Chapter Text
The red-spotted creature floating above Marinette’s desk was looking expectantly at her, blue eyes wide and pleading. Marinette desperately wished the hit had connected when she threw a textbook at the thing. It probably wouldn’t have gotten rid of it—her—Tikki, but…Marinette could wish.
She rubbed the bridge of her nose, “So you’re saying that you are the Ladybug kwami, a physical manifestation of the concepts of Luck and Creation, and you appear in the form of a…ladybug plushie is because ladybugs symbolise luck…?”
Tikki nodded brightly, “Yup!”
“And your physical presence is tied to this piece of jewellery,” Marinette gestured at the pair of earrings sitting innocuously in a wooden box on her desk, “called the miraculous, which can grant whoever wears them the powers of Creation and Luck.”
“That’s right. Being my holder also grants you enhanced strength, durability and stamina! You can have a skyscraper dropped on you and still emerge mostly unscathed!”
“…okay.” Tikki seemed like she was speaking from experience when she mentioned the thing about skyscrapers. Marinette…did not want to explore its implications. “Tying yourself to an easily lost pair of earrings seems like a stupid security risk, but…okay. You also said you get…sucked into the earrings when someone wears them, and when they’re…inactive—which is the state the earrings were in when I first opened the box—and that’s why you suddenly appeared like a genie or something.”
“Yeah, but I am only drawn into my miraculous when you transform, with the phrase ‘spots on’. I reappear when you detransform by saying ‘spots off’. Also, please don’t compare kwamis to djinns. Those creatures are—” Tikki’s face darkened. A string of incomprehensible lyrical notes spilled out of the kwami’s mouth, almost as if she had momentarily forgotten to speak in a language known to humanity. Marinette chose to ignore that.
Transform!? Oh, that was right, Marinette remembered Tikki making a passing comment about that. What was this, some magical girl anime? “I see. Being sucked into a pair of earrings sounds horrible, but—I’m not gonna criticize your lifestyle choices. So, uh…the monster Ivan turned into. You said stone-Ivan is a…champion created by the long-lost Butterfly miraculous, and the person currently holding the miraculous is probably evil and wants the Ladybug and Black Cat miraculous for…world domination purposes? Since Creation and Destruction combined gives control over reality?”
Tikki made a motion that could barely be passed off as a shrug. “Stone-Ivan is probably not known as a champion. Most people who try to misuse Nooroo—that’s the Butterfly kwami…they tend to be melodramatic and think champion is too pure a term. And the part about the current Butterfly holder being evil and wanting world domination…that’s mostly conjecture. But considering your classmate is currently being mind-controlled and tearing a path of destruction through this city…I’d say our guess isn’t too far off.”
Did Tikki just imply this was not the first time someone misused the Butterfly? What the hell. “And…that’s where you want me to come in, right? You want me to be your holder and go out there to defeat stone-Ivan and the Butterfly holder. Me. Marinette. A…a superhero. Alone.”
And that was the crux of the problem.
“Well…you were meant to have a partner, originally, but if the guess that our dear Butterfly wants to collect the Ladybug and Black Cat is correct…sending out both miraculous was deemed too big of a risk. So…it is just you, Marinette, but I am certain you will protect your Paris brilliantly, partner or no!”
Ha, Marinette wasn’t so sure about that.
“…I see.” Marinette muttered, steepling her fingers. “So, about this offer—how about…no.”
Tikki opened her mouth cheerfully. The cheer on her face morphed into shock as she registered her no-longer-future holder’s words. “…what?”
Marinette tilted her head. “What?”
“You…don’t want to be a Ladybug? You don’t want to hold a miraculous?” Tikki forced those words out of her mouth, as if she couldn’t quite believe the truth of it. As if she couldn’t believe anyone would ever refuse the power of a miraculous.
Well. That was just too bad for her.
“No. Nope! No thanks.” Marinette repeated, just in case the kwami was in shock, in denial, partially deaf, or all of the above.
