Candle In The Wind - Miraculous Ladybug Movie Rewrite

Chapter 6: You had other plans to hang your hopes on

"Today could not get any worse," Adrien spat, squinting against the sun that was slowly setting behind the Ferris wheel, coating the previous blue sky with splashes of orange and red.

He gripped his cat plushie tightly by one of its arms as he glanced around for the exit. He hadn't really been paying attention to which way he and Nino had come in from, and every direction looked the same. Just stalls and rides and carousels, and every extra square inch heaving with people.

He hadn't noticed it before, but now it was becoming very clear that this place was full of screaming. Loud, unnecessary screaming, to the point where it sounded like people were more terrified than having any actual fun. Regardless, this only soured Adrien's mood even further. Did they have to shriek like their lives were ending?

He zipped open the schoolbag on his hip and rummaged around, checking to see if he'd remembered his earbuds.

Naturally, he was completely unprepared for the thunderous boom of an explosion that ricocheted through his ears from somewhere behind him.

Adrien barely had time to react before the shockwave crashed into his back, knocking the breath from his lungs and slamming him face-first into the unforgiving concrete. Both his schoolbag and the plushie had been ripped away from him by the blast, their whereabouts instantly lost.

The bloodcurdling screams increased in volume, but Adrien could barely hear them over the screeching tinnitus in his eardrums. His aorta threatened to burst open from the sheer force of his heartbeat, each thud vibrating all the way to his head and knocking painfully against his skull.

Gasping on empty lungs, he used his arms to prop himself up from the ground. Through his blurry eyesight, he saw a smear of blood mixing with the dirt below him. Was he bleeding? He couldn't tell. His face was too numb to feel any pain.

Movements sluggish, he sat back on his heels, swiping a hand across his nose and looking at it. Yep. Definitely bleeding.

Adrien didn't know if this was a terrorist attack, or some sort of natural disaster. All he knew was he should be a lot more scared than he currently was. But the explosion had left him in a state of paralyzing stupor he couldn't fight his way out of.

Other people were reacting accordingly: shrieking and rushing away like their lives depended on it.

Fear was something he understood well. When it took over, any sort of rationale was thrown out the window, leaving behind nothing but an overwhelming incentive to find safety, to survive. Nobody cared, or even noticed, if they accidentally rammed their shoe into the boy sitting on the ground as they raced by him.

Adrien winced as someone trod on his ankle, and he decided it was time to move. Ears still ringing and vision still glazed over, he struggled to get to his feet, fighting to gain control over his heavy limbs, and join everyone else in their mad dash to escape from whatever the hell they were running away from.

His efforts were thwarted when someone's knee struck him painfully in the chest, knocking him backwards so that he was once again sprawled on the ground.

A young blonde woman in her mid-twenties strayed from the roving crowd and crashed to her knees beside him, seizing his hand in hers and gripping it tight.

"It's okay, sweetie, I got you," she said in an attempt to be soothing. Adrien allowed her to pull him onto unsteady legs. She immediately took off running again, dragging him along behind her.

And that could have been the end of it. He could have fled, gone home, left this entire mess behind for somebody else to deal with.

But of course, his life could never be that simple.