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The first thought he had upon seeing the so-called ‘Rooster Bold’ entering the camp, was that his outfit was goofy. But since Nathaniel looked like a Black Cat rip-off, he didn’t have much room to talk—Seriously, why? Monochromatic designs might suit Marc, with his black hair and all, but Nathaniel’s intensely red dyed one stuck out like a sore thumb. Weren’t superhero costumes supposed to hide things like that? Did that mean that Ladybug and Chat Noir had blue and blond hair respectively? Ugh, whatever…
The second thing was that he was, unlike the others (except maybe Miss Hound. Was that her name?) openly excited to be playing football, independently of the whole fighting-an-akuma business.
The fourth thing he noticed was that he was also over the moon about having superpowers.
And then, that he was a pretty smart guy. He would get along with Marc.
(A part of him didn’t want them to meet. What if they got along too well?)
Rooster Bold was also excellent at controlling the ball, which meant that Nathaniel didn’t have to do much after creating a plastic magical wand and pretending to be everyone’s Fairy Godmother for a few minutes.
As someone who was: 1) Not a fan of physical activity. 2) Not happy to be there. 3) Trying to leave behind his superhero fanboy phase. The whole affair felt like a nuisance at best and a step back at worst. Once upon a time he would have been thrilled to be handed a miraculous, but after being turned into the Evillustrator more times than he was comfortable admitting, he didn’t trust himself with that kind of power. People at school still joked about how he threatened to cut random pedestrians in half with circular saws.
At the end, though, the truth was that he had fun. His body felt featherlight, his mind sharper, his movements faster and overall, indestructible. Ziggy, the kwami, was also adorable and Nathaniel bit her farewell with quite some reluctance. His mother never allowed him to have a pet, saying they were too dirty for their apartment (plus another thousand reasons she so readily threw at him at the mere mention of adopting), and petting the chibified goat between the horns was the closest he had ever gotten to having one.
Playing football without enhanced mobility was harder than it appeared at first and the game left him sweaty and exhausted, but in the good way, like resting his aching eyes after a whole night of drawing. It was rewarding and—okay, yeah—fun. And if Marc promised to look at him with the same excited, shining eyes he did whenever Nathaniel kicked the ball, then he could be convinced to repeat it another day.
Overall, he gave the experience a full eight on a scale from one to ten. A one-time thing he was happy to check from his bucket list, even if he didn’t have it written down in the first place.
Then the whole city went to hell and Ladybug needed the whole team reunited again.
The following times Nathaniel accepted being a hero more willingly and when Ladybug asked him why, with a rather pleased smile, he simply answered that he wasn’t immune to receiving puppy eyes from a goat.
He didn’t always coincide with Rooster Bold on missions, but when he did Nathaniel was quick to realise that he was treated like a Jack of all trades. Rooster Bold’s presence meant that Ladybug needed impossible solutions to impossible problems, which at the same time meant that everything that could go wrong had gone very, terribly, hopelessly wrong. The trust Ladybug seemed to have on the guy painted him as someone competent and dependable, mature in a way you wouldn’t expect from the perpetual cherry smile on his lips. It was obvious he liked to help, which made all the more pitiful how he was only called as a last resort.
Caprikid was a bit of the same: Ladybug’s Lucky Charm already provided her with useful items during fights, so she only required his services when her plans were overly complicated or included awfully specific objects. Even if it didn’t happen often, it was more than the few occasions the rooster hero appeared. Nathaniel wouldn’t have minded exchanging roles if that didn’t include saying bye to Ziggy (the little goat was easy to love, okay? Nathaniel got attached).
That’s why learning of her being stolen by that major asshole was devastating. Who knew what she could be going through at the hands of that monster. Nathaniel had problems sleeping at night for weeks after that and, in the peak of his insomnia, he was glad that his mother refused to give him a pet; he was apparently an overprotective owner. He would probably rush to the vet after hearing a single sneeze.
Luckily for him, uneasiness was a general sentiment in the city and no one (not even his parents) questioned why his eyebags were so pronounced, they probably thought he was fearing becoming akumatized again since Monarch was more powerful than ever. Marc, on the other hand, asked almost everyday, looking worried, sounding sweet and being endearingly gentle when he started rubbing calming circles on his back. There were a few times when Nathaniel almost fell asleep on his feet, but he usually got away by saying he was tired. He could see in Marc’s eyes that he wasn’t buying it; yet, a boundary was a boundary and Marc was always careful on not crossing those. Maybe hypervigilant when it came to people he just met. Nathaniel had to somehow grill into his brain that talking to someone wasn’t an offense he should apologize for. Quite the contrary! They should be grateful Marc even decided to approach them.
