FOUR | NOT ANOTHER BUG IN THE CITY!

THE MYSTERY PERTAINING TO THE WHEREABOUTS OF PETER PARKER WAS FINALLY OVER. Monday morning had rolled around and the brunette had slunk into the gates of Midtown Science and Technology like nothing had happen. Marinette had almost gotten used to a school without him walking the halls; the peace of having no one to compete against. However, as they often say, all good things must come to an end and she almost jumped out of her skin when she saw him sat in his usual spot in home room.

On her way to her normal seat, she stopped in front of his desk and cleared her throat to gain his attention. Confused, he looked up to greet her. "Oh, hey Marinette," he said in a sickly sweet voice, smiling up at the girl.

"We had a pop quiz while you were away," she informed him, rummaging around in her backpack as he scratched the back of his neck in confusion.

"Yeah, Ned told me. I'm—"

Brandishing the test paper in his, she pointed to the red mark in the top corner. "I got one-hundred percent, no biggie."

Peter nodded slowly. "Uh, that's good for you," he replied, confused why she was telling him this information. His friendship—or lack of—with Marinette had always confused the hell out of him. He had always thought she was really cool, the smartest girl in their year even but she'd always seemed to find a way to compete against him for reasons unknown to the orphaned boy. School was stressful enough, he didn't want a competition sending him off the deep end.

Annoyed at his underwhelming response, Marinette shoved the paper back into her bag and stormed off down the back. He could at least pretend to be intimidated by her. God.

Noticing her sour mood as she plonked down beside her friend, Michelle asked, "what's got you annoyed?"

"Stupid Peter Parker," she grumbled, squeezing her pencil so tight it left an indent across the palm of her hand.

Michelle snorted. "So, we're back to this then. . . ?"

"Shut up," she grumbled just as the classroom door opened once again. Nino and Adrien walked in and Marinette felt the air disappear from her lungs at the sight of the blonde. God, he was just perfect, wasn't he? She'd spent the entire weekend scrolling through Pinterest, examining the perfect creation that was his face. She'd never seen guys as beautiful as him in person, he felt unreal to look at.

"And let me guess," Michelle spoke over the top of her overactive daydreams, "he's no longer your nemesis," she observed, nodding in the direction of Adrien just as he looked up. His gaze soften when it landed on Marinette, smiling at the girl. She could pass away there and then. "Unbelievable," Michelle scoffed when her friend didn't say anything, too engrossed in staring at Adrien to hear what she was saying.

Meanwhile, the two boys take their seats next to Ned and a very confused Peter. He stares at the model, feeling very out of the loop. "Hey guys. . ." He mumbles, looking at Nino for some sort of explanation as to why Adrien Agreste was at their table now.

"Peter, you were away but Adrien's our boy now," Nino explained, punching the blonde in the arm playfully—obviously trying to appear cooler then he actually was.

Peter raised an eyebrow, looking to Ned for confirmation. "Right. . ."

Excitedly, Nino says, "Adrien, show them the picture you just showed me," he prompts, sounding like an over excited kid on Christmas Eve.

Intrigued, the two boys lean over as Adrien holds his phone up for them to see. "Wait, that's insane," Peter muttered, eyes wide at the Lego-sized Imperial City he was showing them. "You built that?"

Adrien's skin flushed and he nodded. "I got bored of my old Lego City layout and decided to have a crack at following a reference," he rambled, flipped through the pictures of other angles of the miniature city. Peter was even more impressed over the little figures—some extremely rare—all doing their tasks around the city. If he wasn't so impressed, he'd be a bit envious. Not a bit, actually but very.

Still, a cool Lego build wasn't enough to win over Peters trust. Unlike Ned and Nino, who'd not copped nearly as much harassment from Harry Osborn, Peter wasn't as forgiving. He had been positively terrorised by the son of a billionaire since he'd started the first day of middle school. He'd come home with black eyes, cracked ribs and broken phones thanks to Harry's particular obsession with him. Someone who could be friends with a person like that, to condone those heinous actions, wasn't someone Peter wanted to discuss Star Wars fan theories with.

