Back-Room chats

by BenRG

Summary:

Not all of Team Miraculous's life is danger, resisting evil and adventure. There is also the everyday moments of life for them, their families and friends

This will be mostly slice-of-life shorts or little happy-happy moments in the lives of our heroes that I've never been able to find the space to stick into the main stories. Maybe the occasional romantic short too! Probably mostly Lovesquare variations but any ship shown in the Guardianverse stories, even in passing might be included.

Notes:

This chapter is a peek at the Girl Squad sleepover that Alya mentioned to Lila in "The Return of Multimouse".

Chapter 1: A Normal Life

As little as a year ago, Sabine Cheng was genuinely worried about her daughter, Marinette. Although her academic performance was good enough, with the expected variations for her personal aptitudes, the girl dreaded school and the social isolation it meant for her. As much as it would cause great disruption, she and Tom were honestly considering moving Marinette to a different school.

Then, her daughter came back on the first day of her second year, excitedly telling her all about the young woman who had stood up to Chloe Bourgeois’s bullying and had chosen to be her friend! She was thrilled! Sabine was too because, at long last, it seemed that Marinette had been given hope for herself.

In the months that followed, so many things had happened, even setting aside the dreadful appearance of the supervillain known as Hawkmoth. In positive news that actually sometimes drowned out the supervillain’s rampage, Marinette’s circle of friends had expanded quickly and, with her classmates seeing that it was possible to defy Chloe, they realised it was safe to associate with Marinette.

Wonder of wonders, even Chloe, the little bullying brat, had changed radically. However, the cause of this wasn’t the witless and simpering efforts of the barely-adequate Mlle Bustier but, rather, the strangest set of circumstances imaginable. The girl had found one of the mysterious Miraculous and, as a result, had finally reaped consequences for her actions that her father would never consider imposing without the looming threat of the national government leaning over his shoulder.

There was a time when Sabine would have had no kind word for the Bourgeois girl at all. However, she’d learned that some things were not as clear and simple as she imagined; something she ought to have known but had failed to see because she was too bitter about her impunity and malice towards Marinette.

“Girls! I’m coming up!” With the ease of long practice, Sabine balanced the tray on her hand (decades of practice at work) and ascended the ladder up to her daughter’s bedroom hatch. She pushed open the hatch and, as she ascended, took a moment to look at what was happening in her bedroom.

The girls were mostly scattered all around the room. Juleka Couffaine was sitting on the balcony where Marinette’s bed was set, picking out a tune on an acoustic guitar whilst Rose Lavillant sat next to her, her eyes filled with love and devotion that everyone except Juleka could see. Alix Kubdel, Alya Cesaire and Mylène Haprele were sitting at Marinette’s PC, laughing and making comments about an online archive of supposedly-serious TV news bulletins. As for her daughter, she was sitting behind the newest member of the ‘Girl Squad’, a quiet, intense and also incredibly lonely young woman named Tsurugi Kagami along with Sabrina Raincomprix and Chloe. Marinette was laughing at something and painting the girl’s fingernails in individual rainbow colours whilst Chloe was testing various ways she could style the Japanese girl’s short hair with a thoughtful expression on her face as Sabrina eagerly showed her different coloured ribbons and hair clips to try.

Sabine had always been sure that Marinette had the potential to be a leader and a central focus for friends. So it was Chloe who had been the real revelation over the past few months, of course. If she thought for a moment that she’d listen, Sabine would have words to say to Audrey Bourgeois (or ‘Regine’ as she understood the woman was now known). The cruelty to which the girl had been driven to in an attempt to emulate and please her mother! Worse still that she'd gone to those excesses in the pursuit of something that seemingly did not exist to be given: Her mother's love.

“Girls! I have cookies!”

Wow! She might as well have blown a dog whistle in the exercise yard of a boarding kennel! Not that she minded. It was the fate of every mother to have their children grow up too quickly, so it was good to still see a level of childish excitement in every face as they swarmed over the proffered plate. "Fanx Mdm Chng!" Alix said around a huge mouthful.

"Are you enjoying yourself, Chloe?" The blonde heiress seemed surprised to be directly addressed. Sabine assumed that she'd always feared that she would only ever be tolerated. However, Sabine had learned a long time ago that bearing grudges was only a way to loneliness in the long term and there was something heart-breaking about Chloe's social awkwardness and uncertainty now she no longer had her façade of arrogant disdain behind which to hide.

Sabine knew only the basics: After the attack of the akuma known as Style Queen, Chloe had used her newly-acquired superpowers to hijack a train in the hope that she could garner praise by averting a disaster she herself caused. She'd paid a heavy price for her actions. Under intense political pressure, Mayor Bourgeois had allowed an independent psychiatrist to evaluate Chloe and, as a result, she was put on very strong medication. Sabine understood that, although Chloe had been benefiting from the one-to-one therapy sessions, the experience had also had nightmarish elements for her. The girl hated how the strong antipsychotic and antidepressant medications which she had been prescribed dampened her emotions and sometimes left her passively low-functioning and unable to communicate for up to an hour.

Chloe took a nibble at the cookie (one of Sabine's best mixtures, naturally) and her pale face lit up with pleasure before she smiled. The girl had to think hard about what reply to give but then spoke. "It's delicious Madame Cheng!" She paused and looked over her shoulder at the rest of the girls thoughtfully and then down at Marinette's hand where it was squeezing her forearm in reassurance. "Also…. Yes. Yes, I never thought I'd enjoy something like this, but I have and I am."

"It's great!" Sabrina chirped excitedly. "I knew that you could have all the friends you wanted Chloe! Do you want some sparking juice?"

Sabine watched as Chloe let Sabrina drag her off towards Alix (she understood that Chloe and the daughter of the Chief Antiquarian of the Louvre had known each other since young childhood) and frowned briefly at the elaborate golden hair-comb with the bee-like clip at the top holding back her hair on the left side of her head. She wondered just how much that act of trust had changed things too. Ladybug had publicly stripped Chloe of the Bee Miraculous as soon as she realised what the blonde had done with her newly-obtained powers and had publicly denounced her in front of the city's great and good (as well as the press). It had been one of the things that had pressured the girl's father into acquiescing to the President's demand to put his daughter into psychiatric care.

Yet, here she was, not three months later, openly wearing the Bee Miraculous and Queen Bee, as she was known as a superhero, was increasingly a regular part of the patrols of the city's heroes. Having someone give her a second chance, reward her efforts and trust her to continue to change for the better had been a huge turning point for the girl; of that much Sabine was certain.

"She's not really Chloe anymore, maman, not the girl who had made my life unbearable for years. The girl she used to be died with the defeat of Queen Wasp; I'm sure of it."

"Still, dear, Ladybug has taken a big risk on her."

"She has but, if it saves Chloe from the path she was on, it was a risk worth taking! Also… Also, I'm sure it's a risk that's paying off."

Sabine looked over at her daughter and noticed again the latest addition to her daughter's attire: A Chinese bronze coin attached to a leather cord around her neck. Whilst a part of Sabine couldn't help being happy that her little girl was adopting more of the culture and ways of her people, there was something about that coin; there was something about it that felt different and she couldn't help compare it to the Bee Miraculous in some ways. Of course, there was no way that her sometimes-clumsy, often insecure and generally non-violent daughter could make it as a superhero. However, the way her thought tried to jump away from the subject made the woman wonder if she was missing something.

Come to think of it, there were a lot of odd new adornments in Marinette's circle of friends lately. Her eyes briefly tracked over to the strange necklace that Alya was wearing with a beautiful amber pendant that reminded her a little of a fox's tail and the glassy pearl on a thin cord that Kagami wore around her throat. Noticing the direction of her gaze, the bright-eyed and vivacious girl who had so quickly become Marinette's best friend grinned at Sabine in a way that was utterly in character before returning to her excited conversation with Mylène about the latest exploits of Paris's heroes.

A lot in Paris had changed since Hawkmoth first appeared and exploited a simple boy's romantic frustrations to such malicious effect. The most important change had been in turning her daughter from a shy recluse into an outgoing healer and born leader who had already helped so many people. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as Marinette dropped into a kneeling position next to Kagami and excitedly launched into a conversation with her, letting her hair out of its pigtails and demonstrating some simple braids, much to Kagami's fascination. Sabine shook her head as she watched the serious face of the Japanese girl (who was obviously Marinette's latest 'rescue' project) light up and her eyes focus entirely on Marinette in a way that she'd noticed in Chloe's eyes in a few recent encounters and wondered whether her daughter would ever realise the consequence of touching sufficiently-vulnerable hearts.

She also wondered if Marinette would ever have the courage to approach the one who she was sure was closest to her heart. His face was, after all, everywhere in the room but this was no celebrity crush for Adrien Agreste. He was one of her daughter's 'very good friends' and that made it difficult to idealise the gentle, kind-hearted and, yes, there was that too, incredibly lonely young man who had very obviously stolen her heart.

"Hey guys! Come and listen to this! Juleka has literally just written a song!" In response to Rose's excited words, all the girls were swarming around a blushing Juleka who looked like she wanted to vanish behind her hair. "Come on! It's great! Let's play it for everyone!"

Sabine knew that Anarka's daughter was practically the picture in the lexicon next to 'introvert' but there was something about Rose's obvious support and belief in her musical talent that convinced the girl to comply. Mylène had produced a trio of bongo drums out of nowhere and she began to hit out a rapid rhythm  as Juleka, uncertainly at first but, as she focussed more and more on her art rather than it being in front of her friends, with more confidence. Rose, being Rose, kissed the other girl on the cheek before starting to sing in a deep, throaty contralto tone and Sabine wondered if she was making up the words as she went along.

Sabine was not a presumptuous woman. She didn't think of the girls as 'hers'. Many of them had loving parents but those who didn't would always be welcome in her home whenever they needed support. However, she thought that the real support came from Marinette. Nonetheless, she was overjoyed to be part of these girls' normal lives in a city where 'normal' was a rare thing. If she could help them escape, even for a while, then she was sure she was doing a good thing.

Chapter 2: The Bourgeois Sisters

Summary:

Chloe is a girl who had a lot of things most of us can only imagine having. However, after her parents' divorce, she was surprised to learn that she'd actually got something she could never imagine being bought for her: A sister.

Notes:

This chapter is set about a week after the events in "Gabriel Agreste". Zoe has been so messed up with being uprooted from her home and fleeing to Paris that she's not really come out of Chloe's rooms in that time.

“Good morning, Young Miss!”

“Good morning, Jean-Pierre.” The butler smiled at his young mistress getting his name right. So much had changed for her since the master had finally allowed the bitterly-wounded girl to go to a doctor and get the help she so desperately needed. She had become happier and healthier. She had gained more friends (leaving far less of her emotional needs loaded onto the fragile back of young Miss Sabrina) and she had become so much more able to function in a world where, unfortunately, people rarely got everything that they wanted.

Of course, no-one could have imagined that the former Mme Bourgeois was more than just a vile, demanding and arrogant harpy but that she had kept a second daughter from the master as part of some kind of bizarre social experiment in self-recreation. The tall butler smiled in welcome as the other young Mlle Bourgeois entered the room, still a bit nervous and uncertain of her place after the vile woman had driven her from her home in what Jean-Pierre could only assume had been a moment of thwarted rage at losing her hold over the master.

“Um… Good morning… sir?” Zoe’s lightly-accented French was nonetheless filled with a sense of uncertainty.

“Please call me Jean-Pierre, young Miss. What can I get you for breakfast this morning?”

“Zoe is from New York,” Chloe announced in her usual dictatic way, riding over Zoe’s attempt to nervously attempt to ask for ‘whatever everyone else is having’. “I’m sure she isn’t used to real food so please get her a cereal mix…” the older of the twins (by less than two minutes, based on what the master’s lawyers had determined) looked at her sister with genuine worry. “Make sure there are lots of fruits in there, Jean-Pierre. I’m sure that those American hirelings that Audrey left her with for years weren’t feeding her properly!” Jean-Pierre nodded.

“Chloe! I don’t need anything special!”

“Zoe! Please let me look after you! You need someone to be on your side after all the utterly ridiculous stupidity that she put you through!”

Jean-Pierre made his exit and remained very proud of his not laughing at the two sisters already squabbling as if they’d known each other for life.

~*~*~

"Well, here we are, sister dear! My kingdom away from my kingdom!" Chloe gestured around the great central hall/gym of College Francoise Dupont in a grand and extravagant way.

Zoe looked askance at her sister. "Seriously?"

Chloe laughed. "Only ever in my imagination. Honestly, they all despised me but I didn't care so long as they feared me. That was one of the lessons for success that I thought that I'd learned from Audrey. That was until I realised that someone who fears you hates you too and that I'd created a school full of people who'd turn their backs on me the moment I showed weakness. Not a pleasant realisation." Chloe gestured. "Come on, I'll introduce you to everyone!"

Zoe was practically hauled over to a crowd of girls, two of whom she already knew. "Uh… Hi, Marinette! Hi Alya!"

The Martiniquan girl grinned and waved. and the noirette smiled. "Zoe! It's good to see you again!” Marinette looked at Chloe expectantly. “So she is starting here now, Chloe?"

Chloe rolled her eyes. "Yes, at last, after daddy's American lawyers having to practically threaten those clods at her old school to release her previous transcripts!" The blonde gestured. "Zoe, this here is Rose, inarguably the nicest girl in school!" The pixie-like blonde in pink blushed slightly. "And this is Juleka Couffaine-Stone, the goddess of the guitar here in this school and I won't hear any different!" The black-haired goth blushed a lot more strongly than Rose and Zoe had the most bizarre optical illusion that she'd faded briefly out of focus and almost went invisible.

As Zoe tried to blink what she was sure was some kind of blockage out of her eyes, a haughty voice interrupted. "Bourgeois and… well, Bourgeois too."

Chloe grimaced and Zoe got the impression that this was one of what her sister said was her 'many past sins' coming back to manifest itself. "Beaureal," she replied in a neutral tone of voice.

Zoe turned to look into the icy blue eyes of another blonde, this one taller and wearing a light blue cotton-and-lace mini-dress, her hair in two low-hanging pony-tails and a frilly-edged dandelion-yellow parasol of all things leaning on her shoulder. She was accompanied by an oriental-looking girl and a couple of boys without any particular distinguishing features. The newcomer raised an eyebrow and addressed Chloe in an abrupt and bordering-on-rude tone. "Well? Aren't you going to introduce us?"

Chloe visibly grit her teeth and muttered something under her breath before speaking. "Aurore, this is my twin sister, Zoe."

The new girl frowned. "Zoe… Otherwise known as 'Soul Crusher', right?" That reminder of her being used as a pawn by Shadowmoth within a day of her arrival in Paris was like a punch in the gut for Zoe and it took all of her self-control to not start screaming or vomiting. Chloe clenched her fists and was about to step in front of her when Aurore continued, sticking out her non-parasol-carrying hand for a shake. "I'm Aurore Beaureal, otherwise known as 'Stormy Weather'. You don't need to hide your shame, Zoe. You're amongst lots of fellow victims of Hawkmoth in this school; no-one really has the right to talk down to you." She shot Chloe a lethal look.

"Look, Beaureal, I've told you already how sorry I am for that 'once a villain' crack…"

"Not enough times for my liking!" Aurore snapped. Then she closed her eyes and drew in a cleansing breath. "However, for your sister's sake and because none of us can indulge ourselves in petty anger at this time, I'm willing to table this discussion until later."

 "Aurore…" Marinette's voice was gentle and disappointed.

"Save it, Marinette; you may have chosen to forgive Chloe but I'm going to keep her at arm's length if you'll excuse me!"

Zoe's head was spinning as Aurora draped her arm over her shoulder and led her away from her sister with what she was guessing were her three class-mates falling in around her. "So, you are allocated to Mme Mendelev's class! Let me tell you now that it's about a different experience to whatever your sister told you about being under Mlle Bustier's tender care as you can get…" Zoe looked over her shoulder at her sister and was surprised to see a rueful smile on her face as she waved her farewell.

~*~*~

It was Tuesday and that, by long tradition in France, was a half-day at school. Because of that, that afternoon, the Bourgeois sisters were walking side-by-side along the river bank. Chloe was listening indulgently to her sister. "There are some boys that… ugh! I mean, Mattieu is the worst! I was introduced to the class and he's undressing me with his eyes! What the hell is his problem?"

Chloe rolled her eyes. "You'd have to block off an afternoon for that conversation. There are some good ones though?"

Zoe nodded shyly, feeling reluctant to admit to her sister that she was making any friends other than those that the other girl had previously vetted. "Marc is probably the sweetest kid I've ever met! Aurore is actually nice?" she said in an odd tone of voice.

"I imagine that she is. She just isn't to me and I can't blame her." Chloe shot her sister a tense smile. "The second time she was akumatised, it was my fault. She was just really making her show on KIDS+ a big thing and I was… jealous; stupidly jealous. So stupidly jealous that I forgot everything my friends have been teaching me about how to treat people."

Zoe wasn’t sure what so say so she chose to remain silent as Chloe continued. “I’m lucky in a lot of ways. A lot of the people I’ve bullied over the years have been willing to let bygones be bygones. If Aurore wants to hold a grudge, I can’t blame her and I’m not going to complain. I just wish…”

“You wish?”

Chloe smiled at her sister. “I just wish that I’d been smart enough to know what I was storing up for the future when I was still trying to be Audrey’s ‘mini-me’.”

Zoe didn’t know exactly what to say. At that point, she saw that most wonderful of things: A distraction. “Hey, Chloe! Look! An ice cream cart! Wow, I’ve seen pictures of them but I never thought that I’d actually see an actual mobile artisan ice cream salesman!”

Chloe’s eyes lit up. “Oh! It’s Andre’s True Love ice cream cart! This guy is great Zoe! He says it’s magic but I think that he’s an unclassified metahuman. He can make empathic ice cream sundaes that supposedly reveal your true love! I thought it was ridiculous but after he predicted Marinette and Adrikins, I’m starting to wonder!” Chloe hurriedly typed out a text letting all her friends know where to find the wandering ice cream cart before grabbing her sister’s arm and yanking her towards the portly vendor.

“Chloe, I don’t think that I have a ‘true love’ to reveal!”

Chloe laughed. “Andre also makes the best sundaes in Paris! True love or no, you don’t want to miss this! Hey! Andre! Two for us!”

Andre seemed genuinely surprised to see Chloe and Zoe. “Why it’s young Mademoiselle Bourgeois! Have you decided that my magic has something real to offer after all?”

Chloe shrugged. “Jury’s out, sir. One thing I do know is that you make the best ice cream in Paris and my sister here has to sample it right away!” The blonde heiress waved a €20 note, wearing an eager smile.

Andre paused and studied the two girls thoughtfully. “You’ve changed, Mademoiselle Chloe. You’ve lost something but you’ve also gained something more. So, yes, Andre things that you and your sister do need to see what your destiny might be."

The ice cream sundaes, when delivered, weren’t what anyone expected. Chloe’s was dark chocolate with sweet honey-coated vanilla on top with a blueberry at the very top top. Zoe’s was identical except the chocolate and honey-vanilla were swapped over. “Hmm… Interesting.” He looked at the two girls as he handed over their confections. “Andre’s magic isn’t just about true love, you know. Sometimes it is about who we need to grow and be happy. You two young ladies shouldn’t be in a hurry to find true love, you know. Right now, it’s each other that you need to start to heal all the bad things that were done to you.” Andre finished with stabbing two serving spoons into the ice creams, Chloe’s ending with an oriental dragon curling around the stalk and the end of Zoe’s looking like the hilt of a knight’s sword. “Enjoy, my dear children and please tell everyone that Andre said that you two will always be better together than you ever will be apart!”

Zoe boggled at the man for a few moments. “Um… Thanks? I think?”

