Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

For once, Adrien was glad to hear panicked screaming.

Not because he wanted people to be suffering, but because the photographer had been having a temper tantrum for roughly half an hour now and fighting something sounded infinitely preferable to standing there trying to follow the guy’s increasingly contradictory instructions.

Of course, they were screaming in English, so he could only grasp a little of what was going on, but he gathered there was some sort of bear attacking everyone.

Sounds like an akuma.

“What’s going on?” Marinette asked from the other side of the room. “Is there some sort of attack?”

Adrien shrugged at her, even though he wasn’t sure she’d even been talking to him.

Nobody had an answer either, so Marinette said, “I’ll go see what’s happening,” and darted out of the room before anybody else could say anything.

One of the older designers, who’d sort of taken Marinette under her wing, started and called after her, “Marinette, it could be dangerous!”

Adrien gathered from her sigh that Marinette was already too far gone, but that sentence had been enough to jolt him back to reality. This American city might have had their own superheroes, but they weren’t there yet so it might as well be Chat Noir to the rescue.

“I’ll go make sure Marinette doesn’t get hurt,” he volunteered, silently thanking his classmate for the excuse to leave that she’d handed him on a silver platter. Adrien ran straight to the nearest bathroom (he always took note of the nearest ones when he entered a new building, just in case something like this happened) and woke up Plagg. “Plagg, transform me!”

His kwami’s groaning was quickly silenced as Adrien changed into Chat Noir.

---

Chat Noir’s go-to place to observe the carnage was the nearest rooftop, where he could get a good view of what was happening and look for people who hadn’t gotten away yet. The bear was wreaking havoc in the middle of the street, and civilians were running for their lives and hiding behind battered cars, but Chat couldn’t see a single possible thing that could be where the akuma was hiding.

He’d just have to incapacitate it some other way, then figure out what to do about it. It wasn’t like Ladybug was there to cleanse it anyway--

“Chat?! What on earth are you doing here?”

Chat nearly fell off the roof. “Ladybug? You’ve got to be kitten me!”

She didn’t dignify his (very clever) pun with a response. “I thought you said you were leaving for the summer!”

“Yeah, obviously, seeing as I’m here! What are you doing here?”

“It doesn’t matter right now!” Ladybug surveyed the scene. “Any ideas about the akuma?”

“None. Looks just like a normal bear to me.”

“Except that it’s running down the middle of the street.”

“Except for that.”

“Well, I’ll just try to trap it with my yo-yo, and we’ll figure something out.”

“Sounds good, my lady.” Ladybug nodded and swung down into the street. Chat Noir just went for a swan dive. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been hurled across half of Paris before. He had plenty of experience in rolling as soon as he hit the ground so he didn’t break any bones.

When he landed next to his lady, the bear wasn’t facing them. Instead, it was snarling at a couple of teenagers. The two of them stood their ground, the boy holding a bat and the girl with a knife. Neither of them seemed remotely frightened.

Ladybug didn’t hesitate, running forward and throwing her yo-yo. It wrapped around the bear one, two, three, four times, the thin, unbreakable wire pinning its arms to its body and effectively stopping it in place.

The boy and the girl exchanged glances as the girl said something confusedly in English. The boy shrugged, stepped forward, and swung his bat. It went clean through the bear, which turned into sand and drifted away.

Ladybug’s yo-yo clattered to the ground. Chat knew he was most likely mirroring the expression of shock on her face.

Without the bear standing between them, the two teenagers quickly noticed them and rushed over. They looked a couple years older than him and Ladybug and were wearing the same orange T-shirts. The girl wore her brown hair in a similar style to Ladybug’s, except she had braids instead of pigtails, with feathers woven in. The boy’s hair even mimicked his own in its messy style, though his was blond and the boy’s was black.

The boy said something to them in English that sounded like a question.

“Do you know what he said?” Ladybug asked Chat. He shrugged.

The girl’s eyes widened and she turned and said something to the boy, then said to them, “You speak French, right?”

“Yes,” Ladybug said.

“Right. Um... would you mind telling me what you just saw happen right then?”

Chat raised his eyebrows. “There was a bear causing chaos, your friend hit it with a baseball bat, and it disappeared.”

The girl sounded relieved. “Right. Good. That’s what happened. And, uh... who are you?”

“Ladybug.”

“Chat Noir.”

“Cool. I’m Piper.” She nodded at the boy, who’d been watching their conversation without seeming to understand it. “That’s Percy. Thanks for helping out with, uh, the yo-yo.”

“It’s our job,” Ladybug replied.

Piper’s multicolored eyes widened in realization again, and she said, “You’re the superheroes from Paris.”

“Yeah,” Chat said. “Who are you?”

“Well, we’re not Manhattan’s resident superheroes, if that’s what you were asking. And we’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell anybody that you met us.”

Ladybug and Chat exchanged glances before Ladybug said, “Okay, sure.”

“Great. Thanks. Well, we’ll see you around. Or maybe not. Have a good stay in America.” She said something to Percy and the two of them walked away, heading into what looked like an apartment building.

“Well, that was certainly interesting,” Ladybug said.

“It’s good they knew how to get rid of the bear,” Chat Noir replied. “Otherwise, if we couldn’t find the akuma, it could have been clawful.”

Ladybug rolled her eyes. “Okay, kitty, I’m going to leave now, and I suggest you do the same thing. And while it was good to see you again, I sincerely hope that there are no more attacks while we’re here. I’d be quite happy to leave all the fighting in Paris.”

