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rosie-b · 1 year

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True Blue

Chapter 3: A New Normal (5263 words)

Summary: Marinette comes up with a plan to help Adrien attend public school. Meanwhile, a new akuma is on the loose...

You can read the full story below or on AO3!

It turned out that having an upside-down life was pretty much the same as having a right-side-up life, Marinette thought to herself as she selected a background for the slide show she was beginning to make.

Hawk Moth’s akumas were dangerous, evil, and more than terrifying to the human citizens of Paris. Even so, Marinette had quickly learned that she could always count on Golden Bug and Chat Grise to defeat the akuma victims and return them to their normal, decidedly un-evil selves.

True, Pharaoh and his maiden-sacrificing tendencies were concerning, but in under an hour, he’d been back to being Alix’s geeky, conspiring older brother. Stormy Weather was a fierce fighter, and her powers had the potential to be deadly, but her threat, like many other akumas’, had been undermined by Hawk Moth himself.

The villain had paused mid-battle and commanded Stormy Weather to create a talking storm cloud through which he’d demanded Golden Bug and Chat Grise’s surrender. It had been easy for Chat to find and destroy Aurore’s akumatized object while Golden Bug distracted Hawk Moth’s stormy face with a heroic rebuttal, and the heroes simultaneously won the battle and the undying support of Paris. Not what the villain had been hoping for, at all!

Besides, after Lady Wi-Fi and Mr. Pigeon’s back-to-back akumatizations, it seemed that Hawk Moth’s akumas were becoming less dangerous even as their powers grew more creative. With a little luck, maybe Golden and Chat Grise could defeat Hawk Moth during the next akuma battle and end the city’s troubles once and for all!

Marinette’s alarm went off, alerting her that she only had ten minutes until the Gorilla picked her up for school. Saving the few changes she’d made to the mostly blank slide show, Marinette slammed the lid of her new laptop closed, shoved it into her bookbag, and rushed to the mirror to check that she was presentable enough for the day. Then she went downstairs to grab a bite to eat before the Gorilla came.

“Hello, Maman!” she called cheerfully as she tripped over the third-to-last stair and caught herself on the railing.

Sabine smiled and shook her head at her daughter’s familiar clumsiness. “Good morning, Marinette,” she said as she set a plate and cup out on the table for her.

Marinette rushed over, leaning her bag against the table leg as she took the cup her mother had gotten out and poured some orange juice into it from the jug already on the table.

“You’re in even more of a rush than usual, dear,” Sabine noted as she sat down and took a sip from her own cup full of gently steaming tea. “Is there something big happening today?”

Reaching into the fruit bowl on the center of the table, Marinette snapped a banana off its bunch and started to peel it.

“No, not really,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “But do you remember what I told you about Adrien?”

“Gabriel’s son? Yes, I remember,” Sabine answered with a nod. “He wants to go to public school, but his father won’t let him.”

Marinette pointed the banana at her mother. “Right! And it’s making him miserable. Less miserable now, but it’s clear in his eyes when the other students walk by the mansion after lessons that he’d rather be out there with them than cooped up just like he always is. But not anymore!” Marinette smirked as she bit off the tip of her banana. “I foun’ a sowution,” she said in a pleased tone as she chewed the food.

Sabine shook her head in amusement. “I’d love to hear what it is when your mouth is empty.”

Marinette’s cheeks turned pink, and she quickly finished chewing and swallowed.

“Sorry, Maman, I guess I’m more excited than I thought,” she said sheepishly. Her mother’s gentle smile assured her that there was no harm done, and Marinette quickly returned to her earlier, excited babble of information.