(Not too grateful, though.)
And so, despite his best efforts, Nathaniel actually missed being a superhero. Had anyone told him that the alternative to wearing magical spandex was having Monarch seizing all the miraculous, he would have embraced the lifestyle with a bit more gusto.
In the safety of the shadows cast by midnight, with the snores from his parents ensuring him that they were asleep and he was allowed to exist as himself in his own room, he wondered if the rest of the team felt the same. If they also stared at their ceilings with the blanket pulled up to their noses because it felt like a needed lawyer of protection, thinking of their time as superheroes and if they would ever be one again. If they missed their kwamis after only talking with them for no longer than an hour. If they were scared that this battle wasn’t one Ladybug and Chat Noir could win. After all, they knew the true extent of the stolen powers. They, better than anyone else in the nation, were aware of how dangerous Monarch had truly become.
That was his reasoning for joining the Resistance. Not his smartest move when he thought about it with a clear head. What was he thinking, trying to defeat a Supervillain—with a capital S—with some spray paint and a baseball bat? But, hey, it worked, so Nathaniel wasn’t going to critique too much what ended up being Nino’s greatest idea.
Back then, he thought that Nino would have been more suited for the ‘Passion’ miraculous. He for sure didn’t lack it, going through life with the vitality of a little kid and the enthusiasm of someone having a second chance at being alive. A strange combination that had Marc pondering if they should create a character inspired by him.
“He is scared of conflict,” Marc told him in confidence, huddled close together in their corner of the art room. “And he despairs to make others happy but doesn’t really talk about what makes him happy.” He had that spark in his eyes that appeared when ideas started to gain form inside his head. The well-oiled gears of his imagination working swiftly to connect plot points as quickly as they were created. “It’s a combination that promises internal conflict, it could be so interesting if we found the correct way to develop it.”
“I’m sure you will make it work.” Is what said Nathaniel’s mouth.
Since when do you pay so much attention to him? Is what grumbled the green-eyed monster nesting within his ribcage.
It isn’t that Marc had taken a special interest in Nino or anything; it’s simply how he was: observant, meticulous, empathetic, emotionally intelligent. He had a way to understand people that escaped Nathaniel’s comprehension and made him wonder, in his worst days, why he hadn’t run away yet, despite clearly seeing that he was a mess.
Marc was kind, he was… More than Nathaniel deserved sometimes. Any miraculous would have been compatible with him.
“Not at all! I wouldn’t know what to do with one.” Was Marc’s bashful reply when Nathaniel told him just that. “I’m not superhero material.”
“Bullshit.” Said Nathaniel, which gained him a reprimand from a nearby teacher.
Whatever personal opinion Nathaniel might have had on who deserved to be the holder of the goat miraculous didn’t matter, because once Ladybug reclaimed them after Monarch’s defeat (r.i.p Mister Agreste) it was him who she trusted Ziggy to. And there he stood in the middle of his room afterwards, windows open to let the summer breeze in, palms heavy with the jewellery box and an overly excited kwami repeatedly headbutting his cheek, saying how happy she was to see him again.
It didn’t take him long to return the affection, scratching her under the chin and down her back (he had no idea of the correct way to pet a goat, but Ziggy didn’t bite him, so he guessed he was doing an okay job at it) while he frantically searched for a place to hide her in. There wasn’t a single nook or cranny in his room safe from his mother’s scrutiny. She had a habit of going through his stuff that Nathaniel couldn’t reproach without seeming suspicious, so he had already given up on hiding things in his own house. He normally put them in his locker, a locked drawer in the art room professor Monlataing gave him the key to or he left them in Alix’s room. That third option had disappeared along with his best friend into an intertemporal bunny burrow, and the other two were, for obvious reasons, dismissed. So Nathaniel was in distress; Ziggy was supposed to live with him, he couldn’t leave her at school as if she were homeworks he didn’t want to take home.
Besides, it was summer. School was closed and in the middle of being reformed. Not even his bad options were available. He was hopeless.
“Don’t worry! I can go through things.” Ziggy demonstrated by coming in and out of the pillow he had offered her as a temporary bed. “If your mother starts looking around I will go and hide outside, she will never find me.”
