I am besieged by the affliction

The ritual was successful, but it has drained me. I need time to recuperate.

I can't do that, because of The Curse

Dark forces are conspiring within me. I must conserve my strength to battle them.

By which I mean, asks used to be WAY more of the tumblr economy. They used to be more common to send, and receive, and see. They were integral to the collaborative, forum-like behavior of old tumblr communities, not even to speak on the HUGE number of ask-blogs that used to exist to only be interacted with in ask-form.

Charmy: C.

Finral: That's the first letter of your name.

Charmy: Oh, it is?

Finral: Yes, but that's not the first letter of the alphabet. You've said it before. Aaaah...

Charmy: Aaaah... I.

Finral: Oh! It's the first letter, well, you wouldn't know that, because you don’t know how to spell.

Charmy: Fucking A, this is tough.

Finral: Oh! You said it!

Charmy: Fucking? A?

Since it's been bothering me these past few days, this is a list of how I would rewrite a fic I wrote last year, called The Gems of Dupont on Ao3 if I were to do so.

Spoiler Warning if you want to read the fic then read this

Premise: There is a group of students who while anonymous, are known to have a lot of power. Namely, they have a history of getting rid of unsavory figures in the school or associated with it. Their current targets are Marinette (stalking, minor abuse of power, and her actions towards her 'rivals'), Adrien (bystander, actions as Chat Noir towards Ladybug, etc.), Lila (obvious), Alya (misinformation, slander, and something else), Mme. Bustier (bystander, emotional manipulation, poor teaching methods), Mr. Damocles (fraud, neglect, etc.), and Fu (facing the consequences of his own actions)

Problems: A scene that I did not flesh out enough to show the reasoning behind it, too many characters involved in the takedown, illogical plot points, involving characters that make no sense, and moving too fast due to me losing interest but not wanting to go on hiatus or abandoning the work.

The Rewrite:

Establishing the Gems -

The sign of the Gems (a wreath of gems on Mme. Mendelieve's door) is shown, causing rumors to spread through the school

Adrien, Alya, and Lila ask what they are, giving them the full explanation

The Gems are a group of six that every year go through and gather evidence of people's wrongdoings, before giving them to those that would cause the most change. This most of the time results in someone leaving the school. When they are done, gems are left where the person sits. Each gem represents something, and while there are six Gems, there are more gems.

Chloe scoffs out loud while Lila internally scoffs. Chloe thinks she is immune, as she has never been hit before. Lila scoffs because she thinks she hasn't been caught, to begin with.

Cut to a group chat, where two people are arguing over the nicknames they have in the chat. "Eye candy" seems particularly frustrated and claims they bring something more to the team than their good looks.

Safety Measures -

We see a week pass, with people becoming more and more anxious waiting for something to happen. Some sign that this wasn't a fluke. The first week is always when it is that they send out the warnings, where are the warnings?

But one day, as Nino walks in, having not arrived with Alya due to her running off to record an akuma fight, he finds a note sitting on his desk. The note contains a list of numbers and timestamps. A small doodle of a gem sitting in the corner.

On another day, Rose finds a small slip of paper that has Prince Ali's phone number on it, also with a small doodle of a gem in the corner

Luka opens a note left on his bed. He finds the chords for a song, with no lyrics. Each page has small annotations of cherry blossoms in places where lyrics would be, and a doodle of a gem in the bottom corner.

Kagami is surprised when a note falls out of her locker, with a message in brail saying "He hesitates, where is his backbone?". A gem is engraved on the page

The first -

Alya is the first to go down. After a fight between her and Nino that results in their break up, she learns that her parents got a similar note to the one that started the fight.

The numbers and timestamps were coded for different videos on the Ladyblog. The one for Nino was instances where Alya endangered him and those around him. The fight was about her recklessness, and her want to get up close to akuma fights with little regard for her safety.

The one her parents got, however, was every single time she had endangered herself.

The two of them were busy with work often, so they only really watched the videos Alya sent them. Often those were the ones where she stayed safe for the most part or had a lot of views.

So they opened her blog, to investigate what these timestamps were, only to find their daughter once again throwing herself into situations she shouldn't have. Along with countless posts trying to figure out the identities of people who were trying to protect the city and a single post that had them questioning her integrity.

