shuffle.”

Chapter Text

It's a blindfold kick back type of a game
called the Kansas City Shuffle
When the Suits look left, they fall right

Chapter Text

There goes my hero
Watch him as he goes
There goes my hero
He's ordinary
— Hero, Foo Fighters

—

The Akumatized Gabriel Agreste eased out into the light on eight exoskeleton armored legs. His movements were stiff and ponderous, as if he was still trying to get used to his new form.

From the waist down, he was an enormous clockwork spider. From the waist up, an impeccably dressed Victorian gentleman, complete with a purple waistcoat, cravat, bejeweled cane and top hat.

“Father always did draw inspiration from what he saw around him. But what is that? A spider centaur?” Adrien sounded vaguely horrified.

“In D&D that would be called a Drider,” Carapace said.

“He looks like the punchline to a Kevin Smith joke,” Marinette said. “I wonder if he shoots webbing out of his—“

“That’s still my father,” Adrien interrupted. “I really don’t want to speculate about that.”

“I was going to say his spinnerette gland.” Marinette said.

“It’s not any better when you give it a fancy name.”

“Sorry.”

“Does he always foam at the mouth when he’s mad?” Marinette tilted her head sideways in fascinated horror.

“He’s usually in tight control of himself,” Adrien said. “You may have pushed him beyond his limit.”

“Mission accomplished, I guess.” Marinette said.

“Hey R. A.! Do you plan to stand around all day staring at the steampunk spider? Should I pop you some popcorn?” Clint snapped at her through the radio.

“Right. Hey! Avengers!” Marinette scanned the assembled miraculous holders. She waved an arm in a circle, the move encompassing the group. Then finished by pointing at Hawkmoth. “Get him!”

The group dogpiled on the Gabrispider.

For a moment, the villain seemed to collapse under the laundry pile of heroes. Arms and legs flailed over him, trying to find and remove his butterfly pin.

Then the mechanical spider legs rose, lifting the group of heroes. With a spin, Hawkmoth threw them off of him.

“This is the drawback of taking greenies into battle,” Clint sighed into the com. “No battle coordination.”

“We’ll work on it for next time,” Marinette said.

Hawkmoth turned, fixing Marinette and Adrien with a glare. He stamped his cane on the ground. The earth beneath their feet shook.

“That’s not good,” Adrien said.

The ground split open, and wave after wave of human-sized spiders spewed out of the fissure.

“Definitely not good!” Adrien recoiled In horror. “Where did they all come from?”

“Underground? He must have embiggened some sewer spiders.” Nino said in disgust as he threw his shield between the heroes and the horde of spiders.

“Time for plan B!” Marinette said. “Clint, You and Tony stand by in case we need to put plan C into action.”

“We’ll be monitoring your progress, R.A.!” Clint said through the com.

“What’s plan B?” Adrien asked.

“Everyone scatter!” She yelled to the others.

When faced with giant spiders, no one needed to be told twice. The heroes took off in every direction like feathers thrown into a hurricane, the giant spiders chasing after them.

Marinette hooked Adrien’s hand and hauled him over the fence with her as she flung out a web and swung away.

“Father is chasing us!” Adrien reported.

“Good!” Marinette said with dark satisfaction. “Let him!”

—

Marinette dragged Adrien down into the Metro. The train was just leaving the station, and Marinette sent out a web to snag the back. The two of them were pulled into the darkness of the tunnel like Marty McFly on a hover board in that movie that the Friends of Jagger seemed to love.

His father followed.

She pulled them against the back of the train and sat on her heels. He clung next to her onto the back of the car with his cat-claws.

“I feel like this plan of your might be going down the wrong track!” He said.

“I can’t believe you’re making train-based one-liners.”

“Just trying to cover my tracks.”

“Shhhh kitty! I’m trying to think. You’re getting me off on the wrong train of thought.” She booped his nose. A gesture so achingly familiar that he just wanted to pull her to his chest and thank every god he knew for second chances. He owed Plagg so much cheese. All the cheese.

“We could adopt a hamster together.” He whispered. “I like the name Hugo.”

“Sure.” Marinette said absently. She stared into the darkness, frowning as she set up web after web across the passage to trap his father.

