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What Plagg, Tikki and the thousand other billion-year-old kwamis that had been living rent-free (rent-free! In this economy!) in Marinette’s bedroom for the past few months had neglected to tell her was that using the Miraculous could have certain… side effects. She was not aware of this until Alya called her at three am in panic claiming that someone was in her room that no one else could see.
(“Oh, yeah,” Trixx said. “Hallucinations are a common side effect of the Fox Miraculous.”
“Common what of the what.”)
It wasn’t just Alya that was suffering, either. The effects had hit Chat first, apparently, he’d just been completely unaware that hissing, knocking things off tables and being able to fit into spaces that logically he shouldn’t were all completely normal parts of being human. (Spoiler alert: they were not.) Chloe had been allegedly complaining of stinky feet, Kagami had started a gem collection, Mylene was never seen without cheese and Luka seemed reluctant to use any of his limbs to transport himself anywhere. (That had been an interesting conversation to have.)
Marinette herself hadn’t noticed anything yet, but Tikki told her not to worry.
“It doesn’t happen to everyone,” she reassured her holder. “Maybe you’re just lucky! And the side effects aren’t that bad anyway. You’ll just, like, really want to eat aphids!”
Marinette really hoped her Ladybug luck pulled through on this because the last thing she needed in her life were random insect traits ruining her entire existence. And she, decidedly, did not want to eat aphids.
(She felt bad for the first Miraculous holders to experience these side effects. That would not have been a fun time for them or their kwamis.)
She’d been subtly watching her friends for side effects, especially the more dangerous ones. Alya had suddenly developed the ability to jump really high and therefore be really good at high jump, but the hallucinations were stressing her out. And Nino seemed to just be slower in general. Adrien had asked him to pass him a pencil and Marinette swore it took him ten whole minutes to do it.
As the Guardian, she worried that handing the kwamis to their holders full-time would make the side effects worse and lead to the holders getting hurt. She’d warned them all of the possibilities, of course, but that didn’t stop anyone.
One of the things that worried her most was the lifespans. Ladybugs only had lifespans of two to three years. Turtles could live to be over 100. Would those traits bleed into her friends, too?
Tikki said she’d never noticed lifespans of the Miraculous holders changing due to side effects, but Tikki was over a billion years old. She had a messed up concept of time. So, yeah. Marinette was worried about the side effects.
However.
Something Chat Noir had just suggested had her in tears.
“What? It’s a valid question!”
The question in question was: “So, do you think Hawk Moth really likes big lights or. Like, do you think he feels the urge to fly into the sun?”
“I hope he flies into the sun,” Chat Noir muttered. “It’d solve a lot of our problems.”
Ladybug was too busy wheezing and trying not to fall off of the Eiffel Tower to answer.
Once she’d regained some sense of dignity (although she was pretty sure she’d just boosted Chat’s ego to the moon), she wiped away her tears of laughter and tried (and failed) to look at her partner without giggling.
“Do you think Carapace has stronger bones now? Or does he just. Struggle to eat salad?”
And she was back in hysterical laughter at the mental image of Nino chewing leaves very slowly and being in obvious pain about it. “Oh my God, Chat. How do you think of these things?”
Chat Noir flashed her a cheshire grin. “I’m just beautiful and talented, m’lady.”
Ladybug snorted. “In your dreams.”
“Only if I see you there,” he winked.
She scoffed, looking away. Dork.
“What if we, like, call your lucky charm next akuma fight and Tikki makes a really big light and we see if Hawk Moth comes out to fly into it.”
“Oh my God, Chat!”