Work Text:
(1)
Marinette very occasionally wanted to hit Tikki over the head when she detransformed.
She held up the ice pick in frustration. “This could have been a knife,” she muttered to herself as she used the tool to cut the ribbon, “it would have been so much easier as a knife.”
Chat snickered as he tried not to wriggle to make it easier for her. “But then you couldn’t have used it to chip the magic ice!”
“I’m sure I would have managed just fine.”
Chat sighed fondly. “At least this version of Swan Lake didn’t come with actual swans.”
She snorted. “So you don’t have to sneeze as you chase after the birds?”
“Exactly! I wouldn’t be able to resist!”
“Swans are mean, I’m sure you would have run with your tail between your legs as they chased you.”
She finally got through the ribbon keeping him strung up and he stretched with a sigh of relief. “As nice as I look with a bow around my neck, I’m afraid I’m not domestic enough for that.”
“I dunno,” she flicked his bell, “you sure seem domestic enough for me.”
“Well of course, my lady, this stray is more than happy to… I can’t think of a way to say it that isn’t weird, so I think I’m going to end this bit here.” He grinned wryly, then held out his arm. “Shall we show this ballerina how to dance, Ladybug?”
She rested her hand on his forearm like a noble lady at a ball. “We shall. And if I stab the akuma with the ice pick, that’s my business.”
He burst out laughing as they took off after the akuma.
(2)
The next time she desperately wished for a knife, she was given a single knitting needle.
“These,” she yelled as she jabbed forward again, trying to pop the balloon that was slowly rising, “are not really meant to stab things! They’re light weight, which means they bend easily, and not particularly pointy so you can’t hurt yourself! Granted,” the balloon finally popped and Rena scooped up the civilians and gently laid them back on the ground, “these ones are particularly robust. But they aren’t pointy enough.”
The fox laughed. “If only Ryuko was here. Then she could stab balloons with her sword!”
And just use the winds to corral the balloons, she thought with a twinge, but Kagami was out of the country for the weekend. Talk about bad timing!
Her yoyo buzzed and she paused in stabbing to pick up. “Yeah?”
“Ladybug,” Carapace said, “we got the akuma trapped! Ready to release the… sulfur hexa…?”
She grinned. “Hexafluoride! Nice, thanks Carapace, we’ll be there in a sec.”
She popped the last balloon and took off. As soon as the canister was in range, she threw the knitting needle like a dart. For a moment, she thought it wouldn’t work, but she hit the release valve dead on and it hissed as the dense gas filled the air. The akuma’s high pitched voice gradually deepened as they panicked, sinking to the ground, and it almost sounded normal by the time Chat shattered the mini air pump and she scooped up the butterfly.
“No more evildoing for you, little akuma,” she sighed, already hearing the snickers as her own voice was lower as well. She tugged the knitting needle out of the gas canister and tossed it into the air.
“I could have figured it out with a knife,” she swore under her breath as everything was set to rights, “I really really could have.”
Chat, the only one to hear her, snickered under his breath.
(3)
“A nail file?!”
She was practically hissing and spitting as she tried to maneuver the collapsible nail file so it could reach the ropes binding her hands and arms to her body. Chat was dodging the ropes of silk the akuma was throwing at him to try and wrap him up as well, but he was trying to avoid using his cataclysm so early. He’d almost used it on her, but she’d held him off by summoning her lucky charm. Surely, she’d thought, surely it would be a knife.
The nail file almost slipped out her hand to clatter on the floor but she managed to snatch it at the last second with her heart in her throat. There was a slight amount of give in the silk and she grit her teeth before going back to sawing, feeling it fall apart bit by bit. By the time she could flex her arms and tear it off, her grip on the tool was white knuckled.
“I,” she said loudly, “have a complaint to file.”
Chat made a noise of delight as she brandished the lucky charm and finally put her plan into action.
(It could have been a knife.)
(4)
“Okay, real talk,” she complained loudly, “Tikki, why do I never get a knife?”
Tikki frowned. “I try not to give lucky charms that are weapons. They have one real purpose, which is to harm. While you can use weapons as tools for other things, you can also use tools instead, so I tend to give people the tools instead of the weapons.”
“Okay, I can understand not giving me a rocket launcher,” to pick something completely random and not at all from that one memory, “because it’s a rocket launcher. I can understand not giving me a handgun! But a knife? A multipurpose slicing and stabbing tool?”
“Marinette,” she wasn’t aware a kwami could sound so deadpan, but Tikki managed it, “every time I don’t give you a knife, you want to stab something, mostly the akuma.”
She felt her face flush. “Sure, but that’s more because I was frustrated. Which only happened because I had to struggle with something that wasn’t a knife, to do things a knife could have done.”
“But each of your tools accomplished something a knife could not,” she pointed out, “along with some of their original functions and something new. A knife couldn’t have hit the small spot the knitting needle did, and if you’d waited longer, the akuma would have gotten away!”
The akuma alert went off and they both jumped before she suited up.
The akuma had something to do with stitches, sewing people into their clothes and together. His needles could even go through the super suits, and her arm and Chat’s were bound together.
“Lucky charm!”
Surely, she thought as the light cleared and the small object fell into her waiting hand, surely after their talk, Tikki would give her a knife.
The seam ripper gleamed up at her innocently and she tried not to grumble. It was appropriate for a stitch themed villain, after all.
(5)
She looked around at the akuma-induced jungle, the foliage dense and almost impossible to walk through, then looked down at the lucky charm in her hands. She considered hurling the garden sheers into the jungle, but knew she’d be even more trapped.
She pouted. “I just wanted a machete,” she muttered, “it would have been thematically appropriate!”
(+1)
She wobbled on the flexible surface that had taken over the entire Louvre. The child akuma who’d had his birthday “ruined” by going to the museum instead of having a bouncy castle cackled and zoomed around, bouncing to great effect and dodging everything they had. Her heart sank as they couldn’t do anything to get close, just dodge before he could swipe their jewelry and fend him off. They were just too wobbly on the not fully inflated surface. There was enough air for them to stumble, but not enough for them to move effectively, even with their super human abilities. She almost wanted an air pump, or something to just make this thing stable, but the problem was that the akuma had full control over the air in the structure, since he was controlling it from his whistle, the akumatized object.
“Lucky charm!”
She stared.
The akuma laughed. “How small! Whatcha got there, Ladybug?”
She slowly grinned and held it up proudly.
“A knife!”
The akuma went rigid, eyes wide. “NO!”
Well, she thought, tearing holes in the bouncy castle, if they couldn’t inflate the castle more, de flating it worked too.
Finally, Tikki had caved and given her a knife.
Maybe she could have some extra cookies today.