~*~*~

The mirror-image outfits that the Bourgeois twins were wearing were odd that they had the same colours as their ice creams. However, neither of them was paying attention to that right now. The nightclub’s throbbing music was pounding its way into Zoe’s head and, as it did so, she found herself moving more and more uninhibitedly with the rhythm. Chloe’s dancing was flowing and perfectly in tune with the music. As she focussed on her sister’s movements, Zoe found herself dancing in the same way, flowing not just with the sounds but around and in a compliment to her sister’s own movements. All the guys (and more than a few girls) were looking at them with open wonder and desire.

The music came to a stop and the Bourgeois girls joined in the applause for the DJ, a guy called Nino who Chloe said was a friend of hers from way back. Probably more of the same old story as just about all of Chloe’s oldest friends, no doubt. “That was great, sis! I thought you were copying me for a moment there!”

“I was trying to,” Zoe admitted. “I’m not a natural dancer but I found my rhythm by trying to match you!”

Chloe laughed and slapped Zoe’s shoulder lightly. “Flattery will get you everywhere, sis!”

“Hey beautiful girls!” The girls turned to see a guy with spiked dyed green hair standing behind them. Aware of its underage clientele, this venue had a strict 'no alcohol' policy but this didn't stop this older teenager from reeking with the smell of spirits. “What brings a couple of burning hot girls like you to this club?”

Zoe decided to be polite, even though she was already getting creepy vibes from the man. “Just hanging out tonight!”

The man shook his head. “No, I mean, what brings you here together?”

Chloe blushed. “Oh, yeah, I get you. No, we aren’t on a date or anything. We’re sisters!”

“Twins!” Zoe added.

The man looked pole-axed for a moment before he began to cry and put his hands on their shoulders. “Tw… twins? Thank you….” he sobbed. “Thank you!”

“Yyyeaaah… Okay, that’s a big, shiny red ‘no’.” Zoe responded as she began to back-pedal.

Chloe stuck her nose into the air. “Tell me about it, Zo. Get lost and find somewhere you can sleep it off with the other losers, creep!”

“No, wait! I… It’s destiny, don’t you see?” the man babbled as the girls retreated.

“The one thing from New York that I wasn’t expecting to keep happening in Paris!” Zoe muttered as they pushed through the crowds towards the juice bar.

Chloe laughed “Don’t worry, Zo. So long as we’re together, we’re going to be okay!”

The two sisters walked off through the crowd, either unaware or uncaring of all the envious gazes being shot their way. Being exceptional was, after all, ultimately just a frame of mind.

Chapter 3: Saving the World

Summary:

Mylène Haprèle has always believed strongly in saving the world if he can. However, it took the unexpected appearance of of a friend with an unbelievable offer to show her just what 'saving the world' might involve.

Notes:

This chapter is an actual cut introduction to a chapter that was meant to go somewhere in between 'Archaix' and 'Blackout'.

For a long time, I was toying with making the Guardianverse a crossover with Doctor Who and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (two shows that shared a common writer - Douglas Adams). This idea was dropped but a few bits of that abandoned direction to the series remains, including this story, which was meant to highlight why Bunnyx was never around for a long time in the second half of Book 1 and to explain why Polymouse never made an appearance.

You see, Alix has learned her Grandfather's way of fixing problems.

"Look, Mlle Haprèle, you're going to have to face it: This air purifying plant has to be built and it is going to be built."

Mylène Haprèle looked at the site foreman with undisguised hostility. The man was everything she despised about local government bureaucracy: He was entitled, officious and had absolutely no interest in questioning his orders, only carrying them out, no matter what the cost. "Why?" she asked.

"Nothing that you or any of these other troublemakers you've brought here will change… What? Why what?"

Lying in front of a 50-tonne bulldozer at the entrance to the Place des Vosges, Mylène shot the man a humourless smile. "Why has it got to be built?"

"Why…? Well… It's an air purifier plant! You've got to build air purifier plants! Look, you might be a minor but your parent or guardian was perfectly entitled to make any objections or observations on your behalf at the appropriate time!"

"'Appropriate time'? What was the 'appropriate time'? I mean… It's not as if you lot bothered to tell anyone that you were going to rip up their park in favour of that monstrous machine that cannot be a better air purifier than the trees that are already here?!?"

The foreman smirked condescendingly. "Look, you little anarchist, all the planning applications and demolition orders have been on display at the Hotel de Ville for months!"

Mylène sat up and glared at the man with an intensity for which her small size simply hadn't prepared him. "Well, as I'm sure you imagine, when I heard about this I went running over there to see them. It seems that the people of Paris weren’t the only ones who didn't know anything about this! I had to talk to a dozen clerks and finally ask the mayor's daughter to knock some heads together before I found anyone willing to admit that they've heard about this project! I ended up having to go down in the sub-basement!"

The foreman's condescending expression visibly faltered. "R… really? Oh, well that's the civil planning display area!"

"With a torch."

"The lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs!"

The foreman had gone an interesting shade of pale. He knew that the mayor wanted this project going ahead without any trouble but this was a breach of just about every planning regulation in the book. It was beginning to sound that someone had been monumentally corrupt or horrifyingly incompetent and he was hoping to God that it hadn't been him. "But the planning applications were on display!"

Mylène stood up and paced threateningly towards the man who, despite being twice her height, began to back up. "Oh yes! They were 'on display' at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet inside a disused lavatory with a sign on the door that read: 'Beware of the Leopard'." The girl blinked and shook her head in confusion. The foreman didn't look much better on learning that. "Seriously, have you people thought of going into advertising?"

At that point, the bulldozer's engine started and Mylène raced back to jump into the road again in front of it. 

The foreman looked hopelessly towards Officer Raincomprix but the gendarme was still fully occupied dealing with this little monster's boyfriend and classmates who had formed a human chain around the first tree scheduled for removal. With a sigh, the man walked over to the girl. "Mademoiselle Haprèle… Do you know how much damage this very expensive bulldozer would suffer if I just allowed it to roll right over you?"

Mylène hadn't thought of that. "No, how much?"

The man's smile was very threatening in its blandness. "None at all."

~*~*~

By a curious coincidence, 'None at all' was the precisely the inkling that Mylène Haprèle had that one of her closest friends' family wasn't from this world at all but was, instead, from a small planet orbiting a black hole near the centre of the galaxy. This family, who had become marooned on Earth after a dematerialisation circuit failure, had integrated into the society of Algeria fairly well but there was still the occasional hiccup. Such as her friend's mother choosing the name 'Jenny Tiq du Plicyte’ as being 'nicely inconspicuous'.

This friend will enter into this story two paragraphs from now, at which time she will greet the Earth-girl with the words 'Hello, Mylène'. The Earth-girl will greet her in turn but, in deference to two million years of human evolution, will not attempt to pick bugs off of her.

Humans are not proud of their distant ancestors and, as a rule, never invite them to dinner parties.

~*~*~

Lying in the dirt, Mylène was surprised when a head suddenly blocked the noonday sunlight but she couldn't recognise the face was because it was entirely in shadow.

"Hello, Mylène!"

Mylène blinked. "Oh! Alix! Hello!" It was nice to have another friendly face but Alix Kubdel wasn't the one she'd been expecting; she wasn't really 'into' structured activism. Right now, Alix was staring all around her, her eyes darting from horizon to horizon with a fixed expression of worry. “Alix are you okay?”

“Oh, yes, fine. Er… How long have we known each other now?”

Mylène blinked for a moment in surprise. “How long? I don’t know… Three years now? Almost four? Most of it seemed to make some strange kind of sense at the time…”

"Right... So, look, are you busy?"

Mylène looked around her at everything that was going on; you know, the protest, the police arguing with their classmates and everything. "Well, I've got this bulldozer to lie in front of or it will start knocking down all these centuries-old trees but… apart from that, not much, no!"

Alix looked distracted. She pulled out that bizarre pocket-watch heirloom of hers and stared at its face for a long moment. "Good, come on, I need to tell you something. It is the single most important thing that you've ever heard and I've got to tell you it now over a chocolate milkshake at Marinette's parents' bakery!"

"A chocolate milkshake?"

"Trust me, you are going to need the sugar hit."

"What? No! What about the demolition of this park?"

Alix blinked in obvious confusion. "Well, can't they do that while you're away?" Occasionally, Alix got like this; it was as if she didn't fully understand the way people thought or talked.

"Alix? I don't want them to do it."

"Oh…" Alix stepped away from her friend and really looked around the park, seeming to take in everything for the first time. "They want to tear up this park." Mylène nodded. "But you don't want them to. " Mylène nodded again with an impatient roll of her eyes. "… And they can't start because you're lying in front of their bulldozer?"

"Exactly," Mylène confirmed.

"Well, I think that we can come to an arrangement. Hey! Big guy with the hard hat! We need to talk!"

The foreman, who had been arguing with a union representative about whether the workmen would be paid for their time whether or not the demolition actually happened, looked over to see the cheerful, vaguely androgynous redhead standing next to that pint-sized domestic terrorist and waving at him. "Yes? Has Mlle Haprèle come to her senses yet?"

Alix ignored Mylène visibly seething at the implication of the man's words. "Can we assume for the moment that she hasn't?"

"Well?" The foreman sighed.

"Can we also assume that she's going to stay there all day?" The foreman looked like he'd just drunk a tall glass of neat lemon juice but he nodded. "If so, you and your workmen are all just going to be standing around here all day doing nothing!"

The foreman looked at the union rep who smiled benignly before looking away. "Could be…" the foreman reluctantly allowed.

"Well, if you're resigned to that anyway, do you actually need her here?"

The foreman felt like the top of his head had come loose and he struggled to follow the redhead's train of thought. "Well, no… Not 'need'… Not as such…"

"So, if you don't need her here, I can take her to the Dupain-Cheng bakery for an hour or so and we can get some snacks and milkshakes, okay?" The foreman nodded dumbly as Alix walked right up to him. She gestured him to lean up close to her so she could continue in a confidential whisper. "And, if you lads want to sneak off for lunch, a glass of wine or two or something, then we'll cover for you in return."

"Oh, that's very nice of you! Yes, that's most reasonable! Er… I think…?" Could winning be this easy?

Alix stepped back and gestured to the utterly-dumbstruck Mylène. "So, if you'll come and lie down here…"

The foreman felt like he'd just run blindfold into a wall. Actually, it suddenly sounded like he’d not won anything at all. "Wait, what?"

Alix's smile was somehow too wide to be possible for someone with a human's facial muscle structure. "Ah, sorry, I should have been clearer. My client, Mlle Haprèle, has agreed to stop lying in front of your bulldozer on the sole condition that you do so in her place until she returns."

The foreman gestured helplessly for a few moments. "So… you want me to lie in front of the bulldozer?"

Alix nodded. "Yes."

"Instead of Mlle Haprèle?"

Alix's grin actually grew wider. "Yes."

"In the mud?"

"In, as you say, the mud."

"In exchange for which, you'll take Mlle Haprèle to the bakery for an hour or so?"

Alix's fixed and increasingly-terrifying too-wide grin was beginning to hurt the man's hindbrain. "Yes!" she confirmed

The foreman's next word was despairing. "Promise?"

Alix winked. "Promise."

There followed a brief and surreal interlude where Mylène allowed the foreman to lie down in front of the bulldozer in her place, all to the chorus of mocking laughter from their classmates and his work crew. Alix seized Mylène's bicep and led her away with an expression of fierce determination. 

"But can we trust him?" The rainbow-dreadlocked girl asked plaintively.

Alix grunted. "Me? I'd trust him to the end of the world."

"Ah, but how far away is that?"

Alix looked at her fob watch again. "As matter stand? Right now, maybe fifteen minutes. Come on, I need some caffeine and some sugar!"

Notes:

I was never going to go into too many details but Bunnyx had sensed a fatal disruption to the timeline and needed Polymouse (with a version of the Mouse Miraculous from the future) to resolve it. Alix and Mylène were about to start an Adventure in Time and Space (although it would only ever be indirectly referred to in the story).

Basically, I was plagiarising the first episode of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' and this finally made me drop this bit of the story; I also finally decided not to make too much of a thing of the Doctor Who links. However, I love how I wrote this bit and I couldn't bear to just delete it.

Chapter 4: The Peahen and Her Chicks

Summary:

After spending a year... dead? In stasis? In a magical coma? Emilie Graham de Vanily didn't know which and it didn't matter. What mattered was that the world and her family had changed beyond recognition and she had a lot to get used to. Some of it was easy and some of it was hard. What was important that those who truly loved her were with her.

Notes:

This is set before the opening chapter of The Lion's Roar and after the epilogue of Voices of the Miracuchat. I have a lot to say about my version of Emilie but no-where that really fits organically into the story apart from her occasional POV about other characters.

Emilie Graham de Vanily looked up at the ceiling of her bedroom thoughtfully. She still wasn’t used to this second lease of life. As her strength had died away with Nathalie sneering at her as she breathed what she was sure were her last breaths, she had reconciled herself with dying a failure and leaving her son to face his father’s madness with no defender and no tools to resist the horrors that Gabriel would use the Butterfly Miraculous to commit. Waking up in that glass-fronted coffin with a strange androgynous rabbit girl looking down to her had briefly made her question her every half-formed thought about the afterlife before she had come to her senses and realised that the warmth on her chest had come from a restored Peacock Miraculous.

The hurried conversation that followed as she struggled to full wakefulness had told her that her fears about what Gabriel was capable of were justified but that she’d not fully understood how destiny might be on her son’s side.

Speaking of her son… “Plagg, keep it down! Maman is probably still sleeping!”

“Don’t worry, Adrien! I’m a cat, remember? Silent paws?”

“Silent paws maybe; quiet voice though?”

Emilie swung her long legs out of her bed, smiling all the while about her son and the wonderful companion he’d made in the kwami of the Black Cat Miraculous. Maybe her father had been right to say that there was a link between their family and the Miraculous. Or maybe it was just the fact that Gabriel had struck here that led the most powerful of the Miraculous to fall to the most worthy of holders?

Speaking of kwami… Emilie’s hand drifted to her throat; Marinette (who sometimes seemed so much older than her almost fifteen years) had insisted that the price for keeping her Miraculous was to never let it leave her person. Emilie’s solution to this rule was to attach the Peacock Brooch to a white cotton choker that she wore overnight. It was something of a gothic gesture but one that had its practical and emotional benefits. 

Seemingly in response to her Holder’s gesture, Duusu swooped out of her nest in a hat-box to one side of Emilie’s bedroom and swung up to her face, beaming happily. “Good morning Miss Emilie! I hope you slept well!” 

“Yes, Duusu, I did thank you.” Emilie reached out with a finger to caress Duusu’s cheek. “What about you?”

“Oh Miss Emilie! I’m so happy to have been freed from those horrible people who used to live here! It’s like waking up from a nightmare!” The Spirit of Emotion paused and blushed a little. “Um… I suppose you know all about that?”

Emilie smiled. “I did not dream, Duusu but I am so glad to be awake and with my family… my real family again!” 

Duusu beamed again in response. “I can sense your happiness, Emilie but also your regrets!” The little royal blue kwami raised an extremity as if starting a lecture. “You may have made mistakes in the past but you also did all that you could to make them right! Never forget that your chicks love you and you are surrounded by true friends!”

Emilie smiled with a little embarrassment at Duusu’s praise. “Thank you, my friend.” Maybe that was the real reason why dear Marinette had decided to leave the Peacock in her hands: She and Duusu both needed each other to recover from Gabriel’s sins.

Now Duusu swept in closer to her face with a mischievous grin. “Now, let’s go downstairs and eat!”

~*~*~

“Bonjour, Maman!” Emilie had heard that Adrien’s friends sometimes called him ‘the sunshine child’ and she understood why. Maybe before her indisposition, she’d been too used to it to notice it but there was just something about her son that made him light up the room with simple joy of life. She was so glad that Gabriel had not been able to snuff it out.

She turned to her son, filtering out the excited chatter as Plagg and Duusu met mid-air over the kitchen counter. “Bonjour, Adrien, what do you have waiting for you today?” 

“Mostly just school, Maman. However, I’m really looking forward to having Melodié and her family over for dinner tonight!” There was a pause before he continued. “I suppose it’s going to be a formal thing?” 

Emilie was quite proud of herself for not laughing. From his earliest childhood, Adrien had an aversion to ‘formal things’ that bordered on a phobia; one area in which he was very different from both his parents, in her view. “Adrien, this is partly a thank-you to M and Mme Allegra for how understanding she’s been about Melodié spending so much time with us. Surely you want us to show them our best side?”

Adrien muttered something and Emilie bet it was some gripe about her decision, whether it was necessary or his general dislike for aristocratic etiquette. Generously, she decided not to ask him to repeat it. “Adrien, I’m sure that Melodié is quite familiar with you in your everyday life…” And also in your costumed form, she added silently. “However, we need to put on our best show tonight to show the Allegras that we’re reliable and trustworthy; sensible people who can help Melodié, especially after Felix toyed with her mind for so long!”

Adrien nodded in acknowledgement. “Yes, Mama.” Emilie was not to be fooled, of course; she hadn’t been in magical status for that long. That was a grudging acceptance. She considered her son for a moment and then decided to drop the subject. There was no point forcing Adrien to lie to her that he was happy with her decision; that way lay resentment and rebellion.

“I’m sure that you can put on the appearance of a child of our family and to show its good side.” Adrien considered those words thoughtfully. Not all of the history of the Graham de Vanilys was villainy, after all. Adrien needed to show the nobility and the responsibility to protect those under their care that, in Emilie’s view, was a key part of being a true noble.

~*~*~

Emilie was actually more nervous about this dinner than she was ready to admit to Adrien. She knew perfectly well that she had no automatic right to Melodié’s time; Gabriel and Nathalie had seen to that. However, she desperately wanted some kind of relationship with her daughter. Building bridges with the Allegras was a key step towards that goal. 

Because of that, Cerise, their perfectly charming maid, was in her best formal uniform and Emilie was overjoyed that André had allowed Marlena Cesaire to cook for them that night. All he wanted as payment was to attend the dinner and Emilie couldn’t say no. After Audrey showed her true colours and Gabriel’s sins had been exposed, the man had been broken and he needed to be out and about the city, not hiding away in his office at the Grand Hotel.

“M Allegra, Mme Allegra, welcome to our home.” 

Georges Allegra looked away from his consideration of the mansion's lobby area with a thoughtful expression that cleared quickly as he looked directly at Emilie. “Please, call me Georges and this is Amirah.”

“In that case, I am Emilie and, of course, you know Adrien.” Adrien looked about as stiff and artificial in his off-white formal suit as his waxwork at the Musee Grévin. Melodié was wearing a beautiful midnight blue suit with a silvery blouse and a full-length skirt that seemed to bring to life her tabloid nickname 'Moonlight Princess'. Emilie was irrationally and unjustifiably pleased that she was not already laughing at how uncomfortable her twin was looking. Emilie turned to her other house-guest. “Also, this is M André Bourgeois; he’s a former artistic collaborator as well as a good friend of many years standing.”

George’s face was thoughtful for a moment and Emilie suspected that he was not a great fan of the former Mayor of Paris. He was about to say something when Amirah kicked his ankle and, when he looked at her in surprise, took warning from her scowl. “M Borgeous, it’s good to meet you in person.”

“Probably very different from my professional facade,” André said with a rueful smile, offering his hand to Georges, who shook it with some surprise.

~*~*~

“No, Mel, you don’t suck it, you tip it into your mouth; it’s only a liquid after all!” 

Emilie couldn’t help but grin at Adrien’s urgent whisper at the grand dinner table as her daughter visibly struggled with the soup dish. The children were seated opposite each other with George sitting by Melodié and Amirah sitting next to Adrien. André was sitting at the far end of the length of the table in Gabriel’s old seat. Emilie suddenly wanted there to be a photographer present so she could send the picture to the man with which he could decorate his cell. After he'd started seriously using the Gemini Miraculous to twist people's minds, he'd come to despise André, often calling him 'hen-pecked bought help'. How would he react to seeing the man 'supplanting' his seat at the table…?