The next day, Alya was pulled into distanced learning. She was also grounded until further notice, with no blog posting for one day per timestamp listed.

Mme. Bustier -

- As class starts up, the class phone begins to ring. Mr Damocles has called to tell Bustier that there are people wanting to talk to her about something, and that the Art teacher would be sent over to watch her class in the mean time.

- As Bustier leaves the class are told to use this time as a study hall, and those who had nothing left to do just need to make sure they behave for the art teacher.

- When she arrives there are three people in the office. Damocles, a representative from the school board, and a lawyer sent to represent the school board.

- It turns out that an anonymous person sent a flashdrive to the school, with video and audio of some of Mme. Bustier’s ‘teaching methods’ along with lists, links, and more. The evidence alone is damning of her capabilities as a teacher.

- She’s told that there was someone who had been planning to transfer over here anyways, and that they would take over the next day and bring with them their protege.

Aftermath -

- As the new teacher arrives and explains the situation, shock waves through the students. Some sigh in relief that they can put themselves first for once, while others shout out in defense of Bustier. Many stay quiet and just stare in shock.

- The protege arrives then, and is told to sit down next to Marinette in Alya’s old seat, drilling in to some students that Alya truly is not coming back.

- Eventually class ends and the protege is properly introduced to the other students, where they quickly explain through text that they aren’t attending this school, and that they just aren’t able to stay home alone at the moment. They are online learning from their school back in the states, but they’ll be attending classes whenever the teacher can’t find someone to take care of them for a day.

- They are invited to join them in watching Kitty Section’s new song at the Liberty over the weekend, and they gladly join in.

Desperada -

- The weekend arrives, and the class is gathered at the dock they’ve decided on. Students are scattered around the boat trying to find places to see. Kim even dragged Max and by extension MARKOV onto the roof for a better view. Alix quickly climbed up claiming she was there to “keep MARKOV company, who knows how bored they would be without me”

- As the performance comes to a close, Jagged Stone pulls up in his limo, trying to recruit a new guitarist. Marinette does as canon, and Desperada drops in. Everyone scatters, with only a few being captured.

- Eventually a few people drop onto the scene. Ladybug is the only recognizable one. The one that arrives next to her is in a teal suit that covers most of their face, carrying a harp on their back and with one hand resting on a bracelet around their wrist.

- The other two came from different directions. One had a spiked leather jacket over their suit, with hair up in a mohawk like style. They had spots of honey-yellow peaking through a mostly black and dark brown suit. Spiked steel toed boots finished up the look. The other was more…. Chaotic. Tall ears peaked up from fluffed up hair, with hazel eyes peaking out from a pastel blue mask. Their suit had them wearing a baggy hoodie with the iconic turtleneck of the miraculous suits poking out from beneath. With dark brown leggings that melted into black boots reminiscent of the person next to them.

- The first fight goes terribly. Ladybug is hit near immedietly. The teal one twists their bracelet and their back to moments before, in the sewers they had jumped out of. Only, this time the two mysterious people dropped into the sewers with them.

- Ladybug is immedietly suspiscious, reminders of Scarlet Moth and Volpina bleeding into her mind. Aspik however is confused as to why they appeared sooner than before.

- Leather: “Time travel doesn’t effect cartoons, dummy.”

- Turns out the two are heroes who got sent over to assist in the fight against Hawkmoth. The one in the leather jacket has the ability to cause anyone who they use their power on to see all of their loved ones mocking and laughing at them. The one in the hoodie abides by cartoon logic exclusively.

- Ladybug/Aspik:“Ok, and why should we believe you?”

- Leather: “Cause there’s already an akuma. We also could detransform if you want.”

- Ladybug: “Why would we want that? Aren’t you scared of your identity being known?”

- Leather: “Well yeah. Just means I’m scared of dying which everyone is.”

- Aspik: “What do you mean?”

- Leather: “What do you mean?”

- Ladybug: “This is taking too long, Aspik go re-charge, we’ll finish this conversation before you get back.”

- After Aspik leaves, the three get to talking.

