Chapter Text
Today is the day! Bridgette rushed down the stairs and greeted her mom in a rush to get to school and get the day over with.
“Don’t forget your lunch!” Her father called as she rushed out of the bakery door.
“Thanks Papa!”
Today was going to be a good day, Bridgette could feel it. Ever since the day three months ago when she had met her team she had wanted to be able to hang out with them like four normal teenagers.
“You can’t tell them!” Tikki had been angry when Bridgette revealed herself to all her teammates. But they collectively decided to suck up the negative side effects of knowing, they were a team after all!
And what luck that her teammates were also all attending her school! She waved to Emma, not Melodie currently, who was standing in front of the school waiting for people. She had her blonde hair in braided pigtails and she was wearing a purple sweater.
“AH! La- Bridgette! Why are you running? We have another 20 minutes before school starts,”
Bridgette threw her hands on her knees when she came to a stop and said between breathes, “I’m just, excited, to see everyone!” She stood up again and gave an embarrassed smile. Emma threw her arms around her.
“Oh my god! You’re so cute like this!” Well Bridgette was louder as Ladybug, Emma was more soft-spoken in her hero form, so the sudden yelling took Bridgette a little by surprise. Tikki and Emma’s kwami, Bebbe, managed to fight themselves out of the aggressive hug before Bridgette started hugging back.
Emma had Picked Bridgette up and was swinging her around now as the two kwami looked on fondly. “Aren’t they just the cutest?,” Bebbe commented.
“If they keep this up they might be mistaken for a reunited couple!” Tikki agreed. And just like that the girls got embarrassed and stopped.
“Ah! Hey!” A voice came from down the street, they looked to see the other two members of their team walking over.
“Sorry are we interrupting something?” Not Sparrow, Louis teased them. Louis had been the class clown since he came to the school, so Bridgette had been surprised that he was her most serious friend. On the other hand Bridgette was sort of sad she hadn’t guessed he was the super hero. His jacket and hat were the exact same shade of green that Sparrow’s clothes were.
“Can I have a hug too Bridgette?” Mime or rather, Hugo asked and held his arms out. His hair was parted differently and he had on a white shirt with blue stripes. Other than that Bridgette hadn’t been able to identify any differences between Hugo or Mime yet.
Emma grabbed Bridgette’s shoulders and flung her away from the boys.
“No way! Bridgette’s mine!” All the small leader of the group could do was make a sound somewhere between a squeak and a squawk and the whole group started laughing after. As they walked into school Hugo eventually got his hug (Louis too!) and they all headed to find a place for their newly formed group to sit during lunch.
They found a comfy bench near the garden that looked like no one had claimed it and sat down, from up there they could see all the students flooding into the school now that they only had ten minutes to class.
“Hey who’s that?” Bridgette pointed to a single figure in the car drop off area. He was tall, blonde and looked like he hadn’t slept in six years.
“Don’t know him,” Hugo started. “But I did hear that we were getting a middle of the year transfer! That must be him!”
Bridgette was looking at the boy, something about him just seemed lonely. It reminded her of the way she was before Ladybug and the team, of yesterday before she had a defined friend group at school. “Let’s go say hi to him!” she yelled and got off the bench.
“Do we have to?” Emma asked but she was already walking with the group so that was the answer to her own question.
The boy hugged a woman with black and red hair before she got into a car and drove off, she seemed a little young to be his mother so maybe she was his sister? That didn’t matter, Bridgette was set on making a new friend today! The group shifted behind their happy go lucky leader but still they followed her like a bunch of lost puppies.
“Hi there!” She greeted and the new kid turned around and glared at them. “Are you new here? Do you need us to show you around?”
He looked the group up and down for another second “No.” on that note he turned on his heel and kept walking.
And like that, the school yard changed to a battle field and the person they were trying to befriend was now the enemy akuma. Hugo gave support to their wounded leader, and Louis went onto the counter attack.
“Are you really sure? We’ve been hanging out here since we were in primary school,” He threw his arm around the new kid and the sudden movement of being pulled down to louis’ height caused his eyes to widen before annoyance set in. “You hang with us and we’ll show you the ropes of the school.”
The new kid thought about something for a little bit before grabbing the arm Louis had thrown around him and twisting it behind Louis’ back, pushing him into the wall. “Leave me alone,” he stated and ‘Sparrow’ fell to defeat. At this point Emma was fuming.
“Hey you!” Emma ran up to where Louis was still slumped against the wall, “You don’t just do that when people are trying to help you!”
The boy turned around again, even more annoyed and looked at the scene they had made once again. “Evidentially, I did,” and with that he turned back around.
