#pirate!ladybug

[purrincess-chat]

Playing around with doll makers some more, and I made a lil angry Pirate!LB from my Pirate AU that I’ve been planning for like ever. 

[callmeakumatized]

Fish Funk - ch. 2

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Mermay Day Two - Prompt: Petty Crime

A mass moved overhead, temporarily covering the light peeking through the holes in the ceiling. Expecting some type of big fish or whale of some sort - and hoping it wasn't something more menacing - Adrien tore his eyes away from his latest ship find - a soft, pink something - and looked up. His eyes did a double-take before widening.

It wasn't a fish, or any type of underwater life. The details of the whatever-it-was was swallowed in shadow, but the way it cut through the water instead of gliding with the flow of it, leaving a massive trail in its wake, gave it a decidedly inorganic feeling. Plagg joined his side, glancing in the direction Adrien was silently staring. His whiskers twitched.

"Is that…?" Adrien asked his companion, words so quiet in pent-up excitement they were nearly lost to the current. His grip tightened around his coral-colored find, his tail propelling him upward to peer at the dark shape through the hole.

"A ship?" Plagg responded. Adrien nodded. "Yeah, that's a ship."

A ship. A real ship!

A million questions raced around Adrien's brain. Looking to Plagg, the start of his sure-to-be-lengthy interrogation on the tip of his tongue, Adrien faltered. For one thing, Plagg's answers were sure to be short and unhelpful. The way Plagg moved now, twitched his body and whiskers and gazing at the fleeing ship only backed his theory. Whether the overgrown fish would simply be unresponsive - or in mild distress - if asked any questions about it, Adrien didn't know. But there wasn't time to debate about asking or not. Before the dark bulk could leave his vision, Adrien darted after it.

Until a hard slap on his tail caused him to flip around.

Plagg looked serious for the first time since Adrien had known him. His wide lips were tight, his body seeming to curl up on himself and back again in clear agitation. The stance caused Adrien to float back down to his friend, though he continued to glance back wistfully toward the ship's direction.

"They're humans."

Adrien turned to look Plagg straight on.

"What?"

"Humans. They look like merpeople, but they don't have tails. They have no fins of any sort, nor scales." He wiggled his own flippers briefly to accentuate the point.

The description left much to be desired, the mental picture it painted enough to cause an uneasy sick feeling in the merboy's stomach.

How could someone with half a body even survive!?

"B-But how - ?" Adrien wondered aloud, twirling his forgotten find around in his hands. "H-How do they swim?"

Plagg's whiskers twitched again, though Adrien couldn't quite read his expression (slightly understandable, since it was just a wide blubbery mass).

"They don't," Plagg spoke flatly.

"Don't - ?"

"They don't swim, 'kid. There's no water up there to swim in." Plagg swam in a circle out of the hold, gesticulating with his tail as he came back to Adrien, belly facing the light.

It was a concept that, as a merperson, Adrien was, quite literally, unable to understand.

Plagg "laughed", a short sputtering snort he seemed to reserve for when Adrien looked or did or said something particularly stupid. The merboy was about to reprimand him, but Plagg, with a flash of his eyes, spun around Adrien and took off suddenly, moving faster than Adrien would have believed possible. With only a moment of surprised hesitation, Adrien, with his "treasure" still gripped in his hand, darted after Plagg.

(Where had this speed been when they were chased by a shark just a few days ago!?)

Plagg dove into the collection of jagged rocks that lay next to the open space where the ships were. There was a brasher rushing in the ocean here than Adrien had ever heard before. The countless currents pushed and pulled, tugging at everything that passed through. It was difficult to muscle through, a task made harder by the flighty light of the sun. At times the sun shone brighter, and in other parts, its light was doused completely. At those times, Adrien struggled to get his eyes to adjust fast enough to see where Plagg had gone. It was an irony he didn't find funny at all; having lived in darkness his entire life, Adrien's eyes still struggled to readjust to it after being somewhere lighter.

After a long while, Plagg finally slowed, almost to a stop, and Adrien swam passed him with a yelp before spinning in the water and backtracking. He wanted to say something, wanted to reprimand Plagg for doing this, but his gills at the side of his neck were sucking in water too strongly to eke out any sound. Plagg, who, despite being constantly lazy, hadn't any trouble from the ferocious swim, spoke instead.

