#kwami pollen

[natheuchu]

Translation: Pollen

My version is the humanization of the bee's kwami.

[vulpinmusings]

Chloe: 'Sup losers! Your queen has arrived. Ladybug: Chloe? What are you doing here? Chloe: Seeing as my half-a-sister hasn't made an appearance yet, I'm putting in a bid to resume my place as the Holder of the Bee Miraculous. I do have primacy, after all. Ladybug: Look, Chloe, I have more than enough headaches to deal with around here as it is. Chloe: I'm willing to dial my behavior back to before that little Miracle Queen snafu, if that's what it- Pollen: Down with the bourgeois! Chloe: P-Pollen?! Pollen: Oh! Hi Chloe! I didn't see you there. Chloe: Why are you dressed like Napoleon Bonaparte? Ladybug: That's one of the headaches I have to deal with. Chloe: Uh, maybe I'll just come back later.

[amesakigami]

Pollen, the real queen.

[syndianites]

A Queen Serves and Protects

Chapter Two

Last Chapter --> Current --> Next Chapter!

Summary:

Post-Style Queen, Pre-Queen Wasp.

Chloe finds the Bee Miraculous, but instead of finding an obliging, subservient Kwami, she finds the Kwami of Order and Subjugation, and Pollen is not about to let herself be used like Nooroo was.

Granted, the only danger in a teenage girl is the damage she poses to herself. Can Pollen shape Chloe into a hero? Or will she stubbornly refuse to change and remain the bitter, harsh person the city has long since known?

[My take on how Chloe’s character could have developed] ——————————————————————————————

Twenty four hours went by excruciatingly slow for Pollen.

First, she had to wait through the night. Chloe hadn’t unboxed her until late in the day, when the sun was almost gone. That left little time in the day for much interaction with others.

But she didn’t spend this time twiddling her thumbs. She did what research she could. After observing Chloe- who she learned the name of moments after their deal- meander on her phone and laptop for a few hours, she had a dubious grasp on how the current technology worked.

It was quite the adventure.

But after trial and error, she managed to look Chloe up on the internet. (And what a fascinating thing!). The results gave her a basic background; Daughter of the Mayor of Paris, Mother is a renowned expert in the fashion industry, and so on. She seemed clean, for all Pollen could tell.

So she searched her room. Most of what she could see was clearly expensive, from shiny new gadgets to prim and proper clothes. Beyond some Ladybug merchandise- and oh boy was this girl a fan of Ladybug- nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

A sneak around the hotel didn’t reveal much about Chloe, herself, but her parents on the other hand….

What disasters!

Calling their relationship dysfunctional would be a complement. They were completely polarized opposites, and not in the good, healthy way. Her mother was derisive and cruel, refusing to associate with those she believed were below her and didn’t meet her exceptional standards. Her father was, despite his position, a lapdog. He would bend over backwards to please his wife, acting like a doormat.

Together, they were the perfect image of an Evil Queen and her loyal Servant.

It didn’t give Pollen any good feelings about how Chloe herself would act. Would she take after her parents? Or would she be her own person?

Day time did not ease her fears. Chloe was brash and rude, clearly taking after her mother. She didn’t remember anyone’s names, was haughty and snappy towards her staff, and clearly was comfortable acting above everyone else.

Not a good sign at all.

The way she treated her ‘friend’ was yet another bad sign. Just like her mother had her father as a lapdog she, too, had her friend as a lapdog. However, Pollen took note of how she did remember her name. That must count for something, she considered doubtfully.

School was a disaster for Pollen.

Chloe started out just as haughty as she had in the hotel. Somehow, she got worse. Rude to other students, sneering at and belittling them, and outright mean. Treating her ‘friend’ as a servant. Disregarding other’s feelings. Causing chaos in the class.

There was little Pollen saw as redeemable for Chloe. Between her attitude towards those who worked for her and her family and those who she spent most of her time around, acts of kindness were nigh impossible to find.

As they made their way home, Pollen mulled over how to find Ladybug or Master Fu. In theory, she could try and call out to the other kwami, but such an act took a lot of power and could draw the attention of Hawkmoth or worse. She could camp out until Ladybug and Chat Noir had to come out for another akuma, but how would she manage to transport her miraculous across the city without getting snatched by said akuma?

But as Chloe walked into the lobby of the hotel, her mother’s voice caught her attention.

“Clara!” Audrey strutted up to her daughter, typing away at her phone with one hand. “I need you to fetch me something dear.”

‘Clara?’ Pollen mused, ‘Her name’s Chloe.’

Chloe perked up. “Of course mother. And my name’s Chloe. What can I do for you?”