Gabriel tore through each steel-like filament like it was tissue paper.

“That’s not going to work,” she muttered.

Adrien blinked, refocusing. Marinette sounded so much like Ladybug, ruminating over an obscure lucky charm. This. This was familiar.

“What is the objective here?” He asked.

Trap Hawkass down here like a moth in a web.”

“Heh. Literally.”

She lifted an eyebrow at him. “Then get his tacky jewelry. Take it back to where we’ve hidden the Ladybug and cleanse it. After that we let the police take him to the Château d'If and lock him up.”

“You know that it’s no longer a prison, right?” Adrien said.

“Yeah, it’s for tourists now, like Alcatraz in California. You understand what I meant.” She sighed. “It looks like he can move too easily in the metro tunnels. We need somewhere smaller.”

Adrien’s cat ears perked up. They were very near one of the entrances to the catacombs. And while a spider was good at setting a trap, a cat preferred to stalk it’s prey. “I have the purrfect place.”

She took his hand. “Lead on, McDuck.”

They bailed from the back of the metro car as they passed an entry point into the catacombs. He led her through the door and down. Behind them, they heard his father trying to wriggle that ridiculous mechanical spider body through the tunnels behind them.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Marinette muttered as she continued to put up sturdy webs. Father would tear them down again, but at least they slowed him down a little. “I know spiders can squeeze into tight spots. I’ve seen a tarantula squeeze under a door. I may have succeeded in that plan to piss him off a little too well.”

“It was a beautiful plan.” He burst through the door to the underground tunnels. Adrien knew that they were in a section of the old Roman quarries somewhere near the Latin quarter. But it was too dark too see. “Wish we’d brought a lantern.”

“Got it covered.” The glow of her phone was faint enough for his feline eyes to see everything.

He took her hand and began to run down the tunnel. “Let’s hide in a larger gallery and wait for father to catch up. Wouldn’t do to lose him down here.

“Huh, I thought there would be lots of old bones.”

“Only in some places,” he told her. “I think there are over 300 kilometers of tunnels.”

“ . . . Okay.”

“You don’t know what a kilometer is. Do you?”

“I think you and I both know that I do not.”

He scoffed. “Americans.”

“In my defense, I am getting used to the metric system. I just get more practice with baking weights and measurements.”

Their debate was cut short when they heard Hawkmoth behind them.

“He’s really good on those mechanical legs,” Marinette said. “Like Dr. Octopus. Let’s just hope he doesn’t start calling himself Superior Arachnid or something.”

It was no good. Father would catch them before they could lay a trap.

“What are our chances fighting my father in tight quarters?”

“Not ideal,” she sounded grim. “Time for plan C.”

Plan C, whatever that was, obviously involved more of her team members. “Up, then?”

“Yes! Up!”

That was all the prompting Adrien needed. He dragged her through the first door that he came to, and up the passage.

The tunnel opened into the cellar of a construction site. What was probably once a house but was on it’s way to becoming office buildings.

The two of them took a handful of steps into the open air when Gabriel seized them from behind.

Adrien was slammed into the dirt, pinned by a heavy mechanical leg in the center of his spine. Next to him, Marinette was tossed down onto her back. Gabriel leaned over and tore her mask away with his hands, shoving her head to the side, exposing her ear.

Struggling against the weight of the spider leg, Adrien wiped the dirt out of his eyes enough to see that Marinette wasn’t wearing the earrings.

Gabriel snarled. “Where are they?” He hissed at her, striking her across the face.

Adrien bucked against his father’s weight, wishing he was transformed and able to cataclysm the spider leg.

Marinette laughed, grinning a fuck-off grin around bloody teeth. “That’s thing about a shell game, a-hole! By the time you try to find the ball, it’s not on the table anymore.”

Gabriel drew his hand back to strike again, a snarl on his face. Before he could move, a lithe, dark figure dropped from above, knocking him away from them.

The figure in black landed between them and Gabriel. Adrien looked harder at his savior. She was a short woman wearing a black zhi fu. Cat footprints were embroidered in green across the front.