With that, she swung away, leaving Chat to find an unobtrusive way to re-enter the building and come up with an explanation for why he was gone for so long.

Chapter Text

Piper’d seen a lot of weird things, but up until yesterday, she could safely say that two French-speaking, spandex-clad, monster-fighting teenagers called Ladybug and Chat Noir were not two of them.

So much for that.

It wasn’t like new groups of heroes were any sort of surprise anymore, honestly. But the spandex, she was sure, was new.

Then of course there was the fact that the heart of Western civilization, and by extension the gods, were supposed to be in America, not France.

So Piper was pretty sure they were dealing with something entirely different.

She expressed as much to Percy, who simply shrugged and said, “Not my problem.”

She couldn’t blame him for that, seeing as she hadn’t been through nearly the same amount of shit as him and she didn’t want to have to deal with a new civilization either.

The two of them had been in Manhattan to retrieve a new demigod, and although Piper had worried that Percy’s scars and icy stares would scare the Tartarus out of the kid, he came in handy when the two of them found the girl cornered by a couple of assholes from her school mocking her dyslexia.

New demigod in tow, they headed back to camp, and by silent agreement didn’t breathe a word to anybody else about the two French teenagers.

That had to change a week or so later, when Annabeth and the Stolls turned up after a monster attack dangerously close to camp with Ladybug and Chat Noir.

Marinette called Alya every day.

This was actually at her request, because Alya didn’t know Marinette’s schedule and Marinette really didn’t want her phone to start ringing in the middle of talking to Mr. Agreste. He’d hinted heavily that if she did well she would be invited back for another internship next summer, and maybe even get paid this time!

Alya understood perfectly and agreed to always wait for Marinette to call, unless she was dying, in which case she would call Marinette first, Gabriel Agreste be damned.

Of course, Marinette had to agree to those terms.

They were doing a swimwear shoot at Long Island, but Marinette had been granted some rare free time, so long as she stayed within sight of the shoot so they could find her. So, Marinette took the time to call Alya.

She picked up after only two rings. “Mari! What’s up? How are things going with your boss and future boyfriend?”

Marinette laughed a little. Trust Alya to not even say hello. “Not bad! I haven’t actually seen Adrien much, he’s always doing shoots and I’m lucky to even get invited along. But you heard about that yesterday! How is Paris? Any akumas?”

“No.” Marinette couldn’t see Alya, but she imagined she was pouting. “Not a single one, and no sign of Ladybug and Chat Noir, either. It looks like everything just went quiet for the summer. Makes me wonder if they finally caught whoever is making the akumas and I wasn’t there to see it.” Alya sounded dejected on the other end of the phone.

“I don’t think so,” Marinette replied. “Wouldn’t it be all over the news, even if you weren’t there? And you’re always there. There must be some other explanation.”

It was good that there weren’t any akumas around, especially since she and Chat were both in America, but like Alya, Marinette found it a little worrying. What was Hawkmoth planning?

Did he know that Ladybug and Chat Noir weren’t in the city, so he wouldn’t be able to get their Miraculous? That would explain why there hadn’t been a single attack since they’d left. But that in itself was also worrying, because how could he have found out?

“I guess you’re right,” Alya sighed over the phone. Marinette had almost forgotten she was even there. “But I haven’t had new content on the Ladyblog in ages . People are asking questions.”

“Ladybug and Chat Noir will have to come back eventually,” Marinette said. “Maybe they just went on vacation or something. I know if I was a superhero I’d want a vacation every now and then.”

“I guess. Oh, my mom’s calling me, I have to go. Talk to you tomorrow, say hi to Adrien for me!” Alya hung up.

With her remaining free time, Marinette started walking aimlessly down the shore, but she didn’t get very far before she heard screams coming from over by the shoot.

Crap. Where am I supposed to transform now?

Marinette looked around. There were no convenient rocks, no sand dunes, no trees. She was in plain sight of the shoot.

There was nothing for it. She would have to transform underwater.

Marinette waded in as quickly as she could, ignoring the sting of the (surprisingly cold) water. Once she was in up to her waist, she pinched her nose, closed her eyes, ducked underwter, and said “Tikki, transform me” as quickly as she could.

Of course, she still accidentally swallowed some seawater, and Ladybug was still gagging even as she emerged, brushed off some rogue pieces of seaweed, and ran as fast as she could toward the enormous wolf-- how did a wolf even get here? --rampaging in the sand.

Chat Noir was there already, somehow, and he raised an eyebrow when Ladybug turned up completely drenched, but for once decided to prioritize fighting the monster over making chitchat.

Thank heaven for small favors.

“It’s like that bear,” he said, smacking the wolf in the side of its gigantic head with his staff. “No item for the akuma, doesn’t seem to be a human transformed into an animal like that zookeeper back home. Either that guy’s bat that he used to get rid of the bear was special, or he has one hell of a swing, because I haven’t been able to do the same thing.”

“Well, if it’s not like the zookeeper, then it shouldn’t be able to get out of my yo-yo,” Ladybug replied as she unhooked it from her belt.

Once again, though, as soon as Ladybug got her yo-yo securely wrapped around the beast’s legs, a group of teenagers in bright orange T-shirts appeared.

She didn’t see Piper or Percy--these three were two twin boys with curly brown hair and mischievous eyes, and a tall blond girl with her hair in a tight ponytail and a grim look on her face. They seemed to be the same age as the other orange T-shirt teenagers Ladybug and Chat Noir had met, though--seventeen or eighteen.