Audrey waved her hand, “Whatever you say, Cindy. I heard that Adrien Agreste, Gabriel’s son, is in your class. I need you to ensure that Gabriel seated me in the correct location this time. The reshoot of the fashion show is today and I will not be in the second row again.”

From where she could just see Chloe from the gap in her purse, Pollen watched her face fall before she straightened back up with a nod. “Of course! Putting you in the second row is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous!”

“Yes, yes, now please leave. I have business to attend to Carrie.” Audrey dismissed Chloe with a wave before heading deeper into the hotel.

Chloe, despite being misnamed three times in a row, seemed determined to please her mother. She gripped the handle of her bag tighter before rummaging in it to fish out her phone. Barely looking up, she wandered towards the elevator that would take her to her penthouse suite.

When the doors closed and left Chloe alone in the elevator, Pollen poked her head out of the bag. “Is it often your mother gets your name wrong?”

Her lips thinned as she pressed them together. “Yes.” Chloe’s response was short and clipped.

Pollen mulled this response over. Pieces of the puzzle that was Chloe were falling into place. As the doors opened again, Pollen ducked back down into the purse.

Chloe continued to text until a smile lit her face up. “Oh, Adrikins! I can always count on you.”

She skipped into her room, shooting a text to her mother- who didn’t respond- that her seat was guaranteed to be in the front row. Chloe went to toss her bag before remembering that it was occupied and lowering it down on a chair gently.

“Alright, Pollen, how was I? As great as you imagined I would be?” Chloe placed the back of her hand under her chin proudly.

In lieu of an answer, Pollen merely replied,”It hasn’t been twenty four hours yet, Chloe.”

Chloe groaned, grumbling complaints about how her heroic qualities should be obvious by now, but ultimately let it go. They had made a deal, after all.

“Oh,” Chloe said suddenly, “Sabrina will be coming over soon, so you’ll want to hide out for a while.”

A perfect opportunity to see what Chloe was like behind closed doors.

Turns out, she was strangely sweet. 

Sabrina and Chloe played together like any teens would; watching shows together, gossiping- albeit in a less than kind way- doing each others’ make-up, and most embarrassingly playing ‘Ladybug and Chat Noir’. Despite herself, Pollen found it endearing.

Still, it was not enough to sway her. Endearing or not, Chloe was not fit for being a superhero.

///////

The fashion show was cute. True to word, Chloe and her family were sat in the front row where Audrey critiqued- quite loudly for such an event- each outfit that came about. A few she praised, but they were few and far between. 

When Adrien Agreste appeared, the Style Queen gave an appreciative hum. “What quality craftsmanship. Surely an exceptional designer made that hat.”

It wasn’t until after the show that things went south.

Audrey had approached Adrien and, to many’s surprise, Gabriel Agreste in the flesh to discuss the fashion. 

“My dear, it seems you’ve set up yet another exceptional line of clothing. That hat dear Adrien is wearing is quite the gem among them.” Audrey gushed to a polite but stone-faced Gabriel.

“Ah,” Gabriel began, “That hat is not a design of my own.”

Adrien piped up here, “It was actually made by a friend of mine! Marianette,” he called over his shoulder, locking eyes with a shocked dark haired girl. “Come show Audrey this hat you made!” 

Nervous and stuttering, Marianette explained the logistics of her hat and its design, from the synthetic feather to the careful craftsmanship. Audrey, a known harsh critic, glowed as she listened.

“Fabulous, my dear!” she crowed, “I simply must see more of your work. How would you like to come to New York with me to design more fashion for a line of mine?”

Pollen, invested in the conversation, was pulled out of it by a shaking sensation. She looked up to see Chloe outright trembling as she pulled her hands into fists.

“Mother! Why would you take her of all people!” Chloe burst out. All eyes turned to her. 

“Why, Connie, it’s because she is quite exceptional! I would recognize such talent a country away,” Audrey replied with a dismissive wave.

“So am I!” 

A laugh. “Dear, the only exceptional thing about you is your mother.”

Had it not been for the hubbub of people around them, you could have heard a pin drop. Chloe stared resolutely at the floor, teeth grinding together and tears threatening to fall. Marianette, for her part, looked like a deer in headlights, stuck between a sharp drop off a cliff and an incoming car.

“Now Audrey,” Gabriel started, before getting cut off.

“I am exceptional!” Chloe shouted. “I will show you! I’m going to be a super heroine! Just you wait, I’ll be better than this girl will ever be!”

Audrey outright cackled. “Oh honey, keep dreaming. There is not a heroic bone in your body.”

Eyes watering and lips trembling, Chloe turned on a dime and stormed off. Pollen caught Marianette make an aborted move towards her, but was stopped by Adrien putting a hand on her arm.

Fuming and ready to bawl, Chloe bust out the front doors and began running down the sidewalk. For minutes, safely tucked into Chloe’s bag, all Pollen can hear is hard footsteps, people shouting, and Chloe’s heavy breathing.