She paused, realising the poor creature probably deserved some form of explanation as closure, and elaborated. “I don’t do well under pressure. I am clumsy and forgetful. While I might be creative and good at making things, I am not an athletic type and hate sports of all kinds—which I’m pretty sure immediately disqualifies me from being a superhero-slash-magical girl, even if your earrings can grant me enhanced strength and whatnot. Essentially, I am what people call a human disaster. I should be the last person on your list of choices—except maybe for that probably-evil Butterfly guy.” Marinette paused, “Besides, I have a lot of responsibilities! I’m a full-time student, I help run my family bakery, and I’m trying to establish myself as a fashion designer. I simply cannot drop everything to run off to fight a supervillain any time of the day. You see why this is a bad idea?”
“But that’s exactly why you’re a suitable candidate!” Tikki protested. “The only people suited for power are the ones who do not desire it—”
“Did you not hear what I just said?” Marinette huffed. “Besides, I don’t actually have to justify myself to you, you know. No means no.”
Tikki opened her mouth, paused as she realised the validity of Marinette’s word, and closed her mouth once more with an expression of disgruntlement.
Marinette hesitated. “However, I understand you need someone else to be your…holder and defeat stone-Ivan. How about…Alya Cesaire?” The moment Marinette uttered her new friend’s name, a sense of rightness rushed through her body, thrumming through her blood and settling into her bones. Though she had only met Alya this morning, Marinette could picture the auburn teenager’s future in perfect clarity—a red-clad superhero standing tall above Paris, rousing the city into action through the sheer conviction she put behind her words, the pillar of protection and inspiration Marinette refused to could never be.
“Alya’s brave and bold; she never backs down from her convictions. She’s always ready to do the right thing, even if it means going against her maman’s boss’s daughter and painting a target on her own back on the first day of school. She also believes deeply in justice—the first thing Alya said to me is ‘the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing’. If there’s anyone who would be a suitable holder of the Ladybug miraculous, it is Alya.” Marinette continued. “So? What do you think?”
“I—” Tikki stammered. “You—this—we—he—it isn’t—you can’t—”
“Great! I’m so glad that’s decided!” Grinning maniacally, Marinette slammed the box holding the miraculous shut.
Tikki opened her mouth in protest, but before even a whisper could escape, the kwami’s features morphed into a ball of light. Tikki vanished, probably into the pair of earrings inside the box.
Marinette heaved a sigh of relief, sinking into her chair. Her bravado evaporated, as swiftly and effortlessly as the kwami had disappeared.
Heavens above. Excuse her English, but who the fuck decided she—Marinette Dupain-Cheng, human disaster extraordinaire, walking bad luck charm—was the best candidate to become a superhero/magical girl?
Marinette didn’t have much of a clue what she had just done—her mouth was running on autopilot for much of the conversation—but she was pretty sure she managed to dodge the arrow of turning into a superhero straight out of a children’s show. Thank whatever deity was out there for that.
Wait. Were the kwamis deities? Tikki said she was the physical manifestation of the concepts of Creation and Fortune, which implied…oh. Oh.
A god had just come to ask her for help, and Marinette had essentially screwed over all of the god’s plans.
Marinette groaned. She stood from her chair just to walk over to the chaise, grabbed a cushion, and screamed into it.
She sat down on the chaise, burying her face into the cushion. Well—what was done couldn’t be undone. Besides, Marinette still didn’t want to become a superhero. That hadn’t changed in the last minute. And she was willing to do anything to avoid this fate, even if it meant offending a goddess who could—maybe—probably—hopefully not—turn Marinette’s luck from bad to worse at a snap of her non-existent fingers. Not that worse luck was an actual term which existed in any language in the world. Eh—semantics. All words were made up anyway.
