In a world without superheroes, six teenagers stumble upon a dying alien who gives them the power to shape-shift. America, Eli, Kate, Tommy, Serrure, Billy, and Teddy are the only people who can stand against the alien invasion- because they’re the only ones who know about it.
When one of them confesses to being a member of the invasion force, well- That’s just the beginning of the story.
[podfic version] Chapter 1: The Infestation.
Click HERE for the transcript/text version of this chapter
Cisswap fanfic: gets actual reviews from people who read the story, about the plot.
Me, a trans author writing fic where characters are trans: gets reviews about "this is terrible this character is not trans in canon! Also your gender is fake" and also "how can a person be both [x] and [y]?"
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
David leaned back in his cheap plastic desk chair and sipped a liquid that was the closest approximation to coffee to be had on Genosha, Mutant Moon Colony.
My gift to @xaverie for @phoenixyfriend‘s Young Avengers Holiday Exchange 2017!
I hope you like it! It was late because I wrote 90% of this is November and kept thinking “it needs another scene though...” until literally yesterday.
The one where Adrien is trans, Marinette is MIA, and Alya is a main character
Marinette was, on the whole, very responsible with how she used her Miraculous. Sure, there were times in the past she had transformed for her own gain, or for revenge, but she felt that she had learned her lesson and matured since then. She realized that Ladybug was her privilege and her duty.
So why was she transforming for the relatively mundane task of traversing Paris, running errands for her mother?
Tikki could not literally speak to Marinette while she was Ladybug, but she could imagine the little Kwami’s squeaky voice perfectly: ‘ Marinette, you know better than this!’
“It’s just errands,” Ladybug whispered to herself, trying to convince herself as well as her magical guardian. “If I use the Miraculous to get them done early, I’ll actually have time to patrol Paris tonight. If I didn’t use my Miraculous, this would take all day!” It was a trade-off, in Marinette’s mind. She would rather not use her powers for frivolous tasks such as these, but if it gave her more time to keep Paris safe, wasn’t it worth it? Wasn’t her decision more responsible?
Ladybug couldn’t tell if the uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach came from Tikki or her own misgivings.
The feelings followed her from rooftop to rooftop, in the swing of her yoyo, and through her drop into an alleyway. Marinette got her answer when she dropped the transformation, revealing her own doubts along with her real face.
She stood in the alleyway with Tikki peeking out of her purse and re-centered herself. Was this a bad idea? Possibly, although the exact risks were unknown. However, now that she was across town, there would be no point in returning home without the items on her mother’s shopping list. It would just mean a waste of time, a risk without payoff.
Better to get the items quickly and without fuss, and return home as soon as possible.
Newly determined, Marinette marched off with her list in hand.
* * * * * * *
It was early afternoon, and the sun was still shining brightly overhead. In a few hours, it would dip behind the tall buildings flanking the street, marking the beginning of the strange twilight hours experienced in heavily urban areas.
Marinette felt that she was making good time. If she had relied on public transportation, she would just be arriving in the shopping district on the other side of Paris. By using her powers as Ladybug, she had arrived around noon and was almost done accumulating the items on her mother’s list!
Her stomach growled, closely echoed by Tikki’s. Marinette blushed, and quiet laughter drifted up from her purse. The sound was soft and lyrical, like the ringing of a small bell.
Surely there was a café or restaurant where she could grab a quick bite- with a small dessert, perhaps, for her Kwami. It took a lot of energy to travel such a long distance in so little time, even for a miniature God of Creation.
Later, Marinette would notice the laser-like sound that accompanied the akuma’s powers, but without context, she wasn’t sure what she was hearing. It blended in to the sounds of the city. Not perfectly, but enough that Marinette’s first inkling that something was wrong came not from the noise, but from the statues.
She turned a corner, focusing more on the signs of the nearby buildings than on the crowd around her. The crowd parted in front of her, and suddenly there was a statue of a person mid-step. It teetered precariously on one foot. Marinette’s mind was still processing the scene, but her legs were already moving. She lunged as it fell, and lowered the statue to the ground.
