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Under The Bats' Wing

Summary:

Alternatively, *Ladybug Goes to Gotham (Not Willingly)

The rise of Paris's favorite duo, Ladybug and Chat Noir, gains Batman's attention. Unfortunately for Ladybug-- and Marinette-- this leads to a series of events that find her on the floor of some warehouse in Gotham, dying as Scarecrow's fear toxin slowly seeps into her veins.

Batman seeks to diminish the threat Ladybug and Chat Noir pose by reigning them in and training them. Marinette is unenthusiastic. With Chat Noir becoming distant, Adrien dating Kagami, and Lila stirring up trouble, she may find herself depending on The Batman and his sidekicks for more than she anticipated. Meanwhile, Adrien and Alya are becoming increasingly worried about Marinette's odd behavior, and that means some secrets are going to find their way into the open.

DISCONTINUED because this fandom is awful, I want no part of it, and I don't wanna hear about this story ever again.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1: Karate Chops and Kwamis

Chapter Text

She wasn’t sure how this happened.

She’d wandered away from the rest of the class, sure, just for a few minutes. Everyone just seemed so happy! Lila, true to being the succubus she was, had… a pretty singing voice. Delicate, smooth, alluring, like silk that drifted across the skin and left goosebumps in its wake. The class was enamored the moment she joined Luka as he strummed a slow tune on his guitar. She, herself, found Lila’s foxy voice to be almost lulling-- almost. Ivan and Mylene had taken to each other’s arms and swayed together, back-to-chest, Mylene leaning her head back so Ivan could lean his forehead forward and meet hers. Rose and Juleka seemed enamored, fawning over her like lambs looking for a guiding hand. The rest of the class just seemed lost to the music, nodding along with stars in their eyes and-- in Kim’s case-- lighters in hand. Despite all of that, despite the obvious god complex her friends were unintentionally perpetuating in their resident exchange student, she’d been enjoying herself.

She could focus on Luka’s guitar, after all, and the way he made eye contact with her across the deck of their boat, under the night stars and the twinkling bulb lights overhead. And with Lila singing, she couldn’t use that mouth of hers to tell any lies. Things had been good-- that moment was good.

She’d just turned her head at a bad time, caught Adrien’s hands on Kagami’s waist at the horribly right-wrong time. Swaying to and fro with her arms around his neck and her head on his chest. So she turned tail and parted her way through the sea of classmates, inching her way onto the street so she could breath for a second.

She’d decided to wander along the riverline when there’d been a hand over her mouth. An arm around her waist, taller, so that she felt her feet lift off the ground. Her stomach dropped, but she hardly felt it as the mystery grip tightened so hard she felt the air leave her lungs. She opened her mouth to bite or scream, but the hand stayed and pinched her skin and lips between their fingers.

But they’d picked the wrong girl.

She clenched her fist and raised her arm, just to slam her elbow as hard as possible into… their side? She wasn’t sure, but that arm around her bruised stomach lightened up, and she twisted around to return the favor. A kick to the stomach that usually made the akuma backpedal. The assailant, some guy in all black like a textbook creep, flew backwards and hit the ground. Unconscious, from the look of the white of his eyes. Sabrina was right inside, they could call her dad no problem-- but then Adrien and Kagami, locked in a slow dance flashed by her mind. No, everyone was inside, happy, lost to the music on their Saturday night. She’d take care of it herself. Rather, Ladybug would. She parted her bag to see Tikki’s big worried eyes staring up at her, blue and bright even in the dark of the parisian night. She reached in to give Tikki a small scratch on the head. “I’m fine, Tikki, don’t worry. Let’s get this guy to the police station, shall we?”

“I can take care of that.”

Her first thought was Chat, but that voice was too baritone and too serious, and carried a childish tone where Chat’s was merely boyish. Not familiar, and though the hairs on her arms stood on end, their tone betrayed no malice. She jumped, and found, to her surprise, a boy her age, dressed head to toe in color she’d seen before. On the news, in the papers, the heroes people talked about before Ladybug and Chat Noir made their way to Paris. Red, green, black, yellow. Eyes narrowed behind a perfectly-sculpted mask. His name eluded her. She snapped her bag shut and let out a meek “meep”.