"So, you're just not friends with Harry anymore?" Peter asked, cutting off Nino's rant about how crap the quality newer Lego mini-figures had gotten.

Adrien coughed awkwardly. "The Harry I grew up with isn't the Harry I've come to known at school," he began, trying not to sound like he was excusing his friends behaviour. "I want nothing to do with that."

Peter squinted. "A yes or no would've sufficed," he sassed.

"For the sake of my fathers business and keeping the peace, I'm still friendly with Harry but that's it," Adrien explained, sighing as he leant back into his plastic seat.

"Peter, just drop it," Nino cut in, glaring at his friend. Was he trying to keep them at the bottom of the social hierarchy for the rest of their high school career?

                         IT HAD BEEN A WEEK SINCE THE FRIEND GROUP HAD SHIFTED. Marinette was appalled that the love of her life had joined her second least favourite friend group. She was all for forbidden love and tales like Romeo & Juliet but it was still annoying.  She'd catch sight of him in the halls and wave, only for the likes of Peter Parker to think she was warming up to him. As if.

Chloe Bourgeois had a public meltdown over the fact that her pet celebrity—as Michelle had crudely referred to Adrien as—no longer wanted to sit at her lunch table. Everyday she'd stare at the model from across the cafeteria, trying all sorts of pathetic gimmicks to get him to return. At the beginning, it'd just been really loud laughing (an attempt to make him jealous) and when that hadn't worked, she'd opted for loudly spreading gossip. Adrien hadn't seemed like the type to be interested in gossip, though. She'd thrown food scraps at the back of Nino's head, hoping the annoyance would make them evict him from their table. But Adrien had just swapped sides with him. Chloe had always been fascinated in making Marinettes life harder then it needed to be so seeing her be publicly shunned like this by their shared crush was so very satisfying.

She'd been on her way to meet Michelle at her locker before class when Adrien and company had passed her by. The blonde had very nonchalantly half-waved at her, which she'd returned by waving at him with both hands. Ned had snorted while Peter, confused as ever, had just waved back at her. She glared at him for doing so, not paying any attention where she'd been walking.

Then there was a loud slam followed by a sharp pain across her face. Groaning, Marinette cupped her nose in case it started to pour out with blood. "Jesus," Michelle muttered, checking the hinges on her locker door still worked. While she nursed her injuries, Marinette stared out down the hall at where Adrien had disappeared to. She sighed at the thought of getting to see him in home room soon. "It's crazy how quickly you changed your tune about him," Michelle commented.

"Anyone that can put Chloe in her place is an upstanding citizen in my book," Marinette said, a bit too loudly and Michelle snorted. "Besides," she added, sighing, "he's so. . ."

"Come on, let's get to home room before you start writing poetry," Michelle muttered, dragging her along.

Okay, so perhaps staying out super late and fighting crime into the dead of night, right before a huge test wasn't one of Marinette's brightest ideas thus far. She promises that under normal circumstances she is actually a very bright girl, filled to the brim with bright ideas. . . it's just that she's not exactly had a single lesson to prepare her for being a spandex-wearing vigilante by night and a normal girl by day (so, sometimes it got the best of her). Even before all this, Marinette had struggled with a work-life balance—she was always in a constant state of panic. The added responsibility only amplified her dysfunctional existence by tenfold (who knew it was possible).

So, anyway, it's 7:45am now and she was sitting in home-room with her elbows on her desk and her head in her hands. She could hear everyone around her talking but she can't actually hear their words. She's trying, she swears but it's all just a jumbled mess of sounds in her brain. It's safe to assume everyone else is probably revising and yes, she knows she should be, too—especially because she wasn't very confident in this unit of Chemistry but she really can't bring herself to even try. If she closes her eyes for long enough she wonders if it'll make up for all the sleep she was behind on. But is the gratification of giving her eyes a rest worth the risk of sleeping until fourth period again (yes, again).