She stared at the face of the statue, a man’s expression frozen in fear. Marinette’s analytical mind worked overtime trying to piece together what she was seeing. Unsure exactly what to be concerned about, but concerned nonetheless, Marinette scanned her surroundings with the eye of a superhero rather than a shopper.
As the street cleared, Marinette finally heard the whverr of a laser for what it was.
She was too far from the akuma to see her form, or her next victim, but Marinette saw the blue glow emitted by her weapon.
Then, she heard her voice.
“I’LL SHOW YOU REALISM!”
Another flash of blue light, with no specific origin or destination Marinette could see.
The screaming started.
Marinette was not naturally athletic. When she wasn’t paying attention, her hand-eye coordination left something to be desired. Competence, perhaps.
But with reflexes honed by months of heroics, Marinette dropped her shopping bags and vaulted over an upturned café table.
“Tikki,” she hissed, eyes peering over the table for a glimpse of her opponent. “Spots on!”
Tikki’s voice came mournful and clear, like the melancholy song of a sparrow. “I’m sorry Marinette. I can’t.”
Marinette bit her lip and thought. Another of the reflexes honed by being Ladybug: crisis problem solving.
Okay. The akuma had some kind of power that gave off light and turned people into statues. Was there some property of stone that could help? Her mind flashed through concepts, hoping for a clue. Lava, metamorphic, erosion, hardness, fracture- she winced. No, she didn’t want to risk the people trapped in stone.
Alright then, what about light?
Mairnette looked at her surroundings, her eyes catching on the glass storefront behind her, as well as the black tablecloth that had slipped off her table and onto the ground. If she could combine these, she could make a mirror. All she had to do was find a way to catch the akuma’s attention-
Using up Tikki’s energy racing across Paris for a mundane chore could be considered Marinette’s first mistake of the day. It’s true that on any other day that choice might not be her undoing, but this was not any other day. This was the day the MonstArtist was akumatized.
Standing up, abandoning the cover of the overturned table, was her second mistake.
As she scanned her surroundings, looking for a convenient distraction, she didn’t realize that she already had the akuma’s attention.
“Marinette!” Tikki warned.
Blue eyes snapped up, finally alighting on the akuma she had failed to notice before, hovering in the air on butterfly wings made of ripped canvas.
She dove out of the way just in time to escape the blue beam the MonstArtist shot toward her.
The akuma howled wordlessly. Marinette forced her body to run, twist, and roll out of the way. Luckily, the akuma had no particular interest in her, and lost interest when chasing her became too tedious.
Once the MonstArtist’s back was turned, Marinette dashed toward cover once more. She grabbed the black tablecloth in her hands and tried to come up with an easy way to fx it to the back of the window when-
There was a boy not much younger than Marinette standing in the street. The other shoppers had evacuated or found a place to hide, but he was standing shock-still, frozen by his own fear.
The MonstArtist had spotted him, too.
Marinette’s third decision of the day was not, strictly speaking, a mistake.
It was very, very intentional.
Instead of using it to create a mirror, Marinette balled up the tablecloth in her hands and threw it with all her strength at the akuma.
“Hey!” She yelled. “Rob Liefeld!”
The cloth opened mid-air and fluttered uselessly to the ground. The akuma spun around and shrieked.
“How DARE you compare me to that hack!”
Marinette stared at the boy, mentally begging him to run. He blinked, and broke his wide-eyed stare. They locked eyes. He mouthed something to her- gratitude, or a warning.
Marinette didn’t start to run until he did.
She dashed around the upturned chairs and tables, slid under a cart loaded with flowers, and almost made it around the corner before the blue light engulfed her.
The stone overtook her body from her extremities inward. She took one step, agonizingly slow, as the stone advanced. Her legs went numb and stiff, cutting off her escape before it began. She reached for her purse, to free Tikki if nothing else, but her fingers barely grasped the latch before they stopped responding.
Fear gripped her heart- or was that stone?