Explanation: Miraculous magic system makes very little sense. So, I fixed it up a bit. Each kwami is descended from gods of magic, and depending on what is the most present dictates their title. Tikki and Plagg aren’t actually THE kwami’s of creation and destruction alone, they are the creation and destruction of LUCK. Good Luck/Bad Luck. Leather jacket has the hyena miraculous, hoodie has the coyote miraculous, which both fall with the monkey on the chaos side of things. ‘Perfect holders’ or people who have almost the exact same magic signature as the kwami of the miraculous are the only ones able to have chaos miraculous, as they are chaotic and therefore incredibly distructive if used incorrectly. ‘Perfect Holders’ can only loose their miraculous if they willingly take it off or if they die. So they aren’t worried about their identities being found out. Fu who never learned how to figure that out wasn’t exactly worried about finding a perfect holder. Even if he tried, he likely wouldn’t find one, as they could very well be in another country.

Full explanation is chapter ten of the fic

Continuing on -

- When they get back the hoodie wearing holder pulls out a sign from their pocket and shows it to their companion. Their companion nods before asking if Ladybug knows that the person next to her was more fit for a destructive or protection miraculous, rather than the time based miraculous around his wrist. When asked why it would matter, the answer was just “someone with time based magic will be more likely to understand and get though a time based miraculous’s abilties with their sanity in tact and with minimal damage.”

- Aspik quickly returned the miraculous and darted off, with Chat Noir returning shortly after.

- The question of who would take the miraculous comes up, and the two dart off to find suitable canidates. Hoodie returns with a pink haired gremlin in tow, while Leather returns with Luka.

- An agreement is made that the two will swap back and forth every twenty turns so they can try different approaches.

- After a couple rounds of each, Luka eventually comes in with the winning strategy.

The episodes 'Ladybug' and 'Startrain' will not be happening. The reason is that with two new holders out and about, Mayura isn't likely to follow through with what she did in canon. Meanwhile, the field trip got canceled due to the change in teachers. Now onwards.

Realization -

The scene opens with Luka and Juleka in their room. Juleka is tuning her bass while Luka keeps puzzling over the sheet music he got earlier in the story.

Juleka walks up to him to try and help him figure out what the music means. After a while, she asks if he's asked any other members of Kitty Section about it, to which he replies no.

After calling the other members, Ivan gives a response that spurs Luka into a frenzy as he realizes the answer is to find the lyrics to the song.

Juleka looks on as her brother runs around the room, playing the tune and matching the lyrics to the annotations. Making sure that no akuma could touch him when he realizes what the annotations spell out.

Rose's dilemma -

As the call with Luka shuts off, Rose crumbles down with tears streaming down her face, her messages with Prince Ali open in front of her.

She doesn't know who to talk to. Should she tell Alya, who has already left but was the closest to her? Tell Juleka who had long since been sceptical? Maybe Mylene who was as kind as her, might be just as heartbroken?

Rose's Dilemma pt. 2 -

Filler chapter of Rose's akumatization. Likely it would be something about lies. The result would have people questioning Lila's credibility, due to Rose being akumatized. Lila would not have her lies revealed due to this akuma, partly due to how the show tends to treat the targets.

Small scene afterwards of Alix and Juleka comforting Rose.

Feast. -

The first few scenes are Fu's point of view as he steals Adrien's and then Marinette's miraculous. His internal monologue is primarily about his guilt for having to do this and his guilt for causing Feast to begin with. We cut off his POV as he runs away from Marinette's house, cutting across the front of the school.

(I'm unsure when exactly this happened in the actual episode, but I'm going to say it's really late afternoon for the season, which I'm going to also assume is late winter or early spring. This is based on the Christmas special being Season 2, Episode 1 and Frozer still being within that season. So it's a slightly earlier sunset than normal.)

After cutting away from Fu's POV we go to Kim's point of view. He stayed after school due to either a detention or lost track of time on the track and has been running in circles for a while. Both are viable options.

Kim watches as a small old man with a gramophone on his back starts running away from Marinette's house. Very weird. As he goes running by, something falls out of the gramophone, landing a few yards in front of him. He tries to shout for the guy to let him know, but he's too far away and doesn't look back.