At least she doesn't have much time to stress over the fact that her eyelids are getting almost too heavy to open because someone was definitely poking her in the ribs. Marinette groans as she slowly lifts her head up, her irises feeling the sharp puncture of the overhead lights. She lifted her head just enough to see over her lack of bicep and almost inhaled her own tongue at the sight before her.

Adrien Agreste gives her one of his classic lopsided smiles. "I thought you might want to revise together," he says, offering her some bright-coloured index cards. "I know how seriously you take midterms."

Marinette has had plenty of dreams that start out this way and so, she sits there for a moment as all words escape her. He'd looked good at a distant in the halls but up close. . . he was something else. His hair was perfect today but then again, she can't exactly think of a day when it wasn't. He practically had pure gold growing out of his scalp so, of course, she was going to be mesmerised by it—who could blame her? On the nights she actually got to sleep, she imagined he was in the bed with her and she would run her hands through his silky locks as a means to fall asleep. She couldn't think of a time he had ever stood so close to her as he was now. If she breathed hard enough, she could probably make the hairs guarding his forehead move (boy, was she tempted to try). If she hasn't already said it, Marinette Dupen-Cheng thought that Adrien Agreste had the most perfect head of hair to ever (and will ever) walk the face of this earth. If she were to win the lottery, she would probably pay Adrien just to let her run her fingers through—

". . . Marinette?"

"S-sorry, you're so. . . Exhausted," she word-vomits, jerking her head off the desk and feeling her face go bright red.

He squints at her. "I think you're the tired one," he says in his enchanting voice.

Marinette fails to reply instead, taking the index cards off him and attempting to shuffle them as graciously as one can be when they were never taught how to shuffle properly. However, the universe has always seemed to have it out for her and in one clumsy movement, all the cards fall on the floor under the table. Trying to avoid wasting any more of Adrien's time, she practically dives under the table and starts raking all the cards into a messy pile.

Sadly, the way back up is what got her. Still trying to move at supersonic speeds, Marinette manages to bash her head against the metal bar that holds the desk together. A few people look over at the cause of the loud bang and Marinette can feel her face burning up yet again. To avoid further embarrassment, she doesn't let herself cry out in pain—surely, she can brush this off (even though her skull feels like it is about to snap in half). She wonders how misshapen her head must be due to all the bumps it's received; she could never go bald with a bumpy skull.

"That looked like it hurt—are you okay?" Adrien's brows were knitted together in concern as he placed a hand on each of her forearms, trying to help her back into her seat.

Yes, there were tears in her eyes and she was still very much in pain but Marinette could only focus on so many things at once and Adrien Agreste was touching her! This only happened in the imaginary scenarios she made up as she was falling asleep.

She let out one of her classic loud and very awkward laughs. "Who, me? I'm great," she chortled, dumping the cards on the desk and hunching over to neaten them.

"But you hit that so hard—" he tried to say but she spoke over him.

"The only thing that's hard is going to be this test," she continued, still speaking louder than she normally would—it's a nervous habit, okay. Adrien probably just thought she was obnoxious because that's the only way she ever spoke to him.

He sighed. "Yeah, that's why I asked for your help revising."

Marinette's eyes went wider. "Me? I—"

"After, like, Peter or something, you're like the smartest person in our grade," he said, matter-of-factly. "And I don't think he's warmed up enough to be for me to be asking for revision help. So, you're the next best thing."

In her heart, Marinette knows he meant it as a compliment but she can't help but narrow her eyes at the mention of her nemesis. . .

Okay, so 'nemesis' might be an exaggeration but she still hated him. A lot. No one could beat her at literally every science fair since eighth grade and get away with it. He didn't even seem to try either—that's what mostly pissed her off about him. Peter Parker was the type of guy to roll out of bed just before the subway he needed to catch was leaving and still make it in time. He could glance at an unopened textbook and somehow absorb all the information inside (with sources!). She'd seen him write up presentations that would receive full marks in under ten minutes. Everything about the way he went through life so easily made her furious. It always filled her with immense pride when she would achieve a mark higher than him or answer a question in class before him. And every time he would congratulate her in an earnest way that would make her left eye twitch.