"Maybe don't hunch over the food and eat slower," Emilie added. "I don't think that it will vanish."

"If you can persuade her to not rush every meal then I will bless you," Amirah said.

Frustrated, Melodié looked between her bio-mom and her mother. "Are you two ganging up on me?"

"It's a parent thing, I think!" Adrien responded.

"Just take it slow, my dear," Emilie said. "You'll appreciate it more." The girl who Emilie felt was so like her late mother made a very overt and mocking show of doing as she asked. She then reacted with some surprise at the fact it was Adrien who gave her a little sarcastic applause. Still, she'd later reluctantly admit that eating 'rich' was a new experience for her and was cool, in its own way.

The meal went on and course followed course. Finally, they were onto the desert - Ice cream and blackberry syrup melting across an apple pie with a crust so crisp that it made a loud 'crack' every time someone pushed their spoon into it. Mel shot Adrien a pleading look. “Actually,” he said, “I think that this is an occasion where you can justify eating like it’s a race."

Melodié shot her twin a fey grin. “I’d say it would almost be an insult to the chef not to!”

Emilie was very proud that she hadn’t choked on the ice cream when she heard that. Sometimes, it was very good to have her children behave like children despite the horrors they’d experienced at their father’s hands.

~*~*~

“Georges, Amirah, thank you so very much for coming tonight. Thank you too Melodié for ‘enduring’ my need for certain things to be done formally.” The three Allegras offered pleasant smiles in response and Melodié managed to even giggle a little. 

“Catch me at another time and you might even get me to wear a princess dress!” the girl offered.

Georges smiled at his daughter. “Sunlight? You’ll always be a Princess to me.” Melodié blushed in response to her father’s words. Emilie sighed slightly. She had no right to Melodié; apart from a fluke of biology, she was nothing to her and she had no right to be jealous of her close bond with the two people who had raised her from infancy.

Georges took a step to one side and looked thoughtfully at Emilie and Melodié now they were both in the same field of view. “You know, I don’t have any doubt that she is your daughter anymore. Seeing you side-by-side it’s clear that you’re of the same blood.” He shook his head. “It’s just a shame that things ended up being so twisted all because of that man.” He touched his daughter on the shoulder and Melodié responded to the simple act of affection with a big smile.

“Emilie?” Emilie looked over at Amirah’s quiet call from surprisingly close at her side. “I can read your reactions, you know. This isn’t a competition to win or lose. If you want to spend time with Melodié, that’s your right to ask and it’s her right to accept or refuse.”

Emilie was searching for a reply when Melodié spoke up. “I will accept too, Mama-E! Uh… you don’t mind if I call you that do you?” 

Emilie did not remember initiating the hug but the joy she felt at it being so unconditionally returned was a kind of rebirth for her and tears of joy stung her eyes.

After a moment, Melodié stepped out of the hug and looked at her parents. “Papa, Mama, can I… stay a little longer? I want to talk to Adrien for a while.” Every adult heard the unspoken addendum: Without adult supervision.

Georges looked at his watch. “It’s late, Melodié; I don’t want you having to make your way home by cab or something after dark!”

Emilie was about to offer Gerard’s services to return her daughter to her home when Melodié spoke up. “It’s okay, Papa, I have my own way to get home.” The girl then gestured to the elephant in the room that no-one had talked about: The Scorpio Miraculous dangling from her right ear. Emilie’s eyebrows rose. So, she’d trusted her parents enough to tell them everything and they had trusted her enough to let her keep the Miraculous. It was hard to overstate just how much of a good sign that was.

Georges nodded thoughtfully. "Yes… Yes, I suppose that I can trust you to look after yourself, can't you? Just don't stay too late; it's a school night and…" Adrien and Melodié were already at the top of the stairs, hand in hand and whispering urgently about something; nothing too serious, based on their grins.

Emilie smiled. "Don't worry; I'll make sure they are both in their beds in enough time. I have… means of my own." Both Allegra adults looked at her oddly, not realising the significance of her fingers brushing the Peacock Brooch at the centre of her blouse over her collar bone.

~*~*~

André was sitting in a comfortable armchair in the sitting room that Emilie had created out of her ex-husband's aliter, considering a sniffer of brandy thoughtfully. "Thank you for your invitation, Emilie," he said after a moment. "Chloe has been pestering me relentlessly about my 'exile' as she puts it and insisted that I get out and about the city again. In truth, I was afraid of the look I'd see in people's eyes; the look that M Allegra had in his eyes. I know that I failed horribly as a mayor and it isn't something I like to be reminded of. That said…?" He lapsed into silent thought for a moment.

"Staying hidden is running away in its own way, André." The former Mayor and, in Emilie’s view, talented visual artist sighed in acknowledgement. “I think that you need to show that your life is moving on from all the mistakes you made and that you’re trying to make things right.” She smiled. “You are a good man, André Bourgois; one who was both forced off his path and led astray by wicked souls and you’re now finding your way back!”

André considered that for a while before speaking again. “Maybe you can help.” Emilie raised an eyebrow in polite query. “Maybe a return engagement? Chloe has been begging me to invite over ‘Tante Em’ pretty much since Victory Day and, of course, I have another daughter now!”

Emilie nodded. Yes, she knew about Zoe and about the cruelty that this proved was inculcated every fibre of Audrey Regine’s being. 

André was continuing. “Also, perhaps I could be of use to you getting used to the world again too and you could be of use to me, learning how to deal with people in a balanced way?” The man stood and began to pace nervously before crouching right in front of Emilie. “If your public image allows you to be seen with a man such as I?”

It took Emilie a few moments to realise what it was that André was asking; he wanted to date her. “André…” She was thinking fast and some of the things she was thinking surprised her. “André, if I say ‘yes’, then I want you to realise that I am not able to do something like this casually or as a façade over a business relationship. I’m also not willing to be a casual lover or a ‘friend with benefits’; I will need to have commitment so I can give it in exchange.”

André drew in a deep breath and released it again. “Emilie… I am actually an honourable man. When we first met, I’d been married to Audrey for five years already. I would not betray that, no matter how much I knew that she was casual in giving her favours to any man or woman beautiful enough to catch her attention for a passing moment. When you and Gabriel became a couple…? Well, that was another line I would never cross. However, we’re both free now, free of commitments and of our past mistakes and I can tell you something that I was never free to tell you before: You have always been the most beautiful woman I have ever known, inside and out.”

Emilie realised that André had taken her hand and was stroking it gently. She was briefly both surprised by his daring and fighting an urge to chuckle at his demonstration of French charm and gallantry. “Very well then, André, I’ll come to dinner at the hotel with you on the day of your choice and… the other things we can arrange for when we’re both available and ready.”

André smiled; Emilie froze as he cupped her face in his hands and his lips gently touched hers. She was so surprised that her mind locked up but, after that blissful moment had passed, she realised that it was not even slightly unwelcome. So she reciprocated.

~*~*~

Adrien and Melodié had thrown both their formal jackets over the back of Adrien’s sofa and the two of them were standing in the middle of his bedroom, nearly tingling with anticipation. “What do you think that Maman is talking with M Bourgeois about?” Adrien asked.

Melodié shrugged. “Ah, probably business or some other ‘grown up’ stuff that’s more important only when you get over the big 3-0. Me, I’m not going to worry about it; not when we’ve got so much planned for tonight!” The girl’s green eyes were sparkling with anticipation. “So…?”

Adrien clicked the button on the remote control in his hand that opened his windows and then casually tossed it onto the sofa. “Plagg, claws out!”

“Taares! Show my sting!”

Notes:

Yes, Andre/Emilie is going to be an occasional thing! Mostly because I so desperately want to occasionally force Adrien and Chloe to react to it!

Chapter 5: More Beautiful Than the Truth

Summary:

A real dark turn for this story set immediately after 'Princess Justice'.

One of the great mysteries of Miraculous is: Who is Lila Rossi? From where does this singular personality come? What are her innermost thoughts, realities and motives? What are the full extend of her crimes?

Check the tags again because this chapter brings multiple trigger warnings to this collection.

BEWARE: Here be monsters.

Notes:

WARNING for non-explicit but clearly-mentioned triggers:

* Infanticide
* Patricide
* Revenge porn
* Debatable consent:

Lila Rossi sat in a lotus meditative pose in her bedroom at the Italian Embassy. The room was still echoing and reverberating with her mother’s parting threat of: “The Convent is not off the table!” 

Lila snorted. She’d be more scared about that threat if there was any likelihood of her mother even remembering it within a week. Some new project would emerge at the embassy or some new way to advance her career and Bianca Rossi would shift her daughter’s needs back a few steps again.

The funny thing… the deeply funny thing is that this was exactly the way Lila preferred matters. Worse come to worse, it wouldn’t be that difficult to present the face of reform to the world and wait until her mother lost interest in watching her behaviour. 

Oh, for a while there, Lila had resented not having her mother’s full attention but, as the years had passed, she had realised that having that squalling, mediocre-looking moron out of her life was far more… convenient. It wasn’t as if she really felt any kinship for her.

For as long as Lila was consciously aware of herself, she’d known that she was different and special. It took a while for her to develop enough of a vocabulary to define that to herself but she did in the end. She was a genius and always had been: A remarkable intellect and beauty whose standards and abilities left her far above the bleating mob that passed themselves off as sapient beings. None of them, least of all her parents, had any ability, let alone the right, to understand or judge her. 

For a long time, it had been a frustration to her that no-one else seemed to recognise this. She’d assumed that they were simply jealous mediocrities, unable to understand her natural brilliance and so were just pretending to ignore it.

She realised that they weren’t just pretending when she’d started telling her parents little embellishments of the truth and they weren’t immediately noticing it. They were actually too stupid to see what she was and what she was capable of! 

This was like a second birth for her. Suddenly she realised that she could have whatever she wanted and no-one had the intelligence or right to deny it to her! 

She started off small. ‘Borrowing’ money, ‘accidentally’ breaking things her parents valued and pulling surprisingly simple stunts that had the staff at the consulates and embassies where her mother worked practically at each other’s throats! It was so funny, watching good friends tear each other apart because of some carefully-planted gossip,, rumour or fabricated evidence of treachery!

However, for Lila the great revelation about her power and the inability of others to see through her plots was little Sophia, her darling little sister. 

It couldn’t be allowed to continue, of course. Lila had no intention of sharing her parents' wealth and privileges with that horrible little growth her mother had grunted out when Lila was six years old. She had been unable to talk her parents into putting her up for adoption or just abandoning her outside an orphanage, no matter how carefully she implied her little sister was likely going to grow up disabled, deformed or an imbecile. Lila remained careful. Even at almost seven years old, she was perfectly well aware that too much overt action would lead to her possibly coming to the attention of some simpleton who thought they had the intelligence to judge her and that would never do!

Fortunately, babies are very fragile beings and, for some reason, people assume that the family home is an intrinsically safe place for the helpless. Lila was very good at being quiet and subtle, even at that young age and there was no possible way that dear, sweet Sophia could possibly have defended herself. There wasn’t really even any need for a ‘weapon’, not even a chemical to remove any possibility of resistance. All she had to do was wait.

So sad; that a baby not even nine months old should have just… stopped breathing overnight due to rolling over and pressing her face into her pillow.

The funeral was one of the most immensely funny experiences that young Lila had ever had. All those silly adults acting as if they cared and trying to comfort her parents who were just stupidly acting as if the little creature ever had any value when they had Lila herself! Lila even pretended grief herself, just out of necessity and was pleased that her parents demonstrated their essential imbecility and didn't realise that it was play-acting. Lila looked up at her collection of masquerade masks with a smile. The reason she’d manipulated her mother into spending a considerable part of her salary purchasing those antiquities was because they reminded her of herself: A collection of perfect false faces behind which no-one could possibly know what real thoughts and feelings looked out at you!

It wasn’t until a few weeks later that Lila realised that her father, Bruno, had changed. He was looking at her in a suspicious way. It was inconceivable that Lila should have made an error with executing her plan and covering things up so she had to assume that his suspicions were just blind luck. He’d spoken to her a few times and had seemed to be hearing something that Lila wasn’t saying, no matter how carefully she simulated the emotions that she felt she should be showing to reassure him.

Lila’s seventh birthday should have been a joyful time for her parents, celebrating their pretty little girl - their only child, after all. However, Lila, long acclimatised to wandering the residence at night to ensure she had all the up-to-date facts, heard her parents talking. Her father was telling her mother that Lila’s behaviour was suspicious: Wasn’t it strange that Sophia should have had such an improbable accident so soon after Lila had been so mendaciously talking about childhood illnesses and how important it was that they don’t let their love for Sophia keep her from the proper care?

Bianca was horrified and rejected his words out-of-hand but it was too late for Bruno Rossi. No, daddy had to go.

It was hilarious how easy it was for Lila to play on her mother’s ambitions and insecurities, encouraging her to take long working trips (with Lila along) and to look with suspicion at the pretty girls with whom her father worked at the Agusta Corporation. Oh, those arguments were so funny. 

However, the more Lila thought about it, a divorce wasn’t enough. She could not allow her father to be in the position to possibly mention his lucky deductions to anyone who might inconvenience Lila herself. Fortunately, Lila had been cultivating a mechanic in the Embassy carpool.

Lila freely admitted that she was something of a snob when it came to manual labour but she never shied from doing whatever she had to in order to ensure her schemes went well. Who could have imagined that it was that simple to sabotage a car’s brakes, even in this era of computer-assisted driving?

Sitting on the floor by her bed, Lila shivered in near-sexual delight at the memory of the suspicious look her father had shot her after she’d bid him farewell before he left for the civil aviation conference in France. He would never get there of course and the distraught look on her mother’s face when the news of the crash off of a steep road in the Alps was brought to her was yet another sweet memory.

Once again, Lila proved her brilliance as an actress by playing the mourning daughter comforting her grieving mother.

Mother didn’t realise a good thing when she got it, of course. So, whilst she was ‘prostrate in mourning’ (another source of deep delight for Lila), Lila got a bonus by being left in the care of her grandmother, Gianna d’Acanto. 

Oh, the old woman was a delight. It didn’t take long for Lila to hear what wasn’t said and ferret out some of her secrets but she could never have imagined the source of her trinkets and hidden wealth. That she had been a thief and a confidence artist! Stripping the world of treasures and wealth that they obviously lacked the wit to keep! 

Much to Lila’s surprise (she’d been fearful that the woman might denounce her or arrange for an ‘accident’ to keep her secret), instead she took her on as an apprentice! The things she learned about prestidigitation and manipulation of the mind! Many of these things she’d long ago taught herself but these secret and proven methods were of great use to her going forwards! 

There was one thing about Gianna’s stories that Lila continued to scorn with a sneer. ‘Magic’! Only the simple-minded believed in such things! Oddly, Lila continued to hold onto this belief as it was impossible to her that she could have been in error, even with the proven magic of the Miraculous now being part of her life. No, they were a real power that she had felt and could aim to steal to use for herself but lucky charms? The magical ability to make people believe her every word? No, as much as she was grateful for her grandmother’s gift of her most prized 'lucky charm' brooch (genuinely grateful - Gianna was the closest thing to an equal that Lila was willing to acknowledge as existing), she wasn’t about to become a superstitious old woman any time soon!

Returning from Rome, Lila immediately was on a whirlwind of relocations across Europe with her mother who seemed to be trying to deal with the grief of being robbed of her baby and her husband by being hyperactive. Well, that was fine by Lila as it enabled her to continually experience new hunting grounds to exploit and move on quickly before the dullards she was associating with started to question why their ill fortune started with the arrival of the Italian transfer student.

Lila recognised that she relied on luck sometimes. No matter how much planning one devoted to a plot, there was always a degree of chance determining the outcome of any interaction. A brief stray thought of some minute-imperfection could bring a scheme crashing down around your ears. That had almost never happened to Lila, standing as she did head and shoulders above the miniscule intellects of the mob. However, that summer in Corinth in her twelfth year was the great awakening for her and very nearly her downfall.

Kallina Arostos had been her name. Lila remembered it solely because it was in her nature to keep things organised in her head. If one didn't keep tabular mental records of one's marks and their natures, then the chances of some random error that could expose you increases. Lila was not so arrogant as to ignore that possibility. 

It was curious in many ways but dear, sweet Kallina reminded her of Marinette in lots of ways: Intelligent, altruistic and with a sometimes-uncanny talent for scenting out when truths uttered in her present were not strictly factual. She could easily have been a major problem for Lila but for one thing. She had a weakness, much like dear Marinette. However, her weakness wasn’t so repellantly chivalrous as Adrien was, oh no.

The boy that Kallina was crushing on was older than her and was very easily manipulable by someone who knew the right levers to pull when it came to a sense of being inadequately masculine and assertive. To this day, Lila found it amazing how easy it was to manipulate Giorgio to manipulate Kallina into making those ridiculous (and piteously explicit) videos which, naturally, he shared with his Very Good Friend. Giorgio also should have had a better password on his social media accounts where he discussed what he had done to Kallina in what he thought were private blog entries.

The following three weeks were amongst the most pleasurable in Lila’s life. Once the videos started trickling out, Kallina had lost all her credibility at school and quickly became an outcast, all her friends not wanting anything to do with the ‘slut’. 

Lila still remained somewhat annoyed that the overly-sensitive and obviously weak-willed girl cut her enjoyment of her suffering short by ending her life after just three weeks.

Still, the funeral was enjoyable! She really enjoyed being the chief mourner amongst the school-age children, loudly denouncing those who had abandoned the poor girl for ‘one terrible mistake’ in a seemingly-unrehearsed rant at the graveside. Pretending to comfort Kallina’s mother had been one of the most pleasurable experiences in her life.

Then, something unexpected happened: Something went wrong.

To this day, Lila had no idea exactly how that had happened. No-one knew anything; as far as anyone else should have been able to prove, everything was Giorgio’s fault: The videos, leaking them on social media and his subsequent dumping the piteous girl to face the consequences alone (only after he had taken from her the only thing Lila had manipulated him into believing that he truly wanted). Still, she had to have left some loose end untied and, maddeningly, she didn’t know what it was. However, all that mattered is that her mother knew that Lila was responsible. They were forced to move immediately, first to Naples and then to Paris (not that Lila minded, Corinth was boring without the enjoyment of watching Kallina’s mental and emotional disintegration). Somehow, Lila’s mother seemed to be able to pull together all the proof she needed once she had some suspicion of the exact events that took place.

Lila had been careful to not personally commit any crime that could not just as easily point towards Giorgio. However, Bianca Rossi knew and seemed to find a way to pull together all the threads of evidence that satisfied her at least of Lila’s culpability. Not just about Kallina either… She somehow had guessed or maybe had always suspected Lila’s involvement in Sophie and Bruno’s deaths. Once again, there was no proof that would stand up in any court but that wasn’t what her mother needed and certainly wasn’t in her plans for her daughter.

From that moment on, Lila had found herself on a very short leash at home and she had to go to increasingly elaborate lengths to keep her mother out of her affairs in school to the point where she was falsifying and/or blocking every communication between her mother and those imbeciles Bustier and Damocles. Even Lila had to admit to herself that the resulting charades had been so complex that t hey were hard to maintain and it was just a matter of time before she made a fatal mistake.

Paris brought with it one even worse problem: Ladybug. She could handle dealing with Marinette (it was only a matter of time before she broke, with or without Adrien’s continued support and it was Lila’s greatest frustration that she couldn’t break the noirette girl’s link with the teen supermodel). However, having that super-powered trouble-maker somehow always there when she found the opportunity to use Hawkmoth’s gift of power to foment trouble and steal a little bit more influence was slowly driving her to distraction. Worse, either she or Marinette were always there to create a sense of doubt about Lila’s storytelling, especially after Adrien had forced her to admit that maybe not everything she said was true. 

She had to find some way to destroy Ladybug, not for Hawkmoth’s sake - she neither knew nor cared for his motives; she would deal with him and claim his Miraculous for herself in due time - but so that the polka-dotted twit would stop being a tiny, sharp stone in her shoe!