"Adrien," Plagg started, voice low and tight. "This is the most important thing to remember: humans can be dangerous." Plagg had been noticeably more agitated this trip than on any other. The subject, and perhaps where they were (wherever this was) seemed to exacerbate the black creature's emotions. His forked tail whipped so hard and fast after his admission to Adrien, it made a loud snap! in the water. Adrien startled at the sound.

"They eat fish."

The disturbing depiction Adrien had painted in his mind from earlier now had a few added rows of shark teeth.

Adrien had no doubt he would have nightmares the next time he slept.

"Plagg…" So many questions, so many things he wanted to know, and Adrien didn't seem to be able to articulate anything. One question, though, had continuously nagged at the back of his mind since their first meeting, and seemed to be the only thing he could ask now.

"Plagg, why are you sharing all this with me?"

All at once, Plagg paused in his movements. He obviously hadn't been expecting this question, but the catfish's lip turned up in the corner a bit. It was almost his signature smile, but the sadness there, the hardness in his blank eyes, made Adrien wonder, not for the first time, not only how old Plagg was, but all the experiences that he had been privy to.

"Because your people have lived in darkness for too long, merprince."

Merprince.

That wasn't actually a word, but Adrien didn't say anything. Plagg had to know that, using it to show Adrien that he, at some point or another, had found out who he really was…or perhaps that he had known all along. Adrien let this realization, and Plagg's confession, sink in, along with its obvious implications.

Like that the merpeople were, or would be, Adrien's responsibility.

And that the prince was meant to bring the light back to them all.

It was something that Adrien had mused over through the years. The plans to do so ranged from daring to secretive, from bringing Plagg in to meet his father, or bringing pieces of the ships to show the merpeople. Every plan, no matter how dumb it sounded, or how well-thought out it was, all ended when Adrien would come face-to-face with his father.

Gabriel was made king years before Adrien was born. No one really knew how old he was. After his victory over the great oppressor, Hawkmoth, Gabriel was granted a trident from Neptune himself, or so the stories went. Among other magical powers, the object seemed to also grant immortality. The new king, upon reviewing their world to be corrupt and dangerous, moved the entire civilization from their previous home of Atlantis - a legend in its own right - to Ferro Papilio, a place buried deep in the mountain regions of the open ocean. It was where they had lived ever since.

It was here, though years later, he had met Adrien's mother, the first woman in his long reign he had ever fallen for.

Adrien was born soon after their marriage, and, according to his private tutor, the kingdom had rejoiced to have a prince. Though he acknowledged his role as a father, Gabriel never seemed to take a real liking to Adrien. Nothing spoke from him of admiration or acceptance, but where Gabriel failed, Emilie, his mother, picked up the slack. From her he learned the value of a soul, of making others happy, or helping others feel loved. Though Adrien was often kept at home for weeks at a time, his mother was there with him, and he really couldn't find a fault in his little world because of it.

Mere weeks before Adrien's 13th birthday, however, his mother died, the love and comfort in Adrien's world perishing along with her.

There were no real threats to them in Ferro Papilio, Gabriel always drawled on. But their protected city didn't stop Adrien from feeling incredibly vulnerable that day. He had wanted to escape, wanted to see something rather than everything here that reminded him of his mother. But Adrien was never let out of the house after that, and never knew why. When trying to talk to his father about it, the merman would never want to see him. The only companion he was left with was a small crab named Nathalie, who, he learned quickly, was more into spilling his secrets to Gabriel than being a confidant. In was in this stretch of time when Adrien had finally seen his home for what it was. Although living in Ferro Papilio kept them safe, it also left the merpeople in endless darkness, figuratively and literally, and they had no idea.

There was one time Adrien had, after a particularly heart-wrenching day feeling the ghost of his mother's love and fearing he would never feel happiness again, went directly to his father to touch on the subject of what was out there. Adrien was looking for hope. But while the suffering merboy had only asked, in his love-starved state, what was beyond the borders Gabriel had raged at Adrien with a maniacal ferocity that made him retch for days. Unable to stand the mention of Adrien any more, Gabriel had sent him out to join the school. It was the first day that Adrien had been out of the house in weeks, and was, perhaps not so coincidentally, when he felt the warmth, when he met Plagg.

It was, perhaps, why he had so willingly followed.