Picking up the circlet that fell out, a bright flash of light flies up. Honestly, most of Kim's meeting with Xuppu goes the same. Xuppu calls him a nitwit, and he fully forgets about returning the miraculous to Fu. He transforms then runs around trying to find other heroes for a bit and runs into the Coyote hero from Desperada.

They jump over to him and start gesturing around, causing a small cloud to form with the translation of the hand gestures, asking him who he is. As he starts explaining an explosion is heard, as Feast finally is awoken.

The two run off to investigate, and the Hyena holder joins them. They catch up to Feast with Fu biking away as fast as he can. The three jump down in front, as he squawks about miraculous holders being present that he knew nothing of. The three start attempting to fight Feast, with mixed results. Coyote can daze it for three seconds with a giant flyswatter, Hyena tried to attack it with their ability but it wasn't sentient enough for mockery to really work, and Kim had managed to avoid being captured. After a few minutes of it, Ladybug and Banana Noir arrived.

As those two try to escort out Fu, he starts divulging the backstory of Feast. As the fight continues, futilely, Ladybug shouts out to Kim to use his ability the next time the tongue comes out. They set up so they can pull this off as best as they can. The scene pulls out with only a minor mishap of Banana Noir causing the plan to go off early. The toy he receives is one of those toy gumball machines that causes Feast to start throwing up, with all of the items in its stomach coming out as those little toys inside the balls from the machine. Feast falls down exhausted, and the group scrambles to find the object that created and akumatized Feast.

Eventually, Ladybug (now transformed) finds the source and cleans everything up. Kim jumps off around the same time as the Coyote and Hyena heroes, leaving Fu to be accosted by his two chosen.

Filler chapters to show the passage of time -

It's yet another weekend and Alix has invited some of their friends out to see her roller derby match. The group includes Rose, Juleka, Max, Kim, and the protege. While they are there they run into Sabrina, who comes by to watch the matches sometimes, having a small interest in playing at some point. The group decides to bring her with them as they watch and later go on to get some gelato to celebrate Alix's victory.

A class day with the new teacher, with their protege perched on a beanbag in the back corner working on their homework. Students doing homework as they talk about the Gems' activities and history, Lila's excuses not holding water for yet another teacher, and MARKOV interacting with people.

Su-Han arrives and Fu is gone-

The teen holders (everyone but the Hyena) are running around on the roofs training when Su-Han arrives. (He is rolling up much earlier, I know) He prepares to attack but pauses as he sees a miraculous he doesn't recognize. This pause causes the young heroes' attention to be drawn to him due to his attire.

Kim and Coyote pop on over while Chat Noir and Ladybug stay back, weapons at the ready. The two burst out with questions, clouds of them floating up and around Su-Han before he waves them away and starts shouting about them being impertinent and immature.

As they listen an akuma starts flapping over, before Su-Han disperses his emotions forcing it to fly a different way. It instead gets caught by Ladybug who purifies it.

He starts questioning them and they return questions at a similar rate, slowly making him realize the situation that the world has devolved into. He shouts about Chicken Legs and the Impatient One, before turning and telling them that he needs to go do something.

Chat Noir shrugs and says he's going to turn in for the day then, and runs off. Kim and Ladybug stay put, staring at Su-Han while Coyote shoots off a text to Hyena telling them to meet up.

The four, eventually five, run off to go and find 'Chicken Legs' and find themselves at Fu's massage parlor. Ladybug shows some minor outrage at this, questioning Su-Han, before he reminds her of Feast.

Su-Han goes in and confronts Fu, who eventually tries to pull the 'transfer guardianship and erase memories of the miraculous' spell. Hyena jumps in at that moment, reciting a minor counter spell that the like two guardians still alive outside of Fu figured out to make sure that if any rouge guardians popped up, they couldn't just wipe their minds and give an accomplice the miracle box they had.

The Expose -

As the students arrive at their classrooms, they all see that there is a presentation/announcement pulled up on the projector.

When the bell rings the presentation automatically begins to play, starting with the classic black-and-white countdown.

The students watch as multiple videos of Lila and her claims play.

The final video plays and a QR code is put on the screen with the statement "Here are her sources".