Lila blew out her breath and, opening her eyes, she looked around her bedroom, staring at the dream-catcher (a relic of her mother’s belief that what happened to Sophia had somehow afflicted Lila’s mind) and the rows of theatre masks. Things were coming to a head; she could sense that now. The fact that Damocles involved her mother despite all Lila’s precautions and the aid of Hawkmoth’s pet, Sancour, had proven ineffective to protect her from the school authorities had left Lila in a bind. People paid to see actors and actresses and, really, what did Lila do except bring their fantastical performances to everyday reality?

Lila still had absolute faith in her genius. She was smarter and luckier than her peers and certainly than the adults in her life. The one guiding truth of her life and her method - that people would prefer beautiful lies to the drab mundanity of truth - still remained core to her plans. 

It was only a matter of time before she planned and executed a final stroke that would destroy Marinette (and she did hope that she had more strength than Kallina; she was still disappointed that had ended so quickly) and destroy Ladybug. She certainly would have a better costume than that onesie or the more recent black body-stocking with red-and-black segments she had started wearing. Once she had the Ladybug Miraculous, obtaining the Black Cat and then using them as a lure to gain the Butterfly would be ludicrously easy!

Lila’s eyes tracked to the door as it opened a crack to reveal one of her mother’s security staff who briefly met her eyes, nodded in satisfaction at seeing her still present and then closed it again.

No, there was no getting around it. Mother had to go before she became too much of an impediment.

Worse, she couldn’t have an ‘accident’ like father. There was too great a chance that she had shared her suspicions with someone and a sudden death or disappearance, no matter how easily-explained, would immediately have fingers of suspicion pointed her way. 

No, it would require a somewhat harder task. If Bianca Rossi had to be out of her life, then the obvious way  was for Lila Rossi to bow out. Lila already had experimented with establishing a false identities and had established her own means of financial support. No, the only thing that was delaying her was to find the ideal moment and the ideal alternate sponsor and parental figure to whom she could attach herself.

The girl sighed and stood up, walking over to her jewellery box. Of all her possessions, this brooch, an open-cored six-pointed star with five emeralds at five of the locations where the silver bars crossed over each other around the central hexagon, was special to her. She’d never once even thought of having it valued for its cash value. Indeed, she wore it on the inside of her jacket or belt whenever she left this room. Not because it was good luck, as Gianna had insisted but, or so she told herself, because it was a symbol of the approval of the one adult whose memory she’d cherished and because it felt reassuring to have that relic of Gianna’s success as a career thief with her always.

Lila gazed into the trinket and, just perhaps… Were the five green gems glowing with an unearthly light?

Chapter 6: Date Night

Summary:

Being a superhero is a tough and busy life. Marinette always has something to do and someone who needs her help in some way. This is such an overwhelming demand on her time that she really hasn't even got enough time to give her boyfriend the attention she needs!

Fortunately, her friends and her kwami have a plan in place to force the issue!

Time for some AdriNette goodness!

Notes:

Okay, after the darkness of the Lila chapter, I'm treating you with an AdriNette romance chapter that, chronologically, fits in before the two-parter 'The Villains' of 'The Lion's Roar'. I can be sappy sometimes!

Oh, yeah, that's my version of Kitty Noire in the Guardianverse!

“It’s getting utterly ridiculous!” Queen Bee said to Rena Rouge as she paced on the rooftop.

With the fall of Gabriel Agreste, there was a lot less tension in Paris but, with the appearance of Adrien’s grandfather and his own band of supervillains, Ladybug rightly wasn’t about to let her team’s vigilance slack off. As a consequence, there were still regular patrols in the city and Ladybug kept shifting the pairings around. As much as Rena would want to patrol with Carapace and Queen Bee with Ryuuko, it was often with someone else. Tonight, it was with each other.

That was convenient as it meant that the two longest-serving members of Team Miraculous outside of the core pair were able to talk about something that was equally dear to both of their hearts: The mental and emotional health of their co-leaders.

Rena laughed hollowly. “‘Ridiculous’ is something those two are always doing, Queenie. What are you thinking about specifically?”

Queen Bee stopped her pacing and turned to the girl who, after spending so long as her bitterest enemy, had become something of a sister. “I’m talking about their romantic lives, Foxy. Did you know that they haven’t had even one formal date since ‘Multimouse’ became Chat Noir’s official girlfriend? They’ve spent lots of time together on the rooftops and I’m sure you’ve caught them making out behind an aircon unit the same as me.” Rena giggled and Queen Bee felt able to smile because of that. “However, a formal date? Nothing; they’re always too busy; they’ve always got to be on standby to back up one of the rest of us or are investigating the latest mystery du jour!”

"So, what do we need to do?" Rena asked. "I mean, it isn't as if we can order them to take a night off to have a date!"

Queen Bee paused thoughtfully. "Them? No, they're too stupidly stubborn. However, there are some people who will listen to sense and who have a veto against whether Adrien and Marinette are able to do the superhero business!" Rena looked confused. "I'm talking about Tikki and Plagg, Rena. Pollen tells me that they're annoyed at those two as we are! All we need to do is assure them that we'll support them drawing a line in the sand!"

There was a long, appalled pause before Rena started to laugh. "You're suggesting that we incite their kwami to revolt? Queenie, I love the way you stink!"

~*~*~

"Marinette, we need to talk!" Tikki said the next evening.

Marinette turned from her work table where she was labouring at two separate projects at the same time and looked at the Ladybug Kwami of Creation in some alarm. Normally, Tikki had the personality of a cheerful if precocious child but sometimes she came across as a second mother with the same gentle wisdom that Marinette's own mother showed. However, just occasionally, the little chibi spirit reminded her Holder that she was actually a 14-billion year old manifestation of the concept of creation and had a breadth of knowledge and wisdom so great that even the smartest human was a mindless germ in comparison.

This was one those occasions.

Marinette coughed so she could answer clearly. "What is it Tikki?"

The red-and-black spirit floated down to her Holder and Marinette noted with some alarm that every unassigned kwami living in the Miracle Box was hovering in a tight cluster over her bed. "Marinette, you are a fine Guardian and the best Ladybug of the past 500 years, maybe longer. However, you have some flaws and they're threatening your effectiveness… and maybe even your health."

Marinette was flummoxed. “What do you mean?”

Tikki rolled her eyes as she began to flit around Marinette’s work desk, touching every pile of work as she mentioned it. “There’s the summer beachwear collection; there’s the training plan that you’re working out for Fei… without being asked mind you… there is the dresses you’re planning for your friends at the Summer Ball at the Grand Hotel; there’s your actual homework for school; finally, also the patrol rotas that you’re doing even though Chloe offered to do them for you. Marinette, when have you last taken some time just for yourself?”

Marinette’s mouth flapped open and shut for a moment and, before she could put together enough wit to reply, Tikki continued. “Marinette… When was the last time that you and Adrien went on a date? I don’t mean being on patrol at the same time and making out in a shadowy corner or even being together at a formal event. When was the last time that the two of you went out together to the place of your choosing to just spend time together?”

Marinette was touching her index fingers together nervously. “There… was that time we went to the cinema?”

Tikki rolled her eyes. “That was in costume… and before you were in a relationship.” She shook her head. “Also I seem to remember that you didn’t enjoy it much.”

“Tikki, I just have so much to do and… EEP!”

Marinette had cut off because Tikki was suddenly in her face and pointing aggressively at her. “Exactly my point, Marinette! You just take on so much and never leave enough time for yourself! You’ll burn yourself out at this rate! No, I’m sorry Marinette, I didn’t want to do this but I’m drawing a line here!” The Kwami of Creation bean to glow and seemed to swell up to twice her normal size. “As your kwami and one of the Karmic Pair of the Mother Miracle Box, I hereby order you to stand down, Marinette Dupain-Cheng! You will have a night off with your boyfriend without any distractions from your duties, as hero or guardian, your business or your schoolwork or… so help me I will give you such a pinch!”

Marinette was genuinely intimidated. The horrible part of it was that she wanted this but she just felt this constant obligation to help others! “There… There could be an attack?”

“Why did you put together a team if you didn’t want to have back-up in an event like this?”

Marinette tried one pitiful last rebuttal. “Ladybug might be needed!”

Tikki sighed and, with a single blur of motion Tikki snatched the Ladybug Miraculous from Marinette’s ear (just the left ear since they transformed into pair of studs linked with a chain). The kwami smiled and patted Marinette on the nose. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a backup holder for the Ladybug Miraculous all lined up! Enjoy your night off!”

“No! Wait!” Marinette snatched at Tikki but the kwami was already through her window and gone. She turned to look at Zuuben and Barkk, who were both looking at her with mischievous grins. “I don’t suppose either of you are willing to be my Miraculous for the night?”

Zuuben grinned. “It’s worth my peace with Tikki to interfere, M’lady Guardian. However, she did leave this for you!” Nooroo glided over, carrying Marinette’s ‘phone. Adrien’s contact card was already displayed.

Realising that the kwami were likely all in this together, she picked up the phone and touched the ‘call’ control. 

“Hello, Princess,” Adrien’s voice spontaneously brought a smile to Marinette’s face and suddenly she didn’t feel so upset about this at all.

“Hey, ma chevallier, so, I think that I’m going to have an evening off.”

There was a pause before Adrien began to chuckle. “Has this got anything to do with the fact that Plagg just flew off with the Black Cat Miraculous after spending several minutes shouting at me about ‘letting my cheese get mouldy’?”

Marinette giggled. “Oh, almost certainly.” She began to shift slightly, with nervousness or with anticipation she wasn't sure and didn’t really want to think about. “So… do you have any ideas about what we can do with a night?”

“Actually, M’lady, I’ve had the bookings all lined up for months, waiting for the chance for us to share our love with the town!” 

Marinette went red at the intimate tone of Adrien’s voice and shifted in her seat. “Oh, tell me more!”

~*~*~

“Well?” Chloe asked as the two kwami swept into her hotel room.

“Total success, Buzzy!” Plagg crowed. “I just wish I’d had a camera to record the look on his face!”

Alya threw her hands up into the air. “Finally! I just hope everything goes smoothly tonight!”

Tikki smiled. “Alya, why rely on ‘hope’? We all know how often bad luck follows those two around!” The Spirit of Creation flew up to the girl. “So, for tonight, why not have precautions in place?” Reflexively, Alya raised her hand to catch the Ladybug Miraculous as it landed in her hand. Simultaneously, Plagg waved the Black Cat in front of Chloe’s slack expression. 

“You’re kidding.” Chloe said.

“About this? Never. Buzzy, you were born to be the backup in this role!”

“Hey! She’s mine!” Trixx snapped.

“Trixx, get over yourself!” Tikki sighed. “It’s for one night. Besides, there’s no rule that says you can’t hang around with her; both Alya and Chloe have experience with fusion wielding, even if it isn’t something they can do for too long!”

Alya looked at the Ladybug Miraculous, now back in its original form of two nut ear studs and shrugged. “I guess this is punishment for us, huh?” The Ladybug kwami’s expression was unreadable. She put on the ear-studs, which instantly turned into small but thick bronze hoops with black spots on a red background enamelled around the circumferance. Chloe looked at the platinum-edged gold ring on her right ring finger. “Oh well… Might as well get into this so we’re not running totally cold if we’re needed. Plagg! Claws out!”

“I guess so… Tikki! Spots on!”

~*~*~

Dressed in his very best two-piece suit Adrien wondered if he’d died and gone to heaven. 

Marinette had just stepped out of a taxi, her loose black hair running straight down her back. She was wearing a teal three-piece dress, the v-neck slip under her small open jacket with a daring plunge down her chest and back; the ankle-length skirt cut up to her thigh on the right with knee-length string-strap  sandals underneath. She had on a three-loop gold necklace with a long golden strand vanishing down between her breasts and a simple golden ear cuff on her left ear. “Bon soir, ma chevallier!” she said in an uncharacteristically low tone of voice. What Adrien didn’t know (but should have guessed) was that his smart suit and messy hair was doing exactly the same thing for Marinette that her dress was doing for him.

“M’lady,” he said formally before pulling out a blood red rose from behind her back. “I’ve always wanted to do this for you!”

“What?” Marinette seemed genuinely confused before gasping in delight as Adrien tucked the rose stem (carefully trimmed of its thorns) behind her right ear. 

“Perfect! Two beautiful flowers in the same place!” He stuck out the crook of his arm to Marinette. “Shall we?” Marinette was dazed but, nonetheless thread her arm through his and he led her towards the theatre ‘s box office. “Two box seats reserved for the next one of Mr Clown’s performance under 'Agreste'!” 

“How did you get these, Adrien?”

“Harry Clown was dad’s roommate in university. He recently told me that he’d felt guilty for not realising that dad was going bad and raising the alarm. He said that he would have the best seats in the house reserved for me… plus one.” Marinette blushed hot at the sight of Adrien’s sly feline grin.

“Ah, a night for romance, sir?” the woman behind the counter asked.

Marinette grinned in what she could admit was a slightly dreamy manner. “With him? Always? We’re just doing it in the bright lights for once!”

Adrien smiled in a besotted way at the reference to their various assignations since Multimouse had accepted him as her boyfriend and his heart swelled at the confirmation that she’d been longing for this moment as much as he had.

~*~*~

“It’s not fair!” Scarabella grumbled as she and her partner parkoured across the rooftops of Paris. “She gets wings, why don’t I?”

“It’s like how I explained,” Reine Noire responded with elaborate patience. “You need a certain amount of experience with your Miraculous before secondary and tertiary features like that start appearing. Don’t expect wings or a healing aura any time soon! I’m not expecting to be able to charge my staff with Destruction Energy or shoot Cataclysms like lasers either!”

“I still say it isn’t… Hey! What’s that?”

The neophyte temporary Ladybug and Black Cat heroes stopped instantly and dropped behind the peak of a roof before peeking over. “Someone is having a candle-lit roof-top picnic? Tonight?” Scarabella was genuinely surprised by what she saw. “Those clothes are weird too but I can’t see much from this distance

“Yeah, and it can’t be our two lovebirds either!” Reine Noire frowned and, not for the first time, wished that her transformation was less colourful…” She face-palmed. She was Reine Noire, not Queen Bee. She wasn’t in yellow and with black hornet stripes but in nearly matte black with only the occasional poison green highlight (and green lipstick!) and her blonde hair, which was in a long plait with a black ribbon running through it. In other words, right now, she was Ms Stealth. “I’ll check them out! Stay here, Bug-babe!” 

Scarabella spluttered at the overt flirtation and at her partner for the night just rushing off without waiting for a plan (shouldn’t the Ladybug hero be the one with the plan?). 

The vaguely 1950s-themed Ladybug heroine was just considering casting Lucky Charm when Reine Noire returned to the rooftop, visibly pale. “It’s them!” she gasped. “Freakin’ Janus is treating her to a candle-lit rooftop picnic!” 

The hyperventilating Black Cat heroine practically shoved her collapsed staff (in phone mode) into her partner’s face. The picture on the screen confirmed that, indeed, the alternating black-and-white clad form of the Gemini Villain was indeed sitting opposite the silver-clad Virgo Villainess on a primarily red plaid rug with an extremely rich-looking picnic in between them. They were just touching the rims of straight wine glasses together and…

Was the languidly-posed Enchantress blushing?!?

“What do you think that they’re up to?” Reine Noire squeaked. 

“Whatever it is, I doubt it’s anything good!” Scarabella responded. “LUCKY CHARM!” With a bright pink flash of light a red with black polka-dots set of handcuffs, linked with a rigid bar rather than a chain, dropped into her hands. “Weird. Okay, we’ll work it out when we figure out what they’re doing. “Let’s get over there and, Reine? Keep in cover; we don’t need to be seen until we’re ready!”

~*~*~

"Um… Adrien?"

Adrien looked up and noted the way that Marinette's brows furrowed just over her cute nose when she was thinking hard. He saw his Lady do that every day and it made him marvel all over again about the power of the Disguise Magic that stopped him from recognising that the two women were one and the same almost immediately. "Yes, Marinette?"

"Adrien, there aren't any prices on this menu."

Adrien laughed. "Yeah, a lot of the top restaurants do that. It's to stop the prices from scaring away customers. The implicit message is: 'If you need to know, you probably can't afford it'!"

Marinette put down her menu and looked at her boyfriend with worry in her bluebell eyes. "Should we be eating here if it's that expensive?"

"I can afford it." Marinette quirked an eyebrow in response and Adrien laughed. "Maman unlocked my access to the account into which the company put my stipend as a model." Marinette opened her mouth to protest again and Adrien touched her lips just before the first word came out. "I'm sure that she'd have words to say if I just splurged and kept splurging but… that isn't me, you know? At the time, she told me that this was a test of how trustworthy I am."

Marinette's lightly-painted lips curled up in a loving smile. "My faithful kitty!" she murmured making Adrien blush slightly. "You really are a paladin, aren't you? All about trust and faithfulness! I love that about you!"

Adrien had lowered his hand but hadn't got further in withdrawing it than touching the top of Marinette's right hand where it lay on the back of the menu. "If I am the paladin, then you are the Princess determined to save her kingdom and I am delighted to be part of that with you!" He looked down at the menu. "So, do you need any pointers?"

Marinette blew out an annoyed breath. "I'm not a total child lost in the grown-ups' world, Adrien. I'm French; I know what to eat and what I don't want to eat!"

Adrien grinned. “Have I told you that you’re adorable when you’re all strong and determined like that?”

Marinette smiled in a flirty way. “I hope that I’m always adorable, ma chevallier!”

“‘Adorable’ is an understatement, M’lady. How about…?” Adrien thought for a moment. “How about ‘dazzling’? Or ‘ravishing’? Or… ‘the single brightest spot of the universe'?”

Marinette was blushing again. “You flatter me, monsieur,” she responded in a purr before leaning forwards to give Adrien a better view. “Please, don’t stop.”

At that point, the smirking waiter coughed for attention. Both teens looked suitably embarrassed for forgetting that she’d been patiently waiting there for them to order.

~*~*~

Scarabella and Reine Noire would never agree on whose fault it was. Did they land on the rooftop too loudly? Did they get too close? Did Enchantress's enhanced hearing pick up Reine Noire's 'angry cat growl'? Was Scarabella's bright colour-scheme was enough to tip off Janus?

What mattered was Janus leapt to his feet and positioned himself protectively between the heroes and Enchantress, the Gemini Assegai pointed in their direction. "That's far enough, Chat Noir! You and your bed-warmer can…" He stopped and frowned but it was Enchantress who spoke next.

"That isn't Ladybug and Chat Noir! I… can't see past the Disguise Magic! They're completely new Cat and Ladybug heroes!"

"You're right!" Janus frowned. "So, who are you two and why did the self-proclaimed champions send you out in their stead? Are they finally taking the Lion’s advice and retiring from the field?"

"It doesn't matter who we are or why we're here!" Reine Noire snapped, leaning on her deployed Staff. "What matters is that we're going to foil whatever filthy scheme you have!"

Holstering her Lucky Charm on her belt, Scarabella stepped forwards. "The wildcat is right! You've already lost the element of surprise so, whatever evil scheme you have, just forget about it and go home before we have to give you two another beat-down!"

Janus threw his hands into the air. "Evil…? Okay, I admit that we have both got a reputation in this city but… does this look like some kind of evil scheme?!?" He stepped towards Scarabella and only Reine Noire's staff pointing at his chest stopped him from getting closer. Seeming not to notice the threat, he gestured in an agitated way at the picnic, still sitting on the blanket. "I'm having a date with my lovely partner here! Is that in any way a crime?!?"

Reine Noire was quite impressed at how stupid she felt at that moment. Come to think of it, it was kind of hard to think of how a rooftop assignation could be a prelude for some kind of supervillain attack!