Before she was thinking (Not that thinking about it would have stopped her) Emma was running at the boy, ready to punch the base of his neck. Fist fights were not lady like, but Bridgette was their lady anyway.
She got a clean hit on the back of his neck and that caused him to stumbled forward and freeze. ”Hah! That’s what you get for hurting my friend!” all the training that Melodie did, all of Emma’s fencing lessons, could not have prepared her to react fast enough to what happened next.
The new kid dropped his bags, turned around on his heel, Grabbed her shoulders, and kneed her in the gut. Emma toppled back, Hugo and Bridgette came running over to calm the situation down, and they had too.
But Emma wasn’t one to lose easily so when Hugo told her to go over and apologize, she walked over with her head down getting in his personal space and punched him square in the jaw. And at that point no one was willing to try and break it up.
It only lasted about a minute before the Principle finally yelled for the both of them to stop and follow him to his office. Emma had always hated the owl filled room, too many eyes, and from the surprised look on the new kid’s face he had come to the same conclusion.
“So, let’s hear both your stories,” He stated and they both looked at each other for a second before Emma started.
“He attacked my friend! I was acting to protect Louis!” she spat.
“Your friend had me in a headlock!” The new kid stated loudly. At least she got more than three words out of him.
The Principal looked between the two of them and sighed, “Félix Sancoeur, you were expelled from your last school for fist fights, correct?”
‘Félix’ looked shocked at the statement but just sunk lower into his chair. Emma laughed behind her hand.
“And Emma, You are not in the best standing yourself,” Emma grounded. So what if she’d had five different detentions this semester already. Félix mimicked the motion Emma had made earlier.
“Since the two of you seem to be best friends already, I’ll be nice and give you both some time to spend together after school.” He wrote up the two detention slips, “Don’t be late and have fun explaining this to your mothers,”
Emma was about to grumble out that the Principal knew that her mother passed away, but voted against creating more of a scene.
“My parents are dead,” Félix said as he took the paper and turned to leave.
“Well aren’t you special,” Emma muttered under her breath hoping he would hear it. Perhaps for the good of everything, he didn’t.
Emma found her friends standing in a small crowd right next to the door, Bridgette was now watching Félix leave with a faraway look in her eyes. Emma prayed that her airheaded leader would not fall in love with the worst boy in existence.
“Look what I got from all this,” Emma waved her slip like it was a prize. Hugo glared at her and the noise was enough to get Bridgette’s attention (finally).
“Ahh! When is it? Are you going to miss patrol?” Bridgette asked and ripped the paper from Emma’s hand. From the way her shoulders slumped Emma guessed that the answer was ‘yes’.
“Way to go Emma, our first patrol when we all know each other and you go and get detention, again,” Louis quipped.
“You have no room to judge, you’re there just as often as me!” Emma glared at her friend.
Hugo reached over and put a hand on Bridgette’s shoulder, “You know we can just push patrol back an hour or two,” they were all headed to their respective classes, or at least Hugo and Bridgette were, Emma and Louis were chasing each other down the hall.
“Yeah, and we’ll have lots of chances to hangout before patrol later!” Bridgette flashed one of her confident smiles.
They all split up and went their separate ways to their classes bumping into each other in the halls and the ones they shared. (They all agreed to get a table together in History before the year ended!)
It was now twilight and Bridgette, Hugo and Louis were all gathered behind the school, away from the prying eyes of pedestrians and security cameras. Tikki, Zetta and Kippu were all floating next to their respective partners who were all playing poker at the moment.
As the she folded her hand Bridgette stretched and looked at the sky, “I think we should transform soon-ish, the sun’s setting,”
Louis made an incredibly risky move, and it was obviously a bluff. “Well we don’t really need to start for another 90 minutes until Emma gets here,” Bridgette grumbled and fell down onto the ground. From this angle the whole world looked upside down, and the orange of the sky was mixing with the track and sand.
Even in the sea of orange, Bridgette still managed to make out a small, angry dot of purple that grew into Emma. “Hey, what happened to your detention?” Bridgette asked, not bothering to move.
Emma huffed and sat down next to Hugo, “deal me in,” she said and held out her hands for cards.
“The other kid didn’t show up to detention, so the Principal rescheduled it for next week,” Bebbe said in the place of her partner.
Bridgette threw herself up in time to receive a new set of cards, “Well that’s great! We’ll just be headed off after I win this game!” she gave a cocky smile and all her friends had now decided they wanted to win.
The game lasted an hour before they had all agreed they needed to get going, and that they would settle this later. There were no longer and traces of the sun left in the sky, so all the lighting came from the street lights and buildings.