“Tikki, spots on!” she cried in desperation. She braced herself for the change, for the rush of energy and strength leant to her by her kwami.
Her purse was silent. The stone continued. Marinette’s frantic eyes glanced back at the akuma, trying to find some last-second solution-
The stone entombed her. Around Marinette’s frozen body, shoppers still screamed, still fled in terror. But Marinette remained unaware.
And that was how her parents found her hours later, completely frozen, a girl calcified.
Marinette didn’t know that Cat Noire had arrived and, after a lengthy battle, managed to defeat the akuma who called herself MonstArtist.
She didn’t know about the police cordoning off the entire street while they waited, uncertain, for Ladybug to revive the statues. She didn’t feel her own body being moved several days later, when the police admitted that a magical solution was not forthcoming. She didn’t hear her parents speaking to her statue, or deciding to place her in her own room, where she was safe and loved.
She did not hear a thousand citizens of Paris call for Ladybug in the ensuing weeks.
* * * * * * *
Marinette did not feel cold. She didn’t feel much of anything. A sleeping limb feels cold to the touch, but only if you have another limb free to touch it. Marinette was numb all over, the sleepy empty existence of the MonstArtist’s victims completely blanketing her senses.
She thought she heard voices, but they were far away, and muted. Her awareness was limited, as were her thoughts. Later, when describing this to Alya, Marinette would compare her time as a statue to being sick in bed with the flu. Time was fluid and passed quickly, leaving her with only vague impressions of the world around her.
Being freed from stone was like breaking the surface of water after being under too long, or waking all of her limbs form sleep at once. It was a coming to life, a relief from entombment. It was also painful.
Marinette fell to her knees and breathed shallowly through gritted teeth. Her arms shook, and her fingernails bit the soft skin of her palms. Fortunately, the pain faded quickly.
“Marinette?” a voice asked in concern. Marinette was so relieved by the absence of pain that she didn’t consciously identify the speaker. Later, she would not be able to remember who asked first.
She lifted her head. The motion almost hit the small red kwami who was hovering over her, watching.
“Tikki?” Marinette asked, her head spinning. She had been on the street. Outside, alone, and away from home. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but she was clearly inside, in her room, and-
They were not alone.
“Alya?” Marinette asked in confusion. She glanced between her friend and her kwami. The fading pain left her mind a bit clouded, as if waking from a deep sleep, and she was having trouble processing the combination of Tikki and Alya in the same place.
“My- Marinette,” a familiar voice whispered, the word barely more than a relieved sigh.
Marinette’s head turned. Her stomach was already churning as the implications of the situation began to hit her. And there, crouched behind her on one knee, was Adrien Agreste, the object of her most embarrassing affections.
“What’s going on?” Marinette asked. She tried frantically to assemble her most recent memories into something resembling linear time, but they flowed like water between her fingers. Hunger. There was an akuma. She was Ladybug. Screaming. She tried to escape. Which happened first? Which happened last?
Alya and Adrien traded glances. Marinette saw but couldn’t decode what was being communicated.
What was going on?
“I brought Alya into this,” Adrien confessed (confessed to what , though?) “I’m sorry, I know you didn’t want it to turn out like this, but I didn’t know what else to do. Plagg needed to be here in person to revive Tikki, and I figured… if were losing your secret, I’d give you mine in exchange.”
“I told them who you are! I know I promised to stop investigating, but when they asked… we didn’t know how else to save you,” Alya admitted.
Marinette’s brain took a moment to catch up. Nothing Adrien said was making sense, but she could at least try to decode Alya’s words.
Who you are – with Tikki hovering nearby, that could only mean Ladybug . Told them - Tikki already knew who she was, so in this context themcould only be-
Marinette looked at Adrien. Really looked. At the blonde hair, a little more tamed but no longer than her partner’s. Clues began to stack up, and she found she wasn’t as surprised as she expected to be.
“Them?” Marinette asked, anyway, just in case the secret had spread further.
Marinette was breathless, speechless. Marinette had been spending more and more time with Adrien(ne?) recently, and had slowly been replacing her idealized image with a real, living person. In the same timeframe, her image of the Cat Miraculous holder was fading from a flirtatious playboy to a bubbly, honest friend.