The blond girl shouted something to the two boys in English, and they nodded before all three of them raced toward the wolf. The girl and the slightly taller boy had knives, while the shorter boy had a bat like Percy.

Ladybug expected the boy with the bat to swing at the wolf first, but the girl reached the wolf before the two boys and, without hesitation, drove her knife into its neck.

She gasped, even as the wolf turned to dust and blew away, just like the bear had. Ladybug’s yo-yo clattered to the ground again.

The three teenagers hurried over to them, the girl barking out something that sounded like a question.

They looked at her in utter confusion before Chat Noir asked, “Do you speak French?”

The three Americans seemed to recognize what he was saying, but they all shook their heads as one. The shorter boy asked the girl a question, and she nodded before turning back to them and beckoning for Ladybug and Chat Noir to come with them.

Ladybug very pointedly looked at the unsheathed knife in the girl’s other hand and shook her head.

They got that, at least, because the girl and the taller boy sheathed their knives and the shorter boy stuck the handle of his bat into a waiting loop at the waistband of his jeans.

The girl pointed to herself. “Annabeth.” Then she gestured to the taller boy and the shorter one, calling them Travis and Connor respectively. Ladybug and Chat Noir gave their superhero names.

Annabeth beckoned once again.

“Can you afford to leave right now?” Ladybug asked Chat.

He shrugged. “I think so. My fa--uh, my boss said I was done for the day, and I think we both probably have a reputation for vanishing at odd times and then turning up again with no explanation.”

Ladybug laughed. “That’s true. I have free time today too, so I think I can risk it.” She didn’t want to mess up her chances at a paid internship next summer, but on the other hand, they’d run into these orange-T-shirt-wearing, bat-and-knife-wielding teenagers twice now and she was getting curious. “Let’s do it.” She turned to Annabeth, Travis, and Connor, who were waiting expectantly, and nodded.

Chapter Text

Piper saw Ladybug and Chat Noir the minute they entered Camp Half-Blood. Annabeth frowned when they were held back by the barrier the first time, but after a brief conference with the Stolls gave them permission to enter.

Piper hurried over as quickly as she could. She knew none of the three demigods over there spoke a word of French beyond a heavily accented “Bonjour.”

Chat Noir spotted her first. “Salut, Piper!” He nudged Ladybug, who turned as well and smiled. “Salut!”

Piper waved at them before going over to Annabeth. “Need a translator?”

“Oh, thank the gods. Yes, we do. How do you know Ladybug and Chat Noir?”

“Funny you should ask.” Piper explained how she and Percy had met them in Manhattan, fighting a monster. “I take it your situation was kind of similar.”

“Pretty much, but there was a hellhound way too close to camp. That was why we headed out in the first place. I thought maybe they were demigods attracting monsters, but they needed permission to get into camp, so that option’s out.”

“I think they’re something else entirely,” Piper agreed. “So, want me to ask them anything?”

Adrien was pretty sure he had never been subjected to a grilling quite a thorough as that one.

Annabeth, with Piper interpreting, had asked him and Ladybug a list of questions including where they were from, if they had powers, if both their parents were around--she’d looked interested when Piper told her that Adrien’s mom had disappeared, but when he said she’d been there until he was ten she lost interest.

Ladybug had also looked interested at that point, though she’d refrained from commenting. It was the most personal detail about family life he’d shared with her yet.

Right now, Adrien was sitting untransformed in a broom closet, waiting for Piper to bring food for Plagg. He could only imagine Ladybug was in a similar situation, though a different broom closet. It had taken a lot of explaining to convince Annabeth to pause her interrogation so the two of them could go let their kwamis recharge. She and Piper had been surprised to learn that they didn’t know each other’s identities.

Ladybug and Adrien had talked it over and agreed that it didn’t matter if a couple of these American teenagers — who still had not explained their magic borders and swords that looked like baseball bats — knew their identities. What would it matter, as long as they still kept it secret from each other? They were going back to Paris at the end of the summer.

They’d decided not to reveal their actual names to anyone, though, just in case somebody slipped up. Ladybug was unendingly cautious on the identity front.

There was a knock on the door and Piper came in bearing a plate of cheese. “Our budget is a little low for Camembert, but here’s feta, Brie, and mozzarella.”

“Thanks. I’m sure Plagg understands that since we’re imposing anyway he shouldn’t throw a temper tantrum about cheese. Right, Plagg?”

Plagg huffed. “You underestimate me. I adore all types of cheese. It just so happens that Camembert is my favorite, but feta, Brie, and mozzarella are absolutely wonderful.”

“Uh, great,” Piper said, handing Adrien the plate of cheese. “When you can transform back, just hang out here. I’ll be back to get you.” She closed the door and left.

Piper had informed Marinette that they did’t have a lot of sweets at camp for Tikki, but given the circumstances she was sure the Stoll brothers would be perfectly happy to surrender some of their stash for free.

She’d said that last with a wicked grin, and Marinette had raised her eyebrows, but Piper just smirked and closed the door of the closet.

Now, a few minutes later, she was back with a package of Oreos, and Piper stuck around for a bit (it was a surprisingly roomy closet) to answer Marinette’s questions.

“First of all, those shirts are a hideous shade of orange,” Marinette said as Tikki squeaked in excitement and dove into the box of Oreos.

Piper sighed. “I know, but they’re easy to distinguish from the enemy in a fight.”

