Chapter Text
Card Trick, Part I
Julia Lavigne was usually good with first impressions. It came with having one parent who was an attache who had helped several French ambassadors in a number of different countries, most recently in Greece, and another who was an actuary and could, therefore, work anywhere on the planet. She had lived in half a dozen different places and started multiple different schools. After the first couple, she had hit her stride, and in her subsequent first days she had been consistently lovely, and popular. Not wildly popular, mind you, because Julia had no desire to be the queen of her secondary school. That was far too much work when they were just going to move again in a year or so.
Collège Françoise Dupont shouldn't have been any different. Julia had gotten up extra early to curl her straight brown hair and pick out the right cute sundress for the occasion, pale blue with delicate little white flowers on it. She'd put on her favorite lip gloss, pulled on her comfortable flats. She'd event arrived at Françoise Dupont early to give her plenty of time to socialize. That part, unfortunately, had been what had led to this. It had all started with a card trick. Julia's dad loved them, and he'd been showing her how to do them. It was a fifty-fifty chance that the trick would work, but that thought hadn't bothered her when she'd offered to do it for two girls she'd been chatting to, Aurore and Mireille. The trick had fallen flat, which shouldn't have been a big deal at all. Julia's ego wasn't so small that it couldn't take a hit like that. No, it was what had happened next that really made her lose her temper.
As was her luck for the morning, the cards that she'd accidentally dropped, fingers still too clumsy to consistently do the tricks her dad performed with ease, blew away in the wind. Julia scrambled after them with Aurore while Mireille gathered together the few that hadn't fluttered off. It was still early enough in the day that students enrolled in one of the two nearby lycée options were still heading to their first classes. The girl that snatched up one of the cards out of the air just before it struck her face looked old enough to attend one, her dark hair done up in pretty waves and pinned into an updo on the right side of her head. "What's this trash?" she asked dismissively, before scowling at the two younger girls. "Does this belong to you?"
"Yes," Julia said, stepped forward and staring straight at the older girl. "It's mine. The wind blew it away."
"Ha!" The other girl barked out a derisive laugh. "Right, like Arielle didn't put you up to this. Go let a bunch of cards loose to mess up Maribel's hair before she even gets a chance to ask Arthur out!" Her voice got higher pitched on the last sentence as if she was mocking the aforementioned Arielle.
"But we don't even-" Aurore began to protested, puffing herself up like a furious little storm cloud.
"Oh shut it, you failure of a weather girl," the dark haired girl scoffed, cutting Aurore off mid sentence. The blonde girl's cheeks turned bright red and Julia was sure that it was only Mireille's speed in tackling her with a hug that kept the irate Aurore from beating the older girl over the head with her parasol. "As for you," the older girl sneered at Julia. "Maybe next time you'll think twice about getting involved in other people's affairs, if for no other reason than having your trash survive the aftermath." Then she ripped the card in half, both tattered ends fluttering down towards the ground. Julia watched in silence, her whole body shaking.
If they'd been ordinary paying cards she wouldn't have been nearly as upset. Ordinary playing cards were easy to replace, but these weren't. These had been hand painted almost a year ago, finished just days before her beloved grandmama had suffered a sudden, unexpected heart attack that took her life. These cards were the last birthday present Julia had ever gotten from Grandmama. The only reason Julia had brought them to school was because she'd learned the magic formula for making new acquaintances fast was something fun and then a little tidbit of personal information, like the fact that Grandmama had hand painted the cards.
Julia knelt, still shaking, and picked up the two pieces of the Ace of Hearts, doing her best to line them back up as her eyes blurred with angry tears. Even if she would have seen the little purple butterfly fluttering down to land on the card, she wouldn't have been able to predict what was going to happen next. Not like Aurore and Mireille could. After all, she'd been in Greece.
"It's so rude of that girl to treat someone else's property with such contempt," a voice crooned in her head just seconds after the butterfly touched down. "And so rude of her to take out her frustration with another on you. I can give you the power to make her pay, Magician. All I ask in return is that you bring me Ladybug and Chat Noir's miraculouses."
"Miraculouses?" Julia asked, staring at the ripped card without truly seeing it.
"Ladybug's earrings and Chat Noir's ring," the voice explained. "When those would-be heroes arrive to try to stop you, seize those items and bring them to me. In return, I will give you all the power you desire."
"Okay," Julia said, rage still roaring between her ears. "You have a deal." And darkness swarmed up her legs, rising up to consume her whole as Aurore and Mireille ran for help.
