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daswarschonkaputt · 2 years

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hi i was just scrolling through ur blog and i saw u mentioned a miraculous ladybug/bnha crossover, i’d love to hear more about it! also i love the snippets of your stories you post, they’re always so interesting and well written <3

okay, so this story is pretty old?? i think. it's not really still in the works, so i'll just talk about it and my plans for it here.

the main vibe of this fic was to try and tell a slightly more mature story using the basis of the show. i was at the time deeply frustrated by the show, and couldn’t really find what i wanted in fanfic. i wanted to age up marinette and chat noir, put them at like, 17ish, and try and approach the show's premise through the lens of their more adult selves.

(fun fact: my phone lockscreen is art that i made for this story, way back when)

okay here's the story summary:

After four years in the Hero business, Marinette wishes she could say she has it all figured out. But, with a Quirk that’s on the fritz, a secret identity that’s slowly eating away at her life, and one hell of an escalation from everyone’s least favourite villain, she’s almost faced with more than she can handle. And that’s not even mentioning her ever more complicated relationship with her partner-in-crime-fighting.

and here's all i had written:

A chill has set into the air by the time she finds herself crouched behind the treeline, watching the road for riders. Her breath condenses on the air in front of her face, the tips of her ears tinted pink by the cold, but her fingers, coated in light, black gloves, remain nimble.

Left hand gripped tight around her spotted bow, she waits.

It’s quiet. It niggles at her, raising the hairs on the back of her neck, because just a week ago, she wouldn’t be doing this alone. He’d promised her once that he’d follow her wherever she needed him, but that it was beyond him to do it silently. She misses his incontrovertible pessimism the same way she misses the presence of his warmth, pressed into her side, watching her back.

She’ll never have that again.

She spots her target when he crests the hill. At first, he’s nothing more than a silhouette against the night, but as he rides closer, she can better make out his features. His distinctive riding posture and his ridiculous clothes.

He deserves this. He deserves worse than this. It should be slow. It should be agonising. He should beg – beg her to forgive him, to take back what he stole, to leave him alive.

She pulls an arrow from her quiver. In the half light of the moon, she can just make out the red-and-black spots on the fletching.

She draws. The bowstring sits taut, her fingers curved into the hollow of her cheek.

He rides closer.

A whisper: “Lucky—”

The arrow flies.

“—Shot!”

It strikes true.

“—ette, Marinette!”

Something’s tugging on her fringe.

“Marinette, wake up!”

In a bedroom in Paris, oceans and centuries away from that secluded woodland scene, Marinette Dupain-Cheng opens her eyes. There’s no forest, no road, no rider—just the pastel pink walls of her bedroom, peppered with the occasional picture of Adrien Agreste. She takes it all in purposefully – her patterned bedspread, her worn floor, the mannequin wearing a half-assembled jacked in the corner – until the details of that freezing night, with the bowstring, and the cold, calculating weight of anger that doesn’t belong to her, melt away.

She covers her face with her hands and groans.

“You had another dream, didn’t you?” Tikki. She must have been the one to wake her up. She feels a soft weight as Tikki wriggles under her wrists, trying to pry her hands away from her face. “Marinette, this is third night in a row. It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

Marinette sighs, letting Tikki lever her hands off her face. Tikki flies up in the air, and meets Marinette’s eye with the sternest frown she has in her repertoire.

It’s unbearably cute.

“Marinette!” Tikki says.

Right. Okay. So they’re talking about this now. At – she glances at her bedside clock – 4:12 in the morning. Less than an hour before she has to sneak out to meet Chat Noir for their Monday morning debrief.

Perfect.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Marinette admits. She runs a finger over the smooth surface of her earrings. “I barely got anything off them when I first put them in. I’ve never picked up anything that happened over a year ago, and never with this level of clarity. It’s just localised flashes, usually.” She sighs. “Are you sure you don’t know anything about why this might be happening?”

Tikki’s stern frown quickly gives way to a worried one. “You’re the first Ladybug since the advent of Quirks,” she says, chewing on her lower lip. “Where were you tonight?”

“A wood somewhere,” Marinette answers. “It was cold. Ladybug had a bow and arrow. She was angry. I think,” she pauses, closing her eyes to chase away the afterimage of that icy rage, “I think someone had killed Chat Noir and taken his Miraculous.”

