Chapter Text
Marinette threw herself back when she opened the box, pressing herself against the small table in the corner of her room. “A giant bug! A—a mouse! A bug mouse!”
Whatever it was floated in the middle of the air, red and clearly not natural. It spoke out in a squeaky little voice, “Everything’s okay! Don’t be scared!”
A voice cut through the air from below them, causing everything to still. “Marinette, get down here. There’s something on the news that you should see.”
The air stood thick between them, and hoarsely, Marinette called, “I’ll be down in a minute.” She didn’t take her eyes off the creature.
It floated to her. “I’m a kwami. I give you powers, if you choose to wear the Miraculous and accept them. I can help you become a superhero.”
Marinette’s eyes widened. She grabbed a cup which sat on the counter behind her and put it over the kwami.
“Whatever makes you feel safer,” it said. Carefully, slowly, without turning away, she opened the hatch on her floor and climbed down, joining her parents in the living room. This was odd—the bakery was left unmanned.
Live video footage on the local news played, showing a man talking over the city. He had a gray and purple super suit, like one of the American superheroes—it covered his face. He looked quite horrendous, but the screen read New hero to protect Paris!
“...to protect you from a new threat that the city faces. A so-called ‘Guardian’ walks among you, hiding the ultimate power of the universe. It is far too powerful for any one person to wield, and I plan on taking this power back and giving it to the people, as it should be.
“The ‘Guardian’ may send agents after me, wielding the Miraculous, special jewels to give them power. I will have champions to stop these menace and get their Miraculous before they can destroy the world.”
The camera lingered on his face for a moment more, zooming out to show he was standing on a rooftop—then he jumped away, out of sight from the cameras.
It panned to a reporter who began talking, faster than what was comfortably understandable. Marinette ran upstairs to get to that thing—the kwami—whatever it was called. It was an agent of evil, wasn’t it? She looked at the cup but found it empty.
“This is bad!” It spoke up from behind her and she jumped away from it, knocking over the cup. Scooting on her butt, she quickly put distance between herself and it. The Miraculous—earrings—were left on the floor, more toward the kwami than her.
“You’re—you’re from the Guardian!” she said. “I have to give those to the police!”
“Marinette, no!” it said, flying up to her face. “You don’t understand. That’s the man who stole a Miraculous from the Guardian. He’s the one who’s evil. The Guardian is sworn to protect the Miraculous. Who knows what he’ll do?”
“Why should I believe you!” she shrieked.
It remained silent, pivoting around the room for something. When it found nothing, it turned back to her.
“The two most powerful Miraculous can be merged to wield the ultimate power of the universe and be granted a wish at a terrible price. One of them is the Ladybug Earrings, which you’ve just been given. The other is the Cat Ring, which was given to someone else. If the Guardian wanted to wield the power, why would he give them away? And to two people who aren’t allowed to know each other’s identities?”
The air was still, but Marinette said nothing. If what the kwami said was true, then that was a big gap in this hero’s story. But it could just as easily be lying.
“How do I know it’s not the hero’s Miraculous which is needed to wield the power of the Miraculous?”
It sighed. “Do you believe that you’re evil?” it asked, coming up to her face, to the point where she could even smell its breath. It smelled sweet, like a cake.
“No,” she whispered.
“Why would the Guardian give the Miraculous to someone who’s not evil?”
“Because he’s lying to me?” Still, she didn’t put her heart into it—it was a question, not a definitive statement.
“Why do you believe the Guardian’s lying to you and Hawk Moth isn’t?”
They paused. Marinette stood up, walking over to the small hexagonal box and picking it up.
“If I did believe you—which I’m not saying I do—how would these work?”
It rushed over to her. “You have to wear the earrings and say, ‘Tikki, spots on!’”
“Is that your name? Tikki?”
She nodded, taking them out of the box and stepping up to the mirror, carefully putting them in her ears. Immediately, they flashed from red and black dots to plain black—they truly are magic.
“I don’t know what’s going on yet, but I may very well turn these over to the police.”
Tikki closed her big indigo eyes. “I hope you won’t do that, Marinette. But first at least meet your partner.”
“What are my powers?” she asked.
“You can call out for your Lucky Charm and use it to fix whatever’s going on. It’ll be like a puzzle piece, a perfect tool for whatever you need. Once you’re done with it, it’ll be used to fix whatever your partner destroyed. That’s their power, destruction.”
“Tikki?”
“Yes?”
“If what you’re saying is true and it’s actually Hawk Moth that’s evil, what would happen if he won?”
“I’m not sure. Whatever happens will have the ultimate price, but since it’s never happened before, we don’t know what that is. Just that it’ll be detrimental to humanity.”
She nodded, calling out, “Tikki, spots on!”
Bounding across the rooftops, Chat Noir felt free.
Mostly, though, he just wanted to find his partner. Maybe that would clear things up—because clearly something weird was going on.
He noticed, though, the way people were staring at him, pointing, whispering, filming.
They thought he was a villain. He understood why. Part of him wanted to agree.
Maybe that was why he was immediately skeptical—it was the same part of him which always wanted to say yes to his father, the one that sat back in the car that morning and didn’t go to school.