“Look,” Enchatress pleaded. “I know that you have no reason to believe us and certainly none to trust us but… can’t we just have a night off from this ridiculous comic book that is our lives?!?” Scarabella grimaced slightly. She knew Lila Rossi very well and knew all of her tricks but she’d be damned if the tears of frustration in the Virgo Villainess’s eyes weren’t genuine!

Reine Noire frowned. “In future, it might be a good idea not to try to do this sort of thing in costume. it tends to raise the threat level a few notches.”

Enchantress posted with her hands on her hips and a wicked grin lighting her face. “Okay, even though you obviously lack the necessary Y-Chromosomes to be Chat Noir, missing the opportunity to make some cheap cat or fox pun like saying it is ‘less sly-spicious’ pretty much closes the case!” The Fox Villainess grinned at the sight of the weird Lucky Charm dangling from Scarabella's belt. “The fact that you haven’t already worked out what that’s for suggests that you are definitely just some poor third-rate understudy!” Scarabella’s face flamed in humiliation.

Janus laughed at her reaction. “Yes, in a way, I’m insulted by the fact that the heroes of this city sent such inadequate representatives.”

“Whatever,” Scarabella snapped. “As you aren’t actually causing harm right now and to avoid an unnecessary fight, we’ll leave you two to your creepy mating ritual. Come on, wildcat, let’s leave those two alone!”

Reina Noire stuck her nose in the air. “Ugh! You’re right, Bug-babe! I get cooties just thinking of those two playing at being lovers around me.”

“Just remember Janus, Enchantress; We are watching.”

The two supervillains exchanged a thoughtful glance as the two heroes walked away.”

“Actually,” Janus said, twirling his Assegai around in his hand. “Maybe we’re not ready for you to go yet?”

“Indeed!” Enchantress added, subtly sliding her Mirror off of its strap on her left forearm. “It seems that you two probably are new to your Miraculous… and thus maybe not as formidable foes!”

Janus smiled in a sick way. “It was foolish for Ladybug to entrust the two most important of her Miraculouses to neophytes. Come on now, I think that you know you have something belonging to us! So, why don’t you give them to us? Save us the trouble and you the pain of us taking them by force!”

The two heroes exchanged a worried look when, unexpectedly, Scarabella saw her Lucky Charm flare with Trixx’s colours (orange with white spots) as did Janus’s left forearm and Enchantress’s right forearm. Forcing herself to remain calm, she stepped forward. “Perhaps you’ve got a point,” she said.

The two villains looked at each other in surprise and didn’t react until she snapped the charm over their left and right wrists. “My powers produced this Lucky Charm only when I saw you, so I’m guessing it’s for you!” 

“I… What?” Enchantress spluttered Janus and Enchantress were cuffed together and Enchantress trying to raise her Mirror to use her Ensnare power threw Janus off balance. At that moment, the Black Cat staff swept both villains’ feet out from underneath them, sending them sprawling. With their opposing arms bound together, both were having trouble getting back onto their feet as they kept overbalancing the other.

“Au revoir, darlings!” Reine Noir sneered. “As a-meow-sing this has been, we must be off!”

“Enjoy the dates, kids!” Scarabella added, blowing a kiss at the struggling villains before casting her Yo-yo.

“Janus you idiot!” Enchantress screeched. “Get off of me so I can get up!”

“You get off of me you witless witch!” Then something struck him: The bracelets of the handcuffs were valentine’s hearts and he knew from his studying Ladybug’s battles that the Lucky Charm often had a symbolic as well as practical use. “Wait! I know how to get these off!” He grabbed Enchantress’s face in his hands and their lips met in a searing kiss.

Enchantress moaned into her partner’s touch and, for several moments, forgot where she was and what she wanted to do. The two supervillains made out on the picnic rug for a timeless moment before the Lucky Charm fell off of their wrists and dissolved into a swarm of ladybird beetles that swept around them and vanished into the night.

Enchantress was partly curled around Janus. Neither villain could think of anything to say or do. The opportunity given by the two heroes being new to their Miraculous was forgotten

~*~*~

Marinette and Adrien swept around the dance floor of the restaurant, completely lost in each other’s eyes. Adrien dipped his girlfriend and she laughed, kicking her right leg up into the air behind his back. “Ah! It is a classical Parisian night!” Adrien said semi-seriously. “Culture, food, wine, dance and now the company of the most beautiful woman in the city!” 

Marinette blushed as Adrien twirled her around and left her back pressed against his hard muscled chest. “The most beautiful? Ah, monsieur, you flatter me!”

“Not without cause,” Adrien insisted. “You are a light that outshines all in the city!”

Marinette twirled out of Adrien’s embrace and took back a formal ballroom dance pose. The two teens continued to dance more sedately but maintaining close contact. Marinette smiled at the warm and gentle contact with her body and the gentle grip on her hand and hip “Why sir! I believe that you are trying to seduce me! Do you have designs on my virtue?” The young woman flushed red when she realised what he had said and so did Adrien.

“Not without your full and enthusiastic consent… M’lady,” he whispered into her ear, sending a thrill of heat and electricity through Marinette’s body, robbing her of thought or idea of what to say next. Things had gone from teasing to deadly serious far faster than she had expected. Not sure what to do or say next, the couple nervously moved back to their table. 

The two young people raised their wine glasses, touched the rims and smiled at each other giddily over them. Both of their hearts were pounding and their minds were going in certain directions where they’d only ever been during those heated sessions on the roofs of Paris in full costume.

At that point both young people’s mutual spell was broken by the chiming of Adrien's phone. Adrien looked at its face and sighed regretfully. “20:00; I promised your father to take you home before 21:00.” 

Marinette put her phone back into her purse and looked at Adrien with dark and lidded eyes. “These few hours have been worth more than I can say, Adrien. Thank you.”

~*~*~

“You did well!” Tikki told Alya with a grin. “She is every bit as quick-witted as you said, Trixx!”

The Fox Kwami of Illusion snorted. “I told you that she is mine and works best with my powers!” 

“Oh let it go, Trixx!” Plagg laughed as he accepted his Miraculous back from a thoughtful-looking Chloe. “Pollen doesn’t mind, does she?”

“Only because I know my Queen would never be tempted by another!” the Bee Kwami of Subjugation responded primly, making Plagg roll his eyes.

“Do you think that we did the job?” Alya asked as she handed the Ladybug Miraculous back to Tikki and watched as it changed into the two chained studs that Marinette had recently adopted. "For Marinette and Adrien, I mean?"

“I honestly expect that Marinette and Adrien have had the best night of their lives,” Tikki assured the mocha-skinned woman.

~*~*~

Adrien and Marinette stood hand-in-hand outside the back door to the bakery as the Agreste family limousine purred in the background, a patient Gerard at the wheel. 

Adrien smiled at his date. “Thank you, Milady. Thank you for the night, for your company and for your love.”

Marinette squeezed his hands, lifted them and kissed his knotted knuckles. “Thank you for reminding me of your love in your unique way.”

The two teenagers looked at each other, lost in the other’s eyes for a long moment before taking each other’s faces in their hands. The kiss was warm, soft and electric and, for a long moment, the two of them forgot everything but the other. Then Tom Dupain coughed from the doorway, framed by the light on the stairs. Adrien blushed and he and Marinette broke their kiss, looking at Tom with slightly panicked expressions on their faces.

Although Tom tried to look stern, the flushed and love-struck expression on both teens’ faces made his lips twitch with the effort to hold back a smile. Behind him, Sabine wasn’t even trying, her eyes wet with happiness. “Adrien, thank you for bringing my daughter home, on time and safe, just as you promised.”

“Thank you for trusting me with her, sir,” Adrien replied.

That was an odd turn of phrase and Tom did notice that Marinette was still wrapped in Adrien’s arms, back against his chest and looking very much like being in his arms is where she felt most comfortable being. “Maybe that’s talking about an even bigger step, Adrien: Trusting her with you for the long term.” Both teens blushed again, making Tom grin. 

After a long pause, Marinette slipped out of Adrien’s arms, letting her hands trail along his arms and maintaining contact with her fingertips to the last moment. “Until the next time, my love!” she whispered in a husky tone. 

“I shall be counting the seconds, M’lady.” Adrien watched as Marinette’s father gently guided the core and centre of his heart into the home and quietly closed the door. He tried desperately to fix the image in his head before slouching off back towards the limousine. 

Adrien was silent for a long while as the car set off before finally speaking. “Gerard, do you know anywhere that makes bespoke rings?” he asked the family’s bodyguard, receiving a raised eyebrow in response. “Don’t worry; not that far at least not yet but… yeah. The time has come to make this public.”

Chapter 7: Meet the Team

Summary:

Set after the Epilogue of Book 1 of the Guardianverse, the time has come for Marinette to keep an old promise and reveal some truths to those who love her the most.

“So, anyone know why we’re here?” Bunnyx asked, rubbing her arms in a mix of impatience and nervousness. All around her, the rest of the regular members of Team Miraculous were also present.

‘Here’ was, of all places, a half-refurbished upstairs room above the shop that Marinette Dupain-Cheng had apparently inherited from a semi-distant  elderly relative who had recently been taken ill and had to leave Paris. However, that didn’t explain the message on the MiracuChat that instructed all the active team members to gather here.

“I… think that I might know,” Rena Rouge finally said, drawing everyone’s attention.

“Me too,” Added Queen Bee. “However, I don’t want to steal our illustrious leader’s thunder.”

“Where is she anyway?” Vipereon asked. “Chat said that she’d recovered from her coma after beating Miracle King but…”

At that moment, everyone fell silent as the door opened again and Multimouse, followed by Chat Noir, entered the room. “So, your grandmother is suitably decoyed?” Chat was asking.

Multimouse nodded. “I think that she knows about me because of her contacts but maybe not everyone. I’ve asked Papa and Maman to keep her occupied at home rather than risk her finding out.”

“Is there a problem, Harmony?” Vipereon asked gently.

Multimouse gave the Snake Hero a brief annoyed look but shook her head and turned to the crowd of heroes. “Hi, everyone!” Multimouse said with a nervous little wave. “Thanks for coming!”

Scorpia, standing in an isolated corner, frowned. “I thought it was Ladybug who asked us to come?”

“Well, yes…” Multimouse said. “That’s partly what this meeting is about.” There was a little rustle of confusion from everyone except the three heroes who had lost their lives to Lila Rossi… or Enchantress as she now preferred to be known. “Firstly though, I need to introduce someone to you.”

Chat opened the door wider and a blonde woman entered wearing a chiffon aqua-coloured costume with a scalloped-edge skirt that resembled a Peacock’s tail and a peacock’s crest rising above the nose-guard of her mask. “Everyone, this is La Paonne, the real original first hero of Paris’s modern era and Hawkmoth’s original arch-foe.”

“Wait…!” Rena said uncertainty. “You were there in that monster’s attic after the fight! I thought that Mayura was the holder of the Peacock Miraculous!”

The newcomer spoke in a rich and refined English accent. “Mayura… or Nathalie Sancoeur to use her real name… was the usurper of the Peacock but, when it was first recovered from the lava flow in Tibet, it was first given to me… Much against Hawkmoth’s better judgement, according to him later on.” There were a few chuckles.

“So, you knew Hawkie?” Carapace asked.

“Cap! Remember the rules: No identities or information that lets us identify team members!” Rena punched her boyfriend lightly on the shoulder in reproof before walking over to the much taller Peacock Heroine and extended her hand. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you and, yes, I was there too, at the end!”  

La Paonne smiled and took the Fox Heroine’s hand gently. “I’m glad to make your acquaintance too, my dear… in a non life-or-death scenario.”

Rena turned back to Multimouse. “So, Hotmouse? Where’s the boss?” Her brows were raised because, of course, she already knew the answer to that question.

“Well, like I said, Rena, this is basically why Ladybug called his meeting.” Multimouse briefly joined hands with Chat Noir and everyone saw her squeeze it for reassurance and strength. “More than anything else, the secrecy of team members was driven by a need to keep Hawkmoth from attacking us either whilst in our civilian forms or through our families. However, he’s in custody now and, if the what the Chief Magistrate said is anything to go by, he’s never going to be free again.” She sucked in a deep breath. “Because of this, Ladybug has decided that she can now allow us all to know each other’s true identities.” She rolled her eyes at the grinning Queen Bee and Rena Rouge. “Those of us who haven’t managed to work it out already due to the hero in question’s clumsiness and mistakes.”

“Aw, Hotmouse,” Queen Bee said, swaying over to hug the grey-clad Mouse Heroine. “We’ve already talked about this, remember? Necessity and lack of malice or forethought? I’m so over it!”

“Thank you, Queen Bee,” Multimouse said with genuine gratitude. “Anyway, Ladybug isn’t going to make this a condition of staying in the team or anything but, we’re here so that we can unmask if we want to. Anyone who doesn’t want to should leave now and Ladybug will contact you later through the Chat.”

There wasn’t much movement except several glances as some heroes met others’ eyes for a moment. “I think that I speak for us all when I say that we are prepared, Mouse-chan,” Ryuuko said at last. “I know one identity for sure and suspect others but I truly wish to know my brothers’ and sisters’ faces.” 

Vipereon grinned. “Speaking purely for science, I agree that it would be good to put a face to the song!” 

Multimouse smiled brightly and something about this, as always, made everyone feel better. “Okay then! So there are no spoilers, let’s do it on the count of three. Are you ready?” There were a few nods. “One, two… Mullo, get quiet!”

“Plagg! Claws in!”

“Dusuu, furl my feathers!”

“Taares, hide my sting! Maman? It was you?”

“Trixx, let’s rest!”

“Wayzz, shell off!” Expecting the revelation of their significant other, Alya and Nino just grinned and bumped fists  before running over to Marinette and Adrien, Nino yelling excitedly at seeing that his friends were also his team-mates.

“Longg, clear skies!” 

“Pollen, buzz off!” There was a long pause as Chloe and Kagami looked at each other. “So, is it you?” Chloe asked. Kagami just nodded with a smile brighter than any of the others could remember her offering before. The two young women fell into each other’s arms and the kiss that followed just seemed to go on forever.

“Sass, Scales curled!”

“Fluff, Widdershins!” Alix looked at Luka shyly. “I deliberately didn’t look,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to give myself hope or drive destiny in some way.”

“It’s odd that I didn’t try to match your songs,” Luka admitted. “Maybe we both wanted this moment to be special.” The small redheaded androgyne girl hugged her much taller boyfriend around the waist with her usual somewhat-too-wide smile.

Marinette released Nino and Alya from her hug and looked happily over at Emilie Agreste hugging her twin children to her, weeping in joy. A meeting too long postponed, she thought. She had no idea if it would have ever taken place in this form if Gabriel Agreste had not been twisted into a monster by the offer of being able to magically make all his ambitions come true but, at least, in this world it was. 

Nino squeezed Marinette’s shoulder. “So, Mari, as you seem to be the Boss-Dudette’s spokesgal today, where is she? Not much fair play having us all unmask and not being her herself!”

Alya giggled and Chloe made a loud “HA!” 

“Oh, man-of-mine, you have no idea!” Alya lagged. “Mari, show him!”

“Yeah, Marinette, this is getting to feel like a blood sport or something!” Chloe agreed with a grin. “Come on! We want this to be official!” Kagami and Nino both looked suitably perplexed. 

“Okay then,” Marinette said with a big smile. “Please, don’t ask me how I managed it because I don’t know, don’t want to guess and would prefer not having to relieve the stress and lies. However…” Marinette flicked back her hair, revealing her distinctive two nut ear-cuff on her left ear. “Tikki! SPOTS ON!” The flash of pink light was startling and everyone’s jaws were hanging open as they saw Ladybug standing in front of them, grinning in embarrassment. Above the gathered humans, the kwami all looked at each other in satisfaction. Secret identities were not much to their tastes, after all. At least now they weren’t bound by those damn Guardian spells never to speak the truth about who their Holders were!

“Tikki, spots off!” There was another flash of pink light and Marinette shrugged at the slack-jawed Nino and Kagami as Tikki soared up to join her brothers and sisters. “Surprise?”

“But… How?” Nino asked. “All those times Multimouse and Ladybug were at the same battle?” 

“You have no idea how bothersome it was to transform and detransform Marinette so many times!” Tikki remarked.

“Even with the Rabbit’s help, at times, it was getting difficult!” Mullo added.

Alix shook her head. “Nah, you’re better at this than you think. It literally wasn’t until the Endgame when Marinette came out to me as Ladybug that I realised that I’d been shuttling around the same girl in different costumes in New York!”

Alya and Chloe were both cross-armed and smirking at Marinette. “So, now you’ve come all the way out, right girl?” Alya asked. 

Chloe blinked in surprised and shot the Creole girl a shocked look as she assimilated how unsurprised she was. “Wait, how are you not surprised by this?”

Alya looked back, equally shocked. “Wait, you knew about this too?”

At that point, the two started talking in a weird unison. “I thought it was only me…! When did you find out? How did you find out? How did you not let it slip?” Marinette was holding her sides from laughing so hard.

Luka was shaking her head. “It’s amazing what friendship will do; I think that everyone knew, or suspected, at least one of your secret identities, Harmony. We just all loved you too much to let it slip! Not even to those we love.” Alix actually blushed from the intimate look Luka directed her way. 

Nino shook his head. “Well, I didn’t know and my GF was one of the ones who knew! Ugh! I’m thinking that I must be an idiot!”

Alya touched his shoulder reassuringly. “No, you’re just too honest, babe. Ladybug told you not to ask, so you didn’t ask!”

Nino was still trying to get his brain around it. “I struggled to keep one secret identity and somehow Mari was juggling two?” He sighed and straightened. “So, I guess this is it?” Nino asked. “This is game over? Shades or whatever you want to call him is going to jail, so I guess Paris doesn’t need heroes anymore?” Everyone gave him a shocked look with a growing air of sad realisation.and resignation. 

Marinette shook her head with a growing smile and flung out her arms to either side. “The end? Are you kidding me? Oh no, Nino! No, now that the threat of Hawkmoth is gone, things have only just begun!”

Notes:

This was originally going to be a part of the last chapter of Book 1 but I eventually cut it for length. Additionally, I hadn't realised how many people already knew Marinette's secret Identity. Before publishing this, I had to rewrite it to be more about everyone else realising that they weren't the only one (except Adrien; it was was obvious he'd know) to know who Ladybug really was.

I'm glad to finally get it out there.

Chapter 8: Go, Let's Go! Superhero High!

Summary:

Back across the pond to check in with the students of the New York School for Gifted Youngsters, aka 'Superhero High'. As always in school life, things are always changing with new friends and new enemies. A Day in the life of Jess and Aeon in the corridors of education!

Notes:

I wanted to expand on Superhero High when I was writing my version of the New York Special but I didn't frankly have the room. I'm doing so now because I want to establish some of the students, faculty and also the rivals for the NYSfGY and, most importantly, establish who is in Jess and Aeon's lives prior to their inclusion in the third Guardianverse volume.

“I must say, Jessica, this entire concept of public schooling puzzles me beyond belief!” Jess Keynes looked over at Lirri as the Spirit of Freedom slowly circumnavigated her bedroom at Keynes Manor. “Your mother is busy, this I acknowledge, but surely it would be better for her to teach you herself? She is already teaching you the arts of the Brave, after all!”

Jess finished plaiting her long black hair and tying the leather straps around the braids. “I think that was possible back in the time you were with Gilbert, Lirri, but things have become a bit busier and complex these days. Mom runs a company that has divisions all over the world and is also a costumed crime-fighter!” Lirri grumbled a little under her breath and Jess chuckled. “Look, you don’t like having to stay hidden at school and I get that. However, I think that going to school really is better for me in terms of learning how to live as an ordinary person rather than being an eccentric shut-in that Mom was before she met Mama Olympia.”

This LIrri couldn’t deny. Instead, she soared up to Jess and dropped into an inside pocket of the brown leather tasselled jacket that the Cheyanne girl had begun to wear since becoming Ma’xave’keso. “Just keep feeding me on regular occasions and I will endure it!” the Kwami said in a slightly snobby tone.