“You say that because you don’t know her.”
“I can’t suffocate either.” Offered Ziggy, which almost made him fall off the bed. Why would she feel the need to tell him that? “So I can hide inside anything. Don’t worry about me, I promise I will be careful.”
Oh, she looked about to cry. Was she scared that Nathaniel was going to kick her out? Not even in a million years. After learning how that depraved Monarch kept her imprisoned he wasn’t going to take his eyes off her. He was going to spoil that little goat to the moon and back, because he wasn’t only an overprotective holder; he was a fussy one too.
Things moved at a fast pace afterwards. Nathaniel discovered that Ziggy loved to eat his discharged sketches, so the food issue was solved and he got an ecofriendly way to dispose of embarrassing drawings. Ziggy taught him how to change his magical outfit—one of his priorities, because if he had to be a Black Cat rip-off, he was going to be a good one—. And they decided that it would be safer for her to sleep under the covers so she wouldn’t be seen if his mother poked her head into his room at night. During the day she hid in his desk’s drawers. At worst, if his mother did find her, he could say that Ziggy was a present from Rose that he hadn’t the heart to throw away. She didn’t like toys (she found them too childish for his age, a distraction he mustn't allow himself), but she did like when female classmates gifted him things or just interacted with him in general. Well, she was never fond of Alix, who she considered too much of a tomboy, but Rose—who embodied the colour pink and was as girlish as a girl can be—was acceptable in her eyes. At least, as long as he didn’t mention that she was going out with Juleka.
(That was another can of worms he was still not brave enough to open.)
Soon, Ladybug called the whole team to train their superpowers in what she declared was their secret meeting point (an abandoned subway station, how classy) and after an extraneous three or so hours that felt like a week of his skin being peeled and regrown again and again and again, he finally managed to not destransform after using Genesis.
He celebrated their success alongside the others and, since they were for once reunited for something that wasn’t a world-ending catastrophe, he took his time to examine his companions. Emotional intelligence wasn’t his forte, so he wasn’t capable of unravelling their whole life story by their speech or gestures or the way they would do something as inconsequential as leaning towards the left instead of the right. However, he was observant and had a trained eye for detail he was quite proud of. He examined them not unlike Marinette perused fashion magazines and he came to the realisation that he wasn’t the only one who wasn’t pleased with the original outfit.
With the exception of Miss Hounds (that was her name) and Argos (who they were politely ignoring the crimes of), everyone else had upgraded their costumes. Even Chat Noir looked sharper in his barely altered one.
The one that caught his attention the most, though, was no other than Rooster Bold. Gone was the goofy outfit. Gone were the cheap-looking feathers and clashing colours. With his new image Nathaniel couldn’t decide if he was something out of a fairy tale or the lead singer of an underground punk band. Who would have said that a crazy red mohawk would fit seamlessly with a formal three-piece suit and golden high heels. The metallic round buttons and cravat complemented it with a noble air that, again, contrasted cleverly with the multiple earrings on his ears and Nathaniel felt the urge to grab his sketchbook and draw it in detail. It was such an innovative design.
Technically, he could use Genesis to create all he needed for a quick portrait, but it would definitely be creepy to do so this suddenly and with so many people around. The last thing he wanted was to be called a freak while wearing skin-tight clothes by people also wearing skin-tight clothes. He couldn’t allow himself to be ‘the weird one’ in this group.
What he could do was engage in conversation with Rooster Bold in the break Ladybug gave them before talking about some ‘safety protocols’ they had to memorise.
“Can I see your pen?” Others around them were showing off their ‘weapons’, so hopefully it didn’t seem too weird.
The smile Rooster Bold directed at him was charming in an effortless way that made him even more undecided between prince and punk. “Of course, here.”
Like the rest of him, the fountain pen was golden and sleek, the feather looking as soft as his hair. Nathaniel had been thinking for a while about gifting Marc one for his next birthday; it sounded like a good present for a writer and something Marc would enjoy. Even if he would start by saying that it was too expensive, Nathaniel knows by the end he would be giddy about being an ‘author of old’ with a proper calligraphy pen, big ass feather and everything.
