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The boy stared at Marinette.
She stared back, trying to judge whether he was about to attack her or otherwise cause trouble. With the most overboard hairstyle she’d seen yet, he was obviously yet another character brought to life by the powers of the latest supervillain – who’d yet to deign them with their own appearance, much to her growing frustration – and he was looking at her with obvious disapproval. But there were too many of them for Marinette to waste her energy on anyone who wasn’t actively causing trouble, since it didn’t seem like their current akuma victim had any sort of control over these characters, or was just letting them run free to cause chaos on account of their displacement and confusion.
Unfortunately, they were also, as far as Marinette could tell, completely impervious to harm; any attack instead came into contact with a impenetrable shield that briefly became visible with the sheen of an oil slick when struck.
However, what she could do was wrap a yo-yo around their shield and fling them into the river. It wouldn’t hurt them, but it would at least clear away some of the localized chaos as she and Chat Noir searched for the source of the problem.
They had been at it for a while, and no closer to the end of it. So Marinette wasn’t particularly good-natured about getting disapproving glares from random characters.
“What?” she said.
“Yo-yos should be aimed at the ground,” he said, sounding like he had quite a strong opinion on the subject. “Not people.”
Marinette blinked.
“It’s…a magic yo-yo?” She was way too exhausted for this. “It’s not…I could throw this right at your head and it wouldn’t touch you, I promise. I’m just relocating people so they don’t bring down another building or hurt any civilians.”
Granted, she could see how it would look to be tossing people across the city if one didn’t know they were apparently invulnerable to getting hurt by that.
“There’s a supervillain,” she tried again. “They brought you and a lot of other people here, some of whom are trying to hurt people, and they made it so you and the others brought here can’t be hurt. I’m trying to find the supervillain so I can fix this and send everyone home. I’m not trying to hurt anyone.”
The boy considered her words.
“Okay,” he said after a moment. “I believe you.”
Marinette sighed in relief. Now she could move on and keep looking…
“I won’t drop you through the roof,” he added. “Where is this ‘supervillain’?”
What?
She decided to just move past the roof comment. “I wish I knew. My partner and I split up to look for them, but we don’t even know what they look like, just that they brought all of you” – to life – “here somehow. But they’re actually being controlled by someone else, a supervillain named Papillon. If we break the right object, we can free them from his control and send everyone home.”
“I see,” he said. “A cruel game.”
“Yeah,” Marinette said, wearily. “It really is.” One they couldn’t win, but had to continuously not lose.
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
“You…want to help?” Marinette asked, caught off guard.
He nodded.
“Okay,” she said after a moment. Actually, she could work with this. Marinette pulled up her yo-yo to find Chat Noir’s location.
She took the boy – who introduced himself as ‘Yuugi’ – to meet with Chat Noir. Yuugi still seemed put off by her unconventional yo-yo use, but it wasn’t like she was using it on anyone this time, just to swing them around.
“Oh, that’s…” Chat Noir said, looking at Yuugi with ears twitching in surprise. Maybe Chat Noir recognized him; he did seem to know a lot more characters than Marinette did. “Hi!”
“He wants to help,” she told Chat Noir. “Maybe we can get others on our side as well.”
“We should!” he agreed. “I think their ‘plot armor’ only works against us; I’ve been tricking them into confronting each other. I kept having to recharge after Cataclysming the road out from under them every time.”
“Good thinking, kitty.”
“Hey, if we do this, do you think I could get Sailor Moon’s autograph?”
“Stay focused, Chat Noir,” Marinette said, rolling her eyes fondly.
The three of them split up to spread the word and recruit others. It took time, but gradually, the tide began to sway in their favor as their allies grew more organized with their new understanding of the situation.
As Marinette regrouped with Chat Noir and Yuugi, their opponent revealed himself.
“Hoping to wear us out?” Chat Noir greeted. “Sorry to disappoint, Plot Armor.”
“Ladybug, Chat Noir! For too long, you’ve been all the TV wants to talk about! My shows keep getting interrupted because they’re too busy showing clips of you! Surrender your Miraculous so I never have to see you again!”
Marinette exchanged a look with her partner. Really‽ He was mad because the warnings about currently ongoing akuma attacks interrupted regular broadcasts?
Oh well. They had a job to do regardless.
But before she and Chat Noir began their offense, Yuugi stepped forward.
“You’re the one who’s taken us hostage?”
“’Hostage’ is a very strong word,” Plot Armor said. “I like to think I’ve set you all free, free from the confines of predetermined stories and into the real world, where nothing can touch you!”
Yuugi looked at Plot Armor like he was spouting the ravings of a madman. Which, since from his perspective he and the world that he’d been kidnapped from were just as real as anything else, it probably was.
“Be careful,” Marinette said. “He’s not the one really in charge.” She tossed her yo-yo to the sky and called for her Lucky Charm.
Several small objects fell into her hand.
“Dice?”
Yuugi looked over in interest and held out his hand. Marinette looked from his hand, to the dice with unusual designs, and over to Chat Noir, who nodded. She shrugged, and handed the dice over to Yuugi, who smiled in a slightly concerning way.
“Now,” he said, facing Plot Armor. “Let’s play a game, you, me, my new friends, and your puppet-master.”
.
.
It was a quick game.
Fortunate, because Marinette could feel her time ticking down. She would need to detransform soon.
Her die landed on the winning result, and Plot Armor roared.
“No! You can’t touch me, anyway, I’ll just take your Miraculous.” He charged forward, and Marinette brought her yo-yo up to spin defensively.
Then Plot Armor stopped in his tracks, frozen as Yuugi pointed at him.
“Those weren’t the rules.”
And that glowing eye on his forehead definitely hadn’t been there before. Marinette looked over at Chat Noir, who looked a bit excited about this development. Okay. So the creepy glowing eye thing was…maybe not a problem? Not their problem, anyway.
“But you are not the one to be punished. No, this penalty is for you, the one who uses this man as your puppet. You are a coward, hiding behind your puppets because you cannot face the world. And you will face a PENALTY GAME!”
Something happened at this pronouncement, and Plot Armor crumpled and fell over. As he did, a book fell out of his cloak.
Marinette walked over and picked it up, before ripping it neatly in two. The akuma peeled out and she caught it easily. Plot Armor vanished as she purified it, returning to a normal, albeit bewildered young man. At least whatever Yuugi had done hadn’t appeared to have any repercussions on him.
She turned to Yuugi and smiled, including him in her and Chat Noir’s customary fist bump.
“Thank you for all of your help. But I think it’s time to send you home now,” she said.
“It’s a shame what he did to Papillon probably won’t stick after you do that,” Chat Noir said quietly.
Probably. But they could hardly keep everyone here, so Marinette tossed the dice into the sky.
Another battle won, but many more to come.