#damari

It was too early to check on Luka and Kagami, plus they made her promise she would at least try to have a good time, and Kaalki had absolutely no interest in taking her to Paris if there wasn't a clear threat. Normally, she wouldn't have thought about going on a school trip at all. For two years, she managed to "get sick" every time there was an outing on the horizon, and she took no pleasure in going to a different continent for two months, while Paris' population was completely vulnerable to a terrorist. 

However, Gotham might've had been even more dangerous than Paris, and she couldn't let her classmates go without protection either. Not to mention how the whole trip was... kind of her fault.

In her protection, last year, when Mrs. Bustier presented the class with the opportunity, she didn't think they had any chance. So when the woman said she was going to speak to her colleagues in her favor if Marinette filled out the application and convinced the class to reach the requirements, the girl didn't think twice. They shot a cool campaign-video, got recommendations from Jagged Stone, Cheng Shifu, Nadja Chamack, Penny Rolling, Gabriel Agreste, Audrey Bourgeois, the major, the principal and even the Kitty Section for good measure, then she wrote a five pages long essay about the ways they could spend the vacation and the money that came with it. Now that Marinette was thinking about it, they might've overshot the mark a little.

Thanks to Mrs. Bustier, this way she could at least maintain her grades a bit, which came handy after the late-night patrols she was still getting used to at the time.

Giving the Miraculouses to Luka and Kagami after swearing never to use them again was hard, but necessary. As Ladybug, she fed them a story about having to go to the east for a Miraculous-mission two weeks before Marinette actually left, so she could see them in action - Hawkmoth was getting sloppy; he only sent out one akuma during that time period, and it was a pretty weak one too -, and so it wasn't that easy to connect the dots, 'cause... Ladybug and your friend, who magical camouflage or not, look pretty much alike, leave and come back at the same time. You have three guesses.

She made them promise to call her if there was any damage she had to "Cure" or if an akuma was too difficult for them to handle, and she hoped that at least Kagami, being the more responsible one, would keep that promise.

Alya's voice, still hoarse from waking up, pulled her out of her thoughts.

"Mornin'." She stopped to yawn and tried to smooth her red tornado of a hair out. "Where did you get coffee?" 

Marinette pointed at the pot on the counter. Alya shuffled towards it with closed eyes, muttering "coffee" under her breath over and over again, her hip hitting every chair on the way there. She might've cursed a few times, but it came out so tangled, Marinette wasn't sure.

Then came Nino storming down the stairs, probably waking the entire city with his steps, humming Jagged Stones' Jeudi soir. He put a hand on Alya's back, lead her to a chair, then poured her a cup of coffee and smiled at Marinette while mixing two spoons of sugar into it. She smiled back fondly. 

She wasn't sure when she and Alya stopped being best friends. Things just... changed. Marinette started growing out her hair, wearing it in a braid instead of piggy tails. Alya's usual shirts were swapped to fandom T-shirts and crop tops. Marinette's clothes got more red and black, Alya started running another website beside Ladyblog, about her everyday life and various topics from movie-critiques to the art of journalism. Marinette ran out of pink lipstick and purchased a cherry one instead. Alya went to a festival with Nino and it was the best week of her life. Marinette's crush on Adrien disappeared, while Alya's relationship with Nino got more and more serious. 

It was slow and painful at first, but she didn't realize how much changed over a few months until one day she reached for her phone to call her friend and tell her something about a commission she got, then it hit her: they were not like that anymore.

It was comforting, on some level, that she no longer had that responsibility. Or that's what she told herself.

When the rest of her class arrived, she stood up and left the cafeteria. 

***

In the morning, they went sightseeing. Not as if Gotham had a lot of sights, they might've been the only people stupid enough to go there for fun.

No, it was more like two hours of "don't go here", "don't go there",  and "please, don't go there either" as they were shown around the city by a young lady whose posture was radiating stress all the time. Marinette could understand why. Their last stop was the Wayne Tower, where they were told to pair up with each other and discover the shops, cafés, and restaurants around the square.

She locked eyes with Adrien and mouthed "cover for me". The boy nodded, then Marinette quickly turned around the corner and walked around the square a few times before finding a sympathetic café, only one street away from the tower (technically, it wasn't on the square, but close enough).

She took a seat and ordered her third cup of coffee that day (she was healthy like that), before pulling out her phone and researching Wayne Enterprises. She checked it out back home of course, but there was a lot more material there than she had time for

She was reading yet another biography on Bruce Wayne and pretending her tired eyes weren't constantly tearing up and stinging from the screen when she heard it.

"I can't believe it. Have you read this?" an old man asked his wife sitting at the table next to Marinette's.

"Please, Robert, you can't throw a tantrum every time someone gets killed in this city," the women answered flatly.

The man turned a few pages in his newspaper then pushed it under her wife's nose.

"Not just someone, Martha! A girl! A young girl! She was barely older than Katie!" That seemed to pique the woman's interest.

"A girl, ya' say?" she murmured, pulling out her glasses. "Who did it?"

"You'd think they know, right? I mean, they have a list of all the psychopaths rummaging the streets, it can't be that hard to figure out, but no-," the wife shushed him just by raising a finger.

She took a few seconds to read the article before speaking up again.

"This says it was near Crime Alley. No girl goes near that just by accident."

"She was stabbed twelve times in broad daylight! She wasn't that near Crime Alley, look-," he turned the newspaper, searching the lines then he pointed at something, "-she was found on St. Anthony Street! That's five streets over!"

The woman hummed.

"What did ya' say, how old was she?"

"Sixteen. Katie might've seen her a few times, they went to the same school."

A waitress came and interrupted them, giving them their check. Marinette, who was pretending to drink her coffee peacefully all along now turned to them just as the man opened his wallet.

"Excuse Moi? May I ask what time it is?" She asked with a thick French accent. 

The man stopped halfway in paying the waitress and glanced at his watch, giving Marinette enough time to study the wallet in his hand. It was small and black leather, probably a gift. There was a picture too, just as she expected. It showed a girl around thirteen with blond hair and bangs, smiling in her school uniform. "Katie", if she had any luck. 

"Half-past two," the man told her helpfully.

The girl thanked him with a smile, paid for her coffees, then left the shop. 

She walked around the block to get out of the old couple's sight before visiting the Gotham Gazelle's official website on her phone. The dead girl's name was Joanne, but her surname wasn't published and there was no photo of her. She was found the day before yesterday, with twelve identical knife-wounds on her body. The police said they were looking for the culprit, but they clearly didn't have much to go on, given their lack of suspects.

Marinette took out her sketchbook and started scribbling down some notes.

Joanne

16 yrs old

Lives in Gotham

Student

She paused. The uniform on Katie's picture was blue with a red tie. Gotham didn't have many schools, but they all had different uniforms. Blue and red meant Gotham Academy.

Student in Gotham Academy

A quick Facebook search later she had the girl's last name and profile picture. Bless the modern age.

If she had to be in Gotham, she might as well not die in boredom, right?

St. Anthony Street was a little over thirty minutes from the Wayne Tower. She had time.

________________

As always, coffee is my nectar and comments are my ambrosia, so penny for your thoughts!

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