Faceless

Chapter 2: GO AWAY!

It took a little while for Ladybug to find her way back to Collège Françoise Dupont. She stopped behind a rooftop and released her transformation once to feed Tikki , and the gleam of judgement that she saw in the red kwami's eyes made her pout.

"What was I supposed to tell him, Tikki? It's becoming more and more difficult for me to reject his advances. It was so hard this time."

Tikki kept looking at her while munching on her macaron. "Maybe you should talk to him, Marinette. And I mean, be a bit more truthful?" She saw Marinette opening her mouth to protest, so she continued quickly, "I know you don't want to raise his hopes, and I know you can't tell him your identity, but... you should be more open with him. He was very upset today."

"I was upset too!" Marinette balled her hand into a fist and clenched it so strongly that it started shaking. "I don't know what to do. I'll need to talk to Nino about keeping his superhero identity a secret."

Tikki floated to Marinette's face and put a paw on her nose. "Be careful what you say to Nino, and what you get out of him, Marinette. We don't know how Chat Noir found ou—"

"He said 'they' had told him; which means Nino told him. Alya would never," Marinette interrupted her to say.

Tikki sighed. "Yes. But we don't know how that happened. For all we know, Nino could have spoken to his civilian self."

Marinette glared at Tikki. "And revealed the identity of two superheroes to a civilian? That's even worse!"

"Uh... yeah, maybe not. But what if he did? If you tell him that Chat Noir knows, Nino may figure out Chat Noir's identity!" Tikki pressed on.

Marinette started playing with her fingers, fumbling with the fingers of one hand with the other. "I don't know how I'm going to tackle it, but you're right, Tikki, I'll need to find a way that won't put Chat Noir's identity in danger. If Nino finds out, he could give it away to other people. Maybe to Papillombre himself. So we can't risk Nino knowing."

Conveniently ignoring the previous subject of conversation, Marinette transformed again and headed back to her school, making sure that nobody saw her landing in the hall before sneaking in the boiler room to detransform. When Tikki twirled out of her earrings and landed on her palm, she looked at her little friend and sighed.

"I know you're right, Tikki. I will have to talk to him, but, to be hones—" but her words died in her mouth when she heard somebody screaming, 'I don't care!' from further away in the corridor. "Did you hear that?" she whispered, all colour draining suddenly from her cheeks. Tikki nodded and hid inside her purse. Marinette's heart was racing in her chest as she took a big breath and started tiptoeing her way through the corridor, to see what was going on. "This room seems to bring bad luck, Tikki. Every time someone hides in it, they get akumatised. I need to try to help before it's too late," hissed Marinette between her teeth while silently approaching the origin of the noise.

But her surprise was enormous when she went round the corner and she spotted the crouched figure of Adrien, sitting in the exact spot they had found Juleka a few weeks back. She didn't notice—or dismissed without paying attention to—the little blur of black that zipped around and disappeared inside Adrien's shirt.

Marinette's heart was in her ears, she felt it drumming madly and couldn't hear anything else. Ok, scratch that, she could hear clearly the sound of the sobs coming from the boy's shaking frame. She tiptoed her way next to him and crouched down, putting a hand on his shoulder and causing him to jump.

"Adrien, are you o-okay?" she asked, not really sure of how she had managed to put a full sentence together with her heart drumming in her throat.

He balled over himself even more, before shaking his head.