Right now Ladybug and Melodie were running their end of the patrol, but something seemed wrong with the lights to Melodie.
“Hey Ladybug, does it look like there’s something on that window over there?” She stopped and pointed to the one window of light that was shaped differently than the others. Ladybug identified the building as the Grand Paris Hotel.
“I don’t know, we could check it out if you want,” Ladybug said and the two of them walked slowly up to the hotel before climbing up to the level of the window.
As they got closer they saw that it wasn’t a piece of cloth like Ladybug had thought but it was a person, a person who was somehow dressed more gaudy than they were.
The person got a little jumpy when he noticed Ladybug climbing to him. “Who’s there?” He yelled down. Ladybug giggled and swung herself up on the awning of the room next to his. Melodie did the same on the other side and he immediately knew he was surrounded despite never looking at her.
“I’m just your neighborhood superhero!” Ladybug said with a wink. Now that Ladybug had gotten a good look at him she could tell that his all black leather get up was supposed to resemble a black cat.
“Guess that makes me the sidekick,” Melodie giggled.
“Huh, so what are you doing here?” the guy asked as he looked ahead, trying to look like he wanted to be there. Trying and failing.
“Well. Do you need any help?” Melodie asked him in her most innocent voice possible.
“I, uhh, kinda yeah,” the guy muttered. “I’m not very good my powers yet, and I got stuck up here…”
Ladybug bit her tongue to keep from laughing. Melodie was doing a much better job of holding it in, looking genuinely worried for the stray cat they had found.
“You have a Miraculous right?” Ladybug asked, she saw him flinch at the word but slowly nod, good at least he was wary. “Then, just like, jump. Your kwami parenter should protect you,”
He nodded and then stood up but he backed up into the wall scared. “I uh, don’t think I can,” Melodie was also standing, trying to encourage him.
“It’s easy! Look at this!” she jumped off hers and went floating beautifully to the ground.
It scared the stray cat even further. “I can’t,” Ladybug had had enough.
“Alright then!” She grabbed the boy by the waist and under the shoulders. “Upsy daisy!” she said. (Melodie's cuteness was rubbing off on her.) The cat boy yelped when she picked him up and threw his arms around her neck in fear.
And with that Ladybug jumped and maybe not with the grace of a ballerina, but the power of a firefighter, she landed and put the boy down.
He was panting, the jump must have really scared him. “There you go, you’re fine,” she patted his shoulder. What kind of cat was scared of heights anyway?
“I yeah, thanks I need, needed that,” He had sat down on the ground and Melodie plopped herself next to him.
“You’re like us yeah?” She asked him. “That means you have a partner you can trust! They’ll keep you safe,”
“It’s not that I don’t trust him! I trust him a lot actually,” he looked down. “It’s just that Cat claws are much better for climbing up things you know?” this got Melodie to giggle.
The stray stood up and bowed to Ladybug, “My name is Cat Noir, may I inquire the name of my savior?” He took her hand and kissed it lightly before she pulled it away.
“I’m Ladybug, don’t thank me. I was just doing my job.”
“Job?” Cat Noir looked at her confused, what rock did this ‘Cat Noir’ Live under?
“We go around and save Paris from the evil clutches of Hawk Moth!” Melodie jumped up and happily stated, “Though we goof off a lot too.”
“Sounds like a good life,” Cat Noir smiled at the two of them. Ladybug was getting ready to leave, when Melodie opened her mouth again.
“Hey do you want to come and meet our other friends?” At that Ladybug pulled her team mate aside to have an emergency meeting, because there was no way in hell she was letting some idiot who couldn’t jump off a three story awning by himself onto her team.
“Are you really sure that’s a good idea? What if he’s an akuma?” Ladybug muttered to her friend.
“Please, he’s not nearly smart enough for that,” At least they agreed on one thing about the cat boy. “Besides, he said he has a Miraculous and that means that Hawkmoth is after him. We can’t have Hawkmoth getting any Miraculous!” Melodie whispered aggressively.
“I guess you do make a good point, something about that stray bothers me though,” Ladybug mumbled. Melodie looked at her quietly until they were interrupted by their topic of discussion.
“Uhh hey you’re friends,” He started and they both looked at him. “You’re friends aren’t Blue and Green are they?”
“Um yeah their costumes are if that’s what you’re asking…” Ladybug replied not bothering to turn to face him.
“Well, it looks like they could use some help then,” When they looked back the cat boy was pointing to the street and there they could see Mime and Sparrow fighting what looked to be an akuma.
