When the Phoenix Falls (Adrien Agreste)

Chapter 17: The Gamer

Colette smiled to herself as she leant against the edge of the bookcase, a slim novel perched in her hands despite the fact that she hadn't had much chance to read over the past half hour. She hadn't been there for the beginning of the tournament, and she hadn't even realised it was going on when she had stuck her head into the library to find a particular Spanish novel she had been recommended by her teacher. And yet, she had somehow been roped into watching her classmates go head to head in the popular videogame Mecha Strike Three, comfortable in the knowledge that she was nowhere near as good as her sister or half the other people in their class.

In fairness, she was actually second on the current leader board, but not everyone had been willing to take part and there were still a few people to go. Plus, she wasn't all that bothered about taking part in the official competition. She knew that she had enough going on without adding training for a tournament to her to do list, being Firebird was already taking up more of her free time than she had expected, and she had plenty of other extra-curriculars to attend.

This was also precisely the reason Colette had not informed Marinette what was going on there that day. Her sister might have been absolutely incredible at the game, but she really didn't have the time to devote to playing it more than she already did, and she too was being swamped by their superhero duties, Hawkmoth's attacks having taken a surge over the past few weeks. Colette knew that Marinette's well meaning nature could easily get the better of her if she was asked to compete alongside someone else for the school, and her inability to say no could very quickly become a problem.

Colette laughed as Adrien cheered at Kim landing a particularly good combo move on Max's robot. It was clear just how much the boy loved the video game and she was quite surprised that he hadn't volunteered to take part yet. She knew full well that he had pretty incredible reaction times and she was sure that he must be pretty good at the video game. Plus, they needed the best possible players if their school had any chance of possibly beating the other schools' representatives.

"Aren't you going to have a go?" Colette leant forward to ask Adrien the question as Max manged to defeat Kim and glanced around the room for another volunteer. Nino stepped forward to take his place quickly whilst Colette waited for Adrien to answer.

"There's no point," he muttered after a moment. "There's no way my father would let me go to the tournament, so why bother now?"

The excitement was gone from his face, his eyes lidded as he leant back against the bookcase with a sigh. Colette acted before she thought, shuffling sideways and wrapping an arm around him in a half hug. It was a feeble effort to make him feel better, but he seemed slightly less upset when she moved away and she offered him one last lifeline.

"Do you reckon I could convince him?" She knew that Adrien didn't like her interfering with his father's opinions, but she still felt bad about the man missing the theatre show only a few weeks before and she could tell that Adrien really wanted to do the competition, or at least an opportunity to take part in something with his friends.

"Maybe," he tilted his head to look at her. "And he did want to talk to you about the photoshoot at some point."

"In a good way, or a bad way?"

"It's difficult to tell with him," Adrien smirked and Colette let a laugh escape her; it was true enough, Gabriel Agreste was not an easy person to read.

"Well, you might as well play now anyway. There won't be any point in me convincing him if you don't pair up with Max. And it looks as though Nino's about to get pummelled."

Sure enough, Nino sat back with a groan of defeat only a few seconds later, tossing the controller onto the seat beside him and slouching off back to his place on the other side of the library. Colette nudged Adrien in the arm, pushing him to his feet before he could regret it.