Madeleine was 12 when she became a superhero that resembled a black cat and her whole world, so to say, 'turned upside down'. It didn't seem like much when she receieved a box on her desk with a single black ring with a neon green pawprint. She put it on her pointer finger, simply wanting to see how it looked as her, uh, kwah-meh, kah-me- was she saying that right? told her to say "Plagg, claws out." And as she repeated the phrase she felt a sudden, tumultuous lurch.
When she normalizes herself to it in a few days, she'll call it the "transforming" part of being a superhero that held a miraculous. Right then she called it, well, hell. A neon green light invaded her vision, and as the green light vanished she was left standing alone in her bedroom with no kwami in sight.
Madeleine reached out, her arms spread out to somehow feel for the kwami if it was in her range of motion. She couldn't see well for a moment, her eyesight adjusting to the new enhancements it received. Whatever transformation had happened to her, she thought, really was amazing. She felt a consistent wave of adrenaline and energy, a thrumming pulse under her leather bodysuit. Her eyesight, now cleared and no kwami in sight, could probably pass an eye exam with it's eyes closed. She felt kind of like a- dare she say it, cat, with how clearly she could see. Does this mean she had night vision too? How cool, she thought to herself, imagine being able to sneak around in the dark no less!
She was left standing in her room before the implication of her reality set in and she realized that she was a superhero who had to, well, fight crimes. She looked frantically again for the kwami she could swear was just there and looked thoroughly for him. She looked under her books, her blankets, and basically searched her entire room inside and out for him. She was near frantic as she was about to search her room yet again before eyeing the crack of her door, leading to the hallway and then to the living room. Oh no. Her heartbeat felt like a hummingbird's on 15 shots of espresso. She didn't know what her parents reaction to a little flying cat would be but she did NOT want to find out. Madeleine was about to bolt out of her room to search for her new, friend?, before she realized with her hand on the doorknob, that being dressed like a known-in-history hero and letting her parents see her was something that should NOT happen.
She removed her hold on the doorknob reluctantly, and she felt the pit in her stomach deepen as she gazed, lost, around her tiny bedroom. Where could he be? She knew he had to find him. She couldn't just sit and wait for him to come back. It was too soon for her parents to find out, it has been, what, 2 hours of her keeping this secret? No way. Not on Madeleine's watch.
But HOW to detransform? She collapsed onto her bed, the sheets soft and comfortable but not quite resolving her major problem. She found herself trying to recall the transforming process and the moments before. Before a flash of light.. ah, yes!
She recalls her kwami's face, which seemed quite impassive but educating as he told the speech of how to transform, that now that she really thinks about it, has told hundreds of times, and his singular, important, phrase- "If you ever want to transform, just remember to say, "Plagg, claws out!""
Madeleine rolls out of her bed, the sudden wave of nausea from the moment passing extremely quickly in her new form, and tries to analyze the sentence. She ends up looking at her longer, clawed fingers, encased in leather.
She feels an idea trickle in her mind. She has a gut feeling that it's not going to work, but she wonders what are the repercussions of not trying at all and knows she has to try. "Plagg?" She calls out to the empty room, and she feels more alone than ever. "Claws.." She pauses, and knows that she has no time to hesitate, that the consequences are too great. "In?" She says, her command ending in a question. Good thing the miraculous's power doesn't waver in the wielder's self doubt of their own demands, because Madeleine felt the very familiar lurch of green light surround her.
If transforming is like falling straight down to the gates of Hell, then Madeleine very much so believes that detransforming is like crawling from the depths of hell and breaking out of the earth's crust as a dirty, mangled, zombie. She can't lie and not say she's very happy and quite relieved to see an irritated, but not surprised, kwami floating before her eyes.
"Plagg!" She cries out, and is answered by her mother's call from downstairs, "What is it honey, are you alright?" Madeleine's face turns into a quick panicky fear before she swallows and answers back, "No mom! I'm fine, thanks!" And she freezes a moment before her body relaxes as the worse case scenario of approaching footsteps are not there. She turns back to the kwami, and as she realizes again that she almost got them discovered and that, yes, Plagg is alright, she's unable to help the rush of indescribable emotions and relief that she feels, and she wraps her tiny kwami into a tight hug. A sign of either shock, disgust, or both is strangled out of him and she unwraps her arms and lets the kwami go to find that the look on his face is shocked.
Madeleine redraws from her ancient mentor, 'does he not like to be touched?' She wonders to herself, 'did I do something wrong? Oh no what if he gets mad at me and yells at me I don't like being yelled at!' Madeleine starts to panic internally before Plagg makes a 'huh-hum' noise to get her attention. Her eyesight, unfocused and looking at the wood paneling of her floor, snaps up to look at him. "Yes Mr.Plagg?" She asks. 'Oh no this is it! He's going to tell me I'm not fit to be a superhero for Paris and it's going to be so embarrassing what do I do!' She cries in her head, she goes into overdrive, trying to save herself socially in front of the deity she respects.