Using his scrutiny as an excuse, Nathaniel got closer to Rooster Bold. Not too much. Not in a creepy way. Just enough to notice that the design in his mask simulated shimmering golden eyeshadow and a killer winged eyeliner. Until that moment, Nathaniel hadn’t entertained the idea of drawing characters with heavy makeup, but Rooster Bold’s design kept getting better and better each time he glanced at him. He needed to ask Marc for the beauty influencers he followed; he had his mind filled with concept art.
Also, as another absolutely-not-sinister fact to register about his companion, his suit didn’t carry the salty popcorn smell that had previously spread from his cubicle to the whole chamber. During their training he had felt relieved for having the goat miraculous, being able to easily carry paper shreds in his pocket to feed Ziggy, instead of the stinky cheese Polymouse had on her or the chunky bananas the peels of which King Monkey was throbbing all over the place. That changed when the mouthwatering essence of newly made popcorn reached him and he lamented not being able to share some snack with his kwami. He wasn’t about to swallow crumpled sketches, no matter how delighted Ziggy appeared while chewing.
“Does it have actual ink or it’s just, like—magic.” He mimicked an explosion which ended up resembling jazz hands, but the other smiled at him anyway. His eyes squinted with amusement, looking all the more red for it.
“It has limitless ink, so I guess it counts as magic.” Rooster Bold twirled the pen with his fingers in a move that came out as both natural and expertly practised. “Look.”
What the rooster superhero did was scribble in the palm of his left hand something in fancy, loopy cursive that Nathaniel wasn’t quick enough to read before he pressed it against his chest and a golden flash of light enveloped him as he announced: “Sublimation.”
“Is the ink liquid gold?” He asked, baffled.
“It looks like it, right? I thought it was a glitter pen at first.”
That, per se, was quite the funny scenario. Regretfully, Nathaniel was too shocked by the answer being said in his own voice to comment on it.
He brought one hand to his throat. “How-”
“Magic.” This time, it was Rooster Bold the one doing jazz hands. It looked much less ridiculous on him. “I gave myself the power to imitate any voice.”
Before another word left his mouth, they were promptly swarmed by a mob of colourful holders. “That’s so cool!” Exclaimed the cute Pigella, hopping from one foot to the other. “Do mine next!”
“Oh! Oh! Me too! Me too!” Rushed King Monkey with his arms raised.
“Me too!”
“And mine!”
“Can you do mine?”
Nathaniel stepped back as more and more superheroes surrounded Rooster Bold, who didn’t flinch or recoil at the attention. He received it as charmingly as he had done everything else, soft smile on his lips and a confident tilt of his head, truly like a rooster showing off his comb. Jumping from one conversation to another masterfully transforming his voice, engaging with everyone while still maintaining the focus on himself without appearing vain, just the orator they had come to listen to in this meeting turned talent show. It didn’t seem to overwhelm him, as if he were used to it, a social butterfly by birth.
Discreetly, Nathaniel stood to the side and added ‘people person’ to the list of Rooster Bold’s attributes he just realised he was keeping. He wasn’t a stalker! It is just… the guy was admirable. Nathaniel respected him as a fellow crime-fighting individual. Nothing else.
Later, once Ladybug finished updating them on the new terms of their duties. Nathaniel took his phone out to message Marc if he wanted to watch a movie. Which one? He asked. I don’t really care I just feel like eating popcorn. Replied Nathaniel, which gained him a laughing emoji and Marc agreeing to meet him at Zoé’s place.
They found each other on the way there (what a coincidence that they both were out and about at the same time) and started walking together, but not without Nathaniel complimenting Marc first on his new jacket.
“Thank you!” He turned around, pulling on the lapels so the red leather shook and shone under the midday sun. “I did it myself after Marinette taught me how.”
On the back was a cloud with rainbow lightning coming from it, as colourful as the makeup decorating his left eye in blue and red. Nathaniel spent the next twenty minutes questioning him about it and different application techniques, wondering out loud how to differentiate between a character wearing makeup and the artist’s personal style.
At her stepfather’s theatre Zoé received them warmly despite her rushed speech. “Cute earring.” She said to Marc, before apologising with a lowered head for the state of the place. In simple terms: it was a wreck.
“We are still remodelling.” She explained, guiding them through half-painted walls dotted with holes and a floor stripped unevenly of a carpet. “And the projectors haven’t arrived yet, or the films, or the-” They passed a room without a door where André was hunched over a table, looking miserable while clicking away at a calculator and writing down the results. “It’s pretty barebones.”