He caught his breath as he realized that she wore cat ears and a mask. Her long hair was plaited into a braid that lashed back and forth like an angry cat’s tail. They’d just been rescued by a Chat Noire.

“Mom!” Marinette yelped.

“Mom?” Adrien looked in confusion between the two females.

But Chat Noire was already springing back into action.

“You will not. Hurt. These. Children. Again!” She punctuated each word with a blow from her staff, driving Gabriel back across the cellar space. He raised up on the back two mechanical legs, looking like he planned to crush Madame Cheng.

Before he could, a screaming, yo-yo tangled, polka-dotted ball of angrish and punching dropped onto him.

“And that’s my dad.” Marinette pinched the bridge of my nose. “Because of course it is.”

Adrien’s jaw dropped. “How did they get the miraculous?”

“They were supposed to be safeguarding them. But they weren’t supposed to put them on unless things went pear shaped.”

“I’m guessing Plagg and Tikki had something to do with that. This has Plagg written all over it.” Adrien watched as Chat Noire and Monsieur Bug used Hawkmoth as a punching bag. “Should we help them?”

Marinette chewed her lip thoughtfully. Finally she shook her head no. “He killed their other daughter. Let them work this out for now. We can intervene if it looks like Hawkmoth will get the upper hand. Or, ya know, if things escalate and they accidentally try to kill him.”

Adrien sat next to her, slinging a companionable arm over her shoulder as they watched Sabine and Tom fight Hawkmoth like it was a martial arts movie.

“Your dad is very aggressive.”

“He is half-Italian. I’m actually looking forward to meeting my Nona Gina. She seems cool.”

“I suppose that explains it,” Adrien said. “What’s it like to have a dad that actually cares?”

“I guess we’ll see.” Marinette sighed, shaking the dirt out of her short hair. “I had a plan. It was a good plan. This was not part of my plan.”

She looked like she was holding herself together out of sheer spite at this point. Adrien sympathized.

“Clint,” she spoke into that radio earpiece that she’d been wearing. “How is plan C coming?” Whatever she heard must not have been promising, because she looked a lot more frown-y now. “Well, step on it! You have Tony ‘billionaire genius’ Stark with you. Making calculations shouldn’t be that hard! The cat and bug are back on the board. Yes, I know that wasn’t part of the plan!” Her scoff was Chloé-worthy.

The adrenaline from the battle seemed to be receding. Adrien’s fatigue-addled mind jumped right back to thoughts of a relationship with Marinette when he knew it should be on the battle going on in front of him.

“So just to be clear, you have no objection to . . . Say . . . a guy who purrs when you scratch behind his ears?” He asked her.

“I refuse to take the last name of a super villain ,” she stabbed the air in Hawkmoth’s direction with her pointer finger. “Just putting that out there.”

Hope bloomed like a garden in his chest. “Adrien Baker has a nice ring to it,” he said.

“I was thinking of changing my last name to Dupain-Cheng, actually.”

“I can hyphenate. I’m a modern guy.”

Marinette sat up suddenly, tilting her head as she heard something over her radio. “Plan C is ready!”

The two of them leaped to their feet. Marinette drew a big X in the dirt. Then she and Adrien circled around Gabriel to flank him.

Adrien thought he knew Marinette’s fighting style. They’d run TaiChi forms together, fought a giant cat and tracksuit mafia bros together. He’s seen the news footage of her as she fought the Doombots and they’d run from his father.

But now he knew that Marinette had a ‘Let’s Get Dangerous’ fighting mode. She would disappear one moment, only to reappear right before administering a right-cross to the side of Hawkmoth’s face. Then she would vanish again and reappear on the other side of him and deliver an uppercut to the jaw. By the way each strike rocked his father, she was not pulling her punches with her enhanced strength.

Once Adrien had a feel for the rhythm of her attacks, he dropped into synch with his lady (His Lady!), darting in between her attacks with his own roundhouse kicks to father’s midsection.

Under the added pressure of Marinette and Adrien’s attacks, Gabriel backed slowly over the X drawn in the soil.

“Now, Clint!” Marinette cried into her radio.

From somewhere above them, a dart shot downward. Right into the side of his father’s neck.

Whatever was in that dart caused Gabriel to drop faster than a tranquilized charging rhino in a nature show.