“See, Adrien’s problem is that he thinks he has to go around M. Agreste and prove that he can go to school by himself that way. But what if all he needs is the right argument? I asked Ms. Sancoeur about it during my apprenticeship hours, and she said she was doubtful but didn’t shoot my idea down the way she would’ve if it were really impossible. Adrien’s dad obviously loves him, so all we have to do is make him see how lonely and trapped he’s making his son feel by not letting him go to regular school, prove that François-Dupont is a good place to learn at — which I can help with! — and voilà, Adrien is free to leave homeschool! All I have to do is convince Adrien that he can talk to M. Agreste about it himself and finish making the slide show. Oh no!” Marinette gasped as she looked at the clock. “I’m going to be late! I mean early, but still late! Wish me luck, Maman!”

“Good luck, dear,” Sabine said affectionately as Marinette stood up, pressed a quick kiss to her mother’s cheek, and rushed off with her bag slung over one shoulder.

Hurrying down the stairs, Marinette pulled the car door open before the Gorilla had the chance to step out of the just-parked car. He gave a surprised grunt, but quickly recovered, buckling himself in again and pulling the car away from the curb.

Marinette wiggled nervously in the back seat of the car, tapping her fingers against her leg as she watched the familiar buildings rush by outside. She stopped when she saw the Gorilla giving her a questioning look in the rearview mirror and flashed him a quick smile to show that everything was okay.

Before she knew it, the car was pulling into the Agrestes’ driveway, and Marinette quickly hopped out, dashing up the steps to the house and knocking for Nathalie to let them in.

The assistant pulled the door open with a scrutinizing look, and Marinette quickly pulled herself into a more proper pose, straightening her back and pushing a few stray hairs back from her forehead.

“Ms. Dupain-Cheng,” Nathalie said in a toneless voice. “It’s a surprise to see you here so early.”

The corner of Marinette’s mouth twitched, unsure if it wanted to go up or down.

“I am making more of an effort to get here on time, like you requested,” she said in her best ‘adult’ voice. “Besides, why shouldn’t I be on time for school? Education is important,” she said, quoting her teachers words back at her.

The shadow of a smile flickered across Ms. Sancoeur’s face as she tilted her head in acknowledgement of her pupil’s words.

“Wisely said.”

Ms. Sancoeur stepped back to allow Marinette to enter the mansion, and the girl stepped through the door with her head held high. Though she walked to the study room a little quicker than usual, she carried herself with as much poise as she had at the door, and quickly set her backpack down at her desk before turning back to Nathalie.

“Since I’m still a little early, could I be the one to go get Adrien from his room?” she asked politely. It had been a few weeks since Stoneheart, and she could find her way through the whole mansion with ease.

Surprised, Ms. Sancoeur considered the request for a bit.

“I suppose so,” she said after a moment. “Just be sure to knock before you enter. He might not be presentable just yet.”

“Of course,” Marinette said with a grin. Adrien always got up and dressed before her, she knew, because it took him so long to finish his morning routine. He was probably stuck styling his hair out of the roguish state it fluffed itself into every night.

Taking the stairs two at a time until she tripped and nearly fell on the wide staircase, Marinette rushed up to Adrien’s room with her laptop clutched to her chest. Stopping in front of his door, she knocked loudly, bouncing on her toes as she waited impatiently.

“Adrien? It’s Marinette. Do you have any time to talk?” she called through the door.

There was a short scuffle on the other side of the door, and Adrien whispered something to himself before the noise abruptly stopped.

“Sure, Marinette! Come right in,” Adrien called back. He sounded a little nervous, probably thrown off by someone other than Nathalie greeting him in the morning.

Marinette opened the door and stepped into Adrien’s large room, taking a precursory glance around the still strange, but becoming familiar, surroundings. Adrien, who was standing by the foosball table, waved, and she walked over to him with a smile.

“Hello, Adrien! I bet you're happy to see me instead of Ms. Sancoeur for a change,” she said, and Adrien beamed at her, eyes lighting up at the sight of his friend.

“I'm always happy to see you, Marinette,” he said earnestly. “What are you doing here so early, though? I thought you were making it a habit to be fashionably late to class.”

