Chapter Text
“Oh, come on!” she grunted between huffs. All the running began to strain her, although it was truly a miracle that her clumsy self hadn’t tripped over her own feet. “It’s not everyday Gabriel Agreste holds a high school-level design competition! The Gabriel Agreste! High school-level! And the time when he does, this happens!”
Marinette wasn’t a self-centered person, really. That would be Chloé Bourgeois. While Marinette normally wouldn’t be complaining about her personal problem out loud for the world to hear, it was hard not to when she found herself running away from some kind of magical supervillain who threatened to… turn the Parisians into cashiers, or something? She didn’t bother to find out, and frankly didn’t need to find out. Leave it to the superhero to deal with the villains’ odd whims and save the day. As an ordinary citizen, the best thing Marinette could do was to run away and find a place to hide to avoid being turned into… a cashier.
The entire predicament was weird for Marinette, and she was sure that the rest of civilians thought so, too.
So, while Marinette normally wouldn’t be complaining about her personal problem out loud for the world to hear, she was tired. She spent all night giving finishing touches to her dress for the competition. Of course, being overeager for the once in a lifetime chance to have her work judged by none other than Gabriel Agreste himself, she already finished her dress weeks prior, but she wanted to make everything as perfect as possible. Thankfully, her excitement helped her to go through the day; there was no way she could nap during class with a pounding chest, no matter how tired she was. However, Marinette was left a cranky mess when she had to run from the supervillain, because only then could she feel the pain in her bones from the lack of sleep. And the lack of sleep itself. Not to mention her worry about the competition, but not the way she thought she would be—would it be postponed? Cancelled?
Yelling to no one in particular seemed to be the only natural thing to do to release her frustration. It wasn’t like anybody would care, since everyone was busy running or taking covers to even hear her.
She soon followed suit, ducking under the bushes and crawled into a nearby shop after seeing people through the window motioning her to get inside. As soon as she got in, a gentle voice greeted her, “You should be safe here, dear.” Marinette turned to see a woman around her mother’s age, to which she replied with a quick thank you. “I hope the cat will come to the rescue very soon.”
Oh, right, the cat.
If he was known by any other name, Marinette wouldn’t know, but the cat was the only one capable of dealing with the supervillains. Some said that he was a superpowered human, some presumed that he was a magical half-cat-half-human creature, and some even claimed that he was an alien sent to the earth to deal with the evil, but regardless of what the superhero was, the cat ears and tail he donned earned him ‘the cat’ as a nickname. He was never around long enough after battles, nor ever spotted when there were no supervillainy shenanigans going on, and so there was no way to confirm anything to the mysterious superhero. Even Alya, Marinette’s best friend slash an aspiring journalist slash the owner of the infamous conspiracy website relating to the said mysterious being (regardless of Alya’s insistence on the website being “just a little harmless blog. Besides, who wants to actually believe a high-school student?”) was turned down by the black-clad hero when she tried to invite him to an interview session.
He kept the city safe; that was all that mattered.
As the feeling of dread slowly disappeared (well, as dreadful as ‘being turned into a cashier’ could be), Marinette could feel herself relax a bit. Having nothing to do in particular—anguishing over a potentially cancelled competition was a later matter—she started to pay attention to the conversation going on around her. Considering the situation, it was no surprise that it was all about the cat and how he would save the day this time.
Marinette noticed that it was methodical so far. A villain would erupt out of nowhere, seeking revenge on petty little things which, thankfully, wasn’t a huge threat to people’s lives or humanity as a whole (even though one could argue that having a world full of cashiers wouldn’t be that good to humanity). Then came the cat, also out of nowhere, jumping from rooftops to rooftops to catch the villain and defeat them for good. It wasn’t clear how it was even done, either, as usually the fight also happened on rooftops too far for surveillance cameras to capture (apparently the city council was proposing a budget for high-end drones just to solve this problem). Shortly after, any damage directly or indirectly caused by the villain would be magically restored to its previous state, although there were several cases where the magic got a bit excessive and suddenly there were more trees than before. As nice as it might sound, it was more of an inconvenience because the trees could grow in the middle of the road. Not just extra trees; some people even ended up having an extra car. And that wasn’t even the most extreme case! There was something about the Bastille being restored…
In those cases, the cat took care of it by destroying said objects through some means (undoubtedly magic), but nothing changed the fact that it happened—her history teacher just didn’t stop talking about the fortress that shouldn’t exist anymore for a whole week.