When he realized that people calling on their phones were calling the police, Chat Noir retreated into the shadows. A nook on a building hid him well enough, and he caught his breath considering what to do, how to find his partner.
For a moment, he examined his staff. If he held the button on it, it grew, clearly magical in nature as it never stopped getting longer and never got too heavy. If he pressed the button—
A screen appeared.
Call.
Contact List:
Ladybug Miraculous Holder.
That must be his partner, then.
He hit the button.
It only rang once before they answered.
“...hello?” he asked.
A sigh sounded. “You must be my partner.”
“And you are?” he asked, smiling already. Finally, someone who was on the same page as him.
“Um—I’m—Ladybug.”
“Well, Ladybug, nice to meet you. I’m Chat Noir.”
“Did you see that new hero?”
“Hawk Moth?”
“Was that his name? I missed the beginning of the broadcast.”
“We should talk. Where are you?”
“I—I’m not somewhere we can meet. You?”
“A random building on a random street.”
Ladybug didn’t say anything else. Chat Noir imagined they were thinking the same things: If we meet in public, we’ll be arrested. If we don’t both know where we’re going, we’ll never be able to meet .
“Okay, I’m gonna find a random building to camp out on then I’ll text you the address. I assume we can text on these things—I don’t know. We need to figure this out.”
“Agreed.”
Ladybug hung up, and Chat Noir hung out for a while more until he received the message.
Ladybug found a suitable place to meet with her partner and messaged the address—they could text, thank God.
And then she waited.
Chat Noir came after a while, joining her in the small nook she’d found—on three sides, they were protected by the buildings which rose higher than the one they stood on. On the other side, they were protected by a clothesline hung with big sheets.
Dipping gracefully in, her partner met her with a bow. “Pleased to meet you.”
She carefully stepped away from him. “I don’t even know if I trust you yet. Just... let’s talk. I’m Ladybug.”
“Chat Noir.”
“Your pronouns?”
“What?”
“Like, should I call you he? They?”
“Uh, he. You?”
“She/her.”
“And you got a Miraculous today?”
“Which you’d know if you were working for the Guardian.”
If what Tikki said was true, then he got his Miraculous at the same time as her and he knew as much as she did. If what Hawk Moth said was true, then he could be working with the Guardian to confuse her.
She would guard the earrings just in case.
“I can see you’re skeptical of this, then.”
“You’re not?”
He met her eyes, his face conflicted, genuine. “I have a feeling. I don’t like Hawk Moth, and I can’t imagine there’s a conspiracy which involves getting two random teenagers to do the bidding of an evil ‘Guardian.’ Why isn’t he doing this work on his own? Seems less risky.”
“Maybe he can’t,” she suggested. “Maybe he’s too sick or injured. Maybe that’s what the ultimate power is—it’ll keep him alive.”
“Wouldn’t he just use the power if he already had the Miraculous?”
She looked to the sky, anywhere but her partner’s eyes. “What if he’s lying and it’s really the Butterfly Miraculous he needs to wield the power?”
The boy stepped up to her. She finally looked to him, examining his suit. If they were villains, they didn’t look out of place. He wore all black, a jacket covering over the top half of his body. Military boots and knee pads decorated his legs, and green highlights decorated the entire thing. His face was protected by a mask going over his lips and nose, a green cat nose and whiskers taking away what would normally be intimidating and sleek. Still, if he pulled his hood over his face, he’d look like an assassin from a video game. For now, blond hair fell in his eyes, giving him a more just-rolled-out-of-bed vibe.
Her outfit was only marginally less intimidating, and only because his was all black, she knew. Most of her suit was red with black spots, but from the thigh down it was inverted, darkness broken up by dots of red. On its own, it wasn’t too bad—even cute. But over the suit she had a dark cape, again with the red spots, and a hood which she could pull up if she needed it. Her mask rested over her eyes, but it hardly made a difference—again, if she pulled the hood up, she’d give people a proper reason to be scared of her.
“You’re overthinking this,” he said. “We don’t know what’s going on, but if we assume that Hawk Moth is the good guy and we’re wrong, it’s over. As it is, everything’s neutral. We can stop either side from winning just by keeping our Miraculous.”
They made heavy eye contact. Unlike her, his eyes were clearly altered by his Miraculous—the pupil, a cat eye slit; the whites gone, replaced with green.
“You’re right,” she said. “That much is true.”
He smiled at her—she couldn’t see his mouth, of course, but his eyes crinkled. It was so genuine, so obvious, that she almost matched his expression.
“We have to trust each other,” he said. “If we can’t do that, we’ll get nowhere. Okay?”
Ladybug clenched her teeth. He was probably right—if they had no allies, they had no chance of winning no matter who was right and who was wrong.
“For now we’ll wait on it, then?” she asked. “Until we have a better sense of who Hawk Moth is and what he wants. Or maybe the Guardian will approach one of us directly.”
He nodded. “Looks like it’s just you and me.”
Ladybug rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say.” Quickly, she threw up her yoyo, which hooked onto one of the taller buildings, and made her way down an ally.
She’d walk home, despite the distance—it was most certainly the safest option for her.