“Oh geez! Why didn’t they call us?!” Melodie shouted and ran toward the fight, flaming lance at the ready. Ladybug trailed not far behind her, completely forgetting the useless cat.
“Where’s the akuma!” Ladybug screamed to Mime when they locked eyes.
“In the charm on its neck!” he yelled as he fell to the ground where the akuma had thrown them. soon it started talking in the voice of its’ host.
“Why don’t you all just give it up? They are just little pieces of jewelry!” the thing giggled in a little girl’s voice. This one was more focused than others, they had to be careful. Just as Ladybug opened her mouth to tell everyone just that, out of nowhere a rope came and trapped her upside down. When she looked around to assess the situation she saw everyone else was just as stuck; they were screwed.
The monster came over to Ladybug first, “You know, showy earrings aren’t really in anymore,” Bridgette, too scared to hold her Ladybug persona, closed her eyes and waited for the pain of the earrings being ripped out. Instead she heard a voice that was both foreign and all too familiar.
“Hey! Kid! Don’t go picking on people when they’re down!” Cat Noir, Cat Noir was saving them. Ladybug wanted to facepalm but she was still tied up and upside down. She turned her head to see Sparrow and Mime utterly confused by the leather clad cat boy saving them, she couldn’t really blame them.
“Yeah! Go get her Kitty Cat!” Melodie cheered from her hanging place. The monster’s face lit up with the outline of a butterfly, and it went silent as if listening to someone. When the light faded the monster glared at him with a wicked smile.
“I see, so you’re a target as well,”
“I uh, what?” Was all their hero managed to say. Ladybug was not about to let him get caught as well though.
“Grab it’s charm!” She yelled.
Cat Noir was surprisingly fast on his feet, he kept the monster busy as he darted all around trying to grab the possessed Item. The others had turned their attention to the ropes, but if Melodie’s Flames weren’t going to be able to cut it, their only hope was cleaning light.
That thought told Ladybug now was a good time to use Lucky Charm. “Lucky Charm!” She yelled and threw her Yoyo up as far as she could manage. After the light show that had held up Cat Noir and the akuma, A roll of duct tape manifested but Ladybug failed to catch it.
It wound up hitting Cat Noir right on the head causing a yelp from the stray cat. “What’s the big Idea? Is this yours?” he yelled back up at her. She wasn’t paying attention to him anymore though, now that she had used her spell she needed to think fast.
Beside her Mime had also decided that this mess was bad enough to start using finishing moves, “Full Mastery!” he yelled. His finishing move allowed him to Mime anything that he wanted and it would become real, but it was only that one thing. This time he had chosen a pair of scissors.
“That’s not going to work!” Melodie yelled at him, and he realized this just as she said it.
Cat Noir had been holding off the akuma on his own pretty well for someone who ‘wasn’t very good with his powers yet’. But even he wouldn’t be able to hold it off much longer on his own. So he looked to the other four who were trying to fight their way out of the rope. Ladybug had told him to focus on getting the charm but he was going to lose his ring if he didn’t get any backup.
His eyes fell on one of the ends of rope that was at his height level, there was one thing he could do. With a sudden movement he jumped over the akuma and ran to grab the rope. “Everyone get prepared to land!” he yelled and took in another breath before yelling again “Cataclysm!”
To everyone’s shock the rope that had been holding them up began to turn to dust and they all only barely reacted in time to the sudden lack of support. Cat Noir ran over to the group that were all dizzy from blood rush.
Melodie was the first to recover, she wasted no time charging at the enemy with her weapon raised and shouted “Fatal Stinger!” and with that the akuma that had given them so much trouble was frozen solid.
“Why didn’t you start the fight with that?” Cat Noir asked confused.
“It doesn't always work, and it uses all the power of my transformation,” she said and held up her braclet right as a black strip disappeared from the glossy surface. At that moment Cat Noir looked down to his ring to see he only had four paws left.
“so it’s the same as Cataclysm,” he said. The other three walked over to them and Ladybug took back the duct tape Cat Noir was still holding onto. After tieing up the akuma with it before it started moving again, Mime used his scissors to cut the charm in half.
Cat Noir watched in Awe as Ladybug purified (De-eviled it? was that what she’s said?) what had caused the little girl to turn into a monster. He wanted to talk with these people more because they all seemed so interesting, But his ring was down to one paw that meant that he had a minute and a half tops.
“Well then I bid you all good night, and thanks for saving me again,” he stated and turned to leave. But as he did Ladybug called out to him.
“Hey Cat Noir! Right Here, on Saturday! After sundown! You better show up!” He waved his hand to tell her that he heard her, but he didn’t want her to see his face. He was so happy he’d get to see those weird people again.