After hearing doors slam open and closed repeatedly, Chloe and Pollen are left in silence. When Pollen braved a look out the purse, she sees that they have found their way back to the locker room at Chloe’s school. Seeing that they were alone, she moved out into the open.

“Fuck!” Chloe exploded. “How dare she!”

Feeling the rage roiling off Chloe, Pollen rushed to calm her. “Chloe, take a deep breath. Give yourself a minute to let it simmer.”

Icy eyes shot up to look at Pollen. “Take a breath? Let it simmer? Are you kidding! I have done my best to make my mother see I am exceptional, so show her that  I am good enough, and what does she do? Invites Dupain-Cheng of all people to go with her to New York.”

Pacing back and forth in front of the benches, Chloe growled. “Do you know when the last time I saw my mother for more than a day was? Years ago! Years, Pollen!” Tears trickled down her cheeks as Chloe caved in on herself. “I’ve done my best to be just like her, to show her I can be great too. Why won’t she ever look at me?”

With a hesitant pause, Pollen reached a paw out to Chloe’s shoulder. “Some people can’t be pleased, Chloe. You shouldn’t base your self worth on the word of another.”

Chloe jerked her shoulder away, turning her back to Pollen. “You don’t understand.”

“My mother left when I was young.” She walked forward towards the door so that she could peer out the window. “I didn’t understand why. She didn’t even say goodbye.”

“But,” Chloe continued, “If I can just get her to see that I’m worth staying for, she’ll stay here. Maybe, just maybe, I can convince her to be part of our family again.”

Red-rimmed eyes and wet cheeks turned back to Pollen. “It’s just so hard. She hardly cares for me at all.”

A pause. “Pollen?” Chloe bit her lip. “Am I unlovable?”

“Of course not. Chloe, no one is beyond love. Not even the worst of people.” Pollen could feel the tides shifting. Before, she was determined to leave Chloe behind. But now? Her heart ached at the thought of abandoning her.

Chloe starts to say something else, but all Pollen could hear was the flap of wings. Her eyes flicked to behind Chloe to where the locker room door was just set ajar. A delicate butterfly of deep, cracked purple squeezed its way inside.

“Chloe!” Pollen yelled. But it was too late. The butterfly touched down on her white sunglasses and disappeared without a sound.

A sudden blank look came across Chloe’s face. A purple butterfly mask appeared across her eyes. Every part of Pollen screamed that she was in danger. Not just from an akumatized Chloe, but from Hawkmoth knowing that she was with Chloe.

Her eyes darted around the room. She needed to hide. It would be safer for the both of them if she kept herself unknown.

“Yes, Hawkmoth.”

[milliethekitty27-writing]

Bees

There are many kinds of bees.

Honeybees, for one. They’re sweet, and soft. They work hard to make food to feed their ever growing families. Bumblebees hum loudly and cheerfully and visit every flower with the same eagerness they do any other. Carpenter bees burrow into the wood to make their nests, carving beautiful tunnels that can stretch for what feels like miles. Little mason bees zip along as fast as they can, then tuck themselves in their homes after a hard day’s work. 

Bees are hardworking. They are loyal. They work for the good of the community, they love hard and they stand strong against any threat to their hive, even at the cost of their life. They are stubborn and headstrong, they are passionate for their work and they love to be busy. They hum and dance and love.

Most of Pollen’s bees died in defense of the hive. The rest of the Kwamis and their users, or even family or friends, escape while she and her bees buy them time. They stand in confidence and they protect what is theirs, even when there seems to be no point. They do it for their families, for their beliefs, for their homes. They do it because they think it is the right thing to do.

She has had honeybees. Honeybees like Sofi, her little Dutch baker. She had helped her mother when her brother and her father went to war. She had done her part and protected her home. She’d passed on messages and she loved her family, she had volunteered with nurses and turned her cheek at the foreign soldier boys who had no reason to be standing in her home. She had made bread for her neighbors and shared what she had with those who needed it. She had loved her family, her friends, and her people. Pollen had been proud of her. Bij shared food, shared news, tried to help in the ways she could without risking her family even when there was no hope. Pollen had watched her grow into what would have been a beautiful queen if she had not been struck down by green gas that tore into your lungs until you lost all air. Pollen had been sold in an attempt to get more flour to survive a war like no other. 

She has had bumble bees. While Plagg broke the Ottomans and Tikki played in England, long before the most recent Ladybug and Chat Noir, Pollen had lived in France. François had been bright and gentle and soft, hard working and not very bright, but he had had a big heart and a soft soul. He had fought for what he believed to be right and Pollen had watched him grow from a gentle farm boy into a child of the Revolution. Frelon’s sword had taken many a man down in protection of the friends he made, in defense of his beliefs and the country he was falling in love with. He had marched across Europe with a great emperor king and he had dropped her in Prussia. She’d fallen out of his jacket pocket and he hadn’t noticed. He had never come back to get her. 