Adrien pulled the akumatized butterfly pin off of his father’s shirt. He cradled it in his hands, delivering it to Chat Noire. “You have to release the butterfly akuma. Hold it and say “cataclysm.”

Once the butterfly was released, Adrien talked Monsieur Bug through cleansing the akuma. It was kind of entertaining watching the massive baker pirouette.

Instantly, Gabriel’s akumatized form seemed to unravel, leaving his father laying in the dirt of the old cellar.

“I thought plan C would work. Winner, winner chicken dinner!” Marinette groaned dropping back into her bottom in the dirt in relief.

“You planned all of this?” Adrien shook his head incredulously.

“That’s what spiders do. We set elaborate traps.”

A sudden thought occurred to Adrien. “How did your mother even get the black cat miraculous?” He wondered. “It was on your hand when we ran from the mansion.”

“I passed it to monkey-boy when he helped me onto the fence. He was supposed to take it back to headquarters along with the peacock and that book.”

Adrien looked back at Gabriel’s unconscious body, clothes torn and stained. Hair askew. Covered in dirt. He looked small. In Adrien’s memories, his father seemed so tall and imposing.

He’d thought about this moment for so long. Expected to feel euphoric or triumphant or sad. Instead he just felt empty.

Marinette took his hand.

“Come back to the bakery with us,” Sabine said. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

He wasn’t sure if she meant right now, or in general. But he wasn’t going to question it. “Th . . . Thank you.”

In the distance, they could hear police sirens. Then Iron Man landed, Hawkeye in his arms like they’d just gotten married. Clint jumped down and secured Gabriel’s wrists with a set of flexible bindings.

“Good plan, Twiggy. If I ever need a chess master, I know who I’m calling.” Iron man said.

“Stark,” she nodded at him.

The helmet of the Iron Man suit folded in on itself, revealing Tony Stark’s tiny head in the armor like a nesting doll with the outermost top section removed. “You crazy kids might want to beat it, unless you’re ready to reveal your identities. Uncle Tony’s got this.”

Marinette got back to her feet, clutching her ribs and wincing. “Thanks, Stark.”

Monsieur Bug picked both of them up in one arm. “We got this.” He swung them away, while Chat Noire vaulted after.

By the time the police arrived to take his father into custody, they were already back at the bakery watching news coverage of the night.

Chapter Text

Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave

When first we practice to deceive.”
— Marmion, Sir Walter Scott

News spread quickly throughout the city that Hawkmoth had been defeated. Even though it was already late, the city took on a festive feel as citizens took to the streets to celebrate.

The air was filled with the sound of raucous laughter and music as more than one spontaneous rooftop or balcony party sprang up.

Someone must have even gotten into the city’s Bastille Day Fireworks, for soon there was an impromptu fireworks show blossoming over the sparkling Eiffel Tower.

Adrien and Marinette went up to her rooftop terrace to watch. They sat double on her deck chair, Adrien behind Marinette, his tail wrapped halfway around them both. The tip of it rested on her thigh, twitching as she stroked the fur. Marinette leaned into his chest, using his shoulder as a pillow and listening to him purr like a well-tuned motor.

“How much trouble are you in with your parents?” Adrien asked.

“Not as much as I was before,” Marinette said. “It’s hard to punish someone for fighting crime when you just did the same thing.”

“That’s true.” He glanced over at the trap door, remembering the way they hovered when he came to visit Bridgette that time before the gaming tournament, and how enthusiastic they’d been toward him As Chat when they thought he and Bridgette were on the brink of a relationship. “How long until one of them comes to check on us?”

“Five minutes,” she said. “But they’ll have food. They think we’re both too skinny.”

Adrien poked his own stomach with a thoughtful frown. “They’re not wrong.”

She tilted her head, listening to the sounds of celebration coming from Avengers Headquarters next door, where the other Miraculous holders had gathered.

“They sound pretty excited.”

“With reason Mi’lady,” he said. “Nearly every one of them has been akumatized at least once.”

“How are you doing?” Marinette asked. “He’s your dad, after all.”

“At the moment, I’m just glad it’s over.” Adrien‘s cat ears drooped.

