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Marinette let the hatch close with a snap and collapsed, bonelessly onto her bed.
“Tikki, remind me what Hawkmoth’s plan is again?” She groaned. “Because I have no idea how breakdancing zombies were ever supposed to take our Miraculous.”
Tikki shrugged and flitted off to the ‘emergency art supplies’ draw, which was mostly filled with cookies.
Sighing, Marinette rolled over and stared up at the ceiling. There were times when Hawkmoth brought forth nightmares in his pursuit of the Miraculous, villains that pushed her and Chat Noir to the very limits of their abilities and brought Paris to the brink of destruction. Then there were the times when it really seemed like he was just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck. To this day, Marinette had no idea what Mr Pigeon’s endgame was supposed to be.
Maybe it was a plot to lure them into a false sense of security.
Maybe Hawkmoth just had lousy aim.
“Tikki, how do-agh!”
She was cut off by her phone blaring out Alya’s ringtone. Scrambling onto her hands and knees she grabbed for her purse, which she wasn’t wearing, then patted down her pockets, to find them empty, before finally zeroing in on her phone which was attempting to vibrate itself off her desk. Naturally, Tikki was sat right next to it holding a cookie bigger than she was.
“It’s Alya,” Tikki announced, brightly.
“Right!” Marinette leapt off her bed, stumbled her way down the stairs to the main room. She landed on a strategically placed pillow with a heavy thud and raced over to her desk. Picking up her phone she double-checked Tikki wasn’t in view before accepting the video call.
“Alya! Hi, how are—”
“Girl, where have you been?” Alya demanded, cutting straight to business. “I’ve been calling since the new villain showed up, what happened to you?”
“Ah, sorry, I was downstairs and didn’t have my phone.” Marinette blushed, rubbing the back of her head. It was a familiar excuse.
“Seriously?” Alya rolled her eyes. “You’re, like, the one girl I know who isn’t glued to their phone. Did you at least see the Akuma?”
“Umm…” Marinette racked her brain to try and figure out if it was plausible for her to have seen anything from her parent’s bakery. Being best friends with a girl whose life long ambition was to be an investigative reporter was a nightmare when it came to keeping up a secret identity.
“Typical. I should have known you’d even miss a zombie invasion.”
“Didn’t we already have one of those?”
Alya scoffed. “Actual zombies, girl. Actual zombies! Anyway, now that you’re here I really need your help. The Ladyblog is exploding because Ladybug said something about raising the dead and my moderators have all flaked. I need you to take up a ban-hammer!”
Marinette groaned, she hatted moderating the Ladyblog. There were only so many times she could read the same comments about her own butt without getting Akumatised. “Alya~” she moaned. “I— wait, Ladybug said what!”
Fortunately, Alya was too busy paying attention to something off-screen to notice her look of horror. “I know! It’s crazy, she’s reversing the Akuma not reviving people. Anyway, there’s about six threads proclaiming her the second coming, and we need to nip this in the bud before my blog gets taken over by cultists. Can I count on you?”
“I—I—I…”
“Great! I owe you one!”
Alya hung up, leaving Marinette gaping at the screen.
“Uh… Marinette?” Tikki began, alighting on her outstretched hand.
A shudder ran through Marinette’s frame, and she fumbled her phone. It landed on the desk with a familiar smack. “I never said that,” she murmured, staring at nothing. “I never said that.”
“I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.”
“I never said that!”
Marinette threw herself at her computer, brushed aside her Adrian screensaver without a single forlorn sigh, and fired up the Ladyblog. The top story was, of course, her fight with NecroDancer. Alya had an unerring ability to be in just the right place to film Akuma fights. So much so Marinette had doubled checked with Master Fu that Alya hadn’t managed to sneak away with the Fox Miraculous. She elected to ignore the five digit watch count, and skipped through to the end when she’d taken a few questions from the crowd.
Reassuring the people of Paris that they were safe and the situation was under control was an important part of her job as Ladybug. It was just a shame that most of the time she had to field the same three questions. They were, in order of popularity: When were they going to stop Hawkmoth? What was her secret identity? And were she and Chat Noir dating? Unfortunately, that was in ascending order of popularity.
The video showed herself, standing in a recently de-zombiefied crowd of people moments after her ladybugs had once again restored Paris.
“Ladybug! Ladybug!” Alya’s voice rang through the speakers, the camera bouncing as she tried to get close enough to be heard.