“Oh.” Tikki’s voice is small. “I remember that.”

“I guess that kind of thing didn’t happen very often.”

“No, it didn’t,” Tikki says. “But that’s not the point. Marinette, that happened over five hundred years ago.”

Marinette’s fingers freeze where they’re still running over her earrings.

Well, shit.

quirkgirl243

Ladybug is cancelled y’all. I can’t believe some of you are out here defending her after she literally said it was akuma victims’ fault they got akumatised. Fuck that noise. I don’t want to hear any of you defending that victim blaming shit.

labybloggerbug

Ladybug said what????? Um, source please?????

theladyblog

So, OP deleted, but bringing back this post to debunk some of the rumours it started. Ladybug has never said that akuma victims are to blame for getting akumatised. Never. Misinformation like this is really dangerous to spread around, and I’m not just saying that over an imagined slight to Ladybug’s honour.

I’m not sure how many of Ladybug’s current fans were around from the very beginning, but when she first appeared on the scene, both she and Chat Noir faced widespread criticism for their public defence of akuma victims. Several notable Pro-Heroes spoke out against them (sources for Cloudburst, Victoire, and Iridescence) – and most especially against the fact that they refused to support moves to prosecute the first akuma victims.

There was a lot of anti akuma victim sentiment in those early days, and Ladybug in particular is responsible for diffusing it.

(A collection of sources for Ladybug and Chat Noir’s staunch support of akuma victims: (1), (2), (3), (4), (5).)

So, where does this new rumour come from? Well, given the timing of the post, it’s most likely tied to the Gabrielle Lavoie tapes. For the uninitiated, these tapes were made during a court case last year, when someone targeted during an akuma attack then moved to sue the akuma victim for psychological damages. (The Ladyblog covered the case here, with an English translation here.)

Ladybug and Chat Noir provided video testimony on the mechanics of akumatisation – testimony that was then leaked to the press. The passage that most likely kickstarted this post is as follows:

Ladybug: We know that there is a certain degree of consent involved in akumatisation. You have to say yes to Hawk Moth, or the akuma doesn’t take hold.

However, she elaborates:

Ladybug: That consent doesn’t have to be informed or unconditional. When an akuma – for lack of a better word – infects someone, their judgement immediately becomes compromised. Negative emotions are heightened. I’ve heard a few people describe it as a kind of tunnel vision – it’s hard to think of any other solution than agreeing to what Hawk Moth wants. And once you say yes, there’s no changing your mind. Chat Noir and I have both seen examples where Hawk Moth has coerced, threatened, or even tortured akuma that attempt to subvert his will. I do know of cases where someone has resisted akumatisation, but they’re exceptionally rare. In most cases, it’s the exception, not the rule.

(Transcript of the tapes available here.)

I hope that this clears things up at least a little!

-Mod A

undernightskies

God bless the ladyblog. If everyone could reblog this version instead, that’d be great.

source: quirkgirl243-deactivated33492837 #ladybug #chat noir #akuma mention cw #idk how many y’all were around right at the start #but like ladybug used to get shit on a lot by the hero industry as a whole #esp for her views on akuma victims #other stuff as well #but that’s a story for another post

France can boast some of the most relaxed Quirk Regulation laws in the world – and, because of this, some of the strictest legislation regarding Pro-Hero work. The line between vigilante behaviour and lawful intervention may seem paper-thin, but it amounts to the difference between a cheque from the mayor and jail-time.

The unique circumstances surrounding the ongoing Akuma Crisis have led to both Ladybug and Chat Noir being cut a lot of slack by the authorities and, by extension, the National Hero Commission, but Marinette’s never been too willing to toe the line. Neither of them really have any excuse anymore – it’s not like they’re thirteen year-olds catapulted into heroics without so much as a Provisional Licence to justify their presence.

Nowadays, Ladybug and Chat Noir are as by the book as they come. They log and report their hours to a designated secretary. They fill out and sign all the necessary paperwork that comes from an akuma attack and they file their patrol routes a month in advance. They attend conferences, they sit in on meetings, they run workshops – they do everything the Hero Commission asks them to do.

And that includes the Hero Licences.

Marinette looks down at the little piece of plastic in her hand. For something so small, it carries one hell of a lot of weight.