Soon, the buzz in the shop quieted down as the conversation died. Some people started to turn their attention to their own phones, but Marinette couldn’t bring herself to do the same. After all, she didn’t want to be greeted with an email saying that the design competition had been cancelled, at least not this soon. Deciding that she wanted to find some peace in the time being, she resorted to looking out of the window. Maybe she could find some billboard with Adrien’s face to stare at while she waited for the time to pass—or for the cat to deal with the villain, to be precise.
There was a billboard nearby—with a perfume ad Marinette had seen a million times already—and she tried her best to get lost in those mesmerizing green eyes and sweet smile, she really did, but the fact that Adrien Agreste was Gabriel Agreste’s son only brought her mind back to the competition. Needless to say, Marinette did not find peace.
In the end, she gave in and pulled out her phone. Her parents had the right to know that she was safe, after all. Thankfully (or not), there was no new email yet in her inbox. After sending a message to her parents and almost attempting to send Alya a message before realizing that she probably wouldn’t read it anyway, she pulled out her stylus and started mindlessly doodling things with her phone. Usually she would be sketching designs, but it just didn’t feel right.
After what seemed like forever (and two pages of doodles later), a bright light washed over the city, signaling the end of the battle. If Marinette could pick a favorite part of the battle, this would be it. She could almost feel the magic tingling all over her body, and seeing the city being magically restored was a breathtaking sight. It was like a miracle.
It was also a miracle that the competition ended up being postponed for a week. She was in no shape to face Gabriel Agreste after all she went through to avoid being turned into a cashier.
“I’m tired, Alya,” she groaned into her phone. With the threat gone, people began to return to the streets, and so did Marinette. Alya called her as soon as she was done with her business, gushing about the scoop she got about the superhero (exactly the reason why she never replied to Marinette's message during a battle), and after she was done with that, it was Marinette’s turn to complain about her predicament. “Can you imagine having to run that far?”
“Girl, I probably ran as much as you did, but I got sleep last night so no, I can't,” said Alya. “At least now you can get your beauty sleep.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m gonna do right after I got back to my room,” she stifled a yawn. “I’ll visit your blog later to see what that was all about. Why a cashier?”
“Apparently she was a cashier, and her manager yelled at her for some stuff. You know the rest,” Alya said without missing a beat. “Now you better get that sleep, Marinette. Where are you, anyway?”
“Not far from the school. I can see my house already,” she said, and thank god because her body was practically screaming in pain. “I’m gonna hang up, Aly—AAAAAAAAHH!”
Marinette thought she heard Alya saying something but she shoved her phone into her pocket before she could catch the rest. That cat was about to cross the street! And while there were no cars passing (it took a little while for activities to actually resume after an attack, after all), the pedestrian light was red. She quickly pulled the cat back to the sidewalk, lifting it to her eye level to face it straight on. “I know that the road is empty but do you see that, kitty? The light is red, which means you cannot cross. Though… I suppose cats don’t understand this kind of stuff.”
The cat’s green eyes, bright against the black fur, bore into hers. It mewled, as if understanding that it was being scolded. On a closer inspection, she noticed that the cat has a collar, black embroidered with bright green like its eyes, and a black tag with green paw print on it. It looked like the cat was not a stray; no wonder it didn’t understand how to cross the street.
Suddenly Marinette saw people crossing the street in her peripheral vision. It was only then she noticed that the light had turned green, and she was the only one left standing stupefied on that side of the road. Swallowing her embarrassment since apparently people saw her trying to scold a cat, she quickly crossed the road before the light turned red again. “Go. Return to your owner and be a good kitty, now,” she whispered one last time to the cat before putting it down on the ground.
Marinette was watching the cat run away when her phone buzzed in her pocket. “Marinette, what happened?!” Alya’s worried voice flooded into her ear as soon as she picked it up.
“I’m—I’m sorry, Alya! It’s alright! Everything’s alright!” She felt a pang of guilt from making Alya worry about nothing. “It was… This is gonna sound stupid, but there was a cat and it almost ran into the road so I, uh, saved it! And scolded it too—oh my god, Alya, people saw me talking to a cat! They will think I am a total weirdo won’t they? Agh, this is a disaster!”