“You, you brought them back to life?” a man exclaimed, staring rapturously up at her. “You brought them all back?”
Ladybug flashed a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, my ladybugs can fix anything.” Her Miraculous began to beep just as Marinette paused the video
Marinette stared at herself in wide mouthed horror. “Oh… god,” she squeaked. “I said I could bring back the dead.”
“And?” Tikki asked, cocking a brow at her.
“I said I could bring back the dead! Argh!” Marinette pulled at her pigtails as she tried, desperately, to think of anything she could do to fix things. “I didn’t hear him, Tikki! I only heard the second part and now everyone is going to think that Ladybug is crazy.” She leapt to her feet and began to pace. “I’m going to have to hold a press conference. I’m going to have to apologise to the city. Chat Noir is never going to stop laughing at me. And all because I misheard a question and claimed I could raise people from the grave.” She shrank down in on herself. “This is a nightmare!”
“Marinette, calm down!” Tikki grabbed Marinette cheeks and physically pulled Marinette out of her panic induced stupor. “It’ll be fine.”
“I lied.” Marinette whimpered. “I can’t raise the dead, Tikki.”
“Oh… well…” Tikki drifted backwards, suddenly very interested in the carpet.
“I can’t raise the dead, Tikki?”
“Uh…” Tikki kicked the imaginary ground, failing to meet Marinette’s eye. “So, putting right was other Miraculous made wrong is one of my specialities. That means, technically, fixing Akuma damage is easier than just going around making people healthy. So—”
“Tikki,” Marinette pressed. “Yes or no.”
Tikki smiled, sheepishly. “I guess depends very much on how you go about defining dead. If you mean would they be getting better on their own, technically there’s been some who wouldn’t have.”
“But, but when we broke Hawkmoth’s control they all went back to normal!” Marinette protested.
“Well, yes.” Tikki sighed. “The Akuma victim is fine. The people they hurt, though, you have to use your special power for.” Tikki closed her eyes and finished in a rush. “And depending on how you look at it you’re bringing those people back from the dead.”
Marinette stared, mouth hanging open.
Tikki cracked her eyes open. “Marinette?” She asked, hesitantly.
A slight whistling sound escaped the frozen girl.
“Please remember to breathe.”
“Argh!” Marinette let out a tea-kettle scream for just a moment. Then, gasping for breath, she bent double and clutched her knees, hyperventilating harder than the time Adrian winked at her.
“Marinette, please, it’s not a big deal,” Tikki exclaimed, patting her on the back. “You’ve been doing this for months now.”
“Month—“ Marinette cut herself off and took a shuddering breath. She fell heavily to the floor, hugging her legs. “Tikki, how many people have we brought back?”
Tikki flitted away. “Oh, not too many,” she began, failing to meet Marinette’s eye. “Just seven…”
“Seven?” Marinette repeated, in a suspicious tone.
“Million…”
“Million!”
“Three-hundred and eighty-three thousand, five hundred and ninety-two.”
Marinette stared at her, eyelids fluttering.
“Give or take.”
“How?” Marinette demanded. “That’s more people than in all of Paris.”
Tikki shrugged. “It adds up. There was the time Paris froze over, that lead to more than a few deaths. The, uh, ice cream incident was pretty bad. There was the time the zoo animals got out.” She began to count on her fingerless hands. “We had a pirate shooting cannons everywhere. There was a giant robot fight. There was the flood, can’t forget that one—“
“Everyone made it to the rooftops!” Marinette cut in.
“Everyone?” Tikki shot back.
Marinette drooped. “Oh… yeah, I thought things were quiet.” Her head shot up. “But that means—“
“That you saved Paris, and the world,” Tikki insisted. “Every single time. Because you’re wonderful, Marinette. The best Ladybug there could be and a hero through and throw. The stakes are high and you’ve risen to the challenge every time”
Marinette stared for a long moment, then shook her head. “I suppose so, Tikki.” She flashed a weak smile. “I guess I hadn’t realised just how much people were relying on me.”
A buzz reverberated across the room as she got a text.
“Gah! And that includes Alya. Come on, lets save the Ladyblog.” Marinette sprung to her feet. “With great power comes great responsibility, and that includes the responsibility to make sure Alya’s blog isn’t overrun by people comparing me to Jesus.”
“What wrong with that?” Tikki asked, innocently. “He was a great Ladybug.”
Marinette froze, then rounded on the Kwami. “One revelation at a time, Tikki!”