The Hero Licences are a compromise on the part of the Hero Commission – a compromise that only exists because she and Chat Noir were adamant in their refusal to disclose their identities. After months of back and forth and one incident of not entirely ethical akuma-baiting, it was decided that Ladybug and Chat Noir would be issued Hero Licences against their superhero identities, and carry them whenever they responded to a threat.

It’s that last part that strikes a chord of terror in the back of Marinette’s mind.

She can’t control when an akuma will attack. The only thing she has any control over is her patrol schedule, and even that can be difficult to bend around her civilian life. Because of that, she has to carry Ladybug’s Hero Licence with her wherever she goes.

There isn’t anything out there that concretely ties her to Ladybug. Her Miraculous even distorts her face – twisting her features until she looks like an imperfect mirror of herself – and she knows Chat Noir himself couldn’t pick her civilian identity out of a line up.

But—ever since she was handed her first Provisional Hero Licence, two years ago, the thought has lurked in the back of her mind that it’s a shackle. It’s a link between Marinette and Ladybug, in a world where Hawkmoth has proven time and time again how dogged and resourceful he is.

And it’s always on her.

She can be as vigilant as she likes. She can hide it in a secret pocket in her bag, she can stuff it into her bra in blind panic, she can never so much as look at it outside her work as Ladybug—but one day, someone is going to find it.

Marinette places the little plastic card down on her bed. She’s already dressed for school – having learned her lesson about assuming patrol will only take as long as they’ve scheduled it for years ago – and it’s nearly five. Chat Noir is probably already waiting for her. He’s good like that.

“Tikki, you ready to head out?”

Tikki appears from—somewhere that she was probably breaking a few laws of physics to be in the first place. “Are you sure, Marinette?” she asks. “What if it makes your Quirk worse?”

That ship has probably already sailed, Marinette doesn’t say. “Being Ladybug is the only time I don’t have to worry about my Quirk,” she says instead.

Tikki doesn’t look reassured at all.

Marinette sighs. “If it makes you feel better, I can try to talk to someone about it,” she says. “I still have my old Quirk Counsellor’s number. I can shoot them a text.”

“Won’t you have to explain about the Miraculous?”

“Dominique doesn’t ask questions,” Marinette says. “They won’t pry if I tell them I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Certain.” Marinette smiles warmly at Tikki, who flies up to nuzzle her hand.

Quirks have always unnerved Tikki, even if she’s tried to hide it from Marinette. Marinette figures it’s probably pretty rough observing thousands of years of the human race, only to be hit by a curveball like Quirks. Given that it took humans two hundred years to figure out how to handle the issue with anything approaching dignity, Marinette thinks Tikki’s doing pretty well after just four.

“You ready?”

Tikki nods.

“Okay then, Tikki,” she says, “spots on!”

Ladybug (@)ladybug Good morning, Paris.

[IMAGE: A selfie taken from the rooftops in Paris as the sun rises. Chat Noir can be seen in the distance of the shot, grinning at the camera.]

just ENDeavour me (@)coldturtle_isme wait wait wait wait i know the ladybug twitter is verified but i thought it was run by someone in her agency? but this selfie was clearly posted in real time???

flawless victoire (@)monique_123 (@)coldturtle_isme Iirc it’s a mix? Ladybug and Chat Noir’s hero agency manage both of the accounts normally, but Ladybug and Chat Noir have to carry phones with them when they patrol for HC related reasons so they sometimes post stuff themselves.

The first thing Marinette notices when she drops beside Chat Noir is the lack of smile on his face. There’s tension in his shoulders, and he’s fiddling with the controls on his baton, repetitive and twitchy. She doesn’t need four years of friendship with him to identify the clear signs that something’s bothering him.

“Something wrong, chaton?” she asks, flicking her yo-yo back together as she walks over to his side.

“Have you spoken to Paulette today?”

Marinette pauses. Paulette is the sole administrative employee of their Hero agency, a long-suffering old woman who half-resents them for interfering with her retirement plans, and wholly disapproves of their involvement in the Hero industry at all. Chat Noir used to joke that she was a punishment from the Hero Commission – retribution for the procedural clusterfuck that their Heroics careers have been from start to finish.

On her worse days, Marinette is inclined to agree.

“Not since last week,” she tells Chat Noir. “She shouted at me for going over quota again.”