It was then, behind Zoé’s back, that Marc grabbed his hand and gave him a silent plea with his big, pretty green eyes and pouting lips, painted a shade darker than what Nathaniel was used to seeing on him. There was no need to specify what he was asking with that display; he knew he was doomed the moment Zoé opened the door and Marc threw the whole building a pitying glance. He should have turned around then if he didn’t want to end up as an impromptu handyman after a whole morning of magical exhaustion.
Regretfully for his back, Nathaniel wasn’t only weak to Marc’s imploring eyes, he was also a good friend.
“We will accept popcorn as payment for a day of work.” He told Zoé.
Her beaming smile was so radiant Nathaniel had to squint his eyes to not be blinded. “The popcorn poppers arrived yesterday! Come this way, you will be our first clients.”
The afternoon was spent learning how to install the machines, how they worked and why it was a bad idea to fill them with too much corn. Once they had their buckets and Nathaniel had his craving subsided, they cleaned the floor, threw the debris outside and tested which seats were good to stay and which were beyond saving, thus unscrewing them to be put alongside the trash.
During the whole process, Nathaniel felt tempted to ask Zoé and Marc their opinions about the Miraculers. The question always on the tip of his tongue, tangled between his teeth like a stubborn crumb of popcorn. But the Miraculers hadn’t been seen with their new outfits yet, Paris didn’t even know they were active again, much less that they went by that name. A pity, really, he would have liked to hear what they had to say about Caprikid’s updated fit.
He had the opportunity to learn Marc’s outlook a week later, since the heroes had been allowed to patrol the streets to get reacquainted with their abilities and also reassure the citizens that the miraculous were, once again, with their rightful owners.
(If Nathaniel had purposely perched himself on the buildings in front of Anciel Library, hoping for his friend to get a good look at him, well, who could blame him?)
“He looks fluffy.” Was all Marc had to say about him, apparently.
Nathaniel, who had been trying to hide his anticipation by faking concentration on his drawing, almost snapped his pencil in half. “Fluffy?”
“Yes, his hair and the fur on his chest look very fluffy.” Marc gesticuled around the lapels of his jacket, mimicking a brushing motion. “Do you think it’s real goat hair?”
Actually, he had no clue. “Is it real goat hair?” Nathaniel asked Ziggy when they arrived home.
“It is if you want it to be.” Answered the kwami, cheerful as always.
Magic was disconcerting.
The predicament lingered on his mind for the next few days. His suit covered his hands, so he had no way of discovering the actual level of fluffiness or what the material was. He hoped it truly was as soft as Marc believed it to be. What if one day he rescued him during an akuma attack (a plausible scenario he had fantasied about a completely normal number of times) and Marc found the fur coarse or the fabric icky? Marc wasn’t one to complain outloud, so he would probably not voice his displeasure, but Nathaniel would know. He would notice his reticence to get closer, his rigid posture at having to be in contact with him.
Fear had him staying up past midnight to discuss with Ziggy how to amplify Caprikid’s ‘fluffiness factor’. It was that serious.
It was during one of those late nights turned early mornings (talking with her was so easy, Nathaniel loved her so much) that he spotted outside his window a familiar figure standing straight and noble on top of a roof.
Rooster Bold wore sunrise like a mantle. Warm light haloed his head with a sunray crown, bright blues and fiery reds outlining his lithe figure and putting stars where it reflected on his golden jewels. In Nathaniel’s tired, slightly unfocused vision, he was part of an impressionist painting. A personification of dawn watching over Notre Dame. Protector, god and feverish dream, all at once.
He didn’t think twice before transforming into someone who could stand by his side.
“Are criminals even awake at this hour?”
Rooster Bold received Caprikid’s presence on the rooftop with a playful grin. “Haven’t you heard? Evil never rests.”
“Maybe that’s why it never wins.” Nathaniel got closer until they were both looking at the cathedral side by side, his arms crossed over his chest while Rooster Bold’s stayed put behind his back. Honestly, after living beside it all his life and having his mom lecture him about its architecture more times than he bothered to count, the monument had lost most of the charm that enraptured tourists into staring slawjacked at it while taking dozens of blurry pictures. However, he had never seen it from this angle, covered in the colours of a rising sun shining like molten lava over Paris.
As Mister Kubdel told him once, new perspectives help turn ordinary sights into extraordinary visages.