Marinette opened her mouth before pausing, and the air gathered in her lungs rushed out in a sigh. “Was that a pun I heard from you? This early in the morning? Adrien,” she whined, desperately fighting a smile as Adrien’s grin grew.

“It was funny!” he defended himself, crossing his arms and grinning at her. “Look, you can’t even hide your smile. You know you like my jokes.”

Marinette gave up and smiled back at her friend. “Fine, I do,” she relented. She knew how important it was for someone as isolated as Adrien to be validated by their friends. “But that doesn’t mean I can condone such effortless jokes at this hour of the day. I have something more important to discuss,” she said, bringing her laptop over to the foosball table and balancing it precariously on the edge.

Suddenly concerned, Adrien backed away from the laptop. “Marinette, are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked.

Marinette opened the laptop. “It’ll be fine,” she said dismissively. “I might be clumsy, but I’m very good at balancing things that aren’t me. Besides, I can catch it if it falls.”

She pulled up the slideshow she’d been making earlier that day, clicking presentation mode on.

“Operation: Free Buttercup?” Adrien read out loud from the screen, looking curiously at Marinette.

“We’ll retitle it, obviously. I just needed a placeholder title,” she said as she clicked to the next slide.

“Wait, who or what is Buttercup? Why do they need to be freed?”

Marinette looked up at Adrien. “Well, you’re Buttercup,” she said, as if this was obvious. “We’re using code names at this point. Once we have a convincing presentation, we’ll go back and edit them all out. You have yellow hair, like a buttercup, and M. Agreste has that striped ascot, so he’s Tiger Lily, and I used to really like tulips, so I’m Tulip. Any questions?”

Adrien wrinkled his eyebrows in that adorable model way he did sometimes. “Can I please have a different code name?”

Marinette grinned evilly. “Nope,” she said, shaking her head and letting go of the laptop. Adrien’s eyes bugged out as he watched for it to fall, but the laptop remained balanced on the foosball table. “If a flower name is too girly for you, then you need a new perspective. Everyone deserves to have a flower name, if they want.”

“And if they don’t want one?” Adrien asked, his eyes still glued to the laptop.

“Then they should have come up with the slideshow on their own. Beggars can’t be choosers, Buttercup.” Marinette dismissed Adrien’s concerns and turned back to the laptop, which was open to a blank slide.

“This is going to be a picture of François-Dupont eventually. I couldn’t find any good ones this morning, though. Next slide!”

Marinette hit the spacebar with such enthusiasm that Adrien’s heart sank as he accepted the eventual death of the laptop. If Marinette was going to keep being so risky with it, there was no way around its demise.

Plan A: Sneaking out to school, the slide show read in oversized letters.

“This plan didn’t work so well,” Marinette said. “But that doesn’t mean no plan will. I asked Ms. Sancoeur about it, and she feels cautiously optimistic about our odds in convincing your father to let you go to public school.”

Adrien’s jaw dropped to the floor. “Really?!” he gasped. “She said that?”

“Not in those words,” Marinette said with a mysterious smile. “But yes, she didn’t say it’s impossible. Plan B!”

She hit the spacebar again, sending trembles through Adrien and the laptop.

“We talk to your father directly instead of trying to sneak around the problem. Not that I'm saying your last plan was indirect, of course! Just that, this is more direct,” Marinette said, waving her hands in the air. She looked mildly panicked now, though she’d started speaking confidently.

Adrien sighed. “It’s okay, Marinette. I understand where you’re going with this. I’d love to speak with my father directly, but... well, you know, Marinette. He’s never listened to me before. Why should he start now?”

Marinette looked at Adrien with a pitying gaze. “Because he loves you, doesn’t he? Every father wants the best for their child. Maybe he is busy, but he still has some time to talk. He just usually spends it telling me what I’ll be doing to train as an apprentice,” she said with a trace of guilt.