“It’s ok to not be okay, you know.”

“I know.” He gave her a sad little smile. “But he hasn’t been my father for a long time. Tonight I don’t want to think about it. I’ll worry about everything tomorrow.”

She knew that ‘everything’ was a clockwork puzzle with a lot of moving parts. Adrien’s whole future was uncertain. He’d have to figure out what to do with his dad’s company — which would no-doubt flounder when word got out that the head of the company and chief creative was a super villain.

He’d also have to decide what to do with the two miraculous he held and how to navigate his day-to-day life when he was part-cat.

Then there was that love declaration they’d made to one another in back in Hawkmoth’s mansion. That was a whole other conversation they’d have to have.

Strangely, she was least worried about that. She recognized what it meant when Adrien looked at her that way. He was having visions of white picket fences (or whatever the French equivalent was. Little stone cottages in the quaint, lavender fields?) and hamsters named Hugo.

But it didn’t bother her. Adrien liked way too much anime, and he needed to broaden his tastes in music. But his brand of crazy otherwise matched her own.

They had a duty as heroes to get together, before they inflicted themselves on two other poor unsuspecting civilians out there.

“I can hear you thinking from here.” He whispered to her, his voice light and relaxed.

Marinette shrugged, turning to him. “I don’t know how to stop.”

His lips hovered inches from her own. “I can think of a way,” he whispered. Then he closed the gap between them. Marinette was impressed. He was actually pretty smooth with that line.

His kissing could use a little work, though.

Wow.

She thought the bad kiss back at the mansion was a fluke. Weren’t the French supposed to teach kissing in junior high school, or something? She couldn’t hold back her giggles at the thought.

“What?” Adrien pulled back, looking hurt and annoyed.

“Have you ever kissed anyone before?”

His ears flattened against his head. “Yes?” His voice rose.

Marinette scratched behind his ears. “Are you lying, kitty?”

“How bad am I?” He said timidly.

Marinette recognized that she’d unintentionally bruised his ego. She didn’t want to do anymore damage. But by Thor, he was an awful kisser! He went at it like he was a carpet cleaner. One of the type that spit out water, then sucked it back up.

“We’ll work on it.” She said reassuringly, resting her forehead against his and caressing his jaw. Adrien leaned into her touch, a slight purr rising from his chest. “Look at it as a chance for each of us to learn what the other likes.”

After all, her therapist once said that chemistry was just the spark to ignite the fire in a relationship. It was friendship and mutual affection that provided the fuel to keep it going.

That was the problem with her and Luke. They had good chemistry, but she’d been too selfish to build an actual friendship with him. But she and Adrien were already pretty good at the friendship thing.

Until she could teach the boy how to kiss, she’d just wear a raincoat.

“Leave some space for The Holy Ghost, kids!” Tony Stark’s obnoxious voice, accompanied by his Iron Man repulsers, shattered the moment.

Marinette and Adrien broke apart, turning to see the billionaire in the Iron Man suit hovering just beyond her terrace rail.

“Don’t tell me that harassing us is more fun than Jagged Stone’s after party?” Marinette put a hand to her hip.

“Yeah, no.” Tony’s face looked serious. “I actually want to talk to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, here.”

Adrien raised his eyebrows, inviting Tony to get to the point.

“We rescued a couple of hostages from Yizma’s secret lair. One of them is an old guy who looks like Mr. Miyagi. He was asking for you. The other was a woman in a coma. We identified her as your mother.”

Adrien blinked. Confusion, followed by disbelief, then hope crossed his face. Marinette shifted, letting him get up.

“I can take you to see her.” Tony said.

“Please,” Adrien said in a strangled voice. He turned suddenly to Marinette. “Will you come with me?” He was a full head taller than her, with broad shoulders. Yet at that moment he looked so small.

“I need to tell my parents where we’re going.” She unfolded herself from the chair “Otherwise they’ll ground us both.”

“They can’t ground me,” Adrien said. “I’m not theirs to ground.”

“Keep thinking that, A.”

—

Marinette sat in the waiting room of the private hospital wing, nursing one of the worst cups of coffee she’d had in a long time.