“I wanted to patrol this area,” started explaining Rooster Bold, sounding unusually bashful for someone who oozed so much confidence, “but it felt sacrilegious to step on top of Notre Dame.”
“Why?”
“Imagine I break the roof or damage a statue. I couldn’t call myself a Miraculer after that.”
Nathaniel hummed pensively. His mother for sure would lose her marbles at the news of someone ‘desecrating’ such a representative gothic building. “Can’t you give yourself the power to repair anything?”
“That’s Ladybug’s domain.”
“So is creating things, but here I am.” To illustrate his point, he waved his paintbrush around and Genesied a golden hammer. Rooster Bold chuckled.
It was pretty cute.
“Magic is fickle and hard to understand sometimes.”
“Tell me about it.” He handed the hammer to Rooster Bold, who blinked in surprise before taking it and hooking it up on the chain hanging from his lower back. Now he looked like a punk prince who did bricolage as a side gig. It worked surprisingly well. “But akumas don’t care about historical buildings, you know? Sooner or later we will fight in Notre Dame too.”
“Have you?”
“Fought inside Notre Dame?”
“Gotten on top of it.”
“Sure.” Nathaniel shrugged. Truthfully, it wasn’t a big deal. He had the whole cathedral memorised at that point and a sketchbook filled with closeups of the gargoyles and the spire.
“And the Eiffel Tower?”
Nathaniel considered the question, eyes glancing between the stained glass and Rooster Bold’s crimson eyes. With the sun hitting the rose window at this angle, there wasn’t much difference between the two. “Never as Caprikid, no.”
The edges of his smile perked up, his gaze sharpening into something on the brim of teasing. “What about a race to the top?”
“That-” He spluttered, flustered. That challenging expression was cute too. “No way. You will give yourself superspeed or something and win immediately.”
“You could draw yourself a jetpack and then we will be even.”
“That wouldn’t do,” Nathaniel looked away, but that only made Rooster Bold get closer to try to catch his gaze. “If I don’t know how the thing works Genesis just creates a very convincing theatre prop.”
“And here I thought I was the only one with a restrictive power.”
“We should start a club.”
That joyful, bright laugh reappeared and brought with it the caress of feathers to his heart. All things considered, it seemed Nathaniel was doing a good job at being a friendly, not-creepy fellow superhero. Perhaps one day soon he could ask permission to draw him a portrait without it being weird.
“We totally should, but first…” Rooster Bold pointed at the distance, where the Eiffel Tower dominated the landscape with its large silhouette, resembling copper under the veil of sunrise. “A race to the top. No Genesis or Sublimation allowed. Sounds fair enough to you now?”
Emboldened by his taunting, Nathaniel made a show of cracking his knuckles. The pop of his bones was oddly satisfying beneath the fabric of his suit. As if the magic on it was responding to him, clamoring Bring it on! I’m ready!
For someone who hadn’t had a blink of sleep in almost twenty-four hours, he was pretty fired up.
With a final look at each other, they started running, jumping from rooftop to rooftop as they traversed the dormant Paris. It was the most fun Nathaniel had had in a while as Caprikid.
They met quite often afterwards, always by pure happenstance. Rooster Bold usually patrolled at dawn, so Nathaniel joined him whenever his regal profile appeared beyond his window on those nights where he was able to outrun the need to sleep. Meanwhile, Nathaniel favoured sunsets and late afternoons, preferably those when his parents were busy with work so they didn’t notice if he wasn’t home. Normally, the other approached him while he was around Place de la Sorbonne and they talked or played around, interrupted only by the need to stop one disaster or another.
From time to time he encountered other Miraculers on duty: the solemn Ryuko that appraised the graffitis he left in abandoned buildings. The quiet Purple Tigress, who didn’t talk despite observing him with curious eyes. Vesperia, whose hurried footsteps could be heard from a mile away and announced that he was going to witness some crazy acrobatics. Polymouse and her little fragments that could crawl out of the most unsuspecting places and nearly gave him a heart attack on more than one occasion. Pegasus who came, got the job done and disappeared again. And the literal ray of sunshine that was Pigella; she was quick to engage in conversation and difficult to keep track of when she caught something interesting in the distance, but she knew how to entertain herself, which meant that Nathaniel didn’t have to worry about boring her.
They were all great and he enjoyed their company, yet he couldn’t help but miss Rooster Bold’s presence. There was a special camaraderie there that made speaking easy. They already had inside jokes and everything.
