Chapter Text
Marinette Dupain-Cheng was the young daughter of Tom Dupain and Sabine Cheng, owners of a small bakery/restaurant hybrid known as Dupain-Cheng Catering, providing bread, pastries, Chinese dishes, and the occasional hybrid cuisine. She was kind, resourceful, imaginative, clumsy...very clumsy...like ridiculously clumsy, determined, and with a strong passion for clothing fashion and her loved ones, such as her best friends Alya Césaire and Nathaniel Kurtzberg.
Despite her low-to-avarage economic position, her cooking skills and warm demeanor made her classmates to love her. Always willing to lend a helping hand, bringing a new batch of pastries for the class every week, they all loved her... But they don't truly remember her.
Marinette Dupain-Cheng disappeared when she was 12, and hasn't been found to this day...Even though they think they did.
The real Marinette was all that was described, but she was also paranoid, controlling when she throught she knew better, overworked herself a lot trying to fix as many problems as she could, tended to overthink and overcomplicate stuff, and had a very strict notion of right and wrong that often blinded her to the truth. Despite her flaws, she really tried to be a good and generous person, even to her detriment, and most people liked her for it...Most.
Chloe Bourgeois felt her popularity threatened by Marinette, and decided to retaliate. Taking advantage of Kim LeChien's crush on her and Marinette's crush on Kim, Chloe confabulated with the boy to ask Marinette on a date at the pool only for Kim to give her a chocolate box filled with spiders, while Chloe recorded. This ocurred during exam weeks, so Marinette was already pretty stressed beforehand. And despite being loving parents, Sabine and Tom were also emotionally neglectful towards their daughter due to being very occupied with keeping their business afloat. Thus, Marinette was unable to properly manage her emotions, and she ran away.
The next day at school, the class recieved the news that Marinette had disappeared. Her classmates dealt with the news in their own ways, practically treating Kim and Chloe like outcasts, until Marinette, apparently, reappeared one year later.
But let's see what actually happened:
While Marinette fled the pool and tried to return home, she was kidnapped by Su Han and a young Wang Fu. These were the last living members of the Order of Guardians, who dedicated their lives to protect the world from magical threats, but fell due to internal disputes and corruption. But they still had a tradition/duty to maintain: to keep the world safe from the malevolent being that is Null. This extradimensional entity has already shown signs of returning to the mortal realm, and the last guardians needed to keep it from acquiring a physical form. They detected that Marinette had an extraordinary affinity for magic, and so, Su Han decided to use a ritual to turn her into a continental shield against Null's influence.
However, Null has grown wise to the tricks of the Guardians, and instead of being driven away, Null focused his power on turning Marinette into its host. Su Han tried to kill the girl to prevent Null's manifestation, but it was too late and Null knocked him out in return. So, Fu did the best thing he could: summon Tikki, Kwami of Creation, Fortune, and many other things. Wang Fu, barely 13 years old at the time, begged Tikki to save the life of the innocent girl they tried to sacrifice, in exchange of his life. So, Tikki, with a little help from the Kwamis Plagg and Nooru, separated Marinette's soul from her body, transferred it to a new one made by Tikki, and Tikki made Marinette his host.
When she woke up, her new body was too tall, too strong, too heavy. What was once Marinette, now was a six foot tall, humanoid with ladybug features. A black exoskeleton, with some red segments with black spots in the elytra, thighs, and torso. She had two sets of arms, one above the other, the lower ones were shorter than the upper set; each hand had five red fingers that ended on golden claws. Black legs with golden patterns ended on three tarsel claws. Beneath her elytra were golden wings almost as long as her that reached at her kneecaps, and a golden, translucent mantle. A pretuberance in her head made it look like she wore a helmet, from which blue hair bangs came from at the sides of her face, as well as two long antennaes that extended up to reaching the tips of her elytra. Her completely light blue eyes still showed her humanity. She could no longer speak, only screech in horror at her new form. Her memories were scrambled, she had the general idea, but the details were fuzzy, she couldn't even remember her old name.
A new voice in her head tranquilized and comforted her. Tikki explained the situation as best as he could: they battled Null in Marinette's body, but it used powers that didn't belong to it and escaped, the effort and shock causing her to faint. Su Han was nowhere to be seen. And after burying the body of Wang Fu, the creature that the media would dub as The Ladybug (which she took as her new name, Ladybug) flew to the skies, in search for her memories, her body, and the parasite that stole her life from her.
Ladybug searched across the globe for her body, training the new powers that Tikki gave her, using them to track Null's presence and frustrate any schemes it may have, and helping anyone they would encounter along the way... Usually being reciprocated with fear and aggression. But they could never aprehend Null.
Years passed, and Ladybug decided to return to Paris, the city that she remembered as her home. Only to find out that much has changed in the time she was away. Starting with the person that, unbeknownst to her, had taken her place, her loved ones, and her old face...