It was that one time in a blue moon that Marinette was actually going to be on time for school. Not just on time either. She was actually going to be a few minutes early so she could settle into her seat and chat with Alya for a few minutes before Mme. Bustier started class. Maybe she could even work up the courage to talk to Adrien without tripping over her own tongue. Of course, that lovely daydream was destroyed by Hawkmoth's latest akuma. Marinette was only a block or so away from Dupont when her phone chimed with a notification that Alya had gone live on the LadyBlog.
Marinette fumbled her phone, offering Tikki a thankful smile when the little god helped her recover it, and quickly swiped it unlocked. She clicked into the livestream in time to hear her best friend say, "That's right! I'm at the site of an akuma attack before Ladybug and Chat Noir!" Alya sounded absolutely delighted, but Marinette almost dropped her phone for the second time in under a minute.
"This is bad, Tikki," she hissed down at her purse, hoping no one was looking at her, as Alya kept chattering, turning the camera this way and that to capture as much of the action as she could while she sprinted after the akuma. "Alya could get seriously hurt!"
"Ladybug will just have to go rescue her," Tikki said in her sweet little voice as if it was as simple as that.
"I don't even know where she is," Marinette protested, only for her point to be immediately undermined when Alya called out the name of the lycée the akuma had arrived at to a backtrack of frightened screams. "Maybe if I hurry, I can still make it to school on time," Marinette murmured, quickly shoving her bag behind some decorative bushes outside a backyard garden's decorative fence. "Tikki, spots on!" The transformation rushed through her, filling her chest with a bubbling sense of warmth, and soon she was swinging across the rooftops of Paris towards a school she could be attending in a year.
The front courtyard of Lycée Sainte-Geneviève was in chaos. Students had dove for cover in dozens of bizarre places, doing their best to avoid a hail of playing cards that were slamming down with enough force to embed them into the cement. A girl with dark wavy hair was running for her life while her fellow students screamed at her to stay away from them. The assailant, a girl with long brown hair dressed in a black pantsuit with an equally black top hat perched on the top of her head at a slight angle, sent the cards after her target with nothing more than a sweep of her finger. Marinette swooped down in time to catch the dark haired girl and swing her away. Just behind them, half a dozen playing cards slammed into the concrete, only to fade out of existence in shimmers of black as the akuma seemed to fixate on Marinette.
The purple mask outline that always appeared when Hawkmoth was talking to one of his akumas appeared. The akuma studied Marinette, head tilted slightly to one side, and then let out a little sigh. "I suppose I'll just have to make you disappear first," the akuma said, her voice surprisingly bored. Most akumas were angry about the presence of Ladybug and Chat Noir in the middle of their revenge schemes. They saw Paris's heroes as a threat to the fulfillment of their plans, and rightfully so. Marinette had grown as Ladybug by leaps and bounds after the mess her first akuma cleansing attempt had created. She and Chat Noir were a solid, effective team, even with his incessant flirting, and they'd taken down every akuma Hawkmoth had sent their way.
This particular akuma didn't seem bothered by any of that. Instead, as she flicked her fingers, sending a hail of cards from nowhere after Marinette, who shoved the dark haired girl to one side and did a dive roll in the other way. The good news was that the akuma now seemed fully focused on Marinette, allowing the dark haired older girl to run away. The bad news was that this left Marinette absolutely no time to do anything but dodge, because getting hit with playing cards that could slice into concrete was not a good idea.
A hand reached down, casually pulling her out of harm's way, and a familiar voice said, "Looks like you started the party without me, m'lady."
"Sorry, kitty," Marinette replied, giving him her Ladybug grin. "But this akuma was eager to get started."
The akuma was staring at both of them, frowning as the purple mask outline appeared again. After a brief moment it flickered as she said, "Two on one doesn't seem like a promising set up." Then she smirked and added, "I suppose I'll have to try again later." Then she lifted the hat from her head with a flourish. Marinette's eyes widened as she turned the hat theatrically towards them before lowering it back onto her head. This time, instead of the top hat settling on her head at a jaunty angle, it seemed to swallow her whole, until at last it landed on the pavement only to vanish a moment later.
"Well that's convenient," Chat Noir said, sounding more than a little gobsmacked. Marinette nodded in agreement, silently mourning her lost chance to get to school on time, and likely her morning chances to be around Adrien. Any akuma that could disappear at will promised to make her day extra long.
"Let's split up," Marinette said, eager to get this over with so she could get back to more pleasant things, like planning every minute of her next chance to talk to Adrien. "The akuma is after one of the students at this school, a girl with dark wavy hair, so she probably hasn't gone far. If we find the target, we'll probably find the akuma."
"Anything for M'Lady," Chat Noir said with a little bow before leaping to a balcony and using that as a starting point to reach the rooftops. Marinette rolled her eyes at his blatant flirtation before swinging away in the other direction. The sooner she and Chat Noir wrapped this up, the sooner she could see Adrien.