“Are you a military camp or something?” It seemed more like a summer camp than anything, but Marinette had to ask. People were playing volleyball, swimming, riding horses — the horses had wings, but she was trying desperately not to think about that.

“No, but we’re in danger every time we leave the camp. I guess you’ve already seen two monsters — the one in Manhattan and the one on the beach.”

Marinette nodded. “They looked like a bear and a wolf, but they were huge.”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve got a lot to explain. Once you’re ready to transform again, I’ll go get Chat Noir. He’s probably going to have the exact same questions and it just makes more sense to talk to both of you together.”

The rec room really needed more chairs.

That was the first though Annabeth had when she walked in.

All of the cabin counselors were there, and usually they had enough room for the most senior campers to sit in too, but what with all the new cabins in the last couple of years... And they needed chairs for Chat Noir and Ladybug, too. Annabeth wasn’t about to make them stand. They’d dragged in some desk chairs from the nearest cabins, but they wouldn’t always be able to do that.

Just as she was thinking that, the door opened and Piper ushered in Ladybug, with Chat Noir behind the two of them. They sat down in the only three chairs left empty, the two French teenagers looking around a little nervously at all the cabin counselors, most of whom appeared older than them. If Annabeth had to guess, she’d place both of them at fifteen, maybe sixteen years old. She herself was turning nineteen in a few weeks.

“Hello,” Chat Noir said hesitantly. “My English is bad, and Piper, um—”

“Will translate,” Piper completed, and Chat Noir nodded.

“Right. Okay,” Annabeth said. “So Piper, Percy, you two were the first to run into Ladybug and Chat Noir, right?”

“We were looking for longboards,” Percy answered. “Then there was a Gegenee just running down the street. Don’t know why it was alone, though. Then Ladybug and Chat Noir just ran into the street and Ladybug tied up the Gegenee with her yo-yo and I killed it. We got each other’s names and determined that they couldn’t see past the Mist, then left.”

Once Piper had finished translating, she and the two French teenagers nodded in confirmation.

“And Travis, Connor, and I were the next,” Annabeth continued. “We were on the beach because we’d seen a hellhound near a group of mortals, but when we got there Ladybug and Chat Noir were already fighting it. Percy and Piper didn’t mention anything—”

“We didn’t think it would be important,” Piper said, breaking her stream of French for a moment.

Annabeth nodded. “It probably shouldn’t’ve been. But anyway, we decided to bring them over anyway, just because it was an odd occurrence and I don’t trust those. And they needed permission to get into the camp, so we know they aren’t demigods. It also wouldn’t make sense for them to be demigods, because they’re not from North America.”

Ladybug and Chat Noir didn’t appear to have any questions, so Piper must have explained the gods and all that came with them well.

“So. With that in mind, I think it would be best if they explain their situation to us — Piper has already cleared up the whole Greco-Roman pantheon thing — and then we’ll just go our separate ways. If we’re supposed to work together, we’ll run into each other again. I want to be prepared for that, but I also don’t think we need to make it a priority unless it becomes clear that we need to work together.” Everyone nodded. Annabeth turned to Ladybug and Chat Noir. “So, tell us about yourselves.”

Chapter Text

Marinette hadn’t wanted to spend any more time away from Agreste and co. than she had to, so she and Chat Noir had kept the explanation of kwamis and akumas fairly brief. Annabeth had looked like she wanted to keep them there to ask them more about everything, but they’d explained through Piper that they really needed to go and the demigods acceded.

Their final conclusion had been that their run-ins seemed to mostly be chance, and if the Fates (Marinette wasn’t sure what Annabeth meant by multiple fates, but she decided not to question it) wanted them to meet or work together, then they would continue to see each other. They could go about their separate lives, and if Ladybug and Chat Noir headed back to France at the end of the summer without incident, so much the better. The two of them knew where the demigod camp was now, anyway, so if they needed help they could just swing by.

(Piper seemed to think that pun was hilarious. Chat Noir did too.)

Speaking of Chat Noir, he had run ahead of her, extending his staff and using it to propel his jumps further. There wasn’t a whole lot for her yo-yo to latch on to, so Ladybug had stuck to running.

Funny, if the trees cleared up a bit (they were too thick for her to swing through), she could see Chat leaping ahead of her. His figure kept getting smaller in the distance, but he was still definitely in front of her. She wondered where he was going.

Not that it was any of her concern. She still had to get back to the photoshoot and hope that they hadn’t noticed she was gone.

“Hey, Marinette, why are you all wet?” Maria, one of the older designers, asked as Marinette approached the photoshoot. Fortunately, they didn’t seem to have noticed her vanishing.

“I tripped,” Marinette answered. She wasn’t sure if it was a nod to her convincingness or clumsiness that everyone around accepted that without a second thought.

“How’s the water?”

“Cold. Do not recommend.”

Maria gave her a concerned look. “We might have towels or extra jackets if you want to try and dry off a bit. Unless you brought a change of clothes?”

“I didn’t,” Marinette sighed. “I’ll go look for a towel. Thanks.”

Over by the tent they’d set up for clothing changes, she noticed Adrien arguing with his father. He also looked wet. Maybe they’d done a few shots in the water while she was... away. She wouldn’t be surprised; if they weren’t planning to use the water somehow, they could have just greenscreened it. Gabriel Agreste wouldn’t have made them all trek to Long Island if they hadn’t needed that specific location.