Technically speaking, Chat Noir and Ladybug have a set number of hours they’re supposed to work each week, assigned by the Hero Commission. It’s a general measure for all Pro-Heroes that ensures there’s always someone on-duty and counteracts Hero overcrowding. Going over quota is just as bad as going under, and the Hero Commission can restrict working hours, levy fines, and even revoke licences for breaches of the policy.

In reality, it doesn’t really work like that. At least not for Chat Noir and Ladybug.

The past few weeks have been pretty rough on the akuma front. The attacks tend to average at one a day over the Christmas and New Year’s period – Marinette has long since let go of the idea that people are happier around the holidays. Christmas day in particular can boast some of the most vicious akuma Ladybug and Chat Noir have defeated.

Chat Noir makes a face. “You know, I once asked her about that?” he says. “She told me we should have just defeated the akuma faster.”

Marinette wouldn’t be surprised. “So, what’s she upset about today?” she asks.

“She wasn’t upset,” Chat Noir says. “She had… news.”

Marinette tenses. The last time Paulette had news, she was standing next to a court officer holding a subpoena. “Good news?” she asks hopefully.

“News news,” Chat Noir says. He pauses. “You remember that typewriter akuma we fought a few days ago?”

“Typeset?” How could Marinette forget? Dodging car-size typewriter keys as they’re flung about the crowded streets of Paris on New Year’s Eve is pretty fraught, even so far as akuma fights go. “Is she okay? I didn’t want to leave her with Akuma Response Team, without talking to her, but she passed out as soon as I banished the akuma.”

“She’s fine. She just hadn’t slept in three days – her boss was running her into the ground with deadlines during the holidays, which is—” Chat Noir catches sight of her expression, “—beside the point. The point is, her Quirk is called Vocal Recall.”

Marinette frowns. They’ve been through this song and dance before, and it only leads to dead ends. “Using a Miraculous makes you functionally Quirkless, though,” she says. “It doesn’t matter if she has a—perfect recollection Quirk?” Chat Noir nods to confirm her guess. “She still won’t be able to remember anything from when she was akumatised.”

“You’re right,” Chat Noir says. “Or you would be if we were interested in what happened when she was akumatised. But we’re not. We’re interested in what happened just before she was akumatised. Her Quirk provides her with a perfect memory of the timbre and pitch of people’s voices, which generally isn’t that useful in day to day life, but—”

It hits her. “Hawkmoth spoke to her.”

Chat Noir nods. “Hawkmoth spoke to her,” he confirms. “She went to the police yesterday. She’s convinced that she could identify him if she heard his voice again.”

Marinette runs it all over in her head. “Well, shit,” she says, not sure what else she can add.

“Well, shit, indeed, my lady,” Chat Noir responds.

okay so a few more bits from this au:

marinette’s quirk is a touch-based clairvoyance quirk that allows her to see significant scenes from an object’s history. she usually can’t pick up things that have happened further back than a few months -- a year max.

because of this quirk, marinette has a quirk licence that allows her to use her quirk to consult with the police on crimes. she doesn’t do it as much anymore, because her parents got concerned that they were traumatising their preteen daughter by making her watch violent crimes.

lately, however, marinette has been getting flashes of shit that happened with the miraculous earrings like, 200 years ago. this is very concerning.

because miraculouses are from before the advent of quirks, they shut off user’s access to their quirks when they’re in use. barring the miraculous, ladybug is functionally quirkless in costume.

tikki is worried, because she’s never had a user with a quirk before, and she thinks something about the miraculous is making marinette’s quirk go out of control.

i don’t know if i ever figured out where i wanted this plot thread to go? but it’s there.

akuma victims are typically handled very poorly by regular pro-heroes, to the point where there’s a rule that akuma victims are to only be contained and not directly engaged unless you’re ladybug and chat noir

this isn’t directly relevant to the plot, but it’s just sort of part of the backdrop of ladybug and chat noir’s place in the heroics industry

basically: they’re the darlings of the nation, now, but pro-heroes used to fucking hate them and still lowkey do

the same way you’d hate anyone that got special treatment at your really dangerous and difficult job

anyway

when the witness comes forward that says she can identify hawkmoth by his voice, ladybug and chat noir are cautiously hopeful.

and then said witness is murdered in the police station, before she can give a proper statement to the police.