"If you say so," Marinette simply muttered before reading off one of the cards, fighting off the twitch in her eye.

She didn't see the look Adrien gave her.

               AN UNLIKELY DUO WAS THAT LADYBUG AND CHAT NOIR. She found him positively obnoxious and he found her endearing but it worked perfectly (somehow). Yin to her Yang (quite literally, according to the guardian). Without one, the other would crumble and besides, two is always better than one—it's a known fact! Ladybug loved to look at the facts.

However, as the other saying goes: two is a pair and three is a crowd. New York was already overrun with massive crowds as it was. Additionally, there was no demand for another crime-fighting vigilante with an alias inspired by a bug. Even his costume was bordering on copyright infringement (like, really, he just had to be red as well?). It was overkill and it was really starting to piss Ladybug off. Big time.

With a hand on her hip, she frowned through her mask as Chat Noir showed her the low-quality footage of this new 'hero'. He was seen stopping a bus with his bare hands which she hates to admit is a bit impressive. However, she had no interest in having another partner (she already had one too many) but knew sooner or later they'd start stepping on each other's toes. New York was a big city but it wasn't that big.

Rolling her eyes and pushing his phone out of her face, she mutters, "And he calls himself Spider-Man?"

"That's what I'm gathering, M'Lady," he purrs, making her cringe at the nickname he insists on.

"He doesn't sound like much of a man," she says, commenting on the pre-pubescent voice that had declared the name in the video.

Chat Noir chuckles, shoving the iPhone into his pocket. Ladybug watches with unamusement as he runs his fingers through his hair—as if anyone's going to care if it's in place or not. He was like an actual cat, constantly grooming himself.

"He's going to become a problem for us, I know it," she adds, sighing as she slides down against the wall and stares out at Central Park sprawled out in the distance. Ease-of-access to rooftops: her favourite perk of being a superhero. She couldn't see the end to the bright city lights in the horizon.

"You don't know that," Chat says, "I don't see a problem with letting this kid pick up some of our slack."

She glares at him. "Look at him," she snaps. "He's wearing a hoodie with goggles sewn into them; there's being an amateur and then being a literal hazard to yourself. He's bound to get himself killed if we don't step in."

Chat stays quiet for a moment, mulling over her words. "So, what, we seek him out ourselves?" He pauses and then adds, "And then what? If he's such a hazard, why would we want any association with him? That just makes us look bad when something goes wrong."

"Do you care only about your fans, Chat?"

"You're twisting my words."

"Am I?"

"By associating, do we not put ourselves in danger? Is it safe for us to team up with someone so underequipped?"

Shit, he had a point. "Maybe we can deter him from pursuing this lifestyle."

"Would Iron Man be able to convince you not to be Ladybug anymore?" He asks.

Her mouth forms a straight line. "I didn't choose this and neither did you," she continues as she stands up to join him on the edge. "All of those Avengers chose to be what they are, we had this responsibility forced onto us. It's different."

"If I had a choice, I'd still choose this. . . Wouldn't you?" His thick brow is raised at her.

She doesn't answer, eyes locked on something in the distance. Chat follows her line of vision and sees it. A woman was crying as she held her baby and sprinted down the street—everyone who noticed her began to scream, too.

Suddenly, everything stopped.

One after the other every person around began getting struck by pause logos. Cars, birds, bikes—anything that moved lay paralysed in the wake. It was eerie for New York to be so still. It didn't matter if the objects were suspended in the air, gravity did not seem to apply to anything struck.

The heroes barely exchanged looks before swinging into action. Chat Noir immediately gunned for the source as Ladybug rushed to warn those yet affected to evacuate. Even though currently this whole pausing schtick hadn't caused anyone to be harmed, she knew it would be only a matter of time. There were so many ways she could imagine the power being used to inflict harm.