But if they (and by ‘they’ she did mean Mr. Agreste) were making models go in the water, there had to be towels somewhere, and they would probably be in the tent. Marinette hurried over; now that Maria had suggested drying off, she desperately wanted to.

It wasn’t really a tent so much as a large, square canopy with flaps reaching to the ground on each side to keep the sand (and bugs) out. They were keeping anything that wasn’t in use at that exact moment inside the tent, because there were just too many bad things waiting to happen to the latest photography equipment and expensive clothing at a beach.

Marinette ducked in; she was glad for the lamp they’d set up in the center, which was tall enough that it could illuminate the entire inside of the tent. Nobody else was inside, so she opened her purse. “Tikki, you okay?”

Master Fu wasn’t here to heal Tikki if she got sick again, so Marinette was relieved when Tikki replied, “Yup! I could use some drying off, though.” The kwami flew out of Marinette’s purse. “Usually your purse is great, but it doesn’t dry out quickly!”

“I’ll leave it open while we’re in here,” Marinette replied. “Hopefully it’ll dry off some, and if I find a towel we can use that too.”

“Thanks, Marinette!”

“Do you need any food?”

“No, I think I’m okay. You didn’t use Lucky Charm. But I’ll probably need some by the time we get back to the hotel.”

“Okay.”

Tikki flew along next to Marinette as they searched through the tent for towels, finally spotting some stacked on a table in the corner. There were quite a few, so Marinette didn’t feel that bad about grabbing one and using it to wring out her pigtails. At least she wasn’t borrowing clothing from the shoot to change into.

Tikki dried herself off and Marinette did her best to get at the water in her purse with the towel.

“I think that’s all I can get,” she said. “The rest will have to air dry.”

“That’s great, Marinette. Just don’t decide to go swimming again!” Tikki giggled.

Marinette shuddered. “Oh, trust me, I am not planning on doing that again. It was awful. I got salt water up my nose.” She hung the towel over her arm as Tikki zipped back into her purse, then left the tent with it. The towel was wet, anyway, so it wouldn’t be much help to anyone else, and there didn’t seem to be a good place to let it dry. She’d just have to carry it with her until she figured out where they were putting the other used towels.

Plagg had woken up when he heard someone enter the tent. He was perfectly hidden among the clothing racks, but it never hurt to be a little extra cautious, especially when he was anywhere except Adrien’s room. Adrien himself probably wouldn’t be back in here for quite a while, so Plagg couldn’t count on any last-minute rescues or excuses.

(This point had been made very clear to him by Adrien. “I don’t want you getting left in America,” the boy had said. “Flying yourself across the Atlantic wouldn’t be fun, and it would take forever. Who knows how many akumas could be released in that time? Just be careful.” And Plagg had agreed, but that meant that he had to consign himself to light naps. He was great at those, of course, but it would be nice to just sleep.)

Of course, he’d heard the entire conversation between the intern— Marinette, he was pretty sure, who sat behind Adrien in class as well as working for his father— and Tikki. Plagg had known that Ladybug was in America as well, of course, but he hadn’t realized that she was so close.

He debated briefly about telling Adrien before deciding against it. Ladybug wanted their identities kept secret, and as much as Plagg wanted Adrien to stop pining over her, revealing that he’d spied on her (accidentally, but still) was probably not the way to go.

But Ladybug was a lot closer than Adrien thought. That would make the summer interesting.

Plagg shuffled between two of the shirts at the very back of the tent and went back to sleep.

Chapter Text

A few weeks passed without incident. Marinette didn’t see the orange-shirted demigods around, or any huge animals rampaging, or Chat Noir. Mr. Agreste seemed pleased with her work, so if things kept on being peaceful she thought she stood a pretty good chance of getting invited back next year.

Of course, that was when everything went to shit, pardon her language.

They only had a week left in America, and Marinette was mentally preparing to go back home and once again have to be Ladybug, fighting akumas left and right and never getting her geography homework done. She didn’t realize that she would have to be Ladybug sooner than expected.

Hawkmoth didn’t have his tower with him (it would raise some questions trying to bring a building across the Atlantic), but that wasn’t too much of a problem. He’d seen Ladybug and Chat Noir around, after all. In America, where akumas weren’t common occurrences, the confusion in an attack might be enough to overwhelm them. They wouldn’t know the city, and any akumas he created would.

He just needed a room with an open window. The butterflies would appear when he transformed. They always did. Hawkmoth had no idea where they went when he wasn’t transformed, but that wasn’t really any of his concern.

The thing about large cities was that there was always someone angry and upset. Always. It didn’t matter the time of day, the occasion, anything— someone was in perfect position to be akumatized, and he just had to find them. In this case, the waves of emotion practically screamed at him from the top of the Empire State Building. What on earth could have happened to make someone so incredibly angry? He didn’t know, but the more emotion there was, the stronger of an akuma they would make.

Apollo could not get the Valdezinator to work.

He’d tried every technique he knew. He’d even invented a few new ones. He’d tried playing it like a violin. A piano. An accordion. He’d even tried playing it like a damn xylophone. Every time, he’d thought he was getting closer, only for an outrageously out-of-tune note to appear. He’d tried scales. He’d tried arpeggios. He’d tried Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Nothing sounded right, and in fact, most of them sounded very wrong.

How had Leo Valdez managed to play it? Sure, he’d invented the instrument— the horrific name commemorated that— but it was a musical instrument. He was the god of music. Leo Valdez was just a son of Hephaestus, and if Hephaestus could play music people would know about it.