The two ambiguous images overlapped in her mind and began to merge. The similarities between her two friends were clearer now that she had peeked behind their masks. That made it easier to reconcile the two faces of one person: Adrienne Agreste and Cat Noire.
That revelation well in hand, she allowed herself to move to the next one: that her partner knew her identity. Cat Noire knew that their Lady was Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Adirenne knew that their classmate was Ladybug.
And so did Alya.
Marinette’s eyes landed on her best friend, the one person who had her back unquestionably, even when Marinette herself was inconsistent and dishonest.
“I know, girl,” Alya replied with a sad smile. “Friend-me is disappointed that you didn’t trust me, but Journalist-me understands why you couldn’t tell anyone- even Cat Noire.”
“ Thank you ,” Marinette insisted, capturing Alya in a hug. Thank you- for understanding, for saving her, for working with Cat Noire, for keeping their secret.
“So…” Adrienne began, tentatively. “Do you hate me?” Their voice squeaked a bit at the last word. Familiar green eyes revealed hope and fear in equal measure.
Marinette laughed.
“Of course not, kitty.” She reached out, and Adrienne smiled and joined the hug. “We’ll figure it out.”
the one where Ladybug is missing, Chat is trans, and Alya is a main character.
Cat Noire took a deep breath. Their shoulders were tense, and their golden hair seemed messier than usual. While experience had proven that Cat Noire was undoubtedly human, they were puffed up like a nervous cat. In another life, Alya might find this funny. If Ladybug wasn’t MIA, if Hawkmoth hadn’t inundated the city with akuma in her absence, if the Miraculous Cure still guaranteed their safety, Alya would be laughing.
Instead, Cat Noire’s nervousness just made Alya all the more concerned.
“Alya,” Cat announced, “I need you to help me find out Ladybug’s identity.”
Alya’s lips thinned into a grim line. “So you don’t know where she is either? If I had any idea I’d tell you.”
Cat Noire shook their head. “It’s pretty obvious that she was one of The MonstArtist’s statues, but she froze hundreds of civilians before I stopped her.”
Paris gained hundreds of statues that day, residents frozen in the motions of everyday life. The Monstartist had been a quiet akuma, one that hadn’t gained attention until it was too late. By now they had all been removed from the streets. Some families had identified and claimed their relatives, hiding them away in homes for safekeeping. Dozens of others had been relocated to a public garden. Tourists might mistake them for art, but Cat Noire considered it a graveyard.
No Parisian would be able to look at sculptures the same way again.
Alya bit her lip. “Does it really matter who she is? At this point, a Ladybug statue isn’t going to help us much. Is it?” She wanted to be hopeful. She wanted Cat to have a solution, to bring back the world that contained a Miraculous Cure. But as a journalist, she remained skeptical.
“There might be a way to revive her.”
There it was. Her spark of hope. “What? This is huge! You can cure the statues?” Alya couldn’t believe her luck. She began spinning headlines in her head, planning camera angles for when she filmed the revival of the statue garden.
“No, but if she was wearing her Miraculous when she was frozen, there might be a way to revive Ladybug. Just Ladybug.” Cat’s voice remained steady, but the cat ears on their head told a different story: they pivoted back and down, like a cat facing down a larger animal.
The spark threatened to fizzle out, but Alya remained firm. “Okay. So we find Ladybug. You revive her, and she-?” Alya paused, letting Cat Noire fill in the rest. She wasn’t ready to voice her high hopes again, in case they were dashed.
Alya made a promise not to dig into Ladybug’s secret identity. She took down the “rumors and theories” forum on her blog, and all of her own previous posts on the subject. She stopped asking leading questions in interviews. She stopped trying to follow the heroes after battle.
She took every scrap of information, every theory and hint she had ever devised, and put them on a flash drive. It was in search of that flash drive that she was now scouring her bedroom.