Circling back, Ladybug finally saw her. Dressed in all-black spandex—bar some white detailing and stripes—she levitated above the scene she had caused. Her hair was auburn and the mask that concealed half her face matched the suit. Immediately, Ladybug clocked the phone she fervently swiped at to be the source of her power.

She watched for a few moments as Chat fought her, his baton grew and shrunk in order to dodge every pause she sent his way. Ladybug's eyes darted around as she meticulously scanned their surroundings for a possible strategy to vanquish her.

The only idea she had so far was to somehow trap her with the Yo-Yo she used to swing herself around the city. However, someone beat her to it before she could even work out the details.

In the blink of an eye, the phone had been ripped out of her grasp by a sticky fluid. As the girl let out a scream, another burst of fluid shot at her and bound her arms to her body.

"What is the meaning of this. . . !" she shrieked and began flailing around mid-air. "Unhand me this instant and give me your miraculous'. . . !"

Snapping into action, Ladybug leapt towards the figure emitting the fluid and pinned him on his back. Straddling him, she gripped his neck as a means to hold him down and assert dominance.

"Hey, hey, hey, hey," the figure in red and blue sweats shouted, lifting his gloved hands up in surrender. "Here, take it. Do your thing," he said, voice cracking slightly as he pushed the glowing phone into the hand that was ready to punch.

She roughly climbed off him as she snapped the phone over her knee. A purple, glowing moth appeared and she quickly yanked it out of the air. The Spider-Man stayed on the ground and watched in awe as she held the—as the media called it—Akuma in her hands, eyes shut as she focused on purifying it.

"Bye, bye little butterfly," she whispers, opening her hands and watching the white creature fly out. It still amazed her every time.

She watched the girl's costume dissolve as she began rapidly descending from the air. Luckily, Chat Noir caught her before she'd fallen too far and gently set her down. The sounds of sirens filled her ears as everyone around her became unpaused.

"What's your name?" She heard Chat ask, wiping dirt off the girl's face as she stared up at him in awe.

Her entire body trembled. "A-Alya," she said softly, hugging her body.

"You're free now, Alya," he said gently, looking over her shoulder at the officers who approached.

Deciding to let him handle it, Ladybug whipped her head around to glare at the vigilante who had yet to move from where she'd left him. The blue and red sweats in the flesh, just her luck.

"Who do you think you are to interfere like that," she demanded, taking big strides towards him.

His eyes widened and he began scrambling to his feet, stuttering out half syllables.

Once she was standing close enough to feel his uneven breath through his mask against her face, she added, "New York is not big enough for a spider and a ladybug so, I suggest you ditch this hobby and stay out of the professional's way."

"Prof–? You're not even Avengers," he choked out after a moment, trying to stand his ground and maintain some of his dignity.

She could feel her blood boil. "Being an Avenger has nothing to do with it," she spat. "You prance around in sweatpants and call yourself a hero? All I see is an idiot waiting to get seriously hurt or killed."

"Oh, I'm sorry that not everyone has a latex bodysuit just lying around," he retorts, eyeing Chat Noir who now stood behind her protectively.

"Watch it, buddy," he warned, narrowing his green eyes.

"Do not get in my way again," she said one last time before launching herself into the horizon, Chat Noir loosely on her heels.

🐞 karla yaps !

if a lot of this chapter seems familiar to you, you've unlocked a veterans discount (i reused a lot of the original first chapter). i can't believe this is where i'd started the story, no context just immediate action. the rewrite—in my opinion—feels like you, the readers, get a bit more time to sit with the civilian versions of the main characters before you're thrust into the superhero side of things. so you hopefully understand their motivations a bit better.

i almost scrapped alya as a character because we already have michelle (& i don't enjoy alya as a character in the original show) but then i got ideas for some angst.

i'm hosting a writing competition in my server so expect a lot of updates while that's on & im trying to crank out words to win.