His name was Robin, he’d… not so kindly reminded her, the sidekick of the greatest detective in the world-- Batman. And he was going to take this criminal to jail himself, whether she liked it or not. Well, she’d never been one to stand down, even against somebody like him. She was Ladybug! And now she was The Guardian. This was her city (and she didn’t want to be here on this boat right now) and her bad guy, and she was going to be the one to put him behind bars. She’d made a move to pick the dead weight of a guy off the ground. She didn’t stop to notice how fast Robin had circled behind her or his raised hand-- or to wonder why a hero from Gotham was in Paris in the first place. The next moment was darkness.


When she woke up-- she didn’t know how long she’d been out-- she was laid flat. Hard surface, one pillow. Voices a few feet away.

“--ian, you can’t just--!”

“--e’s fine. I didn’t do any damage, and this is what father--”

“--you’ve fucked up this time, Demon Brat.”

“--nough. Robin, she might have gone quietly if you’d spoken to her first.”

“--Tt--”

“Red Robin, she’s here now, and that’s what matters. Red Hood, did you get--?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s right here, Bats.”

“Mm. Nightwing, report on Chat Noir?”

Chat . Her eyes had sprung open, but the lights had been blinding. Right in her face, hues of blues and yellow, starbursts of darkness as her eyes strained to pick up on her surroundings. She’d sat up and felt the splitting pain in her neck the moment she did. Her bag was still at her side, and she could still feel Tikki nestled into its inner lining. Across the room, which she’d eventually figure out to be the batcave, stood Red Hood, Red Robin, Robin, and Batman himself. A man in black had been standing somewhere off to the side, polishing what looked like a suit of old-fashioned armor. She’d frowned to herself, decided that this was NOT how she wanted to spend her Saturday night, and planned to make her big escape.

Seven minutes later, her escape plan, which had involved tossing one of the scalpels she’d found placed in a sterile medical kit to her bedside somewhere to the side to cause a distraction, ended abruptly when she’d climbed off the bed to crawl her way to the tunnel paved for the batmobile and ran directly into Nightwing himself. The plan, she now thought of with shame, would have failed anyway. After all, when she’d tried to back up, she’d hit Red Hood’s legs and met his inquisitive, almost-- no, definitely-- taunting look. Was that possible with his helmet? She’d seen inanimate objects do weirder in her time fighting akumas.

And that was where she was now, sitting back on that table with a bunch of bat-themed grown men surrounding her, watching her as if she’d try to escape again. They were right, of course, she was planning on it, but the sentiment was still insulting. She hung her head and tried not to make eye contact, because she’d heard some of the things these men had done, about the blood on Red Hood’s hands, criminal or no. About how every single one of these men have died and been resurrected by who knows what. She’d have to ask Tikki later how any of it was possible. She was Ladybug, yeah, but she and Chat had never gone toe-to-toe with somebody like Darkseid or The Joker. Hawkmoth was bad, horrible really, but he wasn’t… sick. He wasn’t demented. Didn’t kill people. He was cartoonish, wanted their miraculouses so he could make a wish, probably for world domination or something. Sure, maybe some of his akumas had some terrifying implications (icy blue eyes and snow white skin flashed by her mind’s eye), but he didn’t go around killing people. She supposed she should be thankful.

And she didn’t know why she was here. Because she’d mouthed off to Robin? She’d gladly do it again, and she doubted a world-renowned hero would be so petty.

Red Robin closed the mini fridge door. “Bro, did you eat my last Go-Gurt?”

Red Hood shrugged. “Wanna fight about it?”

They did, in fact, fight about it.

… Maybe she shouldn’t have been so sure. She reached down to her bag and felt Tikki soothingly brush against her hand. Things would be all right. She could handle this. “I didn’t think superheroes would be in the business of kidnapping teenage girls.”

Nightwing crossed his arms and shot Robin a scolding eyebrow raise. “We’re not.” Robin clicked his tongue and turned away. She wondered if they were the same age? He was shorter than Chat was, but his voice said he wasn’t Manon’s or Chris’s age. No, he was roughly Max’s height, so probably thirteen or fourteen at least, right? Nightwing leveled her with a smile, something comforting, the kind of smile she and Chat gave akumatized victims when they’d been purified. “We’re sorry about that. We promise there won’t be any karate chops to the neck when we take you back to Paris.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “Back to Paris? You mean…?”