Sighing, Marinette pulled her head from the cushion. She rubbed her eyes, then slapped her cheeks. Right—back to business. All Marinette needed to do was to find Alya while a stone monster was rampaging through the streets and secretly deliver the Ladybug miraculous to her. And make sure she accepted the miraculous to become a superhero. Without monster-Ivan or the villain behind his transformation finding out. And knowing Alya, she was probably in the epicentre of this disaster, right next to stone-Ivan.
Oh joy.
At least once Marinette managed to make her delivery, she could wash her hands of this fight between superheroes and possessed villains and tiny probably-gods. Now that was something she couldn’t wait for.
Step one: finding where Alya had run off to was easy. Marinette’s new friend had not only taken off on her bicycle after stone-Ivan with nothing but a bike helmet for protection, but she was also live-streaming the entire process. Sure, it was incredibly convenient for Marinette’s purposes, but she just—why. Was Alya secretly suicidal? Oh, gods-who-were-not-kwamis, please don’t let Alya be secretly suicidal.
At least Marinette knew where both Alya and stone-Ivan currently were—at the Parc des Princes, making it both the least desirable location in France and the one place Marinette absolutely had to head towards right now.
Oh, and apparently stone-Ivan was calling himself Stoneheart. Nice to know.
Destination found, Marinette grabbed a random purse out of her closet, and stuffed the hexagonal box on her desk into it. Miraculous secured, she threw the strap of her purse over her shoulder and made her way downstairs.
Maman and Papa were busy corralling the people who had ducked into the bakery for refuge against Stoneheart—and perhaps making quite a bit of revenue in the process, as people bought snacks and cups of tea to calm their nerves. The commotion made it easy for Marinette to sneak out through the back door.
Adjusting her purse’s strap to make sure it wouldn’t fall off her shoulders, Marinette grabbed her bike and cycled off in the direction of the stadium.
Abandoning her bike at the entrance of the Parc des Princes, Alya ran inside and crouched down behind the bleachers, taking care to remain out of Stoneheart’s sight.
Carefully, she angled herself so that only her hand holding the phone was left poking out of the stands. She had followed Stoneheart’s path of destruction from François Dupont Collège all the way to this stadium, steering her bike with one hand while holding her phone with her other—and she didn’t come all this way just to get caught because she was careless now. The bicycle ride towards here was more exercise than she normally got in a month, and with all the rubble Alya literally single-handedly dodged, she ought to be an expert in obstacle courses by now.
And it wasn’t like she could just sit idly at home, either. The people deserved to know what was going on with this sudden bout of superpowers, but none of the major news outlets have sent any of their reporters here yet—maybe the reporter vans were simply held back thanks to Stoneheart tearing the tarmac out of the roads on his way here, or maybe the news stations were afraid their employees would end up crushed by the giant stone monster and they didn’t want to pay their families compensation, but the news helicopters took time to prepare—so Alya’s live-stream was currently Paris’s only eyes and ears. Even if she had no superpowers to physically fight Stoneheart, knowledge was power, and this was the least Alya could do to empower the rest of the city.
Alya whispered, hoping her phone’s mic could pick up her voice despite the noise of Stoneheart’s rampage. “And here I am at the Parc des Princes, fellas. Currently, Stoneheart appears to be in a mindless rampage, screaming the name ‘Kim’ as he destroys everything in his path. For those not in the know, Stoneheart is—was—Ivan, a student in my class, and he had an argument with Kim—another student—just this morning. My current theory is that Ivan’s anger somehow turned him into Stoneheart, but that begs the question…is this ability innate? Or is Ivan the victim of someone—maybe something—else? And if Ivan could always turn into a destructive stone monster…why has he only lost control now?”
With the angle of her screen, Alya could barely make out the comments springing up about her stream. Several people were complimenting how realistic the CGI was, another couple of commenters were discussing the validity of Alya’s theory, and yet another few people were calling this the end of days. Somebody called theUltimateDJ called Alya a suicidal idiot and begged her to run. Alya ignored that message.