“Where was it?” Alya demanded. “I put it right here!” The flash drive was supposed to be labeled “Chem Project” and stashed in her desk drawer with forgotten erasers and depleted sharpies. Instead it, like Ladybug herself, was missing.
“Billie!” she screamed, “Get your butt in here!”
The sound of faint grumbling was easy to miss, but the stomping down the hall, and the slam of her door being opened was not.
An eleven year old stood in the doorway, arms crossed in defense.
“What?” Alya’s younger brother demanded.
“Did you take my flash drive?” she asked without preamble.
Billie frowned and shifted uneasily. “No,” he lied.
“You’re lying.”
“It’s not a big deal,” he grumbled, “I just needed it to borrow music from a kid at school. You weren’t using it.”
Alya held out her hand. “Gimmie.”
Billie sighed loudly. “Fine.”
He stomped away, only to return with the red flashdrive, the label “Chem Project” was intact, but peeling off. Alya frowned at this. Billie stuck out his tongue.
“Thanks!” she called at her brother’s retreating back.
There was little space left, but it looked like Billie hadn’t needed to delete any files to fit all of his music onto the 20gb drive. It also didn’t look like he had opened any of it. The word documents were password protected and labeled things like “Mitochondria 2-10-17”, “Nobel Gases 15-11-17”, in an extra effort to keep nosy siblings and akumas away from the real info.
Under the subterfuge and passwords were high-res photos of Ladybug, a blurry screencap of a textbook, a list of schools in Paris, and several text documents detailing dozens of theories.
Nothing conclusive, of course.
It would take a lot of leg work and some questionable legality, but if Alya could get her hands on a list of MonstArtist’s victims, it might be enough to uncover Ladybug's identity.
Cat declined to join Alya at the statue garden the next day.
“I can’t risk it. In the dark, at the outskirts of Paris, I can run around as Cat Noire. But in broad daylight, at a public monument?” they shook their head, rustling their blonde hair like a tree in the wind. “Hawkmoth would notice. And he’d wonder what I was doing. We need to find Ladybug, but we can’t let Hawkmoth catch on. If he even knows we’re looking, he might find her first. If you find any matches to the yearbooks, I’ll check them after dark.”
“More breaking and entering?” Alya asked with a wry smile.
“What, you’re tired of playing cat burglar with me already?” Cat winked.
“Ugh, get out of here!” she shooed the hero away with a laugh.
It was nice to see that Cat Noire could still pun. Maybe there was still some normalcy left in the world, and some hope that Paris could be saved.
Still, Alya was perturbed.
Sometimes she forgot Hawkmoth was a real person behind all of the suffering. It had been going on for so long that sometimes the akumas felt like a force of nature, a tide of bad luck that Ladybug and Cat Noire fought against without rest.
But he was an individual who planned every attack. One person who looked at the pain and anguish of the citizens of Paris and saw weapons to exploit. Cat Noire had to be more careful than she did. They had to worry not only about the police and the media’s reaction, but also the ever-present threat of Hawkmoth, and how his awareness of Cat’s actions could give him an advantage over the heroes.
Alya went alone. She shuffled the photocopies between her hands, flipping between pages to ensure she wasn’t missing a face. The wind threatened to steal the papers away, tugging at her hands. She tugged back, fighting against the spring chill.
She walked down the rows slowly, stopping at each statue. If the face was much too old or too young to be in 10 th grade, she moved on. If they seemed the right age, she checked their face against the yearbook pages.
It was slow going, but she thought she’d found five matches in the statue garden. It wasn’t a sure thing, and it wasn’t complete, but it was a start.
Five matches. Five statues. Five victims of MonstArtist who were incapacitated at the same time Ladybug disappeared, and who probably had a copy of the textbook that Ladybug was spotted holding. Five possible leads to Ladybug’s identity.
Five dead ends.
* * * * * * *
Cat Noire checked in with her that night, knocking at her window. She gave them the names, and expected that to be the end of it.