How would he ever succeed the task now laid before him?

Adrien wasn't sure. But he would never give up trying.

The feel of something hard within the smooth texture of his stolen treasure from the ship suddenly caught Adrien's attention. Turning the billowing bulk through the water in front of him, Adrien let it flutter out fully to really look at it while feeling for the hard part that had passed his fingers a moment before. It moved softly in the current, mimicking a jelly-fish in some ways. While their colors were certainly similar, the feel of it resembled a dolphin's sleek body, smooth to the touch. He could see the small bulge now. Something was hidden in a pocket - like a seahorse's - on the side of his treasure. With tentative fingers, Adrien pulled it out, wondering what it was.

It was smooth and round, made out of a shiny substance that Adrien thought he had seen before, though covered with flecked of black and red. The color of this was unmarred, though a subtle pattern seemed etched into its surface: a wonky circle with four smaller circles on the top or bottom, depending on which way he looked at it.

Plagg's voice at his shoulder made Adrien suddenly jump.

"It's a ring. Put it on your finger."

At the same moment Adrien slipped the ring on, another mass passed over their heads. This time, when Adrien started upward, Plagg nodded his encouragement.

Neither saw the eels that had followed them. Nor the bright purple that glowed from their eyes.

[[ A/N: I add in more author’s notes and stuff on my ff.net and ao3 stories, just fyi. Thanks for reading!! :3 ]]

[buggaberry]

(Another?) Pirate/Mermaid AU

I don’t really know, this came to me listening to a bunch of Pirates of the Caribbean music…. Anyways!

•Obviously, at a much earlier time period. (‘Cause ain’t no pirates goin’ nowhere in this…. strange era.)

•Marinette still lives in a bakery in the grand city of Paris.

• The Miraculous’ still exist.

• Slightly(?) aged up. (Not too much, doesn’t matter with the time period.)

• The whole gang of classmates are still there, somewhere in the city.

• Mayor Bourgeois is still mayor/king. (some type of ruler, I guess.)

• But deep under the sea, there’s a mer-kingdom, called The Kingdom of Alu'Tel'Quessir. (Because I can and will use Elvish.)

• Gabriel is the king, and Adrien is a prince (who’s isolated and yada-yada)

• Merpeople are more or less water spirits.

• Merpeople who can change forms are called “Ahime-Taváris”. But are usually unaware that they can do so. (It also depends what they shift into, they can sometimes only turn human, some can turn into fairy-like creatures, and others can do multiple.)

• They don’t know because Gabriel banned shifting, he keeps them all under the sea and claims to be “protecting them”. (He basically made it frowned upon to be a shifter *cough* hypocrite *cough*)

• Appearance-wise, their tails are really elegant (Kinda fwooshy like a lionfish’s at the ends). Scales are very shimmery and reflect multiple colors, they also kinda have them scattered across their upper-body, chests are covered (both genders). They kinda have gills on their necks, and elvish ears with a bit of fin at the ends. Hair is akin to silk. They have a bit of “Glamour” also, having the ability to attract other creatures (almost like a siren, but not as strong.)

• Basically, in the black market, you hecka rich if you get one of these.

• Gabriel (who is a shifter) gets his hands on the butterfly miraculous, turning into the dreadful pirate, Hawkmoth. Who makes akuma villains (duh).

• Marinette turns into the heroic pirate Ladybug!

• Who needs to fish out a crew, so that’s where the classmates get dragged in. She had to hunt them out of a tavern.(They go by their akuma names, they weren’t akumatized themselves though.)

• The ship appears when she transforms. (Because the Miraculous powers accommodate to their situations.)

• Adrien gets dragged in when he sneaks out, he peaked out of the sea and there was a terrible storm at the same moment. He ends up washed ashore, Marinette ends up find him and going ‘ARE YOU OKAY?’. She kinda drags him home (after throwing a sheet over him, ‘cause modesty and stuff) she can’t really just leave him. So he gets up and he basically freaks out cause he can’t breathe-… but he can. He has legs (cue The Little Mermaid), and he flips out because 'DAD IS GONNA KILL ME’. Poor Mari on the side like 'what the heck is wrong?’ so she panics, everyone is basically panicking. After a while they calm down (kid gets clothes, but it’s kinda baggy and her dad’s), so they go into town and do a bit of shopping for the clueless boy. (After he figures out how the heck to function legs, kid keeps falling every five seconds and Mari thinks he might be sick or handicapped.)