So. How?

Apollo hadn’t left this spot in three days. He hadn’t eaten, he hadn’t slept. Technically, he didn’t need either of those things, although they did improve life. Sort of like not going to that coffee shop Austin was so fond of for a few days. He would make this instrument work if it was the last thing that he did. He was a god. It was beyond humiliating that a demigod could play this confounded instrument perfectly while he couldn’t even play in tune.

Absorbed as he was, he didn’t notice a small purplish-black butterfly approach and sink into the Valdezinator.

“Hello, Musinator,” an unfamiliar voice said.

Apollo saw, in his mind’s eye, a guy standing in a darkened hotel room with the window cracked open, wearing a weird suit and a ski mask. That was the man talking to him now. Of course, since he was the god of prophecy (at least that gift hadn’t failed him), he knew what the man, Le Papillon, was here to say.

“Screw you, mortal. I don’t need your deals. I can smite people perfectly fine on my own.”

“Can you?” Le Papillon asked, seemingly unfazed by Apollo’s knowing what he was there to say. “Then why haven’t you done it?”

“Because I haven’t figured out a good way to avoid the consequences,” Apollo mumbled.

“If you allow me to akumatize you, you will be blameless,” Le Papillon purred. “I can give you freedom from those who watch over you. You will be able to act. And besides, I can make it so that you can play that instrument. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“...Yes.”

“So what’s stopping you? You’ll be blameless and you get to play the instrument. A Valdezinator, is it? What an awful name, but to each their own, I suppose.”

“And you’ll take over my mind for a few hours to try and steal from a couple of teenagers. I think not, mortal.”

Le Papillon sighed. “I won’t take over your mind. Yes, I will be able to speak to you, like now. But I think you will find that you retain almost all your autonomy. Other forces will compel you to fulfill your part of the deal.”

“That still doesn’t sound like it benefits me in really any way.”

“Does it matter? You’re immortal. You’ll have endless time to figure out how to play the Valdezinator. Me, though, I’m only here in America for another week. And besides, I’m already middle-aged. I’ll probably die before you can say ‘Underworld,’ in your time. If you accept, I get what I’ve been after for years, and you get to indulge yourself for a little while. How does that sound like a bad deal?”

Apollo thought for a moment, gazed at the Valdezinator (now suffused with purplish-black smoke), and gave Le Papillon his answer.

“Oh, my gods,” Annabeth said, staring out of the window in the Jacksons’ kitchen.

“What is it?” Sally asked.

“Something’s attacking Manhattan.”

“I am the Musinator!” the figure bellowed, tall as a two-story building. In its hand it held a contraption that seemed to be a box with a large funnel on top. Cranks and handles extended from the box, and the akuma turned these with its free hand, letting rage-filled music stream out the top of the funnel.

“How could somebody get akumatized here?” Marinette asked the people in the bus they’d chartered. “We’re in America! Is Hawkmoth here too?”

“He must be,” Adrien answered from his seat in the second row. “But why is he here?”

“And what’s the music doing to those people?” another, older model asked, pointing at everybody on the sidewalk. As the Musinator played more music, the people seemed to react to it, getting madder and madder.

“They’re adopting his emotions,” one of the designers said in horror. “Look.”

As they watched, the pedestrians grew so furious that they started putting down their grocery bags, their coffee cups, their children’s hands, and fighting anybody they could reach. The newly released children bit at each other and screamed, while the skills of the older people ranged from martial arts masters to slapping other people across the face.

“It must not be affecting us because we’re not outside,” Adrien said. “Don’t open any windows.”

Marinette frowned. How was she supposed to get out of the bus to fight the akuma? Everyone in here knew where she was, and if she tried to leave, they would stop her because of the fight going on outside.

“Um, I’m going to the bathroom,” she said, getting up and making her way towards the back of the bus. Maybe there was a possible exit there. If not, she could always transform and come back into the bus, jumping out the window before anyone realized that the only person who could have exited the bathroom was Marinette. Things like that had worked before. If she left while everyone was watching the passerby, it should work.

Just then, someone hit the windows of their bus from the outside.

“It’s cracking,” someone pointed out worriedly.

“Cover your ears!” Marinette said from the back of the bus. “If you can’t hear the music as well, it might prevent you from reacting to it.”

Since nobody had any better suggestions (Mr. Agreste was already wearing noise-cancelling headphones, and some of the other designers who were working on the bus had done the same, so they were probably safe), everyone on the bus hastily plugged their ears as best they could. Those by the cracked window scrambled back to safer seats, just in time.

An American outside smashed a fire extinguisher into the glass of the window, exactly where the first spiderweb crack was, and it shattered.

Chapter Text

“I’ve never seen a monster like that before,” Sally said. “What is it?”

“Um... I don’t think that’s a monster,” Annabeth answered.

Percy came to join them at the window. “No, doesn’t look like one. What about those things that Ladybug and Chat Noir mentioned?”

“Akumas?” Annabeth took another look at the thing. It was tall as a giant and dressed in a white suit decorated with musical notes. “Well, it would definitely be a surreal outfit for a monster. And the giants should all still be in Tartarus.”

“We should still go try to... capture it, or something,” he said. “Look at it, it’s a menace. People will be freaking out.”

“You’re right. I’ll call Chiron, maybe he’ll have some ideas.”

But as the three of them stared out the window at the giant in the suit, they all knew that this was a new type of attack.