Adrien raised his eyebrows. “You’re saying we should try to convince him while he’s giving you your schedule after school? Won’t that be kind of annoying to him?”

Marinette grimaced. “Maybe,” she admitted. “But that’s just about the only time either of us see him. I’m pretty sure Nathalie could give me my schedule instead, and you could stay behind with M— with your father to convince him.”

“But what if he doesn’t listen to me? What if I forget what I was going to say to him, or he doesn’t want to listen to me and throws us out of his office?”

“That’s why we’re making this slide show,” Marinette said, waving a finger in the air. “Even if he refuses to hear us out, we can email our argument to him. He has to look at it sometime.”

Glancing at the time on his phone, Adrien gulped. “That might work, but Marinette — or should I say Tulip? — we don’t have enough time to make a whole slide show before class. Really, we need to get downstairs now, or Nathalie is going to be mad at us and tell Father!”

Pulling out her own phone, Marinette, too, looked at the time. “Ah,” she said understandingly. “That’s okay, too. We’re going to do this over lunch! We can eat here, in your room, and finish the slide show before the end of the day. I know the first few slides aren't helpful right now, and the whole thing needs a better title, and then there are the code names, but I do have a lot of evidence gathered already. We can do this together, Adrien! I won’t let you stay trapped in homeschool just because you have one friend with you now. You deserve more than that, Adrien! And I want you to be happy! Now, come on,” she said, not noticing the awestruck look on Adrien’s face as she grabbed his hand and closed the laptop with her elbow. “You were right, we still have to get to class on time.”

__*__*__*__*__

Morning classes were interrupted by one akuma, who was still on the loose when Golden Bug and Chat Grise lost them and gave up.

Marinette supposed it didn’t make sense for the heroes to waste their energy on a wild goose chase, but she hoped they would find the akuma before it had the chance to hurt anyone, because this akuma seemed more dangerous than the last two.

The limited footage from the Golden Blog had shown a black blur running through François-Dupont, conjuring items out of thin air and trapping the heroes, as well as Alya, the Goldenblogger, under a heavy table that literally weighed a ton before leaving the building. Chat Grise called for her Cataclysm in a quiet, defeated voice, and Golden Bug reset the damage to the building with his miraculous cure. Then the two heroes had to go, and the footage stopped, leaving Marinette and the other citizens to wonder when the battle would start again.

Or maybe the akuma de-akumatized themself, Marinette thought hopefully. No one had done anything like that before, but that didn’t mean it was impossible.

Marinette’s leg jittered nervously, making her chair squeak each time she moved, and Adrien looked up from the table at her to offer a gentle smile.

"Sorry, I'm just worried about the akuma again," she whispered to him apologetically.

“It’s okay, Marinette,” he said — even though they were in class, there was no use whispering while Nathalie was the only other person in the study room with them and could hear every sound they made. “I’m sure Chat Grise and Golden Bug will find the akuma as soon as they can.”

Marinette groaned as she set her pencil down on top of the worksheet she had to complete before lunch.

“I know,” she said. “But I can’t help but feel like this time is different. I was really hoping they’d be able to defeat Hawk Moth and his stupid butterflies once and for all today, but it feels like maybe they’re going to lose, instead!”

Adrien winced and opened his mouth to reply, but Nathalie answered her first.

“If the heroes lose to an akuma that they aren't even actively fighting, that would be quite the feat,” she said. “I’m fairly sure that for now, Golden Bug and Chat Grise are safe. You have nothing to worry about, Marinette. Now, finish your worksheet and then you can head to lunch.”

Marinette smiled gratefully at Ms. Sancoeur. “Thank you,” she said. “I guess it was just a silly fear, after all.”

Adrien frowned as he wrote something down at the bottom of his worksheet. The right answer, probably. He was really good at finding those, Marinette thought jealously.

She struggled through the last two math problems and laid her pencil down on the table.

“Done!” she called cheerfully.

Ms. Sancoeur walked over to check her answers.