Her favorite of her mason bees had been a young man in China, centuries ago. Bohai was strong and capable and very bright. He built great ships to sail far away, but he’d never been tempted to sail with them. He had lived a quiet, good life, and Mìfēng had only gone for those who hurt those he loved, for those who were weak, because he had come from little and worked hard enough to better himself. Bohai had fallen when someone attacked his family for the money kept in a pretty blue jar, for the little glittering gems in his wife’s ears and around her throat. His son had been barely a year old and he was left fatherless, but not motherless because Bohai had bought time for her to escape with a box of Kwami in her arms, jewels at her throat, and a baby across her back.

Her most recent carpenter bee was Olga, who had picked her up and decided to keep her. She was strong and determined and loved her husband and children with all her heart. She had worked in a factory, making cars, with her beautiful pin hidden in an old threadbare jacket. War came. Olga kept the pin in her jacket and took flight with women who’d lost too much and Kayf flew threw the sky. When Olga’s beloved Dmitri had been struck, left on the battlefield, she had changed too.

Bees change slowly, you see. It takes a great deal to turn them into war machines. Bees don’t sting until they’re driven to.

Olga had turned into a hornet, grieving and angry with those who’d stolen her husband and the father of her children and a good man, and Pollen had not blamed her. Pollen understood, you see, what it was to lose a hive and feel like you could do nothing. Olga had taken her plane as far as she could before she crashed and burned. Kayf became Osa but it killed Olga in the end. Pollen was found by a gentle woman who drove her hive to safety and brought to Poland, where it had been safer, and eventually found her way to Fu and then to a France she hadn’t seen since François.

Her British bee, Elizabeth, had wanted nothing more than to strike out at those who held her down, who forced her children to work more hours in a day than they could afford for so little money that they starved, who forced her husband and brothers into mines where they lost their breath forever, who drove her father to drink and killed her body but not her spirit. When Pollen found her, Miss Bee had been young and hopeful in the way that children often are, but she had lost that spark with age. Her striped coat had turned yellow in her anger and Yellow Wasp had screamed her rage in the streets of a great city that hated her lack of wealth. She threw chairs through windows and waved signs in the cobblestone streets, demanding change that would not come in her lifetime. 

Oh yes, her bees could be wasps. Her little honey bees could become the fiercest warriors of their hives when they were threatened. Her first holder had been such a warrior. He had protected the monastery she’d first lived in with all the power he could muster. He had been born as a bumble bee, then turned into a wasp to protect his nest and those he cared for. He fell protecting the box and those who lived inside. 

Bees are not always angry. They can calm, they can be serene, they can turn from warriors to workers as often as it takes. Those bees who survived would often return to their gentle natures, their work, and their hives. Pollen had seen it time and time again. Most bees are builders, you see. They build their hives, they work to support it in jobs they love, and they do what they have to do to protect it and those inside. They have many different types and many different lives. They can be warriors and farmers or bakers and mothers or kings and scholars. Bees make their hives strong and protect what is in it. It is your heart, your courage, that matters, not your position in life.  

Creativity and Destruction are always there. They balance each other, they work together and against each other and make the world what it is. But they are nothing without the bees that keep their hive clean and safe and working, that protect and love more fiercely than they could dream. Bees are workers. They are warriors. They work for the good of the group because that is what will bring peace and harmony. The bee works because it loves to, it serves because it must. A bee serves because it loves.

Pollen wonders how long it will take her newest little Queen to learn this. 

-----

Thank you for reading! 

I think Pollen is one of the most interesting of the Kwami and while I might not like bees, I like her and I like Chloe when she’s not being a problem. (so… never) I wish we got more backstory on the miraculous users of old. 

In case it wasn’t clear: Bij was a baker’s daughter in World War I. Frelon was a farm boy with big dreams during the French Revolution. Mìfēng was a Chinese man married to the Guardian sometime before 1525, which is when the Ming dynasty scuttled their navy. Kayf/Osa was a Soviet factory worker during World War II. Miss Bee/Yellow Wasp was a working class woman in Victorian England. The new little Queen refers to Chloe. 

[tamacatleen]

Hi !

I just posted this kwami on Redbubble :

 https://www.redbubble.com/fr/people/jkatleen/works/41217661-cant-i-just-bee-miraculous?asc=u&p=spiral-notebook

Hope you like it ❤️

[laphita]

[officialladynoirette]

Just some boujee blondes enjoying pool life. Allegra is out of shot about to dive in the water like the graceful swan she is