Adrien was off consulting over his mother’s condition with Dr. Strange (or this reality’s version of him. Maybe they were all the same guy? She wasn’t as familiar with cross-dimensional wizardry as she was with the multiverse shenanigans the spider-crew occasionally got up to.)

If anyone was equipped to deal with a magically induced coma, she supposed it would be the former world’s foremost neurosurgeon turned current world’s foremost wizard.

Too bad no one passed his card to Gabriel Agreste before he started his reign of terror.

Just then Nick Fury walked up and sat down. Marinette looked at him like he was the postman, come to deliver the mail right on schedule. Of course he would show up at the end of things. The chess master needed to appear to reset the board, after all.

“You’ve had a very interesting few weeks, Miss Baker.” He observed.

Marinette met his level gaze with one of her own. “You don’t seem that shocked, Director Fury.”

“You don’t either.”

She shrugged. “There were quite a few people displaced into this reality. Yet the director of SHIELD personally saw to it that I wound up in Paris.”

The corner of Fury’s mouth turned up in the barest hint of a smile. “I used to give this rousing speech. It was about an idea I had. To pull together a group of remarkable people and see if they could become something more.“

“That’s why you put me here.” Marinette surmised.

“Archimedes once said ‘give me a lever and a place to stand, and I can move the world.”

Marinette stared into her paper coffee cup, swirling the dregs. She wondered if you could read the future in them like tea leaves.

“So now what?” She asked Fury.

“Now SHIELD is going to take Gabriel Agreste and his assistant into custody. Adrien Agreste can announce his father’s retirement due to the stress of having been possessed by Hawkmoth. The family will avoid the larger scandal, which should buy your cat friend the time he needs to decide what to do with that company of his.”

Marinette’s eyes narrowed as she contemplated the threads of the web that Fury was weaving.

“And he can channel some of that considerable wealth into funding the Avengers.” She guessed cynically.

“Your friend is one press conference away from pulling a Tony Stark and announcing his secret identity to the world. Some levers are easy to spot. Anyway, I think the name ‘Miraculous Avengers’ has a nice ring to it.”

Assuming Strange could work his literal magic and pull Madame Agreste out of her coma, Adrien would want to put off his decisions regarding his father’s company until Madame Agreste could participate.

Marinette rubbed her tired eyes. How was it that she found herself looking for solutions to save a company that was among one of the worst for using sweatshops, polluting the environment and flaunting human rights?

Asgardians above, what a mess!

But the alternative? Dismantling the company and selling it piece-by-piece to other fashion houses that did the same? That was just as bad. If Adrien could find a way to keep the House of Agreste solvent, maybe she could convince him to rebrand the company in a more socially and environmentally conscious direction. And he would probably even be willing to donate part of the profits to homeless shelters, if their conversation back on their ill-fated road trip was any indication.

A new thought occurred to Marinette. One that might buy Adrien a little more time to figure things out. “Is Janet VanDyne alive in this reality? And is she a famous fashion designer here?”

Fury’s mouth twitched again. “Yes to both questions. I can arrange a meeting on behalf of your friend.”

“Thank you.”

—

Within an hour, her parents arrived, sending her down to the cafeteria to eat while they watched over Adrien.

An old man in a Hawaiian shirt sat down next to Marinette in the cafeteria. By Tony’s description, she recognized him as Gabriel’s other hostage.

Today was quite the day for receiving visitors, wasn’t it? She felt like a southern belle in a Tennessee Williams play with all the gentlemen callers she was entertaining.

She smiled at him in a disarming way. Then she spotted Tikki and Plagg peeking out from the folds of his collar.

So that’s where they went! She’d wondered about that when they took off the moment they’d all gotten to the private hospital.

“I don’t speak Tibetan, and my French is horrible.” She said to him in Mandarin, taking a gamble that he actually spoke that language.

“By your accent, It sounds like you’re American?” He answered back in Mandarin as well.

“I’m a Manhattan girl. Grew up in the Chinatown there.” Marinette said. “If you don’t mind me asking, who are you?”

He looked pleased. “I’m Wang Fu, and I’ve been the guardian of the Box of Miracles for well over a hundred and fifty years.”