“The third answer should be negative,” she said. “The multiplication inside the parentheses doesn’t eliminate the negative sign outside of them.”

Marinette drooped in her chair as Adrien gave her a sympathetic look from the other side of the room, where he was standing by the door.

“But your work overall is still good enough. You are free to go to lunch, Marinette. I believe Adrien told me that you wish to eat in his room rather than at the dining table, correct?”

Marinette nodded, looking cautiously hopeful.

“Very well. It should be delivered in ten minutes. Bon déjeuner.” Nathalie walked out of the room, gripping her tablet tightly in her hands as she walked in the direction of the atelier.

Grabbing her phone and laptop from her bag with a smile, Marinette walked over to Adrien.

“Shall we?” she asked.

Adrien smiled and gestured towards the door. “After you, dear Tulip,” he said.

Marinette rolled her eyes as she walked past.

“Did you have any ideas for what you wanted the presentation to say during your makeup emergency this morning?” Marinette asked as they walked up the stairs to his room together.

Adrien winced. “Not really,” he said, raising a hand to adjust the hair in front of his ears. It just barely hid them from view, and how he was comfortable like that, Marinette wasn’t sure. But he’d never said anything about not liking the hairstyle, so maybe it was his idea.

“That’s okay,” Marinette said as they reached Adrien’s room and he reached out to open the door. “Just tell me if you disagree with anything on the slide show or if it’s making you uncomfortable. There's always another way to get your father to let you attend school.”

“I don’t know about that,” Adrien said with a laugh as he led Marinette over to the white couch facing his huge windows. “But I’m sure I’ll like whatever you have so far. Except for the code names,” he said with a smirk.

“Oh, hush, you,” Marinette said. “Would you rather I come up with some other ones? I’m kind of an apprentice, so I could go with that. The Apprentice. Your father gets to be Candy Cane, and you... hm. Would you prefer Golden Boy or Rapunzel?”

Adrien stared wide-eyed at Marinette. “Golden Boy?” he asked, his voice nearly two octaves above where it usually was.

Marinette frowned. “Yeah, does it not make sense? You’re still just my age, but you’ve already accomplished so much already. It should strengthen our case, honestly.”

Adrien nodded absently. “Yeah, yeah, but don’t you think it sounds a little too... like a certain yellow hero’s name?”

Marinette gasped. “You’re right!” she shrieked. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice before.”

Adrien stared warily at her, looking like he might bolt at the next words out of her mouth.

“The heroes are on my mind so much today, I guess it affected my code name choices,” Marinette laughed. “I really hope Golden Bug and Chat Grise are taking care of that akuma.”

Adrien laughed awkwardly, eyes darting away guiltily. “Yeah, that would probably be the smart thing to do,” he said, and gulped hard.

Marinette shrugged.

“I guess. It’s not our responsibility, though, so back to the slide show! I added—”

Just then, a black- and white-suited akuma leapt through the window — which was now just a hole in the wall, having been erased by the Evillustrator’s powers — and landed in front of the sofa Marinette and Adrien were sitting on.

“Marinette!” Nathaniel called out in a familiar voice. Marinette gasped. So that’s who the akuma was this morning, she realized.

The concerned tone he used, and the way he looked at Marinette with wide, almost-frightened eyes made it seem as if Marinette was being saved by the akuma rather than having her plans interrupted by one.

But he was an akuma, now. There was no way he was still the polite Nathaniel she was used to. And he was targeting Marinette!

Oh, no, Marinette thought as Adrien gasped and threw himself in front of her, blocking her view of the akuma. She’d heard that some akumas targeted other people, but until now, she’d never thought she would be one of those akumas’ victims.

But if Nathaniel, or whatever his akuma name was, was targeting her, then he probably had a good reason. Nathaniel was one of the only people who was nice to Marinette last year, and though some of it could have been the fact that he wasn’t in class with Marinette and Chloe, Marinette had begun to see Nathaniel as a kind person, one who would never lash out without reason.