“I think you’re right about it being an akuma,” Piper said over the phone. Chiron had handed the phone off to her when Annabeth had called, since she’d been the one interpreting for Ladybug and Chat Noir and therefore had the most accurate description of what an akuma was like. “If it’s dressed in a suit with musical notes on it, it probably has something to do with music. Plug your ears before opening a window, yeah?”

“Sally’s getting earplugs right now,” Annabeth replied. “But listen, even if it is an akuma, we should help out. We might not be able to get rid of the thing, but we can help trap the akuma.”

“Sure thing. I’ll let people know at camp. We’ll probably take a while to get there, though.”

“Just do your best. Might want to bring pegasi. It’s giant-sized.”

Piper sighed through her nose. “Of course it is. Alright, we’ll bring pegasi. Make sure you plug your ears.”

“You got it. See you in a couple hours.”

“Seeya.” Piper hung up on the other end of the line.

“Found them,” Sally said, handing Annabeth a pair of squishy foam earplugs. “I’m just glad Paul likes concerts, otherwise we probably wouldn’t have these around.”

“Great, thank you. Where’s Percy?”

“Grabbing your camp shirts. He figured it would make it easier for Ladybug and Chat Noir to recognize you.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea. Piper’s bringing campers, but they won’t be here for a few hours, so I hope Ladybug and Chat Noir show up before then. Otherwise, this is going to get really bad, really quickly.”

The moment the bus window shattered, everybody inside panicked. (Except Mr. Agreste, who was impossible to scare.) The driver pulled to a stop as quickly as possible and opened the doors so they could get out, and in the lack of common sense created by shock, most of the team rushed out into the fight. The bus driver went as well, taking Mr. Agreste by the arm and escorting him out of the bus.

Marinette stayed inside the bus. She needed a relatively hidden place to transform, and the seats worked well enough. She opened her purse and was about to transform when she heard, from the front of the bus, “Plagg, transform me!”

Green light shone out from one of the seats in the first few rows, and when it vanished and her eyes re-adjusted, Chat Noir was already leaping out of the bus.

Oh my God.

Chat Noir was on the bus with her.

“There’ll be time to think about that later,” Marinette said firmly to herself. “Tikki, transform me!”

Once she was all set to go into battle, Ladybug hurried out the door, neatly sidestepping several people grappling with each other. She could see the rest of the team huddled together in the lobby of a hotel, watching from behind glass doors. All of them were there except—

Where was Adrien?

She scanned the team again, but he wasn’t there. He could be at the back of the group. The only thing she could really do was keep an eye out for him and hope he hadn’t gotten hurt in the mob. No sense in getting distracted.

“When I got invited on this trip, I didn’t think it’d be nearly as panic-inducing,” she muttered to herself.

“Same here, milady,” Chat Noir replied, materializing next to her. “And look who I found!”

Right behind him were Annabeth and Percy.

“But they don’t speak French,” Ladybug said.

“I asked them where Piper was and Annabeth held up her phone so I’m guessing they called her and she’s on her way.”

“Okay. Where’s the akuma? It moved while I was transforming.”

Chat Noir pointed down the street. “It went off that way. Shouldn’t be hard to find.”

“I’d like to use the buildings, but I’m not sure how to get Annabeth and Percy up there.”

The other two heard their names and looked quizzical.

“We—” Ladybug pointed at herself and Chat Noir— “are going to go by rooftop.” She pointed up at the skyscrapers around them. “Can you?” She pointed at Annabeth and Percy and shrugged exaggeratedly to indicate she was asking a question.

Percy and Annabeth looked at each other and spoke for a moment in English before Percy did an ear-splitting taxi whistle.

The sound seemed to cut through the akuma’s music for a moment— people paused in their fights and looked confused, but as soon as the sound of the whistle faded and they could hear the music again, they continued their brawls like they had never stopped.

Then a black blur started approaching from the sky, spiraling down and seeming to aim directly for the four of them. Percy pointed at the blur, still looking perfectly calm, and said something in English. It sounded like just one word, but Ladybug wasn’t sure what it meant. Perhaps ‘kamikaze death blur?’ Still, they didn’t seem worried, and they certainly weren’t moving from their spot, so she stayed put as well.

“A pegasus,” Chat Noir noted as the blur got close enough that they could see a horse, with wings. “Like the ones at their camp.”

Annabeth nodded. “Pegasus.” She pointed at the winged horse, which had stopped hurtling down and was now hovering a few feet above Percy’s (the tallest) head. “Blackjack.”

“I guess Blackjack is its name,” Ladybug said.

Blackjack gently dropped to the ground, and Percy and Annabeth got on its back. Ladybug gave them a thumbs up, then gave her yo-yo a twirl and aimed at a gargoyle on the nearest building. The faster they found the akuma, the faster they could stop it.

Chat Noir planted the end of his staff on the ground, prepared to extend it and shoot into the air. “Ready, milady?”

“You bet.”

Chapter Text

“So, how are you doing?” Le Papillon asked.

“Fine,” Musinator replied. “It’ll be easier to get the Miraculous if I can isolate Ladybug and Chat Noir outside the city. They don’t know the surrounding land and it’s entirely possible that a monster will show up and distract them.”

“Doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose of the power I gave you? It does rely on other people being around, and the Miraculouses make them more resistant to its effects.”

“You’re a puny mortal who relies on another god for power. Excuse me for not caring. I do have my own powers, you know.”