“Whoa, calm down, Marinette,” Alya sounded quite taken aback. “While I’m glad that you're alright, don't you think you're worried over nothing there?”
“And I should just let it cross the street and get hit by a car that appeared out of nowhere?!”
“No, I’m not talking about that! I mean, surely people won’t care that you’re talking to a cat?” Alya sighed. “Or you know what? I’ll hang up, so you can get home quickly and have that beauty sleep.”
“Oh, right.” As the word ‘sleep’ was mentioned, Marinette was once again brought back to reality; the reality that she was tired and in a very dire need of sleep. “Right, sorry for snapping at you, Alya. I guess I’m just tired. Thanks for checking on me, by the way.”
“No biggie, that’s what friends are for! Now get some sleep!”
“Sure will,” Marinette giggled before ending the call. “I really should head straight home and crash onto my bed…”
***
It was a little past seven when Marinette woke up. She stretched, making her bones pop audibly, and started to take in her surroundings. She felt that her mood was considerably better than in the afternoon, now that she got enough sleep to function for the rest of the day. Not that there was much left to do for the rest of the day: having dinner, doing homework, and maybe checking Alya’s conspiracy website if there was still enough time.
She did exactly that—or at least, that was what she had in mind when she climbed down her bed. After having dinner with her parents (and the topic was, of course, the supervillain who was intent on turning people into cashiers, to which her dad commented with, “What would happen if it hit any one of us? We’re technically already cashiers after all, we take turn to tend the cash register of our bakery,” and only then Marinette thought that maybe it didn’t matter if she got hit, and she was running for nothing) Marinette walked back into her room to see a cat sitting right in the middle of her rug. It was the cat from before; there was no mistaking that collar, that tag, and those bright green eyes.
“Alright, I know I saved you before, but I don’t remember ever taking you…” she trailed off as her eyes wandered to the opened hatch leading to her balcony. “I don’t remember leaving that open either, but, okay, maybe I was just too tired and don’t remember opening it,” she said to no one in particular. “How did you find me, anyway?”
The cat meowed and leaped onto her chaise, snuggling against a peculiar wooden box. Huh, she wondered what that was. She didn’t remember ever seeing that kind of box—it was the size of a jewelry box, octagonal with red engravings on it—anywhere in the house. Was it a gift left for her, from her parents perhaps? She would have assumed that it was from the cat if it wasn’t for the fact that it was more unlikely. There was no way a cat could bring a box and place it neatly on her chaise, and didn’t cats usually bring dead birds or mice for a gift?
Curiosity got the better of her, and Marinette picked up the box. After sniffing it (just to make sure that it wasn’t packed with dead birds and mice, in case it was really from the cat), she opened it to find a pair of black earrings. Her face was filled with delight seeing the shiny new jewelry in her possession. Just a week ago, she told her mom about wanting to get extra allowance to buy new earrings since her current one was getting a bit too out-of-trend (Chloé just couldn’t stop humiliating her for it, but Marinette was very well aware that it was out-of-trend, Chloé or not), and in turn she would help out in the bakery more often. Her mom gave a not-very-straightforward answer of “let’s see,” but Marinette started spending more time in the bakery, nonetheless. Maybe her mom just wanted to surprise her?
It was a pair of stud earrings, adorned with polished black stone that glimmered under the light of her room. It was simple, yet beautiful. It was perfect.
Her moment of amazement was disrupted by a swirling red something that zoomed into her face. Marinette, too awestruck to be functioning normally, could only jump back as quick as she could. She fell to the floor—she assumed? She wasn’t really sure, but she felt that she fell—and saw a flying… bug? No, it was too big to be a bug—mouse? Bugmouse? Some creature, red in color with a big black spot on its forehead, staring at her with its big blue eyes.
“Please don’t panic,” it spoke—it could speak?! “My name is Tikki, and I—”
Apparently, Marinette flung a pillow from her chaise to the red creature. She wasn’t exactly aware of her actions, but she needed to get rid of that thing, all while trying not to verbally freak out. When her pillow seemed to go through the thing, however, she scurried to take the pillow back and stuffed it on her face instead, muffling her screams with it. She was contemplating on planting her face on the pillow forever to avoid seeing the red creature when she heard a call from downstairs. “Marinette! Is everything alright up there?”