“Adrien, move out of the way,” Marinette demanded, scooting past him on the sofa so that she could stand up and face Nathaniel. “I need to talk to him!”

“Marinette, no!” Adrien cried.

As Marinette pushed herself off of the couch and stood up on shaky legs, the Evillustrator smiled, in relief, it seemed to her.

“It’s so good to see you again, Marinette,” Nathaniel’s sweet voice greeted her ear. “School’s been nothing but awful without you there.”

Marinette twitched, and she felt herself beginning to frown sadly.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Nathaniel. Is that why you were akumatized? You can fight it off, you know! I believe in you!”

Moving to be beside Marinette, Adrien threw his arms around her protectively and scowled at the Evillustrator.

Nathaniel scowled back at Adrien, while Marinette patted his head reassuringly and tried to smile in Nathaniel’s direction.

“There isn’t anything to fight, Marinette. Hawk Moth isn’t controlling me right now. But yes, I suppose you could say that school is why I got akumatized. Or more specifically, Chloe is,” he spat out, and his blue eyes flashed dangerously.

Adrien’s arms tightened around Marinette.

“Let go of me,” she hissed at him.

Adrien pouted down at Marinette. “No,” he said with a huff. “I won’t stop protecting you, not until Mr. Evil Artist leaves you alone. What do you even want, anyway?” he asked the Evillustrator.

Nathaniel grinned and drew something on the tablet attached to his right arm. A red rose appeared in the air, and Marinette felt Adrien stiffen around her.

“I came here because as petty as she is, Chloe reminded me of something important today,” he said in a shy voice.

“No,” Adrien growled. The Evillustrator shot a pitying glance at him.

“She reminded me that without action, none of my dreams have the chance to become reality. And for the longest time, Marinette... my biggest dream has been to be with you.”

Nathaniel offered the rose to Marinette with a flourish, and she felt her face burn scarlet.

“Me?” she squeaked, fingers twitching as she reached out uncertainly for the rose.

Adrien grabbed it before she could.

“No, Marinette, it’s probably poisoned!” he cried as he threw it towards the open window area. It landed two feet away, on the floor.

Marinette turned a frosty gaze on Adrien, making the boy cower in front of her.

“Then you would be dead now,” she said, untangling herself from Adrien’s arms. He squawked in protest. “That wasn’t very helpful of you to do, Adrien.”

Outside the window, a thin black pole with a person clinging to it rose into view, and soon Chat Grise was stepping into the room.

“Evillustrator,” she hissed, and her thin belt-tail lashed behind her. “What are you doing to Marinette?” Her voice was quiet, as it always was in the Goldenblog’s videos, but it carried a chilling power in it.

“Not now, Chat Grise!” the Evillustrator growled in exasperation. “It’d bad enough that I have to deal with this boy! Both of you, take a hike!”

He started drawing frantically on his tablet, and a mountain rose from the floor and stretched up through the ceiling, separating Marinette and the Evillustrator from Adrien and Chat Grise.

Marinette gasped. “Nathaniel!”

“It’s the Evillustrator!” he snapped back, a violet shadow appearing around his eyes. As quickly as it appeared, though, the shadow disappeared, and a remorseful look entered Nathaniel’s eyes.

“Sorry, Marinette,” he said in a subdued tone. “I guess Hawk Moth still has some control over me, after all.”

Shoulders drooping, Marinette sighed and looked down.

"So it seems," she said sadly. "Does that mean I should forget about the rose you were offering me?"

Suddenly perking up, the Evillustrator started drawing on his tablet again.

"Not at all, Marinette," he said, hope coloring his voice. "I just thought, with how that other boy was clinging to you, that maybe I was already too late."

He offered a new rose to Marinette, this one red with shimmering gold tips.