Red Robin leaned against the medical cabinet, a very Chat Noir motion with his arms and legs crossed nonchalantly, a cool smirk on his masked face. “Welcome to Gotham.”

“No, oh no. No, I have to get back!” She reached into her bag to pull out her phone. “Alya will be looking for me, I--!”

“Relax.” Robin took what looked suspiciously like her phone out of his pocket and tossed it to her. “You might be an ametur, but I’m not.” So this was her phone, then. She hurriedly swiped it open and glanced at her messages.

>Girl, where are you?

<Went home. Headache.

A little blunt to be her, headache or no (and she certainly was feeling one coming on right then), but it sufficed. Similar messages were sent intermittently to others, and there was even a message to her parents about her spending the night “elsewhere”. No doubt she’d be in trouble when Maman got a hold of her, but at least nobody thought she went missing-- or came to the correct conclusion of her getting kidnapped. She hummed disapprovingly and opened her bag to…. put…. her phone.... back . Her eyes widened in a moment, and she snapped her bag shut and swiped it behind her back. Robin snorted. “Please, I’ve already seen that creature of yours. Why do you think you’re here?”

Her heart stopped beating for a moment, and turned cold in the next as Batman himself brushed through his sidekicks to stand before her with a grave look on his face. His stature was overwhelming, a hulking mass that towered well above her, would tower well above Chat, too. She wondered if this was how his enemies felt, staring up at this man who felt more like an impending miasma. He stared down at her with a stone face and thin lips, eyes narrowed beneath his mask. “We know you’re Ladybug, and we know Chat Noir is--”

“No! Stop!” She covered her ears. “I don’t wanna know! It’s bad enough you all know our identities! How!” There it was, her Ladybug. She clenched her fists and glared up at Batman, because he had no idea what he’d just done , what the implications of him knowing meant for herself, and for Chat, for Paris . “How did you find out!”

Batman stood resolute, unsurprised by the change in her, and more importantly unthreatened. She guessed the magic of Ladybug faded away when the mask came off to reveal Marinette. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re done.”

“What?”

He turned tail. He walked away from her like the conversation was over. The men around her seemed to wince, most of them with empathy. She guessed they’d all been there, too, as previous Robins. She leaped off the table, hands clutching at her bag because if he thinks he’s going to take Tikki -- “What do you mean I’m done? You are not the boss of me, and Paris is not your city!”

“Maybe not,” he sat down at what she assumed was a super computer, or a bat computer, or whatever, and started typing. “But you’re not ready.”

Not ready? To be a superhero? Who did he think he was? She growled and pulled her bag closer, tugged it to her chest and took a step forward, only for Nightwing to branch out and stop her. She glared up at him, but found only sympathy in his masked eyes. She turned to Robin, who wasn’t looking at Batman, who seemed like he was tired of this conversation, like he’d heard it a million times before. Maybe he had? “Says the man who sends kids my age to fight his battles.”

She was right. Robin bristled, and Batman tensed up. “Robin is always with his brothers or under my command. You and Chat Noir answer to no one but yourselves, and that makes you dangerous.”

“Chat Noir and I would never use our powers for anything but good! We’re here to save Paris, not destroy it!” A broken moon and a wasteland of water, a tilted Eiffel Tower. She fought her urge to wince. “Hawkmoth--!”

“--Should be left to the adults. His abilities to manipulate emotions and turn a simple civilian into a monster are dangerous, but nothing The Justice League hasn’t seen before.” Except they hadn’t, not to public knowledge, anyway. Maybe they’d dealt with a monster or two, but she doubted any such creations before were so miraculous .

“For the world’s greatest detective, you sure haven’t been paying attention.” She jutted a thumb to her chest. “I’m the only one who can purify the akuma that make his minions! You get rid of me-- and Chat -- you make Hawkmoth a thousand times more powerful!” Because the akuma multiplied like mold on bread, and no alien green ring or golden rope or laser vision could put an end to the creation of a miraculous. Because she was Ladybug. Because she and Chat Noir were a team, and there’s no way some grown man in spandex was going to change that.

“Then we stop them at their source. We take down Hawkmoth himself.”

