Earthquake

Chapter 6 - I'm sorry. I'm so sorry

The first snow fell surprisingly quickly when it comes to France, but they indeed were high up in the mountains, so it was probably normal up here. Making use of a moment of free time, Marinette thought that she wasn't on a walk for a long time. She didn't want to take Tikki with her, knowing that Kwami's barely moving so she just wrote a short note about her absence, which she put on a table and walked out. Speed up Summoning was to have its solution within the next two weeks and she didn't wanted to risk little, pregnant creature's health.

Snow-covered forest and mountain peaks could easily compete with colorful leaves in the fight for the most beautiful natural phenomena. Fascinated with this scenery dark-haired girl uncontiously stepped off of known to her path and delved among the trees more than she wanted to. She did not have to wait a long time for the leg, without cooperation with the rest of the body, to slip on the ice and pull the owner of the limb downwards. The downhill ride might be a lot of fun, if it weren't for the fact that Marinette, completely unprepared for it, kept catching on growing bushes and lying stones. At one point, after a close encounter with a large and hard boulder, she felt her left wrist crunch and radiating pain spreading through her body. A moment later, it was dark before her eyes. Did she faint? No. If she did, she wouldn't be awary of what's happening. She waited and then blinked trying to sharpen the image she was seeing.

'Where I...?' she mumbled, just to hiss in pain a moment later. She completely forgot about her hurt wrist. 'Okay. Calm down, Marinette. You're the Ladybug, you're gonna make it.'

She lifted her healthy arm up, checking whether there's anything above her that she could hit her head on and, when she made sure that it's safe, she slowly changed her position into a sitting one. She had to wait a couple of minutes so her sight could get used to this ubiquitous darkness.

She was in a round room, obviously located pretty deep beneath the earth. Behind her, a couple of meters above the bedding, was a small hole, through which she'd fallen here, letting the sunlight inside. She looked around. Against the walls were table tops, some matalical utensils, which she couldn't indentify, the shelves were full of books and some weird items of unknown origin. The most striking, however, was the smaller version of the Eiffel Tower, standing in the center, quite large for the size of the room. The whole thing reminded her of an abandoned lab of some crazy scientist from cartoons that she watched when she was a child.

'Oh, great, girl,' she said with a slightly ironic tone. 'You know what surrounds you. What now?' she looked at the gap. 'How am I going to get there?'

Her left wrist swollen pretty well to this time, not comforting her and significantly making the climbing attempts harder. Plus, it started to get awfully cold. If she won't get out of here quickly, it can end badly for her.

She got up and walked up to the hole. High. Maybe... Her sight flew through the room once more, and her eyes stopped on a chair that was standing at one of the tables. She put it centrally beneath the only way out of the cave and backed away a couple of steps. If she'll manage to gain enough speed, jump perfectly upwards and grab the root at the entrance, she could have a chance to pull herself up to the surface. It was risky, but at this moment nothing else came to her mind. Waiting wasn't an option.

She took a breath. Once a goat's death, as it's said. She run. Jumped. Grabbed. Screamed. Her hurt wrist made itself known.

'Don't give up!' she shouted to the space, tightening every possible muscle, trained thanks to the Ladybug's role. She always saw in movies, that fighting people were screaming and she wondered why they were doing this. Now she knew. 'A little more!'

Millimetre after millimetre she was moving up, praying to every Kwami so that the roots won't let go. She didn't quite dreamed to fall down from this high up once again. The tears of pain were falling down her face, freezing on her cheeks. When she finally saw snow and flung her hand on the surface looking for some help from Mother Nature, her hands were screaming in protest.