Marinette gasped at the sight. "Nathaniel! This is beautiful," she said. Accepting the rose from the Evillustrator, she ran a finger gently over its petals and brought it to her nose to sniff its fragrance.

"I've had a crush on you for nearly a year now," Nathaniel said shyly. "I might've... taken to sketching you whenever I felt down. Chloe found my sketchbook and teased me about it in front of the whole class. There's a new girl in class this year," he continued, watching Marinette toy with the rose. "Alya Cesaire. You might know her from the Goldenblog."

The violet shadow appeared over Nathaniel's eyes again, and he grimaced before shaking it off.

"She's been helpful in weakening Chloe's power over us, but this time the teasing was just the final straw. It was already a hard day for me, because no one seemed to care about me enough to remember—"

"It's your birthday today," Marinette finished fo him, looking up with a gasp. "I knew today was special somehow. I'm so sorry, Nathaniel! Nobody deserves to have their birthday forgotten."

"Thank you, Marinette," Nathaniel said with a small smile. "I knew I could count on you to care about me, even when no one else did."

Marinette froze, hand still caressing the rose's petals. "I do care about you, Nathaniel," she said slowly. "And I want you to be able to celebrate your birthday the way you should. I'll tell you what," she said, speaking around the lump that was growing in her throat at the thought of the plan she'd come up with. "If I go on a date with you, will you promise that you won't listen to Hawk Moth or hurt anyone while the date lasts?"

Nathaniel beamed. "Marinette, that's exactly what I wanted! I promise," he said with a wide smile.

Marinette barely had enough time to smile back before he scooped her up in his arms, princess-style. Suddenly nervous, Marinette threw her arms around the Evillustrator's neck so that she wouldn't overbalance and fall.

"Wait!" she cried, and the Evillustrator looked down at her in surprise.

"What is it?" he asked.

"You have to un-make the mountain," she pleaded. "It's so steep; what if Adrien falls off of it?"

"Worse, what if Chat Grise sees that we're leaving and follows us?" the Evillustrator growled.

Marinette looked up at him in fear. He sighed and turned away from her to look at the mountain he'd created in the room.

"Fine, I'll erase the mountain. But first..."

He drew something, the outline of a cloak, on his tablet, and Marinette watched as he finished drawing, transferring the cloak to the real world and creating a faint shimmer around them.

"Don't make a sound," he whispered. Then he erased the mountain out of Adrien's room, leaving two confused, out-of-breath people to fall down a few feet and land with an oomph on the floor.

Before Adrien, who looked more than a little irritated, and Chat Grise, who was only slightly less frustrated, could figure out what was happening or detect the faint shimmer from the invisibility cloak the Evillustrator had made, Nathaniel drew an invisible chariot drawn by Pegasusses and climbed into it with Marinette. The horses flew them away from the scene as Chat Grise asked if Adrien had seen where the Evillustrator went, and Marinette cowered against the sides of the chariot, away from Nathaniel.

"Did you have to do that?" she asked.

The Evillustrator looked down at her seriously. "The heroes can't find where we are, or they'll take away my powers," he explained. "Hawk Moth isn't all bad, Marinette. I used to think his akumas were evil, but look at me! Do I seem evil to you?"

Marinette studied Nathaniel, his new suit, red hair, and gentle expression. It's in your name, Evillustrator, she imagined Adrien saying, poking fun at the akuma, finding the humor in the situation like he always did. But Adrien wasn't there.

Swallowing, Marinette decided to answer Nathaniel seriously. "You don't seem very evil at all," she whispered. "But Hawk Moth hasn't been controlling you yet, has he?"

The Evillustrator grinned as the invisible chariot touched down by the Seine.

"No, Marinette," he said as a purple shadow formed around his eyes, growing darker by the second. "He's not controlling me at all."

#bluewing au #ml fanfic #rosie-b writing #adrinette #evillustrator #kwami swap #ml au #ml leak free #miraculeakless #miraculous ladybug

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