Abruptly, Cat grabbed her around the waist and used their extendable baton to propel them both toward the statue garden. At the school, Alya had stiffened and remained rigid until Cat put her down. This time, she tried to tuck her body against theirs and calm the hammering heart in her chest. She was somewhat unsuccessful.
At the garden, Alya dutifully led the superhero to each suspect in turn, introducing the statues to Cat Noire by name and school. Cat leaned in to scrutinize their faces. Alya watched with bated breath.
She wondered what they were looking for, if it was some magical moment. She wondered if Cat Noire could really recognize Ladybug out of her costume, considering that they didn’t know her identity to begin with.
(Alya allowed herself a moment to lament the demise of one of her favorite theories. ‘I can’t believe Cat Noire doesn’t know Ladybug’s secret identity,’ she thought, ‘I guess they really aren’t together.’)
“Not this one,” Cat said shortly. They stepped back and looked at Alya, gesturing for her to lead on.
‘How do you know?” she blurted out. Hair could be changed, eyes were clearly mutable by magic. Was Cat looking for the curve of her jaw, the width of her nose?
Cat blushed in embarrassment.
“This statue isn’t wearing earrings. Pl- I have evidence that Ladybug had her Miraculous on when she was frozen.”
* * * * * * *
The first four statues weren’t wearing earrings. The fifth was, but Cat Noire confirmed that the hoops winding through her cartilage didn’t match the shape or size of Ladybug’s Miraculous, so the last suspect was cleared as well.
“We’re back to square one,” Alya lamented, collapsing onto a stone bench at the entrance to the garden.
“No we’re not,” Cat Noire announced. “We just crossed several hundred people off the suspect list!”
“Yeah, and we’re back to having no idea who- wait. You’re right. We know Ladybug goes to one of these schools-“
“-probably-“ Cat Noire interrupted.
“-and that she got frozen by MonstArtist. We also know she’s not here in the garden. Her statue must’ve been removed by her family,” Alya concluded. “So we have narrowed it down.”
“But how do we identify a statue that’s hidden?”
Alya thought this over.
“We find…who isn’t here.”
“What.” Their question was flat, but the cat ears on their head perked upright with curiosity.
“Absentee records. We have a list, now, of students who are in the statue garden. So now we subtract those from the students who were absent the day after the attack, and we’ll have a new list of possible Ladybugs!”
Cat Noire nodded along.
“We just have to get access to the class roll…” Possibilities flitted through her mind. Alya wished she could remember that first day more clearly. No matter. She could make a list of who was absent in her class yesterday, and cross off the students who had evacuated. But that was only one class out of several at Collège Françoise Dupont, and that didn’t even cover the other two schools.
“Hey, what school do you go to?” she asked Cat Noire.
They jumped. Their shoulders rose toward their (human) ears, tense. “Alya, I definitely can’t tell you that!”
Alya huffed. “Cat, I’m not trying to find out who you are, I’m trying to see if you can help!”
Cat remained tense. “Well I don’t go to Collège Lycée Charlemagne or Collège Privé Charles Péguy, so it doesn’t matter!”
Alya noticed they didn’t deny going to Collège Françoise Dupont. And sure, maybe it was because Alya went there and she clearly didn’t need another insider at her own school. But Alya filed that away in her mind, just in case.
* * * * * * *
Alya checked out her own class first. After that she planned to use Cat Noire as a distraction (knowing or unknowing) to break into Principal Damocles’ office for the rest of the attendance records. She would worry about the other schools after she checked all of the victims from Collège Françoise Dupont.
Alya was getting desperate. A few hours after her meeting with Cat, an akuma attacked. He wasn’t as bad as MonstArtist had been, bit he did create a small army of minions before Cat Noire defeated him. Those minions included friends, neighbors, and Alya’s mother.
They had not been released when Cat defeated the akuma. They would not be free until Alya found Ladybug.
Alya should have returned to her methodical search. She should have checked one of the other schools first, leaving her own, the easiest target, for last.
But she didn’t. Partially it was desperation. But also, a hunch. Collège Françoise Dupont had the highest concentration of akuma victims in the city. Hawkmoth tended to strike in the center of Paris. The tourist areas, some said. A common theory was that he was trying for largest collateral damage, and the highest visibility. Alya wondered whether the school was targeted because it happened to be near this area, or vice versa.