Everyone rushes to scan the QR code, Lila staring in shock and confusion at the code before realization seems to set in. She starts shouting for everyone to not look, only to be brushed off as those who scanned it earlier stare at their phones and at her with horror smeared across their faces.

Shouts break out, some apologizing to Marinette for chalking up her actions to jealousy, while others scream at Lila for her deceit.

The shouts are broken off as Mr Damocles walks in, head bowed as a small group of lawyers walk in. Each of them slaps a file of papers in front of Lila. Each one is a different lawsuit.

Lila shrieks as she starts shouting at Marinette, before turning her finger on Adrien, shouting about how it must have been one of them. She continues screaming until her mother walks in and drags her out.

They find out later from Alya that Lila was moved to another country after she tried to grab an akuma to escape her room.

The Cat -

The next day shows a major change in seating, with no one sitting near Adrien except for Marinette. That's tenuous, as the girl squad tries to convince her he was wrong in what he was planning with the high road approach.

The class progresses, with Nino being comforted by a few of the other students due to losing two close relationships in the period of a few weeks.

After class, we move to Adrien's POV as he starts jumping across the roofs of Paris. He runs into the Coyote eventually, who motions for him to go somewhere. Being suspicious still of the foreign heroes, he starts going in the opposite direction. Eventually, he finds himself inside of an ally, where the Hyena hero hid. They start talking to him, asking him questions about his time as a hero. This escalates until the two are yelling about opposing ideologies.

They are trying to tell him that his sacrifices are not productive,, that his actions during some akumas are inappropriate, and that it seems as if he doesn't take his job as a hero seriously.

He shouts back about his beliefs about it and talks about how the Black Cat and Ladybug are destined, Yang and Yin, Destruction and Creation, and how just because he likes to have fun during fights, doesn't mean he can't be serious during them.

Hyena lore dumps back about how it is that the two are meant to be equals to keep the balance, and how he isn't doing that. How his slacking off has caused more destruction, and that there has been almost no recorded time where a Creation and Destruction miraculous holder has ever been a successful couple. Their differences may make them unique and help them work together, but it often causes tension and disagreements when it goes beyond a partnership.

This argument continues on until eventually, an akuma flies near, being caught by Ladybug. The two take a deep breath before Hyena officially revokes his miraculous as the guardian.

Ladybug stares in horror at Adrien, before leaving in a hurry, as he reaches out to her in despair. As the spell comes to a close, his memories of his time with a miraculous are wiped.

The Cat miraculous is given to Kagami, and Adrien starts going to a therapist due to his memory loss being apparent to his father. He is taken out of Dupont. (After Hawkmoth is caught he is moved to the UK with Felix and his aunt, where he goes to school again while still in therapy)

Filler chapters -

- Kagami with the Black Cat miraculous training with the other heroes, with the Hyena leading a basic class on how to utilize miracle weapons and gives more details on how the Black Cat miraculous is supposed to work (besides cataclysm having an ability that creates misfortune to the one hit by it and another ability that destroys major damage caused by another miraculous)

- A group chat messaging back and forth about whether ‘Y’ or ‘B’ needs to be revealed first. The chapter ends before the answer is revealed

The Largest Fall -

- The students arrive the next day to find an interim-principal taking Damocles place. It’s mentioned that Mr Damocles is having a chat with the board members, something about his retirement.

- Chloe has a sudden rise in cockiness/frustration/etc. and begins treating Sabrina worse than usual, often lashing out at those around her.

- The next day a small note is found on Chloe’s desk, with no one being able to read it before Chloe is guided out of the classroom kicking and screaming by her parents and their lawyers.

- The next day, the new gem filled crown is found sitting on their classrooms desk. A stir breaks out as people theorize about who was what gem, coming up short for a couple of gems.

- A flashback starts up of Alix and Juleka going to the Dupain-Cheng bakery to have a chat with Marinette’s parents. After a short conversation about how they are concerned for Marinette, and that while they can’t get into the specifics, it is very likely that Marinette needs therapy to help her with her anxiety. After they head up to Marinette’s room to have a conversation with her about the specific concerns they had, holding Marinette close when she starts to cry and telling her they won’t let an akuma control her.