The last step in Jess’s morning routine was to remove the Eagle Talon from its place tied snugly and flat against her left arm and drop its leather lanyard instead around her neck. “Okay, go time,” she muttered. 

Jess walked only one door down the hall before knocking politely on her sister’s door and stepping in. 

Aeon Hill liked making a joke of being ‘a visiting alien android’ but her room really showed the truth of that description. There was no bed as, of course, the android girl didn’t need one. An array of free-floating haptic display screens stood in a shallow arc around Jess’s sister’s resting place, a recharging alcove made up of hollow dark metal frames filled with cabling, flashing lights and, above Aeon's head, a circular cold light disc. All of this took up nearly a quarter of the room, centred in one of its corners. “Good morning, Jess,” Aeon said brightly as, with a faint noise of detaching interface cables, the girl stepped out of the recharging alcove. As she did so, the continually-moving neon blue lights running along the cables faded.

One thing that didn’t match with the very alien and sci-fi aesthetic was the most recent addition to the room. Jess had asked one of the tribe’s shamans to create a dream-catcher for Aeon and her sister had suspended it directly over the centre of the alcove. Jess wasn’t sure what the message was meant to be but was sure that Aeon, filter-free as she was, would tell her if she wanted her to know.

“Good morning Aeon!” Jess replied. Did you ‘sleep’ well?”

“I am fully regenerated, thank you Jess and all of today’s data updates are processing even as we speak!” 

The concept of ‘resting’ was, of course, as alien to Aeon as the concept of ‘recharging’ was to Jess. In some ways, it should have been impossible for the two girls to be as close as they were, given their utterly different natures but, as Mama Olympia liked saying, love transcended such boundaries. Besides, it had only taken a few days to persuade Aeon that no-one at the house either wanted or needed a full-breakdown of all events overnight around the world!

Aeon should be bored by the forced inactivity of family mealtimes, she supposed. However, that would be ignoring the single key directive that, above all else, defined her. She was aware that she was an android and, as such, was not created with the reflexive human instincts that they started learning at birth about non-verbal communication and social norms. So, as Jess and their mothers busied themselves with breakfast, Aeon observed and learned, all whilst maintaining a wide variety of 'small talk', mostly discussions about various things in pop culture that had caught her data parsing algorithm's attention as something her relatives would find interesting.

Of course, because she was an android, she was also multi-tasking a hundred other things by processing possible clues to upcoming villainous activity, simultaneously being active participants in a dozen online forums and critiquing Markov's most recent poetry, posted under a rather underwhelmingly-disguised pen-name. Then a large amount of her processing space was taken up by an incoming phone call on Jess's cellphone. Whilst an ethical argument could be made that it would be wrong for Aeon to eavesdrop on the call as it was something private to her sister, Aeon also knew that every social being was subject to social pressures that could coerce them into some dangerous course of action. So, Aeon did listen in until she was able to verify via voice pattern and stress analysis that the call was definitely from Zoe Bourgeois, not some other person using her voice, this display of discretion based on such concerns proving that she was a true AI, not simply a complex linear computer system.

"Are you going to have your breakfast, Aeon?"

Aeon looked up at Mama Olympia. "I don't need food, mama."

Olympia laughed. "I know but I also know that you like my pancakes."

Aeon could not think of a single logical rebuttal for that. Also, yes, she did like the taste of Mama Olympia's pancakes. She might be a Xenoian but she'd spent essentially her entire life on Earth and, apparently, few are the women from Iowa who couldn't make decent pancakes to the point where Olympia had decided that teaching her android 'daughter' to do the same had become a personal priority.

Mama Barbara looked up from her copy of The Wall Street Journal to look at the girls. "Jess, remember the importance of maintaining a decent blood sugar balance to prevent loss of orientation or balance in combat. Also, Aeon, remember that we really don't want your school-friends wondering why you don’t ever eat."

~*~*~

After arriving at the school, Jess was unexpectedly taken to one side by Dean Gate; the bald man’s face was strangely fixed as if he had somehow got some annoying news and Aeon wondered if it was due to the intramural competition due today. As she had no data, it was pointless pondering it and, instead, she walked into the building, nodding sober and neutral greetings to everyone she passed until she reached the central courtyard that was both a gymnasium and social area.

"Ceriza! Good morning!" Ceriza Ithavol was one of Aeon's closest… Well, to call her a 'friend' would be inaccurate. The tall and pale-skinned girl with long black hair didn't really do 'friends' for a wide range of legacy emotional and cultural reasons but she was a strongly moral person and Aeon found that the paranormal being shared many of her views on how those in authority often viewed social injustice. 

Ceriza's most eccentric characteristic was literally putting her feet in the face of people who annoyed her or disrespected her. She didn't kick them as much as just… put her foot in their face. Aeon had no idea the cultural significance of this. Ceriza came from an isolationist community of para-humans known as Umbras and was only going to the New York School for Gifted Children because she had several odd characteristics, due to her hybrid biology (her father was a Lumien, for aeons the rivals of the Umbras) that her tribal elders found threatening and wanted her elsewhere to learn to control over her abilities.

Aeon would admit to be glad that the girl had stopped trying to sneak her quartet of semi-automatic pistols into school although her high-heel boots still had the mounting clips for two of them.

"Hey, Aeon. Have you met the new meat yet?" Aeon shook her head; long used to how the Umbra girl referred to things in dismissive ways as almost a reflexive defence tactic. "We actually have another token normie! I've got the feeling that she's got some kind of hidden abilities though and that's why SPECIAL are sending her here!"

"Yo! Aeon! Shadow-witch! I want you to meet Carole!" Aeon and Cerisa looked across the exercise yard as Jess strolled over, dragging a girl with hip-length blonde hair with her. Aeon smiled in greeting and Cerisa rolled her eyes. Both the android and the Umbra girl could immediately see that the new student, currently tucked protectively under Jess’s arm, was one of those perky and upbeat people whose attitude hid deep and personal troubles. In other words, “a ticking time-bomb of angst and supervillainous potential”, as Mama Barbara liked to put it.

“So, everyone ready for the match?”

“Match? Is this something I should care about?” Cerisa drawled.

“The netball match today against the Mount Griffith Darkstars,” Aeon reminded Cerisa helpfully. “As you will recall, Professor Price enrolled you in the Cheer Team as punishment for beating up those boys in the neighbourhood and assigned you to this match ‘because it would be good for you’.”

The pale girl was silent for a moment before pulling out her cellphone and reading the screen with a fixed, manic smile. “Oh! It’s Tuesday! Jeanne, my friend from home is visiting today! I’ve got to go and show her around the town’s hot-spots! Tell the professor that I’m sorry?” She looked around to take in Jess’s brick wall-like expression, Aeon’s completely uncommunicative peaceful expression and the new girl’s look of confusion. “Guys! Please! Think of all the things I did for you over the years!”

“I actually cannot recall any such thing!” Aeon said, again in a helpful tone of voice.

“Aeon, you’re lucky that I love you or that would put you on my list!” Cerisa said mournfully.

“Ah!” All four girls turned as a young man in a royal purple and grey school uniform, whose badge was a lightning bolt on a black field. “I see that this institution has kept its one exceptional feature: Its’ beautiful women!” He grinned at Carole and stepped towards her. “A new face I see! My name is Gregory D’Argent and may I say…”

Cerisa scowled and actually stepped in front of Carole. “D’Argant, I’m giving you fair warning here. If you so much as say a word to this girl, I will send you to hell for a few subjective lifetimes!”

“D’Argant has a ‘voice of command’ ability.” Jess whispered into Carole’s ear. “He’s not allowed to use it but he claims that it ‘slips on’ occasionally - only when it amuses him.”

Meanwhile, D’Argant was looking at Cerisa, scowling in annoyance at being interrupted on a hustle. “Hellspawn, you don’t even have your guns anymore! The faculty confiscated th… UMPH!” 

Somehow, the black-haired girl had her boot in his face to the point where he was practically chewing on her stiletto heel. Somehow, her long hair had slipped partially out of its bun and braids and  was in motion around her. Carole wasn’t sure exactly what the shapes she was seeing seemingly deep inside her hair might be but they somehow felt cold, old and very, very evil and left a distinct odour of sulphur in the air. “Who said anything about my Bullet-Fu, ladykiller?”

~*~*~

“The Mount Griffith School for Children with Great Expectations is the largest independent school for superhumans in the Western United States,” Aeon was explaining to Carole as they walked to class with a silently-proitective Jess and Cerisa, who had her phone’s ear-buds in and was sulking pretty obviously, both bringing up the rear. “Like all specialist schools, they are meant to ensure that emergent superhumans are trained to the highest ethical standards and are aware of their legal obligations. However, there have been some previous… incidents involving Mount Griffith alumni that the school’s trustees have claimed were either misunderstandings or deliberate attempts to discredit the institution. Additionally, there are some concerns about the anomalously high rate of antisocial behaviour amongst alumni of the institution.”

“Basically, they’re a school for supervillains and are good at hiding it.” Jess explained.

Carole ws trying to fit this into some kind of logical framework. “So… You have sports fixtures against supervillains?”

Aeon smiled. “Yes; we are generally better able to deal with their attempts to cheat than most schools are. Additionally, not all of the Darkstars are that bad.”

Carole shot Aeon a raised eyebrow. “A bunch of supers with wonky ethical standards ‘aren’t that bad’?” 

“Many of them are very gifted, academically,” Aeon explained.

“They spend about 95% of their time in Los Angeles,” Jess added. 

“They throw the best parties!” Ceriza concluded without changing her expression in the slightest. She looked at Carole thoughtfully. “So, Normie, what’s our story?” Carole blinked in polite confusion. “Why is someone without any paranormal abilities a student here at Superhero High? What’s your ‘dirty secret’? Magic? Can drive men insane with the sight of your body? You can transform into a seven-foot-tall armour-plated biomechanical killing machine?”

Jess felt Carole freeze in response to Ceriza’s tactless question. “I… I’m not… I don’t…” the girl began in a panicked tone and took the girl back under her arm. 

“Cerisa, drop it, please.”

“As well as being a school for young people with superhuman abilities, this is also a school renowned for its academic and vocational courses,” Aeon interjected. “Maybe her parents just want Carole to have the best general education.”

“Yes! That’s it!” Carole confirmed with an insincere and slightly crazy grin. Cerize rolled her eyes in doubt but didn’t push any further.

~*~*~

 

For all of her life, Carole had suffered occasional audio-visual hallucinations when around certain people. However, she was never entirely sure if they were really hallucinations as they always seemed to ultimately reveal something about people. Her parents had called it ‘wishful thinking’ but, after a SPECIAL doctor had provisionally classed her as a medium-magnitude Delta-level superhuman (something  that nearly made her mother faint in pure shame), it was impossible for her family to ignore anymore. Although the doctor had recommended further study, she found herself on a transcontinental flight within a week, heading for The New York School for Gifted Children with her father’s muttered comment that ‘those monsters had better teach her how to control her freakishness’ still ringing in her ears. 

Carole had wondered exactly what her special ability might be but, that lunchtime, she found out. 

The blonde’s scream of agony cut through the crowded cafeteria and her three new friends were at her side in an instant, stopping her from clawing out her eyes. 

Carole never was able to fully explain in human terms what she had seen. Everyone in the school cafeteria had an aura, often in dazzling and sharply-contrasting colours. Sometimes, those auras would take shapes that made it hard to see their real physical forms. Jess somehow had eagle wings and Ceriza… well, Carole knew what a denizen of Hell looked like now. It was all the more odd that Aeon had such a regular aura - silvery-grey made up of innumerable interlocking cogs and levers. 

Then Carole was looking into the sun. “Miss Hopper, are you okay?” 

Carole had to blink a few times to realise that the shining golden figure was Olympia Hill, Aeon’s foster mother and the Enhanced Physicality teacher. “I… Ma’am… I…” she swallowed. “Sorry, I’ve never had my… my condition flare up like this before.”

Olympia smiled. “We all had to go through things like this in puberty,” she said gently. “Please tell me what it was that you saw.”

“Lights… Colours… Shapes; everyone had them and they were all different. Some brighter, some darker.” Carole sucked in a shaky breath and realised how warm the eagle’s wings in Jess’s aura were: How safe she felt with them wrapped around her.

Olympia nodded. “Some kind of augmented senses then; the team at SPECIAL thought something like that but for it to trigger so strongly?” She he held out a hand. “Let’s get you to the nurse’s office…”

“No!” Teacher and pupil alike were surprised to see that it was Ceriza who had spoken. Carole blinked at the girl, consumed in a swirling mass of inky black, shot through with lava red but, when she hugged the blonde, the noirette wasn’t hot to the touch but there was a firm sense of protection and a warmth of a kind she always felt her mother should have had but never did. “She’s our friend and we’ll help her…” Ceriza paused for a moment before dredging up: “Ma’am.”

Jess and Ceriza helped Carole get to her feet, Jess helping the girl balance and Ceriz’s prehensile black hair unwrapped from its braids and curved across Carole’s eyes, effectively blindfolding her; the consuming inky black of the Umbra girl’s aura blocking all the others from her sight except for the protective and possessive warmth of Jess’s own. “Easy there, Carole,” Ceriza whispered. “Try not to see until we’ve out of this room.”

Olympia frowned at the Umbra Witch for a moment before smiling. “Only if you do take her to the nurse’s office, Miss Ithavol. Aeon, Jess, if you will bring your friends’ lunches?”

~*~*~

Despite Carole’s wishes, the nurse had declined to give her medication intended to dull or entirely suppress strongly enhanced senses. “You have to get used to them and learn to control them, Miss Hopper. Attempting to just make them go away on a chemical level defeats the object of medicine, which is to prevent long-term harm.” With this Carole had to be satisfied.

Now she and Jess were standing outside the girls’ locker rooms, waiting for Aeon and Ceriza. The other students were naturally curious about the girl who nearly went insane during the lunch break but none of them seemed particularly interested in risking Jess’s protective wrath. “Jess?” The First Nation girl looked over with a raised eyebrow. “Jess… What is that necklace.” Jess’s eyes got a bit wider and quickly tucked the metal-framed eagle’s talon on a leather lanyard inside her t-shirt. It was pointless as it was visibly shining blue-white through the material, at least in Carole’s eyes. “I can see its light but it is so different from yours!”

Jess leaned over to squeeze Carole’s shoulder. It felt strong, comforting and soft, like the touch of a bird’s feathers and so different from the supple, smooth leathery feel of Ceriza’s touch. Carole watched, fascinated, as the illusory eagle’s wings closed again around her comfortingly. “We all have secrets, Carole, especially me. The necklace is a… trust I received from a friend. I’d prefer it if we didn’t discuss it in public.”

“NO NO NO!” That broke the spell of the two girls’ conversation.

“Ceriza, it isn’t that bad,” Aeon’s perpetually-reasonable voice responded.

“NO IT’S WORSE!”

Aeon walked out into the hallway, wearing the gold-edged royal blue uniform of the school’s cheer team. “What’s up with the Shadow Witch?” Jess asked laconically.

“Miss Price assigned Ceriza to the core of the formation.” Aeon responded ambiguously without much expression.

When Ceriza came out the infernal reds and brimstone black of her aura was much more pronounced and, yet, despite the wholly-fiendish colour scheme of what Carole had decided was somehow her soul, it couldn’t hide the fact that the ‘formation core’ uniform had a pink top and pink stripes in every alternate pleat of the skirt. Ceriza even had pink and blue ribbons plaited into her black hair. “Please, kill me,” she begged.

Suddenly she found herself in Carole’s arms. “It’s beautiful!” the girl said with a huge, beaming smile. “On most girls, it would look like they’d been caught in the explosion of a cotton candy machine but on you it looks great!” Carole gestured. “Really! The high-contrast between your hair and the ribbons especially!” 

Ceriza shot the girl a wonky smile. “Thanks for the effort, Pollyanna.” She leaned in close. “I’ll try to talk Price into letting you take my spot; you would be better with this look than me.”

~*~*~

“Let’s make it to the top! We’re never gonna drop that ball!” the cheerleaders sang, waving their pom-poms, even the scowling Ceriza who, as the name suggested, was in the centre of the group of dancing girls, both acting as the anchor of their formation and leading their motions and changes of position with her own dance moves.

“She’s made to dance, isn’t she?” Carole whispered.

“So are you,” Jess responded, squeezing the new girl’s hand .

“We’re a school united! We’re gonna give it our all!

“So let us sing, let us cry! No fool’s gonna pass us by!

“Go, let’s go! Superhero High! Go, let’s go! Superhero High!”

Sitting behind the new girl was a girl with lavender streaks in her hair and wearing the purple-and-grey uniform of Mount Griffith leaned forwards and whispered in a malicious tone. “This school!” she sighed. “Only you lot would choose a goth to be the cheer team captain!”

“What’s the matter Flaer?” Jess responded. “Doesn’t your school have what it takes to do that?

Dani “Solar Flare” Flaer was still struggling to find a response as the cheer team finished their half-time show, forming two concentric circles around Ceriza, who proudly and unsmilingly held her pom-poms out at shoulder-level in a T-pose as the other girls dropped down to form something like the shape of a flower around her. “Damn… She is good. Got to talk to Sugar and Sweetie about this!”

“She’s so perfect?” her next-seat neighbour, a boy from Mt Griffith, said dreamily. Dani looked at the bespectacled boy in shock. 

“Mike…?” 

“So strong, so superior and so detached…!” Dani shook her head. There was clearly no point in trying to understand this!

With the half-time show over, the two teams returned to the gymnasium floor. The scores were tied and Mt Griffith prided itself on never losing an intramural match, so everyone was expecting trouble as the two team captains faced off: Representing New York was a redhead named Stephanie ‘Sunset’ Shimfield and against her was a deep purple-dyed hair girl named Stella Glimm “She is known as ‘Equaliser’,” Jess whispered to Carole. “Due to her ability to temporarily neutralise powers in her vicinity. Naturally, the Darkstars have her on most of their teams to prevent superhuman shenanigans”. 

Carole blinked in surprise. “Surely no-one would cheat using super-powers in an intramural sporting fixture?” 

Jess laughed “They would and it’s kind of hard for them to imagine anyone not doing so if they could!”

“Scared, Sheffield?” Glimm sneered.

“Nope!” Steph replied. “You?” The Mt Griffith girl hissed in anger and lunged clumsily as the ball was tossed between them.

The match was a lot more evenly-matched than Carole had expected and she found herself being hypnotised a little by the flow of the fourteen girls’ auras as they all sought advantage. For all they were often playing dirty, Carole realised that the Darkstars were hobbled by the fact that they were competing at least as much between themselves as they were with the New York Brightlights. Because of this, it was harder for them to get a significant advantage in a team-based sport. With the scores still tied with only twenty seconds to go, Steph intercepted a pass by the Brightlight hoop and began to pound up-court towards the opposing team’s hoop whilst, behind her, several of the Darkstars lost focus on the game in favour of screaming abuse and recriminations at each other.

Carole looked towards the staff benches and saw a grey-haired woman who was obviously a member of Mount Griffith’s faculty, rubbing the bridge of her nose in a frustrated response to that fiasco. 

“GO! LET’S GO! SUPERHERO HIGH!” the cheerleaders were chorusing as Steph progressed up the court. she was almost close enough to attempt to score when she suddenly sprawled and one of the Darkstars sprang back, her hands raised and a wholly-unbelievable innocent smile on her face. 

“FOUL!” called the referee. “New York has one penalty throw.” The woman pointed to the Darkstars benches. “Miz Indigo, you have a three-minute time-out.” The referee was almost immediately surrounded by protesting Mt Griffith faculty but she was resolute in her decision. 

After being helped back to her feet by Coach Price, Steph walked up to the penalty throw spot and was given the ball. 