And so, when classes started again and everyone and their mother was talking about the Miraculers, Nathaniel proudly announced: “Rooster Bold is my favourite.”
“Aren’t you in the Goat Community?” Alya asked in her ‘there is something juicy here’ tone.
“That’s because all the artists are there. Besides, isn’t your favourite Ladybug?”
Alya, from the Fox Community, corrected “Actually, it’s Carapace.” At the same time Nino, from the Turtle Community, beamed like a smiley neon sign.
“Rooster Bold is cool.” Whispered Juleka.
“Like a prince!” Rose agreed.
“But he has some alternative fashion going on.”
The conversation went on without him, not that he cared when Marc’s hand had closed around his wrist and his eyes, green like a valley in summer, were looking at him with a shy type of hope. “What do you like about him?”
Nathaniel almost wanted to laugh. “What is there not to like?”
At that, Marc seemed to be repressing a smile. How strange. “Isn’t he a bit… too much?” He asked, fiddling with his dangly earring.
The action distracted him; it happened a lot these days. It was Marc’s fault for getting this pretty over the summer. “I think the only problem is that Ladybug doesn’t call him enough.”
That suppressed smile blossomed wholly on his painted lips. “I like him a lot too.”
Of course, that didn’t surprise Nathaniel at all. He had already thought that they would get along. Still, he couldn’t quite shake off the feeling of dejection that lodged itself, bitter and sticky, within his throat. Some part of him had expected, perhaps naively, that Caprikid would be Marc’s favourite.
“What about the others?”
“Oh,” Marc hooked their arms together, getting closer as if he were about to tell him a secret, “Purple Tigress is the best.”
As Nathaniel’s hopes and dreams got dragged through the mud, Juleka perked up with the loudest “Seriously?” he had ever heard from her.
“Very seriously, I love her whole look. She is so fierce.”
“Powerful too.” Commented Nino, wide-eyed. “That punch of hers is scary, dude.”
The conversation derailed as more and more heroes were introduced, with Nathaniel only half-listening to them. Waiting for the perfect moment to ask Marc, without raising suspicions, “What about Caprikid?”
Marc’s reaction was to cover his mouth with his hand, the hidden smile evident in his crinkled eyes, only to end up answering: “He looks even fluffier than before.”
Good to know those sleepless nights weren’t for naught.
“If you were in danger,” he prompted later that same day as they walked to their next class, “and you had to choose someone to rescue you, who would it be?”
“Ladybug, of course.”
Ugh. “Besides Ladybug.”
“Chat Noir.”
“Chat Noir isn’t an option either.”
“Then Pegasus.”
Nathaniel wanted to hit his head against the wall, mostly because he didn’t have a single criticism to throw at Pegasus; the guy was as professional as they come.
He wasn’t proud of it, but Nathaniel might have gone slightly overboard with his superhero questions for the next week or so.
“Are you feeling okay?” Rooster Bold asked him during a morning encounter. “You look a bit down.”
“It’s nothing.” Nathaniel grumbled, splayed supine atop one of Notre Dame’s towers.
The other superhero kneeled by his side. That way his body covered the rising sun, casting Nathaniel in shadows. “Do I have to turn myself into a human truth serum?”
That made him laugh. “No need.” The air was crisp on his tongue as he took a gulp of it. The coldness of autumn was starting to creep around the edges of dawn. A warning of rain in the clouds slithering along the horizon. It was a good landscape to paint; it suited his mood. “I’m just disappointed.”
“By what?”
“I’m not my best friend’s favourite superhero.”
In the silence that followed, Nathaniel listened to the soothing clinking sound of golden accessories as Rooster Bold sat fully on the worn-out stone. “It might not mean much,” he said, voice low and sincere. Akin to a caress on his heart, “but you are my favourite Miraculer.”
Nathaniel turned his head; on his lips was a bashful smile unseen on him. It reminded him so much of Marc’s. Even with the confidence he had gained throughout the year, hesitation lingered on his features, as if he were just one step away from recoiling into his old shell, even when it no longer fit him. “It means a lot.” His lips curved on their own accord. He wouldn’t be mad if Rooster Bold were the one to save Marc, Nathaniel would grant him the privilege. “You’re my favourite Miraculer too.”
They remained on the tower, enjoying the companionable rumble of a city on the brink of awakening, until the blaring alarms of a police car passing across the street below signalled their time to intervene.