Chapter Text
“Here you are, Monsieur .” The cute, dark blue-haired, half Asian girl said as she handed her customer a transparent box containing a delicious-looking fresh Dark Chocolate Salted Caramel Oreo Pie inside. “Enjoy your pie!”
“Thanks, Pixie,” a tall buff man with a white fringe in his hair that looked like he had just come out of a gang fight replied. He was about to walk out of the bakery when he suddenly looked back at the tiny girl, who looked no more than sixteen. “Oh, by the way! I sent you a link on Twitter to our team in Miraculous if you’re ever interested. We could really use a Mage.”
A Mage. “Pixie” internally laughed at the lie she told people. As admirable Mages were, she knew she can never be as precise, calculating, and accurate as mages. Unlike her pink-haired friend, Alix, who made a name for herself with the name BuniX online.
BANG BANG!
She was jolted back into reality by the sound of gunfire just outside her shop. The shots were followed by a few minutes of muffled shouting and screaming, then finally, silence.
Gunfire wasn't uncommon in Paris, being the city where the Agreste manor was located and all. Though it did suck that she has to close up shop early. Just as she was actually having a good day for once!
Looking outside, it became clear why there was a shooting. An Agreste car, which probably had her friend Adrien occupying it, had just passed by in a hurry to get away from Parisian rebels.
“Marinette!” a familiar voice startled her just as she was closing up the last of the shop blinds. Think of the cat-like human and he shall appear.
“Kitty! You scared me,” scolded the girl as she hurriedly closed the bakery and lead the blond upstairs.
You see, if they thought that it had already been hard for her group of friends to find time to hang out with the young Agreste while they were at collège, it was even more so now that his father had been officially declared a dictator by the general public.
Even though everyone knew that Adrien was nothing like his father, he was still targeted by people that opposed his father’s ruling. No one knew that he, himself, was a “Masked Hero,” which was what people called the inner court of individuals rebelling against Gabriel Agreste, or what we know as the class of Miss Caline Bustier in collège.
Together with the help of their whole class, they led people to safe houses for those that were taken away from their homes, they plotted to take down politicians that are usually connected to their own parents and planned to take down Gabriel’s reign once and for all.
Enough of that though!
Marinette’s POV
Putting on the last of my ACCESSOR HARMONIC WSH2 headpiece and bodysuit, I turned to Adrien one more time with a nod as the world around my vision changed.
<Loading....>
You see, all of France has been looking for a way to escape reality lately. After people just stopped trying to fix what’s already broken, most lost all reason to keep going. And soon, the rest of the world followed suit.
Then came Tikki and Plagg Lenoir Wang with their video game design company, Kwami, who became the heroes of many who wanted the said escape.
They showed us that we can go everywhere without going anywhere.
In their virtual reality MMORPG, you get a chance to live a life you can live.
This once small company saw the future…
And they built it.
They gave us a place to go.
A place that’s very…
.·:*¨༺ Miraculous ༻¨*:·.
It's a place where the limits of reality are your imagination.
<Please enter your code and password>
Everyone comes here for the escape, but they stay because of all the things they can be.
<385147>
A tall Cleric giant that devoted themselves to the church of Fúcóng mìfēng.
<{******}>
A female half-orc noble that’s in hiding as a bard at a pub filled with men.
<Access Granted>
Tall? Beautiful? Scary? Different sex? A different species? Realistic? Cartoonish? It’s all your call! Here, anything can happen.
<Welcome back, Coccinelle >
Here, most people do whatever they want to do, whatever their dream is. This is why death is such a risk in the game. Your avatar can come back to life, sure, but you lose all your stuff. Everything you’ve ever worked for. And so losing your shit means losing your shit.
<■■■■60%■□□□□>
<■■■■90%■■■■□>
Thankfully, there are things such as duel requests, where you can PK without losing anything but a couple of experience points, depending on how much you flop that battle.
<Finished!>
I glanced up and down the trees of Miracle Forest. My virtual surroundings looked almost (but not quite) real. Everything inside the game was beautifully rendered in three dimensions. Unless you drew focus to something and stopped to examine your surroundings more closely, it was easy to forget that everything you were seeing was computer-generated.
I’d heard from Adrien that if you accessed the simulation with a new state-of-the-art immersion rig like what he had at home, it was almost impossible to tell from reality.
BEEP BEEP.
A floating scroll appeared and unfolded to my right just as I heard the beeping. On it was an image of an Elf Huntress with blonde hair and black highlights, and a golden tiara around her head. Beneath that were two options. A red button that said DECLINE and a green one that said ACCEPT.
Accepting the call from Abeille, I braced myself for my friend’s verbal torture.
“Where are you?! Chaton’s already here and you’re late!” the elf’s shrieking voice greeted rather rudely. “Are you out of town? Urgh. You’re ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous!”
“Sorry Queenie, I forgot I logged off while running from the little demon.”
Who’s this little demon? Ibn_al_Xuffasch. He never engaged in PK, but he wouldn’t stop asking me for duels! It was bad enough that I already had to deal with R0B1N.
“Honestly, just woman up and ask him out if he’s so persistent.” Wait, what? “It’s obvious he’s just another one of your little admirers.”
“It’s not like that! He just wants to, and I quote, ‘prove that I am more superior than you who’s not even in our guild’ and all that,” I said as I gathered some herbs stuck to trees while swinging back to the city.
Red City
Home of the two ancient artifacts that have never been found. Or, well, the public hadn’t found.
Ryuko and I found the Dragon Choker last year after I solved the riddle on where it could be. I just needed someone “worthy” of wielding it. After that, she’d been working day and night to perfect her swordsmanship to win 4 different types of swordsmanship tournaments in real life to unlock the artifact.
Then there was the Ladybug miraculous, which was now in a place that only Tikki, Plagg, Adrien, and I knew about.
Why ? you may ask.
I mean, someone could still find it but it was unlikely… unless they knew Fu, too.
That’s because Tikki made it so.