marinette is called in in her civilian self to try and get a reading off the murder weapon (a knife)

long story short, the clues marinette gets off the knife seem to point to nathalie, gabriel agreste’s assistant

MEANWHILE we have a really complicated dynamic between ladybug and chat noir

they’ve been friends for years at this point and trust each other a lot

but a point of contention remains ladybug’s staunch belief that they shouldn’t tell each other their identities

in the short extract above it says something about “not-entirely-ethical akuma baiting” or similar

essentially, way back when ladybug and chat noir were fighting for the right not to have to disclose their civilian identities when they got their hero licences, they announced that this one official from the hero comission had been let in on the secret, and that official was promptly akumatised forthright

but surprise! he didn’t know shit! it was all a test so ladybug and chat noir could demonstrate how important their identities remaining a secret was

so, like, ladybug’s position on the matter is that no-one is infallible, especially her -- and if one of them gets akumatised, they need to minimise the fallout

whereas chat noir’s position is that if ladybug is akumatised, they’ve already lost, so it should be safe for her at least to know his identity

she’s deadset against it, though, and he respects that

there’s an added layer to it where chat noir is very openly in love with her and she kind of returns the feelings, but she doesn’t want to have a relationship that can only exist when she’s wearing a mask

she’d much rather date in her civilian identity

so, obviously, this is another point of contention -- because ladybug basically admits to returning chat noir’s feelings, but the barrier in the way of their relationship (their secret identities) is steadfastly maintained only by ladybug

the murder mystery runs parallel to the interpersonal drama, basically

anyway, the end reveal of the fic comes after nathalie and gabriel have both been arrested by the police on suspicion of being hawkmoth but the authorities have failed to retrieve their miraculouses

and we discover that the peacock miraculous is now in the possession of lila

and lila was the one who murdered the witness in the police station, covering it up and fooling marinette using facts about the nitty-gritty mechanics of marinette’s quirk that only alya knew

if we pivot a bit to adrien, we find out that before he was arrested, gabriel essentially gave him the keys to the castle, and adrien discovers the secret hawkmoth layer beneath the mansion as well as his comatose mother

and there it is! the missing butterfly miraculous!

only bam! lila is here to claim it

we get a showdown in the lair between lila and adrien. adrien manages to keep the butterfly miraculous away from lila, but she manages to rip off his cat miraculous ring

lila cataclysms to bring the ceiling down on them, and adrien has to run for his life

the destruction summons ladybug to the manor, as she was called in because of its links to the akuma case

lila tries to play some mind games to get ladybug to believe she’s the good guy in all this, and adrien is on his father’s side

adrien says something cryptic that only chat noir would know, as a message to ladybug, and she realises what’s going on

big dramatic fight! ladybug is driven back, struggling against lila who has two miraculous. eventually, adrien uses his father’s butterfly miraculous, and powers ladybug up. ladybug and adrien team-up defeat lila.

with the black cat miraculous retrieved, and lila defeated, ladybug turns to adrien. her earrings are beeping at her. adrien apologises to her. he knows how important she considers their secret identities.

ladybug doesn’t care. she’s just glad he’s alive. she kisses him, and as she does so, her transformation melts away.

epilogue: marinette and adrien are dating. their identities are secret to the general population, but the hero comission knows now. they’re asked to consider being heroes fulltime post-graduation. they don’t want to.

also, an aside: adrien is quirkless. it’s concealed from the public out of concern for his celebrity career. the fic was going to be almost entirely marinette pov though so i’m not sure when this would come up.

one of the final scenes of the fic would be a confrontation with alya, because the entire reason lila had been able to frame nathalie was that alya shared, like, deep, dark quirk knowledge that marinette had confided in her with lila, alongside the fact that marinette works for the police. marinette considers this a betrayal, and ends their friendship over it.

last bit would be a post from the ladybug twitter, a photo of chat noir and ladybug sitting and leaning their heads on each other’s shoulders, with the caption “The City of Love <3″

#kaputt writes stuff #asked and answered #sorry this is so messy i didn't have any notes from this au #normally i have at least an outline #miraculous fic #bnha fic #this fic also doesn't have a title #literally the top of the word doc just says [Title]#if u have questions abt the outline just reply to the post and i'll reply too #i know i'm not the most coherent when i'm this tired lol

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