• BUT HE DOES NOT SPEAK FRENCH. Adrien is babbling at Marinette in some mer-language and she’s clueless, but merpeople have the tendency to pick things up super fast, and he starts talking in French all the sudden, without even processing it. He sits there puzzled for quite a while. (He still has this really weird accent, it confuses a lot of people.)

• Adrien meets the crew in their “civilian forms”!

• They kinda chit-chat and he leaves after a little while, thanking her. But he still wanders 'cause “Ooh, outside world”.

• Adrien obtains the cat miraculous, and BOOM CHAT NOIR.

• Ladybug and her crew have been at it for a while at this point, so when he gets thrown into the picture they’re like 'wut?’ and he’s all 'What’s a pirate?’ and they kinda just question him.

• The Miraculous’ are used in the same way, holders are the same and all. Chat still has Cataclysm and Ladybug has her Lucky Charm.

• Chat Noir joins the crew, fails miserably a few times (because LEGS). He still has to rush back under the water, he can’t get caught by his dad, so he bounces back and forth. He also occasionally walks around as Adrien when there’s no akumas.

• Adrien is the only one who keeps his identity from the crew, they have a tad bit of trust issues with him. Nobody knows he’s actually a prince of the sea either (or else he’d be dead and sold by now).

• Nino and Adrien become BESTIES (Bubbler still thinks Chat is pretty weird).

• Marinette falls for Adrien, partially his glamour. On the other end, Chat thinks Ladybug is amazing and falls for her. (Cue love square shenanigans.)

• Adrien has to go into a secluded area to practice a bit of “being human” to himself (he tried underwater and he almost drowned). He challenges himself after a while and attempts to take up fencing for some fighting practice (he didn’t know what it was until nearly three hours of explaining from Nino).

• He gets REALLY good at fighting and such pretty quick, so Chat shows up one day and everyone is extremely shocked. (Ladybug was gawking the entire battle)

• Gabriel coincidentally isn’t home when there’s an akuma, so Adrien manages.

• Of course, Plagg and Tikki are the same. (Adrien has no choice but to steal camembert occasionally when he’s on land)

• They all battle akumas into the sunset and protect Paris. (Hawkmoth is basically just the Davy Jones of the sea.)

[callmeakumatized]

Fish Funk - ch. 4

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ao3 ff.net

Mermay Day Four – Prompt: Virtuoso

She was 11 when she conquered her first ship.

The question of how a miniscule girl of the uppers of upper-crust society was able to trap 47 pirates below deck and keep them there was a question that would forever be unanswered. The fact that, after the initial capture, and during the subsequent battle to keep them all there, the little princess was able to sew her own flag – from the fabric of their shirts – and then single-handedly sail herself to the nearest port to present 47 shirtless men to the kingdom for trial was, in essence, nothing short of miraculous.

"I'm just lucky, I guess!" was the girl's only response on the subject.

The captured pirates were mum on the subject. Whether this was from sheer embarrassment or from not truly knowing themselves, the people could only guess. And guess they did. The story wasn't a simple thing; the ship, a vessel of infamous history, had been long harassing people along the coastal European cities for years, building a notorious reputation that was not unfounded in dirty deeds. Princesa Marinette had been sailing with her parents to England when their vessel was overtaken, the sight already famous child causing an excitement akin to that of Pizaro's treasure to the seafaring thugs. Once she was on board with them, they wasted no time in sailing out of sight.

It was the last heist they would ever do. And though the pirates as a whole wouldn't speak of what she had done, the name "Pequeña Dama Suerte", "Little Lady Luck" became, from that time onward, the name associated with the Spanish princess.

She was 12 when she bested her mother, Queen Sabine, a renowned fighter in her own right, at fencing; 13 when she won against her father, the King, who was famous throughout Europe for his swordsmanship.

The girl was as small as she was strong…and smart. Her hands could barely grapple a longsword, but it didn't stop her from becoming adept enough with an epée to best any opponent who challenged her. They all entered laughing. They all left astounded. The general descriptions of their battles were "quick". They would tell of the way she seemed to flit around like a bug, even humming in the interims between rounds as if to round out the picture of an innocent creature who would sting at the first sign of trouble.