Carole shook her head as she watched a lavender-coloured tendril extend from a timid-looking bespectacled girl in the spectator stands as the grey-haired woman whispered to her from close by whilst wearing an evil smirk that was clearly terrifying the other girl. “I think… I think she’s going to use her powers to block the throw!” Carole gasped.

Jess frowned. “That’s Kagayaki Tsaeogareno! She’s a telekinetic! She could easily deflect the shot!” 

“Should we tell one of the teachers?”

Ceriza, immediately ahead of Carole along the side-lines with the rest of the Cheer Team, frowned. “Tell them what, Pollyanna? ‘Oh, our superpower empath new kid saw the least-competitive student at Mt Griffith deflect a penalty shot for a match that I’m sure she doesn’t care about? Without evidence?” The Umbran girl grinned. “No, leave this to me.” 

In Carole’s viewpoint, Ceriza seemed to flare up black but the aura held tight around her head as Steph lined up, took the shot and… 

Suddenly, Ceriza’s hair lunged towards Kagayaki like it was alive and very, very carnivorous. No-one else seemed to notice except the Mt Griffith girl whose power seemed to backfire and knock her thick-lensed reading glasses off of her face and made her fall from her bench with a cry of terror and dismay. With the telekinetic intercept foiled, Steph’s shot went right through the hoop. The New York bleachers erupted with cheers and the groan of horror from the Mt Griffith bleachers was physical in its' strength.

Jess got onto the court as soon as possible, with Carole in tow, to confront Ceriza, who was exchanging a silly-looking ‘secret handshake’ with Steph. “What the hell did you do, Shadow Witch?” the First Nation girl snapped.

“Bad luck spell,” Ceriza explained with a diabolical grin. “Powers against players are forbidden. Pranks against other spectators? Nearly impossible to prove and what was Little Twilight doing even having her TK active in the middle of a competitive match?”

~*~*~

No-one was surprised that Mt Griffith’s notorious principal (the grey-haired woman with the aura that simply stank of contemplative evil to Carole) was appealing the outcome of the match, declaring loudly that Stephanie’s penalty only went in due to ‘superhuman means’. Ms Hill invited her to prove it, making her straighten her blazer in a dignified way and stride off.

Carole looked worriedly towards the bespectacled oriental girl, Kagayaki, who was visibly alone waiting for the bus back to their hotel. The only person who seemed interested in her was the pretty blonde woman who Jess identified as the dean of Mt Griffith High and seemed bent on consoling her. “I know what it’s like, being different and scorned,” she said quietly.

“Maybe she should stand up for herself,” Cerisa spat.

“Maybe she doesn’t know how,” Jess countered. Carole decided that this was a story that was only beginning.

“You’re one of the good guys, Carole,” Jess rescinded, putting an arm across her shoulders and hugging her briefly, sending a flash of electricity and heat through both girls.

Cerisa’s face was uncommunicative although she’d obviously sensed something. Aeon, who was also on the cheer team, was not restrained by any issues with appearing aloof of human emotions. “Is she going to be your girlfriend, Jess? I had wondered if you would ever replace Zoe!”

Jess made a stuttering sound and Carole squeaked, going bright red. Interestingly, Aeon noticed, neither of them made any hint of a denial or tried to break contact.

“Repulsive, isn’t it?” Ceriza remarked with a cruel but friendly grin.

~*~*~

Jess and Aeon were met at the school gates by Mama Barbara in her black Ferrari coupe. Her quick, intelligent eyes noticed the addition of Carole to their friend group as well as the way Jess nervously kept adjusting her hair and clothes and otherwise fidgeting nervously around her. “Made a new friend?” Barbara asked.

“Yes!” Jess said, too loud and excited for her own peace of mind.

“That is Carole Hopper,” Aeon reported matter-of-factly. “She is an energy empath and she is going to be Jess’s new girlfriend.”

“AEON!” Jess was hiding her face in horror as her cheeks burned.

Barbara was very pleased that she didn’t laugh at her daughter's mortification. “Well, I hope that this new romantic entanglement isn't’ a distraction, Jessica. Remember that we have a new mission awaiting us to defeat the plots of the Style Queen since she ‘came out’ as a criminal during her recent time in Paris.”

Notes:

Yes, Carole Hopper is going to be Jess's love interest but she's got a far greater destiny in my story than just that.

Also, yes: Ceriza Ithavol is Bayonetta. In the Guardianverse, the Witch Hunts never occurred. That means that she never had her time skip or amnesia. She's still Ceriza but she's also still the target of suspicion and prejudice from her fellow Umbra Witches. This makes her a bit defensive and possessive of the mortals who have chosen to be her friends.

Chapter 9: Be More Chill

Summary:

Back to the war against Hakwmoth. This is a deleted chapter from the earliest phase of 'Voice of the MiracuChat', when the story was still a casual series of semi one-off chapters. This was inspired by several fan-animations I've seen on You Tube of this song because I love them and I agree that they perfectly describe peak LoveSquare UST.

Besides, every show has a musical episode these days!

Sitting on the edge of the roof of a Paris apartment block, Ladybug rubbed her face wearily.

Of all the foes Hawkmoth sent against her and her team, she hated the most were the ones with behavioural modification powers. You could at least fight against monsters that could throw around titanic blasts of destruction but it was borderline-impossible to cope with a supervillain that could fill your mind with an uncontrollable obsession that would focus your every thought on doing their obsessional whim.

The Love Akumas were the very worst but Music Man had been an odd one: He was a musical actor who had been rejected by innumerable theatres on the grounds that ‘musical theatre is overdone’ and that people weren’t interested in the genre anymore. In Ladybug’s opinion, that was a silly thing to say; even Chloe agreed that the concept was ‘utterly ridiculous’ but it gave Hawkmoth an opportunity to create a ‘champion’ that turned huge parts of Paris’s population into performance troupes for song-and-dance numbers. What was the problem with that? Well, it’s hard to operate a car, bus or any other delicate operation when you have an overwhelming need to form a chorus line and belt out off-Broadway numbers.

Even she and Chat Noir were trapped in performing numbers from Mama Mia! If Carapace had not been able to protect the other five heroes then this really bizarre attack may have even given him his long-sought-after victory! Fortunately, being hit by Queen Bee’s Venom broke the spell and the Lucky Charm – noise-cancellation headphones – had protected Chat Noir and given them time to trick the akuma with one of Rena’s Mirages before Chat Cataclysmed his akuma container, an old-fashioned conductor’s cane.

Now, the team were on top of a building, recovering from the experience. All the city was still recovering after the Miraculous Cure brought them all out of their musical trances. In truth, Ladybug wondered if there might be some long-term consequences; she’d caught Officer Raincomprix humming bits from Pirates of Penzance. Music had a magic uniquely of its own, after all.

Chat dropped down next to Ladybug and the two senior heroes looked over the sunset panorama of their city. “Chaton?”

“Yes, M’Lady?”

“Um… Can I ask you a question?” Crap! This is bad! Ladybug heard in her head a up-beat rock guitar riff start in her head like one of Luka and Juleka’s tunes but it was too late; the magic was there and it couldn’t be denied.

“Shoot!”

Ladybug began to sing in a surprisingly tuneful mid-contralto tone (she’d never been a good singer), attracting the whole team’s attention.

“Say there’s this guy that you pass in the hall every day,
“You’ve known him since seventh grade.
“You’re used to thinking about him in a certain way,
“From the persona that he displayed.
“But then something changes, and he changes…

“From a guy that you’d never be into,
“Into a guy that you’d kind of be into!
“From a guy that I’d never be into,
“Into a guy that I’d kind of be into!
“Is he worth it, Chat Noir? Is he?”

Chat blinked in shock; he guessed that this was the influence of Music Man somehow, but this wasn’t just a random song. He could tell from the look of pleading in Ladybug’s eyes that this was a dilemma that had been weighing on her heart. “Is she talking about me?” he muttered under his breath. He was shocked to somehow hear Plagg respond in his head.

Of course she is! I’ve been stimulating your pheromones! Keep it up!

“Say that there’s this guy that you never knew that well…” Ladybug continued

At that moment, Carapace, Vipereon, Ryuuko, Rena Rouge and Queen Bee all leaned in and whisper-sang an interjection:

“She is totally into you!”

Ladybug continued, foicussed entirely on Chat Noir, her eyes wild and desperate.

“You thought that you had him pegged but now you can tell!
“He’s gone from…”

Suddenly, Ladybug was on her feet, shaking her hips from side to side to the rhythm in her head whilst Rena, Queen Bee and Ryuuko danced around her, mirroring her movements, shaking their fingers to the first lines of the chorus and then clasping their hands to the side of their faces in an ‘Aw! Tis Sweet’ gesture to the second whilst harmonising with the lyrics.

“From a guy that you’d never be into,
“Into a guy that you’d kind of be into!
“From a guy that you’d never be into, (never be into!)
“Into a guy that you’d kind of be into! (kinda be into!)
“Is he worth it, Chat Noir?”

Chat Noir was so fully immersed in the moment that he didn’t hesitate to respond, his arms flung out to either side.

“Ab-so-loutely!”

Ladybug stopped her dance and stepped to one side, a spotlight shining down on her from somewhere.

“I never felt easy with talking to guys,
“Except when in disguise!
“But there’s so many changes that I’m going through…”

Ladybug grinned mischievously and punched Chat lightly on the shoulder.

“And why am I telling this to you?”

Suddenly, Ladybug stopped singing and it was if someone had struck a tuning fork or something to break the spell and, suddenly, the polka-dotted heroine was smiling at Chat in a happy, relieved way.

“I guess a part of me wants to…”

The other heroines began to sing a regular metronomic descant of “Ah-oh-ah-oh!”

Ladybug sidled over and sat down next to Chat again, much closer this time, shifting closer with the end of every line.

“I guess a part of me wants to! Who knew?
“I guess a part of me likes to talk to you!
“I guess a part of me likes to! Who knew?
“I guess a part of me likes to sit with you!
“I guess a part of me likes to, who knew?”

Ladybug was very close to Chat now, her eyes shining with something that the black-clad Cat hero couldn’t quite interpret but desperately wanted to.The other heroines’ vox humanis descant was growing ever more intense with each line.

“I guess a part of me likes to hang with you!
“I guess a part of me likes to, who-ooh-ooh knew?
“I guess a part of me…”

Their fingers were touching on the roof edge ledge and their lips were drawing ever closer as Ladybug’s song dropped to a quiet murmur and then she jumped back, startled, as if scalded. She was blushing brightly and suddenly couldn’t meet Chat Noir’s slitted green eyes.

“Back to mission debrief.” Ladybug sang awkwardly. She suddenly looked back with a pleading expression on her face.

“I know that it’s weird, but I swear that it’s true.
“That the guy that I’d kind of be into…”

Chat Noir responded with a strange smile. This was a dream come true.

“The guy that you’d kind of be into…?”

The next line was sung as an awkward duet:

“Yeah, the guy that I’d (you’d) kind of be into… Is…”

Ladybug whispered the last bit into Chat’s ear. “Adrien Agreste.”

The heroine sprung back, a look of panic and shame in her eyes. “Oh… Oh, Chat, I’m sorry! I’m sorry, it was the Akuma’s magic, I swear! I didn’t…! I’d never…! I mustn’t…!”

Chat blinked stupidly, stamping hard on his urge to find this ‘Adrien’ guy and stomp him for stealing his girl (That isn’t possible, genius; it’s you!). Instead, he was fighting an impulse to destransform on the spot; it was a ridiculous impulse that couldn’t help but only hurt “M’Lady, wait!” It was too late; the Yo-yo lashed out, caught a chimney stack and carried the weeping Ladybug Heroine away.

There was a long pause and everyone else was looking at each other in a startled way. “Well.., That could have gone better,” Rena Rouge drawled ironically.

 

Notes:

'The Guy That I'd Kinda Be Into' was written by Joe Iconis and Charlie Rosen for the musical 'Be More Chill'; I just played with the lyrics a bit to make them fit the setting better.

Original animatic that served as my inspiration: https://youtu.be/Awv7LVPWJGQ?si=UeZQJd5arxGB75xJ, starting at 1:23.

Chapter 10: Condorman

Summary:

Not all the kids of Mlle Bustier's class at College Francoise Dupont have been chosen to weild a Miraculous but that doesn't mean that they don't have heroic potential. All that is needed are means by which to manifest that potential. Nathaniel Kurtzberg has that in spades but it took the Blackest Day to motivate him to do so.

Notes:

A continuation of sorts of the events in my chapter of Guardianverse Book 3 - The Watering Hole, featuring yet more of the results of Socqueline Wang's remarkable creations.

Marc Anciel looked at their boyfriend worriedly as he stood on the edge of one of the middle cross-structures of the Eiffel Tower, over a hundred metres above street level. “Nate….”, Marc said nervously as theu readied their camera phone. “Are you sure…?”

Nathaniel Kurtsberg, wearing a tan jumpsuit that he’d bought from the art supply shop that Mariette often patronised, grinned at his boyfriend. “Marc, Uncle Woody’s drawings have never let me down before!” He drew in a deep breath and remembered the script that Marc had thrown together for him last night. “Okay, ready?” 

Marc swallowed and raised his phone, starting the video recording. “Ready and Nate? I love you and you don’t need to prove anything to me!” 

Nathaniel shot his boyfriend a shy but confident smile. “Okay and… go.” He drew in a deep breath before declaring in a stentorian tone: “With Team Miraculous pinned down by the Mega Akuma plague, who will save the visiting Princess of Corona from the foul plans of Shadow Moth? There is only one man with the skills and the tools!” Nathaniel moved his hands to his side, took a firm hold on a pair of handgrips and pushed outwards, deploying two huge metal-framed synthe-canvas wings printed with a feather pattern. “This is a job for… Condorman!”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Nathaniel stepped off of the metal ledge and leaned forwards to catch the warm updrafts of air rising from the Parc Champ-du-Mars.

Marc swallowed; this was it: their boyfriend was actually going to do it! “Oh Christ, Nate!” 

Nathaniel, with a precise total of zero hours hang-gliding experience, almost immediately was in trouble, having difficulty keeping the wings steady, let alone catching any of the anticipated thermals. The condor-themed hang-glider almost instantly went into a flat spin, dropping towards the distant ground at very close to terminal velocity. “Oh, mon dieu! Nonnonnonnon! This is BAAAD!”

“Gotcha!” Suddenly, Nataniel wasn’t falling anymore. Instead, he was in the black polka-dotted red arms of Ladybug!

Marc desperately tried to get his heartbeat under control as the Champion of Paris completed her swing to land right back where Nate had been just a minute ago, retracting her yo-yo into her hand with a flip of her wrist. “M Kurtzberg, M Anciel… What the hell was  that?!?”

Nathaniel couldn’t meet the superheroine’s outraged gaze.

~*~*~

It was a good question: What the hell was that? To answer, you would need to know something about Nathaniel’s family. One of his mothers’ uncles was a man who was, in every meaningful way, Nathaniel’s personal and professional inspiration. Woodrow ‘Woody’ Wilkins had been a penciller and inker (a rare combination of skills) for ‘The Big Two’ during the so-called Diamond Age of comic books in the 1980s (when the revelation that there really were costumed adventurers, alien visitors and magical champions made everyone want to invest their time in the world). He was also a talented amateur engineer who made it a point of principle that his creation would not ever have gadgets and tools that could not work in the real world. 

Although long retired by now, along with Auntie Natalia, to a cottage in Provence, ‘Uncle Woody’ had inspired Nathaniel to pursue his dreams of becoming a comic book artist and had even given him access to his personal archives as a source and model for his own art. Searching frantically through them in the aftermath of the Blackest Day, Nathaniel had found something that almost immediately caught his attention: It was the design for a wing-suit based on a condor, the largest bird of prey in the world. 

The deeper that he dug, the more gadgets and tools he found. Talon-themed grappling hooks; a James Bond-style super-spy’s sportscar, a working laser pistol of the same type as had been deployed by SPECIAL for decades! This treasure trove could only aid him in achieving his goal: To gain the abilities and skills he needed to protect Marc from the evils of this world. 

It was a decision that was made easier when he realised that Condorman was real and had worked alongside the first generation of the United Heroez in the 1980s and 1990s.

“So, this is your uncle’s drawings huh?” Ladybug, recognising the importance of the scrap-book to her artistic friend, carefully and reverently set it aside as she continued to sort through the foot-locker. What she found next made her stop her search.

Nathaniel’s mouth quirked up into a proud smile. “So, Ladybug, as you can see, none of this stuff is really untried.” 

Ladybug scowled as she looked at the burnished chrome-plated ‘UH’ badge that marked Mr Wilkins as a former agent of SPECIAL and one of the United Heroez Initiative. “So I see,” she sighed. “You were lucky today, M Kurtzberg, you understand that, don’t you? You have no magic, no training and were hoping that Condorman’s designs were simple enough to use so that you wouldn’t need training to make them work for you. Am I right?”

“We’re sorry, Ladybug,” Marc bravely tried to draw the magical heroine’s ire. “I guess that I just went on a bit too much about how dangerous Paris has got in the last two years and that…” Marc’s gentle green eyes looked away from Ladybug’s assessing gaze.

“Team Miraculous can’t be everywhere or there all the time, Ladybug,” Nate challenged.

Ladybug sighed. “I can’t deny that M Kurtzberg but I also cannot let you put your life at risk like this, Nate. You must promise me… You must swear that you won’t try this again without far more preparation.”

~*~*~

Socqueline Wang frowned. Herr Dietel had begun allowing her to take on personal commissions after the Mademoiselle Sans-Culotte costume had proven so successful. The cheerful old German didn’t know that his Apprentice was the tricolour girl vigilante but… Well, maybe he didn’t. He was just that good at keeping his inner thoughts a secret from everyone.

The point was that going beyond the basic fabrication of M Kurtzberg’s drawings of a collapsable worn hang-glider was a touch outside of her competence. She looked over to the left where the boot jets were resting as their enamelled paint-job set. Yes, that would help get him going from a standing start but controlled flight… It had taken birds millions of years to evolve those instincts and she doubled that Nathaniel had any avian-dinosaurid ancestry! However, Herr Dietl had a reputation of delivering the best solutions to costumed adventurers, heroic and villainous alike and that left her with a responsibility to fulfil. 

Opening her phone she began a search for suppliers who might be willing to try a collaboration and would be off-the-grid enough to not ask questions. 

Wait a minute, what was this? “This had better not be a joke,” Soqueline muttered as she dialled the advertised number and an obviously-synthetic voice answered almost immediately. “Hello, this is MAX Personal Control Solutions. My name is Markov, can I help you?”

~*~*~

Marinette had sworn that she’d give Socqueline her trust and had tried to live by that oath but it was difficult, especially now that Nathaniel had nearly got himself reduced to a pavement art installation by trying out one of Soqueline’s creations without preparation or training. The older girl was clearly providing supersuits to anyone who was able to pay her fees. Whilst a part of Marinette had to admit that it was quite a business plan, another part of her wanted to drag her former best friend by her hair to the Prefecture of Police for putting her friends in danger with her thoughtlessness.

So, here she was, perched in full costume atop the Arc du Triomph and watching through a pair of SPECIAL standard-issue binoculars as Soqueline helped Nathaniel strap on what she assumed had to be the mark-2 version of his recreation of his great-uncle’s superhero costume.

Marinette had asked her nonna Gina about Condorman and had been surprised when her grandmother burst out laughing. Oh, she had endless stories about Condorman, the details of which made Marinette think that he had a personality like Adrien’s: Serious, determined but with a tendency to be a bit of an unintentional goof. as if he’d spent too much time reading comics (or writing, in his case) and assuming that real superheroes behaved in the same way. 

