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Marinette smiled as she walked into the bakery, greeting her parents as she went. The smile felt gross on her face. She didn’t want to be smiling, she didn’t want to lie. The smile was certainly a lie. But she also couldn’t let her parents know, they would just worry, and it wasn’t like they could do anything to help anyway.
Tikki flew out of her purse as they reached the living area, a concerned look on her tiny face. Tikki was another person who could do nothing but worry, Marinette thought. She wished that she didn’t have to worry those closest to her like this. Team Miraculous was worried about her too, she knew. There wasn’t anything most of them could do about it anyway. Even Adrien, who was in her class, couldn’t do anything for fear of all of his freedom being stripped away. She didn’t blame him. He was suffering too. She could see it in his eyes, and hear it in his reassurances, as if they were just as much for him as they were for her.
She sighed, lying smile falling from her face as she ascended into her room. Now that the smile was gone, it was all she could do to keep tears from falling from her face. Today was especially bad. She couldn’t deal with this right now, she needed a distraction.
She moved, almost on autopilot, to her computer. In a few practiced motions she brought up one of her favorite games, on this one she was even topping the leaderboards. Crushing some other players should probably make her feel at least a little better. Just as she was getting into it though, she saw Tikki float into her field of vision, looking guilty.
“I… I know you need the distraction right now, Marinette, but…” Tikki sighed. Marinette knew just how much she hated being the bearer of bad news. “You have an English test on friday. You need to study.” Marinette groaned, head falling forward onto the desk (Never losing sight of the game, couldn’t lose just because she was being melodramatic.) with a thud.
“Really?”
“I’m sorry, but yes.”
Marinette started getting out of the game, her thoughts spiraling back to the events of the day. No, nope. Not dealing with it. She had to figure out how to study and distract herself at the same- oh. She had an idea. A small, real smile on her face, she started getting back in, much to Tikki’s confusion.
“What are you doing?” She asked, floating up to the screen.
“Switching regional servers! If I play on an English speaking server, with English set as my language, that could count as studying, right?” Marinette smiled at Tikki, pleased with her own idea. Tikki blinked at her, and then smiled back.
“I’d say it counts!”
“Thank you Tikki!”
As she logged in to the unfamiliar server, she realized that here she had little to no reputation. A blank slate of less skilled players trying to take her on. Ahh catharsis, you are sweet. It took her a little to get used to the English text for everything, but she managed. It actually added an extra layer of challenge, making the whole thing that much more fun! She couldn’t believe she hadn’t done this before.
There was this one player, not a newbie but not anywhere near her level. He kept coming back, only to be slaughtered again. She admired his tenacity. Maybe she would even remember his tag, she had seen the message saying she had killed him enough that she honestly probably would. His tag was “Ghost Boy”, in English obviously. She smiled as he held his own for a few seconds longer than before, though he did succumb to her power eventually. He was learning! Interesting!
When he didn’t immediately come back after being killed, Marinette got worried. Then disappointed. He’d probably just given up. Sad, she had been having fun. She wondered if she could find another player who stuck around for as long as he did- She was pulled from her thoughts by a notification… on Discord? Oh, she had almost forgotten about that app. She had usually talked to her friends on the school Discord server, but she got enough hate every time she messaged there that she had muted the server, and she talked to Team Miraculous by normal text. Intrigued, she left the battle zone for a no-violence zone where she could afk while she read the mystery message.
It was from Ghost Boy. She had forgotten that she had put her Discord tag on her “About Me” page. Huh. So maybe he hadn’t given up.
Ghost Boy
How are you so good??
Marinette chuckled a little at his message. Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t that. A challenge, maybe, or cursing her out, but for some reason she sensed no hostility in his message. She sent her own reply.
Mouse Bug
Practice i guess??
She honestly didn’t know to properly respond to his message. How was she so good? It had to be the hours of practice, but was it also innate skill? Superhuman reflexes granted to her by the miraculous?? No, probably not that, if that was true then Adrien would probably be better than her, given his miraculous and endless free time. Hmmm. Skill then? That didn’t seem fair. Alas, such was life. Ha.
Ghost Boy
Teach me maybe?
I have this other friend whos rly good at video games
And she refuses to teach me
I wanna get good so I can beat her
Finally
OH so she wasn’t the one being challenged, someone else was! She was being slotted into the mentor role. I mean, if she said yes. This looked interesting though! She had already said that she admired Ghost Boy’s tenacity. If he was willing to ask for help then he was somewhat humble too, but he also wanted to beat his friend at video games at all costs… What an interesting guy! Definitely the kind of guy she would want to be friends with, given that he wasn’t a A-hole. She really didn’t think he was though. Plus, she was grinning. Actually grinning. She hadn’t done that in a while. Tikki looked happy too.
It might be another responsibility for her to take on, but it looked like this one might be a bit more relaxed. It already proved to make her smile from the short interaction, and it came with an interesting person to talk to! She couldn’t make any hasty decisions, but she was leaning toward saying yes to his teaching offer. There was also the issue of timezones… he lived in North America. Marinette sent another few messages, explaining a bit of the cons on her list. Those lead into a conversation, and she was amazed at how easy it was to slip into easy conversation with him, despite the language barrier. (She had a feeling she was going to want to bookmark this translation website.)
Tikki sat on top of her monitor, smiling softly as Marinette wrapped up their little conversation. She needed to sleep, after all. But for once, she went to sleep with her mind unburdened.
---
Over the next few days, Ghost Boy became a friend. She talked with him not infrequently, and both of their sleep schedules were bad enough that timezones were mostly a non-issue. It was really nice to have a friend separate from… all of her situations. He didn’t talk to her about Ladybug, or Lila, or anything else that she was worried about. He even gave her the inspiration for a wonderful space-themed jacket! It was one of her better works.
Another good thing about her friendship with Ghost Boy, her increased happiness was ticking Lila off. Lila kept probing both her and her (ex) friends to find out just what was making little Marinette so happy these days. Marinette just laughed into her hands at Lila’s purple face as she once again threatened to steal her happiness. Marinette knew there was no way she was going to steal Ghost Boy when he lived an ocean away, and Lila didn’t actually play video games when she didn’t have to.
Team Miraculous’s performance had also improved, seriously, aside from the lack of sleep (which had already been a problem), she wasn’t seeing many downsides to being friends with Ghost. He was fun to teach too, watching him get excited about the move combos and tricks she taught him was a great feeling. She felt like a village elder passing on her knowledge to the young village children, or something. Child. Whatever.
It was over two weeks after she met Ghost that she was playing on the North American servers alone, waiting for Ghost to log on. She was fighting this one player with an interesting name, “The_Blood_Son”, who had a very intense play style. Ghost Boy was fun to play with, but he wasn’t the most aggressive player in the world. This player, though, was up there. It was a nice change of pace.
He stopped coming back. Marinette felt a strange mix of disappointment and deja vu. This was almost exactly like what happened with Ghost Boy, what were the chances that… right on time, her Discord pinged. She grinned, opening the app to see a message, it wasn’t from Ghost Boy. it was from The_Blood_Son. Oh my gosh. She opened the message with a stupid grin on her face. This was unreal.
The_Blood_Son
I wish to know where you learned that sequence of moves so that I may learn it as well.
Oh my gosh. There were two of them. This was the best day ever. Marinette grinned wider as she started to message him. He had a very different tone than Ghost, but if she could talk to him easily, and if he made her smile, then maybe… maybe she could gain another friend. This was seriously the best day.