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Bunnyx was examining the present events from her Burrow. She needed to be on her guard constantly, she couldn’t relax. Someone was repeatedly causing glitches in the future she had to smooth.
“Do you think it came from Marinette?” Adrien asked, laying on his bed toying with the heart-shaped Valentine’s Day card. “She has the same handwriting after all. And it would make so much sense for the sender to be a classmate. They could have taken a sneak peek at my initial poem easily.”
“It could easily be Pigtails,” Plagg acknowledged. “How would you feel about that?”
“Plagg, you know she’s just a friend,” the boy rolled his eyes. How many more times did he have to stress this to his kwami for him to finally understand?
So good so far. Things in every possible future were running according to plan as Kitten Noir stuck to his guns about his feelings regarding the girl.
“Besides, she said to me herself that she’s in love with Chat Noir,” he continued.
“Like that’s any different...”
“But she has to be! Because if Marinette isn’t really in love with Chat Noir then why would she say that? She wouldn’t have lied if she didn’t have a really good reason for it. What could be such a good reason?” Adrien contemplated the matter, abandoning the card and sitting up on the edge of his bed.
“Teenage girls will be like that sometimes, attention-seeking and all, don’t read too much into it kid!” Plagg changed his approach immediately, rather keen on dropping the conversation.
“Nah, Plagg, Marinette isn’t like that. She’s kind and honest, like an everyday Ladybug. Oh… I went after Ladybug when we met. I got so distracted by her confession that I totally forgot about how strange that was. Marinette appearing where Ladybug had just disappeared. Could it be…?”
“Don’t read too much into it!” Plagg said casually but the panic in his voice was evident.
“If she was trying to cover her identity because I got too close to it, that would explain why she was lying like a charm. But that means that Ladybug is Marinette and Marinette is-”
“What, don’t be ridiculous, Marinette is Marinette!” the kwami outright pleaded.
“Ladybug! Marinette is Ladybug!” Adrien jumped to his feet in realization, a wide enthusiastic grin spread all across his face. “Wow, that makes a lot of sense! They are so similar, both in appearance and personality. I’m such an idiot, how didn’t I notice this before?! This is brilliant!”
“Yeah, how didn’t you...” Plagg grumbled resignedly.
Not ideal but everything was progressing normally so far, no glitch in the future yet.
“Plagg, this is wonderful! This means that since I’m in love with Ladybug, I’m in love with Marinette! I have connected the dots! I was in love with her all along!”
In this exact moment, things ran off their rails. The future turned upside down, chaos consuming every possible reality. It was versatile, really, the moon vanishing, Paris underwater, Paris on fire, post-apocalyptic abandoned Paris. Fourteen million six hundred and five different options, one more horrible than the other. There was only one, where things turned out as they should have been all along. Adrien and Marinette with three adorable kids and a hamster, living the life they were destined for. Maybe for someone, it would have been a good enough reason for hope. Bunnyx considered it a pretty slim chance, a reason to set the odds right.
“You didn’t connect shit,” she murmured to herself as she rewound the picture.
She stepped out of her Burrow and into Adrien’s room, minutes before the boy came out of his bathroom.
“Hi, Plagg, fancy running into you!” She greeted the kwami with a deadpan expression on her face.
“Oh, not again!” he cried in frustration. “What did he do now?”
“It would be wise to get rid of that card finally,” Bunnyx advised, pointing at said item that lay on the bedside table, undisturbed so far. “Not that I mind, I had to come back at least fifty times because of it, but I really do. Just purge it already!”
“Not that I’m against destruction, I’d normally do it with pleasure, but he holds onto it really dearly,” the kwami huffed, taking the card and hiding it behind some unused books.
“Then just help him snap out of it or else we have two incredibly long years ahead of us.”
The door handle of the bathroom creaked, forcing Bunnyx to retreat to her hideout. Was this the 25,912th time she had to set the timeline right or the 25,913th? Anyway, she was clearly not getting paid enough to endure this nonsense.