However, he’d been a serious hero; he’d even (with the assistance of his then-girlfriend and later wife, Laser Lady)  helped Nonna and President Hombee fight Enchantress’s apparent antecedent, Volpe de Argento, during her rampage around Europe in the early 1980s. “One thing I can say is this mia nipotina,” she’d said. “I’ve never met a more genuinely noble, heroic and courageous man than Woody Wilkins. Whoever seeks to fill his boots is seeking to fill a large hole in the superhero community.” It turned out that a lot of his concepts were still being used by SPECIAL to this day; he’d been the imagination that had made them able to turn the technologies that they’d developed for practical purposes and, according to Alya, there were several pages of search results in the newspaper archives about his exploits.

That vote of confidence aside, Ladybug was getting ready to intervene again when she saw someone else with Nathaniel, Socqueline and Marc on the tower’s cross-beam: Is that Max? That gave the polka-dotted superheroine genuine pause. All indications were that he was the first Holder of the Miraculous of Technology, after all. If Tikki’s powers had augmented her dress-making and other design skills, maybe Markov’s newly-manifested magic might do the same for Max’s machine-crafting?

~*~*~

“Okay, Nate, this may be a bit weird but I am better than 89% sure that this is the help that you will need to make Mademoiselle’s Wang’s recreation of your great-uncle’s designs a real, working appliance.” Max gave Nate a pair of safety goggles with an elasticated strap between the ear hooks. After settling them in place, he touched a button recessed in one of the hinges of the ear-hook arms. There was a loud two-tone beep and a vertical rain of computer code briefly passed in front of Nate’s eyes before a pleasant voice spoke in the earpieces attached to the ear-hooks. 

“Hi! I’m the Wingsuit Integrated Navigator for Gliding and Associated Aviation Endeavours or ‘Wingy’, if you need me to have a nickname!” 

Nate blinked at the small condor-like anthro-chibi hovering in his sight to his left. He pulled off the flying goggles and confirmed that, indeed, that creature was a projection. Max shrugged. "I told you that it would be a bit weird,” he said defensively. “Most of this is Markov’s idea!”

“I thought that I had somehow got a kwami,” the red-headed artist said before resettling the goggles on his face. “Wingy, can you tell me your functions?”

“Of course, Nathaniel Kurtzberg. My primary function is to sense the local meteorological conditions and fine-adjust the Condorman-II wingsuit and your own control inputs to optimise your flight stability in all aviation modes including combat.” The avatar shrugged. “Basically, you decide where to go and I directly control the wingsuit to make it happen!”

Nathaniel gave Max a concerned look as he took in Wingy’s bubbly and cheerful tone. “Max, her voice? Is that…?”

“I digitally sampled Rose’s voice, yes.”

Marc grinned. “You always said that she had the sweetest voice that you knew, Nate!”

Nathaniel gave his boyfriend a firm look. “There’s nothing sweeter in this world than your voice, Marc.”

Socqueline blushed and Max focussed on adjusting his ‘ground control’ equipment as the two young men kissed happily. After a few moments, the young crafter coughed. “Monsieur Kurtzberg, I would like to know if I’ve finally completed this commission to your satisfaction so… If you could please carry out whatever tests you believe are necessary?”

…

Ladybug stood up and summoned her energy mesh wings, which materialised either side of the sheath of the Ladyblade Sword that had become part of her default equipment ever since she created it in Tokyo. 

…

 “All flight systems online; reactive wing controls ready.” Wingy chirped into Nate’s ear.

“Okay then, let’s do this.” He stepped up to the edge of the beam and extended his wings again. No bombastic speeches this time; that was the wrong mental approach. Taking his courage in both hands, he dropped off of the beam.

Marc uttered a cry of anguish, both eyes screwed closed before he felt the Wang girl jabbing him in the side. “Look, kiddo; your man is okay!” 

Marc’s eyes snapped open and, indeed, Nate was hovering in the air about ten metres off of the tower as the synthe-canvas wings flexed and rippled in the air currents. Nate had tucked his feet over an ankle bar and was using it to provide ‘rudder’ inputs into the suit’s fan-shaped tail, just like his Uncle Woody in the old tapes of him in  the original Condorman suit. “It… it works? It WORKS!” Marc was practically dancing and hugged first Max and then Socqueline, who grimaced and tried to keep her professional facade intact. 

“Well, of course it does. Deitl’s always delivers!”

“Eventually and with help,” Max responded dryly, earring a scowl from his Prime Contractor.

“You’ll get your cut, M Kanté, if you can keep your mouth shut about us and our client.” Soqueline snapped, folding her arms aggressively.

Nate was slowly getting used to the strange feeling of being held up by the suit’s wings and not being fully in control of the wing’s configuration. “Okay, Wingy, let’s see what we can do, huh?”

“Is this what I’ve been told is called ‘go time’?” the AI chirped back.

Nate rolled his eyes and, tilting his wings, he angled himself towards the Seine and began a long dive towards the river and its bridges, Wingy folding the eings back into a 'swooping' configuration. “WHOAAAA! WOOHOO!” Nate took himself down to just a couple of metres above the surface, zooming along at what felt like motor car speeds. Pulling up slightly to avoid an impact, Nathaniel shot over the rear dining deck of a restaurant boat. “Pardon! Excuse-moi!” he called to the waiters who had to stumble out of the way to prevent upraised plates being thrown from their grip by his passage. Nathaniel laughed as he looked down to see a dark-haired man offering a happy and tearful blonde woman a ring on the foredeck. “Bon chance!” he yelled. He looked up and his eyes dilated in terror. “WINGY!” 

“Contracting wings for restricted-span environments,” Wingy responded calmly as he shot under the bridge connecting the Parc Champs du Mars to the Trocadero Stairs near Marinette’s parents’ shop. 

“Time to gain a little height, I think!”

“Engaging sustainer turbofans.” With a whir of powerful motors in his boots, the wingsuit began to ascend as the powered fans added thrust to his flight. Flexing his hands around the controls, he cancelled the boost as soon as he passed 100m altitude according to the HUD provided by Wingy on the lenses of his goggles. He then settled back into a hover, letting the thermals fill the wings and keep him aloft.

“Well, that seems to be working better this time, don’t you agree?” Ladybug would later apologise but her appearance at his side so frightened Nate that he literally lost balance in the air and went swirling down towards the river below. If not for Wingy, he would certainly have crashed. “Oops! Ma faute!” the superheroine replied before buzzing down to once again hover at the aviator’s side as he regained control. 

“Quite a show you’ve put on M Kurtsberg but, I have to ask: What are your plans now that you have your wings?”

Notes:

'Condorman', distributed by Disney in what was their first full-length superhero film, was a dramatic comedy about Woody Wilkins, Condorman, and how his flights of the imagination led him to become an agent of the CIA in a struggle with the KGB over a defector, Natalia. All I really changed was for him to have been recruited by SPECIAL instead.

Being a brilliant comic artist, it seemed appropriate for him to be both kin and an inspiration to Nathaniel.

Also, yes, that opening mishap is meant to be a call-back to the opening scene of 'Kick-Ass'.

Chapter 11: In Search of Perfection

Summary:

Back to Book 1 for a cut scene from between chatpers 9 and 10. I've always wanted to write more about the relationship between Marinette and Kagami without Adrien being a significant factor so, here we are with Tomoe finding Kagami sparring with Marinette in the park near Tom and Sabine's bakery.

Tsurugi Tomoe walked without any hint of trouble through the Plase des Voyages, using her bokken practice sword like a blind woman’s cane. Because of that and her eye-obscuring sunglasses, no-one looked twice at her, assuming that she was simply a visually-impaired woman out for a walk in the sun despite her lack of sight.

They could not have been more wrong.

Whilst Tome’s eyes were non-functional, the visual cortex of her brain was picking up and interpreting signals from her ears, skin and nose that enabled her to ‘see’ the world in a dazzling array of colours that she could only interpret by a lifetime of experience. There was the vibrations caused by people’s life-processes, the heat their bodies produced and the motions through the air and ground.

However, like most people, Tomoe could ignore most of this in favour of the sensorium that she was personally searching for. A very specific set of traces that she’d known and intimately, for all 14 years of that person’s life. Then she found it, in the centre of the park, surrounded by a few dozen other traces that suggested an audience. Then her super-sensitive hearing picked up the clash of steel upon steel.

Behind her blacked-out glasses, Tomoe’s eyebrow quirked as she recognized her daughter, Kagami, practicing fencing (using naked, live blades at that), with another young woman who, despite her demure exterior, was doing a good job of parrying her daughter’s every attack.

Unhurriedly, Tomoe made her way over to a bench and sat down, leaning on her bokken in a meditative ways. Whilst her daughter’s practice partner’s moves were router and less refined, Tomoe recognised her daughter’s unique styles in her motions. That meant that she had been taught by her daughter to copy the moves of their old sensei, Toshehiro Isuko. Tomoe might have been annoyed at the betrayal of the old man’s secrets if she had even the slightest personal stake in this. Instead, she had to admit that the old man’s main concern would have been that Kagami had passed on the secrets of his fencing style properly.

Overall, on a technical level, Tomoe had no complaints. She had her own opinions on Kagami’s choices but she would choose the right time and place to utter them.

Suddenly, it was all over. Kagami had, as was her wont, been fighting strategically, luring her partner into longer and longer lunges, which Kagami had been delicately parrying aside. Finally, her opponent was fully extended and Kagami side-stepped, leaving her off-balance and exposed for a light touch with the point of Kagami’s rapier to the armour guarding the side of her neck.

“Merde!” the other girl snapped. “You got me, Kagami!”

“You did well, Marinette; you are learning to not hesitate in your attacks and counters. You kept me at bay for far longer than I’d anticipated.”

Marinette pulled off her armoured helmet and shot her friend with a shaky and rueful smile. “Still not good enough, Kagami. I’m beat and you’re barely even sweating!”

Kagami smiled. “Practice is the core of stamina, Mari-chan,” she said. Hearing this intimate suffix made Tomoe’s eyebrows rise. “Kagami!” she called. Her voice not loud but still penetrating and commanding.

“Hai, Museum?” Kagami responded. Marinette visibly (at all levels) flinched in response. However, Kagami didn’t even seem slightly surprised and Tomoe wondered if that was good biocontrol or if her daughter had been aware of her appearance in the park.

“Kagami, please come over so we can speak without bellowing at each other?”

Kagami briefly turned her gaze back on Marinette and smiled at her in a sunny way that made Tomoe internally frown in disapproval at the emotions it implied. “I will speak to you this evening, Marinette,” she said quietly (but Tomoe could easily hear her over the murmurs of approval of the ‘show’ that they had just put on.” Tomoe’s frown actually deepend as Kagami, with an air of daring, leant over and gently kissed the other girl on the cheek; nothing unnatural for French society but something so revealing that Tomoe felt only disapproval, maybe perhaps mostly because of the reaction from the girl in question, the flush of heat and the mute appeal in the way she leant into Kagami’s touch.

“You wished to speak to me, mother?” Kagami’s asked in Japanese. Her body language was wholly neutral, which, normally, would please Tomoe. Not today.

“So,” she hissed. “You have chosen to take a learner in secret? Without my permission?”

Kagami was a Turugi and Tomoe was pleased to note that she barely showed any reaction. Good, she’s not become as flawed as I feared.

“Marinette is a good student, mother. She is also Adrien’s closest friend and I felt that it was inappropriate to reject her when she appealed to me to teach her to fence.”

Tomoe considered that. “Have you asked her why she wishes to learn to fence? Other then to be closer to Adrien, of course.”

Kagami blushed and was glad her mother couldn’t have seen it; Kagami had her own reasons for wanting to spend time with Marinette, of course. “These are dangerous times, mother. Marinette is training in unarmed combat with Nora Cesaire, a local fighting champion. When she asked me to train her in armed combat, it seemed a reasonable thing she’d want to know to defend herself, her friends and her family from Shadowmoth.”

Tomoe didn’t respond by changing her expression; she just rapped out a reply. “So, you wish to train your own rival?” she snapped.

Kagami didn’t immediately respond. “She is not my rival, mother. As you must recall, she is my own friend, as well as a friend of Adrien’s. I have found her a good, quick student and, as you know, a teacher learns just as much as she passes to her student, if not more. She… challenges me.”

Tomoe ground her teeth before continuing. “Yet, she is still your rival, girl!”

Kagami shook her head. “I could not see Marinette ever betraying my trust or attempting to undermine my position with Adrien,” she said, added mentally: Whatever that is; he is hardly makes a show of courting me, except formally.” She decided to add something. “She is… Adrien is more than a friend to her. She desires him and, I suspect, it is mutual. I am… at ease with his fact. As you are aware, your contract with Agreste-san is purely commercial in nature and, whilst I am ready to do my duty to my family, I do not wish Adrien to be trapped by his duty to his family in a loveless paring. It would be… uncivilised.”

Tomoe nodded. “So, you are content for this girl to be Adrien’s sokoshitsu?”

“Yes,” Kagami said, surprising herself. Or mine, if that is my destiny, she added silently.

Tomoe nodded and patted the bench bside her. “Sit, girl, we4 must talk.”

Kagami complied and waited, seemingly for an age. “Her name was Harikama Bara,” she said. “An actress, dancer and singer of no little skill whose career was sponsored by my father,” she said. I met her in a family gathering when I was only a few years older than you. Her humour, kindness and beauty touched my heart.” Kagami wondered how her mother was aware of Bara-san’s beauty but did not interrupt. “In time, I took her as my comforter and lover. I think that I would have taken her as my formal sokoshitsu, if I were of age. However, your grandfather disapproved. He had plans for me and I had my duty to the family to bear an heir, if possible. She was a distraction in his eyes, and he sent her away.”

Tomoe scowled. Actually, he did more than send Bara away. He’d sent Kaze Gozen after her to end her in what was obviously a clumsy loyalty test. “She eventually came to Paris and appeared in a motion picture made here called Solitude. I came after her… I suspect that my mind was filled with any number of romantic notions.”

“You intended to run away with her?” Kagami was genuinely surprised.

Tomoe nodded, remembering the wild, half-sane thoughts that had consumed her on her way to Paris that climactic  time. “Perhaps. However, I knew my duty and ultimately left her to the life she’d made for herself here in the West and returned home to marry your father. Tomoe had already decided to end her father’s life and take his place in the Dark Order. The callous way he’s sent her to kill her lover without a hint of apology gave her the anger she needed to finally break the bonds of loyalty he’d laboriously forged to control his only child’s thoughts. This was one benefit to her first trip to Paris. Her meeting with André Bourgeois’s up-and-coming sponsor and business manager, Gabriel Agreste and his wife, Emilie, who were amazingly easy to lure with the offer of the power of the Miraculous, was another and far greater one. Gabriel, she knew, was corrupted by her offers, Emilie less so but only because she suspected that the Enlighwoman already knew of the power of the Miraculous, somehow.

Kagami nodded. “I wonder if she’s still here…?” she murmured.

Tomoe’s smile was icy cold. “It matters not, Kagami,” she said. “What matters is this: I willingly set aside my love for Bara-chan because I recognised it as a weakness and one that I could not afford… That our family could not afford. In time, you will see that your affection for this French girl is much the same. I urge you to set her aside and do so now before the price of doing so becomes too great for your heart.”

“Mother…”

“Kagami, I am doubly-disadvantaged. Not only am I blind, I am a woman and that makes me inadequate for my position in the eyes of my peers. You will know the same prejudices and I fear that marrying young Agreste-san will not do much to help you in the short term for he is a gaijin and, by his nature, you will be soiled by sharing yourself with him.” Tomoe smiled thinly. “Of course, that says far more about those critics’ tragic lack of vision and, in time, you will be in the position to avenge their insults.” Financially or with the edge of the blades you will bear as the new Kaze Gozen, possibly also wielding the power of the Dragon Miraculous like Tomoe Gozen before you. “The greatest counter you will have for these slanders is being as close to perfect as you can be. There are things that are part of your destiny that require you to be an avatar of perfection itself. I want you to have these things and this, more than for any other reason, is why I push you to attain perfection.”

Kagami, keeping her face neutral, finally responded. “I understand, mother.”

“Good; I see that you have collected your gear so you may lead me back to Tatsu so he can drive us home.”

~*~*~

Back in the Tsurugi estate, Kagami had excused herself early from dinner (her mother being suspiciously at ease with this) and was in her personal room, her laptop with the Mircuchat app open.behind her as she carefully cleaned the blade of her rapier. At that point, she heard a ‘you’ve got mail’ tone but not from her laptop but from her phone: Marinette, one of the few people that her mother allowed as a personal contact, mostly due to her role as Kagami’s friend, although how long she would still allow that was unknown. These concerns aside, her presence, if only electronic, was… welcome.

---

WazzApp! - Istudiedtheblade ([email protected])

Istudiedtheblade: Ohayo, Mari-chan

Marinettedesigns: Hello to you too, Gami-chan. So, has your mother berated you enough for her tastes?

Istudiedtheblace: Ugh

Istudiedtheblade: That isn’t particularly funny but unfortunately true.

Istudiedtheblade: I honestly think that, right now, she’s sulking.

Marinettedesigns: Sulking?

Istudiedtheblade: By teaching you, I’m proving my own skills, so she can’t accuse me of under-performing

Marinettedesigns: Well, I’ll try not to let you down, Master.

Marinettedesigns: I’m not exactly up to speed with Japanese but she seemed to be talking a lot and not entirely about me either.

Istudiedtheblade: You are not wrong.

Istudiedtheblade: She reminded me of how misogynistic my native culture is and warned me that I must be doubly perfect to be accepted.

Marinettedesings: I have learned a little about that problem whilst learning Chinese and talking to my cousin, Fei.

Marinettedesigns: Her is the thing though: She can’t realise just how perfect you are already.

Marinettedesigns: You are smart, noble, kind, resolute and brave. Everything that someone could hope to be. You have a talent for artistic beauty too!

Marinettedesigns: If you have too many X-Chromasomes for some people’s taste…?

Marinettedesigns: Well, no amount of mental or behavioural perfection can make them feel better about you.

Istudiedtheblade: Thank you, my dear friend.

Istudiedtheblade: I would feel far more ground-down by her stern nature if not for your friendship.

Marinettedesigns: And Adrien’s love, of course.

Istudiedtheblade: Yes, yes, of course.

Marinettedesigns: Just know that you are valued and you are wonderful

Marinettedesigns: If your mother cannot perceive that as perfection, then it is due to her not understanding perfection at all.

Istudiedtheblade: Yes…

Istudiedtheblade: Of late, I have increasingly understood my old master’s teachings and his warnings about her.

Istudiedtheblade: Thank you for your confidence and love, Mari-chan

Istudiedtheblade: I needed to hear someone tell me this.

Istudiedtheblade: Whilst I do not wish to disappoint my mother…

Marinettedesigns: You know that she is not the sole arbiter of worth for you?

Istudiedtheblade: Yes

Istudiedtheblade: That, or so I now perceive, is the real imperfection in her perceptions.

Istudiedtheblade:: She wants a tool, not a daughter.

Istudiedtheblade: A tiny part of me wants her love and approval but I fear that the cost to my soul would be too great.

---

After some brief moments of more light-hearted discussion, Marinette signed off to attend to her schoolwork and Kagami acknowledged that she had to do so also.

Longg settled beside her as she started to toy with her practical science assignment; something far from her strongest academic suit. “You appreciate that Marinette is speaking the truth?” the Dragon Kwami said. “You are far, far closer to perfection than I fear your mother is capable of understanding or appreciating.” Kagami nodded sadly. The little Spirit of The Storm smirked. “You know, Tomoe Gozen would have gladly called you ‘daughter’ and challenged your mother for her right to lead the clan.” the small creature began to laugh at the look on his Holder’s face. “Of course, she is gone now, isn’t she? This isn’t something that is in her power to do”

Kagami nodded but, in her heart, she found herself fearing just what her mother’s unyielding nature might lead to her having to take action to protect her family’s good name and honour.

Notes:

Yes, there are some hints to Tomoe's coming out as a supervillain in The Lion's Roar in this story and, ultimately, the breaking of the Tsurugi ladies relationship due to Tomoe's evil.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of The Guardianverse