“Oh, and you know who he is too?” There was a silence, a very telling silence. Even he didn’t know who Paris’s personal supervillain was, which, checkmate, meant she had him right where she needed him. “Like I said, Chat and I are Paris’s only hope of--”

“No, the Black Cat miraculous and the Ladybug miraculous are Paris’s only hope of survival.” He stopped typing, didn’t turn around. “Which is why you’re going to give me yours.”

“In your dreams! I spent all year refusing to give one old man in a winged costume my miraculous…”

Batman looked at her over his shoulder, paused for a moment. She blinked and hoped she imagined that the jerk had the audacity to smirk. “Red Hood?”

“Yeah, yeah.” The tallest of the sidekicks-- and until they stopped holding her hostage, that’s what they would be, sidekicks -- took something out of the messenger bag he’d kept at his side, something she hadn’t noticed. It was oddly shaped, and sort of clunky looking, with ornate designs. She squinted at it, and Red Hood stepped forward and brought it into the light. The Miracle Box. She sucked in a breath. “Look, girly, we got the rest of your jewelry set right here. Just be a doll and--”

“That is enough!” Red filled her line of sight, and she realized belatedly that Tikki had phased through her bag and sat stalwartly inches from her nose. “Maybe you’ve done your research on the miraculouses, maybe you even know who our holders are, but you most certainly did not do your research on me !” The room fell silent, but there was the faint buzzing that came with tension in her ears. She could feel it in the way Nightwing stood straighter, in how Robin put his hands at his hilt. Batman himself turned around, leveled, calm, but even Marinette could see the clench of his jaw. Tikki seemed unbothered, and she briefly recognized that, as the kwami of the Ladybug miraculous, Tikki herself must have some Ladybug stubbornness in her. “Marinette is my Chosen, not because of her experience fighting crime, but because of her heart! I am Tikki, the God of Creation, and like every holder before her, Marinette is the only person I recognize as worthy! She will not give you her miraculous, and Plagg will reign earthquakes upon your city before Chat gives you his!”

“How do we know we can trust you?” Red Robin cocked his head, eyed Tikki with all the skepticism of a scientist eyeing down a theory. “We know somebody. Somebody with a beetle who gives him his powers. It was a struggle for him to keep his own body under control. How do we know--?”

“What is it with you humans and calling me an insect?”

Nightwing’s eyes widened, hands up in offense. “That’s not--!”

“I’m a kwami! Kwa-mi!” Tikki sighed, small arms hanging limply by her sides before she set them at her… hips? Did Tikki have hips? “We kwamis have always been a force for good in this world, and Nooroo has simply fallen into malicious hands! Whatever book you read about us from will tell you that.”

“Be that as it may,” Batman stood, cape bunching up in the air before it fell over him, and she thought for a brief unflattering moment that he looked like a kid in their favorite blanket, nothing at all like the threatening aura of a man that had shrouded her earlier. “Marinette is a child, as is Ad--” He caught himself, turned his head as his lips thinned. “Chat Noir.” He looked at her, rather than Tikki, at least it felt like it. “She’s untrained. Sloppy. She’s going to get herself hurt.”

“Then let’s train her.” Nightwing strutted forward, standing between with herself and Tikki on one side and Batman’s hulking figure on the other. “You said it yourself, Bats, she shows potential. If you think she’s not ready, why don’t you make her ready?”

“You said I show potential?”

He glowered. Later, Red Robin would tell her, that was how they all-- the batkids-- knew Nightwing had won.

“I won’t have the time--”

“Then I’ll train her!” Nightwing smiled, cocky, the second time one of these supermen had reminded her of Chat. It made her feel safe, despite the circumstances. “Hell, Hood and I could take turns.”

“Hell no.”

“Robin?”

“--Tt.”

“I’ll take that as a yes!”

Robin groaned and Red Robin snickered. Batman’s lips seemed to somehow grow thinner, as did the slits of his narrowed eyes. He turned around with an abrupt twist that made his cape lift dramatically. “Fine. Nightwing, take her home.” She squeaked and took a step back as he turned suddenly and approached her, hand outstretched with what was clearly a batarang. It blinked wildly up at her, red and small, but blinding. She winced. “Miss Dupain-Cheng, we’ll be in touch.” Despite every bit of her pride telling her not to, she took it.

“Hey, can somebody just blindfold me this time? If an akuma hits, I won’t be of much use concussed.”