Musinator could feel Le Papillon’s shrug. “Do as you will. Not like I can stop you, I’m locked in my room so nobody will walk in on me transformed.”

“That’s nice,” he replied. “Excuse me while I do your errands.” Le Papillon closed the link between their minds, but Musinator could still feel it there. It was just dormant, waiting until Le Papillon needed to talk to him again.

He was almost out of the city. There was another reason he’d wanted to leave: the demigod camp was on Long Island, and the chances that Leo Valdez, or anybody who could tell him where Leo Valdez was, were anywhere but at Camp Half-Blood (or at Camp Jupiter, but that was across the continent) were slim. Ergo, he needed to go to Camp Half-Blood, and he could worry about the Miraculouses later.

This was the best he’d ever played the Valdezinator, and the fact that he could only play it once he got semi-possessed was even more infuriating. Musinator hurried faster.

Plagg had always felt he was lucky, as far as being a kwami was concerned. Transforming his chosen (and staying transformed) was much less work for him.

Sure, it was tiring, but all he really had to do was transform Adrien, wait for Adrien to want to Cataclysm something, awaken the Cataclysm so he could do it, then de-transform Adrien once he got too tired to continue. Tikki didn’t have it nearly so easy. She had to choose what to give Marinette for Lucky Charm. Plagg knew he wouldn’t enjoy having to actually think and follow the battle along like she did. So, he was lucky.

Adrien was landing harder today, and taking less well-planned jumps. Probably because it was an unfamiliar city. Still, the boy needed to work on that if he wanted Plagg to keep him transformed for as long as usual. The suit protected Adrien from a lot of surface injuries, such as scratches or bruises, but with every stopped wound, keeping the suit intact got just a bit harder. Plagg would tire out faster and Adrien would lose his protection.

He and Adrien couldn’t communicate while they were transformed, but for the sake of superstition (ironic considering he was a black cat), Plagg thought, You’d better be careful.

“How close are we?” Piper asked Pollux, who was driving the camp van she and a dozen or so other demigods were currently squeezed into.

“Pretty close.” He frowned at the road. “It’s weird that we aren’t seeing any other cars around, though. Are people just not going into Manhattan today? Wonder why.”

He was cut off by a thud from somewhere on the road in front of them, and Lou Ellen said, “There’s your answer.”

Musinator was there.

The giant akuma was on the highway, walking toward them.

“Alright, earplugs, everybody,” Piper called. “They won’t block out sound completely, so be careful, and if you start getting mad then retreat really quick to somewhere that you can’t hear as well so you can calm down. I’ve given the people in the other vans the same instructions, and Drew and I will be on hand in case somebody gets seriously affected and we need to charmspeak them back into being calm.”

“Why’s Musinator going this direction?” Malcolm asked. “There’s like, nothing that way, except—”

“Camp,” several people said at once.

“Guys...” Piper said. “I think Musinator might be one of us.”

“Do we have a plan of attack?” Annabeth asked Ladybug and Chat Noir, raising her voice to be heard above the earplugs and Musinator’s music.

Ladybug frowned. “Quelle?”

“Oh, right,” Annabeth mumbled. Ladybug and Chat Noir didn’t speak English. Or, well, not enough to be able to discuss plans of attack in it, anyway.

Where was Piper when they needed her?

She got her answer only moments later, when they turned a corner to see a long stretch of highway. In front of them was Musinator, and on the other side of Musinator were the telltale Camp Delphi vans.

“Well, there’s the rest of camp,” Percy said. The wind was rushing past, making it difficult for her to hear him, especially since he couldn’t turn around to talk to her and keep his balance at the same time. “Ladybug and Chat Noir will probably have a better idea of what to do, so maybe they should go down and update everyone else and we’ll try to distract Musinator?”

“Sounds good,” Annabeth replied. She waved to get Ladybug’s attention again, then pointed at herself and Percy, then at Musinator, then at Ladybug and Chat Noir, then at the vans below. “Piper’s there!”

Ladybug nodded and gave her a thumbs-up, clearly recognizing Piper’s name (Annabeth was sure just saying ‘Piper’ and pointing was roughly ninety percent of their direct communication), then said something to Chat Noir. The two of them quickly dropped to the ground and started running for the vans, where demigods were cautiously disembarking. They didn’t seem to be fighting each other, so hopefully Piper had told everyone to wear earplugs.

“Alright, let’s go!” Percy said. “Do you have anything in Celestial bronze on you right now? It’ll probably have... some sort of effect. I hope.”

“I’ve got a knife, but I think Riptide will probably be more effective.”

“Switch places then.”

“What?”

“I can’t watch where we’re going and taunt Musinator.”

“And you should probably do the taunting,” she agreed. “Are you sure that particular ability of yours isn’t a gift from Poseidon?”

“Ha, ha. Blackjack, stay in one place for a moment.” Blackjack obligingly hovered in one place, though he seemed to be complaining. “It’s just for a minute so Annabeth and I can switch.” Blackjack snorted. “I promise.”

Annabeth quickly realized that she had no idea how they were going to do this. “Um, okay. How about both of us slide back, and then I’ll climb past you.”

“Okay, that works.” They both slid back, then Annabeth crawled forward to get past him so she could sit in the front. “You didn’t mention that the climbing involved using my leg as a footrest.”

“I didn’t think it was relevant. You’ll survive.”

“Probably, but that doesn’t mean I can’t comment on it.”

Annabeth settled into her new seat. “Let’s go. Time to distract some akumas.”