And sting she would.

She was 13 when she took her second ship, though it was the first one she had set out purposefully to capture.

The tales of a girl with the power of the sea and the gift of the sky became songs on the lips of sailors and lullabies to the babes of mariners. The girl they described had no knowledge that she had been painted as both a siren and an angel, an ethereal being without a name except "Ladybug". In the space of only two years, the rumors had grown into whispered myths. They transformed into stories told alongside Poseidon and Ceto, mermaids and Atlantis. Something magical to hope for…or a destructive entity to fear.

Until the ship that held Governor Bourgeois and the French colony heading to the Caribbean was recovered, Ladybug had lived in song and story. Now, though, the ethereal shown itself in corporal form; she fought like a dragon, the twin ships of the famed buccaneers downed within the hour she arrived. The ships were sunk to the bottom of the sea, along with any of the crew that had been foolish enough to stay aboard a ship set on fire. Le Grand, Bourgeois's ship, found itself suddenly armed, the colonists' weapons returned and then some. The resulting battle was short-lived; the captain was killed by the girl hero herself when he refused surrender, and the colonists found themselves neck deep in renewed heart and hope as they retook their own ship.

Marinette had sailed herself back home in Chloé's ship, explaining to her parents that she had been kidnapped and freed herself and sailed back at the earliest chance.

The only surprising part of this story was that someone would dare kidnap her in the first place.

And the fact that, somehow, she had acquired the reddest dog in existence while out on the sea.

Marinette, for her part, had to deal with being thirteen and not only experiencing the sights of war, but the repercussions of taking a man's life for the first time. It was this that persuaded the Princess of Spain to invite Governor Bourgeois and his daughter for a visit. And, when Chloé came, the only person privy to her secret, to beg her to stay.

She was 17 when she took her last voyage as Ladybug.

By now, the mask Chloé had made her on their first trip had become a staple – though the garment now had been redesigned from a torn red cloth with inked black dots into something Marinette approved of. It was leather, the side that touched her face covered with a ship-worthy canvas, the same material woven through the sides to a double tie she could fasten behind her for stability. She fingered the aged material, thinking of how the worn paint needed a touch up.

From her spot in the crow's nest, Marinette could see their last companion ship, Lady Grace, turn toward the north on their voyage home. A canon fired, the force of it resonating in Marinette's soul a little deeper than it should have. She fought the tears that came to her eyes at the finality of it.

It had been a smart outfit. After building a crew – mostly by the means of Chloé's extensive connections and ballooning from there – Chloé and Marinette (under the guise of Ladybug), took a ship, named it El Lugar de la Mariquita, The Ladybug's Spots, and became "pirates" fighting pirates in their own right.

A second canon fire.

They were "lawless" in the sense that they answered to no one, though the local governments would always turn a blind eye when the crusaders of the sea were about their business of saving souls. They never killed if it could be helped, never gleaned anything from the spoils of their battles. Within three years they had amassed two more vessels to their number. Their flagship, Ladybug's original brigantine, was more than modest in size, a merchant-looking vessel. In other words: perfect bait. The innocence of the ship was like a fishing lure for seedy sea vermin. And by the time the unsuspecting ships would realize their mistake, it would be too late. Three blasts from a canon, and then Ladybug's symbol would appear. Within moments, their companion ships, Reine des Abeilles and Lady's Grace, would come to either help, or, more likely, help clean up the pieces (Abeilles was built to pull ships, and Grace was a renovated brig with an entire floor dedicated to prison holds). Pirates grew wary of lone ships on the sea, knowing that if they came close enough, the Ladybug's colors would suddenly be hoisted, and their villainous days would be over…one way or another.

The third canon fire sounded, and Marinette – Ladybug – dissolved into the tears she had held back the entire voyage. She watched through misty eyes until Lady's Grace's dot disappeared forever into the darkness. This wasn't a goodbye to them; they would sail again, under the same spotted flag. The symbolic canon fire – their symbol – was for Ladybug herself. For when her crew next set sail, Ladybug would not be joining them.

This was Ladybug's last adventure.

But, contrary to what Marinette believed, it wasn't over yet.

[imthepunchlord]

doodle concept for pirate/mer AU idea, with Captain Ladybug and Adrien the mer.