He speaks before she can make, well, if he's going to say it, a fool of herself. "If you want to detransform, like you learned, you'll want to say "Claws out". There are powers you have in costume that are useful for you to know too, for example you can use,"Plagg's quite long Madeleine personally thought, explanation was cut off by the thump of boots on the staircase leading to her room. "Quick Plagg, hide!" Madeleine whispers frantically. "Where, exactly?" Plagg gestured to the mostly bare room. Madeleine's head whipped frantically around, but she only succeeded in whipping herself with her hair. "Uhh.." The thump of boots were getting closer the more she hesitated. 'Focus!' She screamed in her head. "Uhh.. Here, just-" Faster than she gives herself credit for, she opens and shoves Plagg into a chest with her old toys in it and closes the top. She hears the thump of Plagg pushing his body against the chest as her Dad walks in. Hoping it isn't too noticeable she kicks the chest with her boot. 'For being a couple thousand years old he has no sense, does he?' Madeleine remarks to herself. "Madeleine, you have to catch the metro or you're going to be late, let's go!" Her Dad leaves with his warning, the thump of his boots fading marking his absence as he leaves for work. Madeleine looks at the clock hanging on her wall. "8:45? Oh my god, the metro ride is like 20 minutes and class starts at 9 am how am I going to do it!" Thump, thump, thump. The sound coming from the toy chest snaps Madeleine out of her internal panic. She lifts the heavy top up for an exasperated Plagg to fly out of the chest, staring at her pointedly. "You didn't have to lock me in the dark, how cruel! Also, why do you have so many cat plushies in there anyway? A big fan of mine?" He yawns leisurely, sprawling out on a pile of clothes. "Uhh.. I really liked cats growing up." She answers, her brain fried and too frazzled to answer questions correctly at the moment as she shoves worksheets and books into her book pack. With that done, she faces Plagg, about to doze into a mid morning nap. She looks at his leisurely appearance before hanging her head in defeat of her circumstances. "Plagg, how am I going to get to school in time? I've never been late before! I don't want them to yell at me but it's just not possible to get there in 15- no 10- minutes!" She runs across her room, throwing on acceptable clothing instead of her pajamas to go out in public. "You know, no one said you had to get to school as yourself." Plagg remarks, looking at his frantic charge who's near tears over being late of all things. Madeleine's face brightens at the idea she's given. "Thanks Plagg! You're so smart. Quick, Plagg, claws out!" Her heart already racing with adrenaline, she runs into transforming into her new form head on, the transition to her cat form is graceful, the adrenaline associated with the form more like a boost to her already racing senses instead of a foreign sensation.
Wielding her metal baton, she's gives it an experimental flip in her hand before she lurches it out her window to the top of the block of houses across from her, she's about to take off to the location the baton reaches before she spots her backpack. "Ahaha, guess, I'll be needing this!" She hastily grabs the backpack before she is flung out the window to across the street.
The thing though about being a fast human dressed in leather with cat ears, along with being paired with a long metal pole that lets you fly anywhere, is that not many people see you. Or if they do, they don't care enough to bring attention to the fact that they do. 'Maybe the idea of superheroes are normal in Paris,' she thinks. She knew that people with miraculous's exist in this world when she was growing up, but she never thought she would be one of them till now. So it's quite strange that not one of the many bystanders on their commute in the work traffic point her out. Maybe she's looking a gift horse in the mouth by thinking this, but she doesn't remember many superhero's flying above the rooftops of Paris in the mid daylight for the 12 years she's lived here.
She registers it as a good question to ask Plagg when she gets back home, and she tries to focus all of her thoughts on training the art of using her baton. The motion of flying in the air, the push and pull of her body lurching as she extends her baton is less likely to happen if she keeps continually using it, she notes to herself. 'It's kind of like a walking stick in the way that you can push the baton behind you to propel forward!' She's amazed for a moment before seeing her middle school in her view. Dropping to duck behind a building, she prepares for her return to civilian life, and it irks her how sad she is to depart with her second form.
"Plagg, claws in!" Her command melts away the adrenaline and leather encasing her body, and she is left with cotton on her skin and the anxiety that still builds because 'what's the time I don't know oh boy what if it's 9 am already I can't get there in time what a waste', and she is acquainted with her tiny Kwami. "Plagg! Quick, get in my boot, I need to get to school!" Plagg's tiny face crinkles into disgust. "You're boot? Don't think so. Do you have anything else on you? A purse, perhaps?" "No, you can get in my book bag then. Hurry, I don't have time!" She rushes her sentence out, panicky as she notices the few students walking into the school gates. "Look, Madeleine, I need to be with you at all times just in case an akuma attacks. Anything at all? Just not your boot. No way." Madeleine frustratedly waves away the Kwami. "The boot or you're getting in my bag. Deal or no deal?" Plagg glares, head on, and Madeleine thinks twice as he slides into her winter boot.
She's about to apologize when she sees that no students are walking into school. She runs into a dead sprint, grasping her bag from the sidewalk as she flings herself into action. As she races through the gates and up the staircases to her homeroom, she walks in, tired, panting, and a bit flushed, to see her classmates in groups, talking. Turning to the front of the classroom, her teacher is not there yet. She trudges up to the front row of seats before collapsing on a seat next to her best friend Jeanne. "Ugh." Madeleine moans out as her head lands on the cold wood of the desk, her arms cradling her head. "Are you alright Madeleine?" Jeanne asks her friend, with a hint of good humor in her voice. "Yeah, I'm good." Madeleine says tiredly, the adrenaline of the morning taking a toll on her, she turns to her friend as she raises her head up. "Say, where's Mme Dehanau? She should be here right?"
"Not really Madeleine. You actually got here early for once! It's 8:58." Madeleine feels relieved before she feels a bite on her calf, using her other shoe to knock the current guest in her shoe off, she tries her best to ignore the strange stare Jeanne gives her, and Madeleine switches the topic to something else. 'It's gonna be a long day,' She remarks to herself as Mme Dehanau arrives. 'Lets hope Plagg isn't too mad at though.' Another nip at her ankle says the opposite. 'Great.'
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un novice en vie - a novice at life
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I Fall Still, Falling Apart. (Miraculous Ladybug AU)
FanfictionMadeleine was only 12 when she was given the single handed job of being a superhero. Paris didn't need superhero's for many years after all, not since the reign of Hawkmoth on the city of love, a dark stain on the history of Paris that she finds peo...