“I-i-it’s alright!” she forced the word out from her mouth, glancing away from the direction of her chaise where the creature floated around. “I just tripped and fell. You know how clumsy I am, hahaha!”
“Alright, be careful next time, honey!”
“I-I will!”
Thankfully, her mom didn’t push further. But since the conversation was over, she had no choice but to face the thing again. Marinette could still feel her heart thumping erratically, but she could manage it. Hopefully.
Marinette slowly—very slowly—turned her head back to her chaise, half hoping that it was just her imagination and she would see nothing but the chaise, but that was quickly proven to be a futile wish because it clearly was still there, eyeing her with an apologetic expression. “Have you calmed down?” it asked with its tiny, high-pitched voice.
“I’m… not exactly calmed down, but I can manage,” Marinette said, giving it a nervous smile. “Sorry, what was it that you tried to tell me?”
“Oh!” It twirled in the air before flying towards Marinette, who instinctively inched away. “My name is Tikki. I am…” Its chatter trailed away, glancing behind Marinette as if looking for something. Marinette decided not to mind and gestured it to continue on. “Well, we can get into the details later on. Now let me ask you something: are you up to become a superhero?”
“What?!” Marinette’s eyes bulged. “I mean, that was a very flattering offer, but why? Isn’t there already a superhero out there?”
“Exactly,” Tikki nodded. “But, you see, we’re having a little difficulty with how it is right now, so it would be nice if he gets himself a partner. That’s why I am here, to ask you if you want to be his partner in fighting crime!”
“By ‘he’ you mean… the cat guy?”
“Yup!”
Marinette was effectively rendered speechless. She backtracked the events that led to her current situation, trying to make sense of it—of any of it. She started the day with no sleep, nervousness building up in her nerves as Gabriel Agreste’s high school-level design competition came nearer. School went as usual and she was heading home to pick up the Marinette-designed dress for the competition when a supervillain showed up from the direction of her house. She ran away to avoid getting hit by the villain’s laser beam and turned into a cashier, not without complaining about how it ruined her day, before hiding in some random shop and tried to pass the time by staring at Adrien’s picture doodling some stuff. After the coast was clear, she headed home, for real this time, and stumbled onto a cat trying to cross the street while the light was red. Trying to prevent the cat from walking to its death, she pulled it, scolded it, got stared at by passersby, and felt humiliated. She finally got home and welcomed that beauty sleep, woke up thinking that the rest of the day would go well, and now she had floating red… Tikki, whatever it was, trying to recruit her as a superhero.
No, actually, everything stopped making any sense ever since those supervillains started showing up. She shouldn’t even try to make a sense of it.
Marinette tried a more rational approach to the situation. Her? A superhero? While rationally she shouldn’t be opposed to the idea, it was… fishy, to say the least. After all, she suddenly had a creature sent to her and offered a job as a superhero! Not to mention that she already had a lot on her plate: schoolworks, helping out at the bakery, designing, and should she take her clumsiness into consideration? Nevertheless, it would be wise to decline.
“I’m not even a superhuman with superstrength, how could I become a superhero?” she asked.
Tikki’s enthusiastic response was not what Marinette was expecting. “Well, that’s what I am here for! I can lend you my power to defeat those supervillains!”
That didn’t work. She needed another excuse. “But even if you lend your power to me, don’t I need to, you know, know how to use it? The tricks, techniques, things like that—I’m not familiar with superhero-related things, after all.”
She had yet again provoked the opposite reaction she hoped Tikki would give her. “Practice makes perfect! I’ll teach you the ropes, and you’ll be swinging across the city before you know it!” Tikki started to gesture animatedly. “And of course, it’s not just me, but he’ll be training you as well. With the two of us, there’s nothing to worry about!”
“Yup, you heard her,” a voice chimed from behind her.
Marinette had never turned her head as fast as she did just now and she regretted it instantly because she wasn’t prepared for the surprise waiting for her. Standing right behind her, arms folded across his chest, was none other than the cat.
“Hi there,” he smiled at her.
Marinette screamed.