❛𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐐𝐔𝐄❜ ━ 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘈𝘤𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘺

━━ 20

“ALRIGHT, THAT WILL BE ALL. Thank you, sweetie.”

Marinette positioned the last bag filled with rice down on the floor of the new store that had just recently opened up. It'd never really occurred to her just how much that stupid video could change everyone's view of her, but she'd learnt it the hard way when people dismissed her help whenever she offered it. They would come up with foolish excuses such as “oh no, I don't need any help” but then Marinette would catch them accepting another student's help.

Either the woman she was currently helping had no idea of the video, or she just didn't care at all, but nevertheless, Marinette was glad to have helped and received her signature as well. The woman was the third person she'd helped out so far and already twenty minutes had passed. There was no way she was going to get ten signatures if everyone kept rejecting her help.

So, she'd just stuck to one idea: only help out the powerless ones. The powerless didn't hate her. In fact, they adored her and were quite relieved to hear that someone was sticking up for them. Marinette hadn't really caught sight of that many powerless people yet, and the ones she did come to didn't need any help with anything.

Luckily, she'd figured out where to find some people to help out. She knew of the restaurant opening next week. The people who were opening it were still working on setting a few things here and there, so the unfinished restaurant was where she went to next. She wasn't sure if any of them had powers or not, but she felt relief wash through her entire body when they all accepted her help.

Marinette helped one man with setting the tables, helped another woman with cleaning out the extra smudges from the kitchen, helped with mopping the floor along with taking the menus and passing them out to people in order to get their attention about the new restaurant opening. Due to her working so hard as the others had put it, each one of them there gave her their signatures, which resulted in her having eight in total.

“Thank you so much.”

Two more to go. Okay, so maybe I can do this after all!

She spotted a few of her classmates not too far away from her and started heading over. Excitement rinsed through her body with relief hanging from the edge when she noticed it was Alya. She was waving over at someone else and when Marinette looked closer, she noticed it was Adrien and Nino, who were probably a team for this activity.

Marinette started strolling over, yelling out Alya's name just to make sure the girl knew she was coming. Alya looked surprised at first, before she calmed down with a chill look on her face, waiting until the younger reached over to her.

“Hi,” Marinette stopped right in front of the ombre, a little surprised that Alya didn't still look upset over yesterday. “How many signatures do you have so far?”

“I've actually completed,” Alya smirked as she showed Marinette her paper. “I helped out twelve people. The boys and I are heading over to the zoo as there could be a few jobs for them to do there, while I can look at all the pretty animals.” She chuckled to herself after saying the last part, just as Nino and Adrien had reached over to them. “Do you wanna join us?”

“Yeah, I do.”

And together, the four of them had started walking over to the zoo, which wasn't too far away, and while they did so, Alya informed her that the owner of the zoo was her father himself. They reached the massive zoo, which Marinette had only been in once, which didn't even count because she never went in. Seeing all the animals there just reminded her that majority of people here had animal forms, so that was why she'd never even bothered. That one time she'd come here, she stood at the gate, staring through between the bars and wondering if she ever had an ability, which one of those animals would she have as her form.