Submitted prompt:
When Adrien has his outburst and quits being Chat Noir, the ring ends up in the hands of someone new after a crow picks it up and brings it to a human who feeds him regularly. (Crows do that with humans who are nice to them, sometimes.) This person is Célestin Rivage, a trans boy who is an up and coming fashion designer. He’s active on social media calling out the industry’s problem with underpaying workers, using sweatshops, and other awful practices in the fashion industry, someone Marinette follows and thinks is nice but doesn’t have a crush on. She wants to be a sustainable fashion designer who makes things that last and that contribute to the anti-fast fashion movement in France, so she follows his Tiktok and YouTube, uses some of his tips on how to spot poor craftsmanship and signs a garment was made with unethical labor, etc.
Célestin is not sure he’s the right choice for a superhero. As he tells Plagg, he’s got real concerns about if he can do superhero duties, schoolwork and his part time job correctly without neglecting some aspect of it. But since he’s moved to Paris and Paris has akuma attacks, it would be immoral not to jump in and try to help while he’s here. Ladybug shouldn’t have to do everything by herself. So he jumps into a fight against an akuma, they win, and then he takes off the ring and holds it out to her, explaining he’s not right for this but he trusts her to find someone who is. He trusts her judgment. But Marinette… well, she just had a fight where someone took the threat seriously, didn’t clown around and had her back for once. She sees someone who views having a miraculous as an incredibly serious thing. After having dealt with Chat’s nonsense, that’s wonderful.
Ladybug tells Célestin to keep the cat miraculous for the time being. She’ll look for another candidate to give it to long-term. For now, though, she trusts him to do the job correctly, since he takes it seriously. The bigger issue she has is Alya speculating on the Ladyblog that Ladybug and Chat Noir broke up or that Ladybug is cheating on Chat Noir with the new black cat. Exhausted with Alya insisting the two are dating and not listening to anything Ladybug has ever said about not being interested in him, Ladybug stops giving her interviews and instead, with Célestin’s help, sets up her own social media accounts and personal site in order to be able to speak to people directly. She talks about how Chat has harassed her, touched her without her consent, repeatedly ignored her boundaries and made her life harder. Paris’ opinion of him turns sour at the same rate as Adrien at school gets snappier and shorter tempered with the people around him. Marinette’s crush on Adrien fades as she sees him defending Chat Noir, arguing with other people and generally being less and less mature in ways that are distinctly repulsive instead of charming. Lila decides to go for a different model she’s charmed online who isn’t defending sexual harassment, Chloe is too busy trying to figure out what’s going on with Adrien to bother Marinette, everything is looking up.
Then Adrien gets akumatized. It’s a combination of having his hero persona disliked by everyone, seeing Ladybug be happy with someone else, and the fact that she said she wasn’t romantically interested in him. He manages to suck at being an akuma because the person he goes after, immediately, is the new Chat, Chat Minuit. He thinks this man somehow stole his girlfriend despite all evidence to the contrary, and yells out that he was Chat Noir and Ladybug is his. Ladybug has never been more disappointed or repulsed in her life. Unfortunately for him, Alya livestreamed most of the fight. Now people know he was the douchebag Ladybug had been complaining about, and they’re mad, so Gabriel, if only because he likes money and this is bad for his company’s reputation and profits, shuffles Adrien off to a private boarding school away from angry, dangerous people who hate him enough to want to hurt him. (Yes, Adrien is a minor and shouldn’t be threatened by adults, but sadly, we’ve seen adults IRL threaten minors. It’s wrong but it happens. The fic just shields him from it because no minor, even a shitty one, should be threatened by adults with physical or mental harm.)
Alya apologizes to Ladybug for everything and vows to make amends. Marinette excels at pursuing her fashion career without having to worry about carrying around Chat Noir’s deadweight and instead has someone to lean on when it comes to superheroics. Célestin ends up being the permanent new holder of the cat miraculous and finally overcoming his ongoing fears of not being a good enough person. Now the fight against Hawkmoth can go on but with two competent superheros, not just one.
In my mind I picture Célestin as black, but honestly I’d be cool with a prompt filler making him another race so long as he wasn’t white. This show has way too many white characters when you look at France’s actual demographics already. Please keep him a nonwhite biromantic ace who isn’t automatically attracted to Marinette and she isn’t automatically attracted to him because people can in fact just be friends, regardless of what bad writing might tell you. Give me some bi ace rep where being bi doesn’t mean crushing on everyone or cheating and being ace doesn’t mean being cold or standoffish and I will die happy.
