Miraculous One Shot Compilation

Telltail Signs of Cataclysm

Marinette didn't know what to do. Most akuma didn't scare her anymore, but this one had successfully staged a surprise attack. He was angry to have been falsely imprisoned, and started caging people to show them what it felt like. Now she was to be used as a bargaining chip against herself to make her alter ego give up her miraculous. Good thing her captor didn't know that.

To make matters worse, she wasn't even alone. Trapped in the cage along side her was her one and only crush, Adrien Agreste.

Secret or not, Marinette was the tried and true hero here, she should be able to keep calm and find a way out. Instead she was rocking back and forth on the cage floor, trying to collect her emotions, as her crush hugged her in an attempt to comfort her panic. She felt hopeless.

"It's okay, Marinette." Adrien got up, patting her shoulder as he did. He inspected the cage bars. "I think I can get us out of here, but it's a secret technique, so you have to promise not to watch or listen to what I do, okay?"

Knowing that she was currently too much of an emotional mess to figure anything out herself, and berating herself for it, Marinette nodded. After Adrien told her he'd let her know when it was okay to look, she curled her head down into her knees and plugged her ears with her fingers. She could still hear Adrien yell something, but couldn't make out the words.

After a few minutes, she felt his hand on her head, so she unplugged her ears and looked up at him. He was smiling. "It's okay, we can get out now, but be careful. The edges of the bars are a little jagged, and the akuma is still loose out there."

She looked to the exit that Adrien had created and was immediately confused. "Adrien, how did you use Cataclysm?"

"What do you mean? I didn't use Cataclysm." Adrien's voice shook in an uncertain tone she had never heard from him before.

Marinette scowled in displeasure at his oblivious lie. The bars had been turned blotchy in several shades of brown, curling outward from where they had been sliced straight across. "No, you used Cataclysm, I know what it looks like."

Adrien knew Marinette had only met his alter ego twice, and he was pretty sure that he hadn't used his special ability in front of her either time. "Have you ever even seen Cataclysm up close?"

"Many times!" She growled.

Adrien had never seen this side of Marinette before, and yet the emerging girl was somehow very familiar to him. Seeing her sparked a shift to a different area of his own personality. "Are you pawsitively certain you've seen it before?" A/n - I am not going to make him call her purrincess, because as far as I can tell, the fandom made that one up. It isn't cannon. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't find hide nor hair of it.

"Now is not the time for your puns Chat!" She snapped irritably. They looked at each other wide eyed, listening to the words that had just come out her mouth.

"That explains where Cataclysm came from?" She said slowly, her voice twisting it into a question at the end.

"Uh..." was all he answered.

"Snap out of it!" She told both herself and him. "Tikki, spots on!" Marinette transformed, no longer caring that Adrien was right there.

"Oh," Adrien staired at Ladybug, still in something of a trance. "And that's how you know what Cataclysm looks like."

"Coming?" She asked him, having made it to the other side of the mess of broken iron.

"I'll catch up with you. I need to feed my kwami again since, I'll admit it, I used Cataclysm."