In her class, there were several unconfirmed victims of MonstArtist: Sabrina, Max, Kim, and Marinette. Sabrina’s name was already crossed off. Her statue had been present in the garden, and Cat Noire had already checked her.
Plus, Alya’s mind whispered, Sabrina had been akumatized in the past. Alya had seen Ladybug with Sabrina.
The truth was close. Out of a sense of superstition or hesitance, Alya avoided considering the full implications of her clues just yet. She spread them out in her mind:
Collège Françoise Dupont
The 10 th grade History textbook
Absence from school since last Tuesday
Someone who had not yet been akumatized.
Although they were first and second on her list, Alya skipped over Max and Kim for now. Instead, she grabbed her bag and her phone, and headed to the Dupain-Cheng bakery.
Alya was surprised to find it open, given the late hour and the general state of the city. Most businesses in the area were closed, their owners either evacuated or battening down the hatches in case of attack.
The bell chimed as she pulled open the door, as if it was a normal day. As if there were customers waiting, and Alya was arriving to hang out with Marinette.
“Coming!” the voice of Marinette’s mother called from the back.
Alya ran her fingers down the shoulder strap of her bag. Marinette’s mother had never been anything but kind to her. She didn’t deserve to be lied to, but Alya also couldn’t tell her the entire truth behind her visit.
“Alya?” Sabine Cheng greeted her. She was carrying a rag, which she was using to wipe flour off of her hands.
“Hey Mme. Cheng. I- uh, I’m surprised to see you’re open.”
Marinette’s mother laughed. “Well, you know Tom. If he couldn’t bake, he’d be a mess. I only hope we can sell some of this before it all goes stale!”
Alya tried to laugh. It didn’t fool anyone.
Sabine gave her a sad smile. “Are you here to see Marinette?”
Alya nodded.
As Sabine led her up the stairs toward Marinette’s room, Alya regained her voice and began to speak. Sabine deserved something, some justification for Alya selfishly exhuming her daughter’s memory.
“It was quiet at school without her,” Alya began. “It’s closed now, for a couple days, but when all this started we were still attending class. Marinette was one of the first to g-go,” she tripped over her words, but kept going, gaining speed. “She’s usually so positive, it was hard to feel normal without her there. I kept hoping she was just late to class, you know?”
Sabine nodded, “I know. You and Nino came here after school that day to check on her, remember?”
“Yeah. I was just hoping she was sick or something.”
“We all have to keep hoping,” Sabine confided, “That one day Ladybug will return and deliver Marinette back to us.”
“Definitely,” Alya agreed sadly, quietly.
Caught up in her own story, Alya’s eyes were already tearing up as she approached the cold, hard facade of her best friend. Like all of the victims, Marinette was frozen in a moment. Her body was twisted, her head turned as she noticed something behind her. Her legs were bent as she prepared to run.
Alya spared a moment to be thankful Marinette hadn’t had time to take a step. With both feet on the ground, she had retained enough balance to stay upright, even while frozen. Alya wasn’t sure what could happen to the statues if they broke, and she hoped they never found out.
Marinette’s hands were close to her body, one holding tight to the strap of her purse. The other hand was resting on the latch of the small bag, thumb pressed to the metal. She must’ve been about to open it.
Alya was overwhelmed by emotion. She had seen dozens of frozen victims before this moment. Classmates, friends, and enemies had stood before her, rendered inert and still by the magic of Hawkmoth. Marinette was somehow different. Maybe it was the closeness of their friendship. Maybe it was the setting, seeing her here, in her home. Maybe it was Marinette herself. She was usually so animated, so alive. She wore her emotions on her face and felt so deeply, it was hard not to feel with her.
Pushing through the torrent of horror, regret, and sadness, through tears, and through her own reluctance, Alya lifted her eyes to Marinette’s face-
And to the earrings hanging innocently in her ears.