“Have you?” Marinette clasped her hands, resting her chin on them.

“Very little startles you, does it?” Fu said as he sipped his green tea. Marinette considered switching her coffee out for the tea as well. She was starting to get jittery.

“I’m part spider. And In the past month alone I switched realities, founded the Paris Avengers and fought akuma, giant cats and killer robots. Very little is shocking anymore.”

“I suppose not,” Fu chuckled. What was it about her that people seemed to find funny? She wished they’d let her in on the joke!

“Sorry I gave away all your Magic jewelry,” Marinette winced.

“In the past, the Miraculous were not meant to be held long term. Simply used whenever a problem needed to be solved.” Fu sipped his tea, a contemplative expression on his face. “The world is different now. There are giant cats and killer robots. Perhaps it is time to let the Miraculous stay active. ” He nodded once to himself, as if deciding something. “Tell me about the Avengers.”

Marinette picked at her cuticles, thinking of her conversation with Fury earlier. All at once, the words came to her.

“There was once a day unlike any other. When Earth’s mightiest heroes found themselves united against a common threat. They came together to form the Avengers. To fight back against foes no single hero could withstand.”

— End

So I wrote this story to exorcize an idea. 16 chapters just because I couldn’t get the image out of my head from chapter 15 of punk!Marinette in a black and red catsuit with bloody teeth and fuck-off grin telling Gabriel Agreste that the thing about a shell game is that the target is never on the board.

I may have a weakness for hot mess characters but badass ladies being awesome are my drug of choice.

Of course, with any story there are potential plot threads that there just aren’t room for. Since I feel like I’ve exhausted the potential of this story idea, I’ll just leave those discarded ideas here for your amusement.

• Lila being a mutant with charisma-based powers. This being the reason that everyone guzzles idiot-juice around her enough that they actually buy into her weak-sauce bullshit.
• 
  Emily and her family actually being a deep cover Hydra agents. When she went into her coma, she was involved in a plan to steal the Miraculous.
• 
  Marinette meeting her extended family, and her reactions to Rolland (racist grandpa? Hard pass!), Gina (biker Grandma who loves Pink Floyd? Can I be her when I grow up?) Uncle Cheng (wait! I recognize this soup! You mean the guy who invented my favorite soup was my own uncle?)
• Marinette and Adrien getting pulled into Spiderverse shenanigans.
• 
  Visits from various other spider women including May “Mayday” Parker, Cindy Moon, Gwen Stacy and Jessica Drew.
• 
  Adrien embracing the Tony Stark model of super hero/scientist/CEO and dragging Marinette along for the ride. Marinette would obviously be the Pepper Potts keeping the team and company running smoothly.
• Various career paths that Marinette might take up, including psychologist, costume historian, freelance graphic artist or private detective.
• 
  Marinette never taking up a miraculous. Adrien wearing the cat and ladybug miraculous in rotation. Whichever Kwami isn’t being worn rides around in Marinette’s hood.
• 
  Alternately: Marinette taking up the ladybug miraculous, and having an effect on Tikki. (Maybe the kwami grows extra arms and fangs like a spider? Plagg is very unnerved by the whole thing.)
• or Tikki getting increasingly frustrated that Marinette won’t pick up the Ladybug Miraculous.  What’s wrong with Marinette?  What’s wrong with Tikki?
• Marinette getting into a situation where she needs a Miraculous, and being: “Fine! Plagg, wanna go wreck stuff?” to which Plagg is all: “you’re speaking my language little spider!” And Tikki is just. So. Done. 
• Future!Alix showing up one day all: get in losers! We’re going on a time heist!
• Marinette bonding with a symbiote in order to fight/rescue Adrien as Chat Blanc. Followed by Chat Noir having to fight symbiote!Marinette in order to rescue her. Because Marinette would absolutely pull a suicidal Batman gambit like setting herself on fire to keep Adrien warm because she has faith that he can put out the fire in time. 
• 
  Future Marinette and Adrien looking at their toddler, who is sitting on their ceiling, and commenting on the level of baby-proofing they are going to have to subject their home to.

Thanks for giving this story a chance. I hope you liked it. As Stan Lee used to say, Excelsior! 
—Pen37