Someone with the username kingofthejungle cropped up, leaving behind a string of comments.
tkss for the stream
our class wont left the pdp safely if not for u
btw dis kim
stone ivan def not my fault!!
Ah. Alya’s eyebrows shot up. Had Stoneheart tracked Kim here to take revenge on him? Pride blossomed in her chest at having helped Kim and his class, even as she began reformulating her theories in her mind.
Alya opened her mouth to tell her audience about her latest theory.
Of course, that was when something crashed into Alya’s back, hard and fast. Alya’s grip on her phone slipped. The phone fell from her grasp, tumbling several rows down before coming to a stop.
Even from her position, Alya could see the cracked screen that now decorated her phone.
She cursed loudly.
What the heck!?
Stoneheart turned in her direction. Alya winced, and clamped her hand over her mouth. She shrank back beneath the stands, her heart pounding, even as her mind started to wonder how sensitive Stoneheart’s ears were—at least, she assumed he had ears, even if she couldn’t see them.
What had hit her, anyway? It couldn’t be a piece of rubble; Stoneheart was in front of her, not behind.
Alya glanced down. There was a wooden box at her feet.
That hadn’t been there a moment ago.
Alya frowned; was this what had hit her? Curiously, she leant down to pick the box up.
Intricate patterns had been drawn on the lid of the box, seeming vaguely Asian in design. Something about the box called to Alya, a siren song telling her to open the lid and reveal the secrets within.
Alya had never dealt well with curiosity. She opened the box.
Light flashed before her eyes.
When Alya finally managed to blink the spots out of her eyes, an adorable red-spotted creature was floating in front of her. It—they?—the creature looked somewhat like a plushie. They looked around, blue eyes wide with confusion as they took in the present situation.
The creature muttered something incomprehensible to human ears. Alya didn’t have a single clue what those words meant, but she could tell from the creature’s expression that they were meant as a curse.
Universe blue eyes regarded Alya, peering into her as if the creature was trying to dissect her with their mere gaze. The creature grumbled darkly, “She actually went through with it. I can’t believe—”
But then, the creature seemed to remember Alya was an actual person, not just a specimen. They clammed their mouth shut. Emotions tumbled across their face, the creature appearing to go through the five stages of grief before they regained their cheerful demeanour and greeted Alya enthusiastically.
“Hi! My name is Tikki, the kwami of Creation and Luck!” The creature—kwami?—she?—Alya didn’t want to assume, but Tikki’s words set off a voice in her mind that whispered Tikki was a she—said. “You are Alya Cesaire, right? Good, you are, I’d hate to have found the wrong person after a certain someone so kindly brought me here with my consent.”
Tikki cleared her throat, “As I have said, I am a kwami, a being born from the abstract concepts of Creation and Luck. The pair of earrings in that box is my miraculous, which allows me to share my powers with a chosen holder. Stone-Ivan—the stone creature out there—was created by the Butterfly miraculous. By wearing my miraculous, I will be able to grant you access to my magic, along with an enhanced physique. You will be able to purify the monster and return him to his original state. Alya Cesaire, would you like to become my holder to defeat this stone creature?”
…what.
“…are you saying you want me to help you defeat Stoneheart? To…restore Ivan to his original form?”
Tikki nodded. “Basically, yes.”
Alya glanced up, at the towering behemoth that used to be her kindly classmate. She glanced back down at Tikki, who was waiting anxiously for an answer.
In the end, it wasn’t a difficult choice at all.
Alya took the earrings from the box and clipped them onto her ears. She had never been more grateful that she had gotten her ears pierced as last Christmas’s gift.
“Okay,” she nodded, “tell me what I need to do.”
Marinette smiled as she saw Alya put on the Ladybug earrings.
She left the stadium, hoping to hurry back home before her parents discovered she was missing.
Her encounter with all things miraculous was now officially over.