Sign Up!

Marinette Dupain-Cheng clicks, and the screen shifts.

Email:

Username:

Password:

Her email is easy, and second nature to type. She's been using the same email since she was seven, and she's now fourteen. Half of her life.

She hesitates at the username, before thinking of her character, Tikki. She remembers the hours spent Googling ladybugs, and how they are supposed to represent good luck and prosperity. All that Tikki represents, and all that she wants for her new comic, The Adventures of Tikki.

She types 'LadyBug' into the username category, the same password she uses for everything into the password category, and clicks the Sign Me Up! button before she can lose her nerve. The screen changes again, revealing her new account page. She uploads the picture she drew of Tikki for the profile picture, but hesitates again at the description. In the end, she just writes something short.

A French girl who likes drawing and making comics.

She feels like it's boring, but decides that she can change it later if she wants. She isn't on Miraculous, a site to draw and post comics online, to become popular. She's doing it so she can finally give Tikki a story.

The idea for The Adventures of Tikki had been floating around in Marinette's mind since she was eight and started to become interested in creating her own cartoons. She'd created Tikki a year ago, and had often imagined her defeating supervillains in Paris, where Marinette lives. However, it was only recently that Marinette had created the idea of kwamis, which Tikki was, and kwami that had gone bad, Nooroo. Once she'd created Nooroo, who could turn normal people into supervillains when they got upset, she knew she wanted to create a comic about them.

She clicks the Create Comic button, and types The Adventures of Tikki as the title. She might change that later, she isn't sure. She just wants to make a comic, and she'd heard about Miraculous from her friend Alya. Alya was obsessed with the many online comics on the site.

Marinette was yet to tell her that she would be creating her very own comic.

The screen in front of her is mainly made up of a white canvas. Entirely empty, and a dizzying amount of tools everywhere around it. It's overwhelming, to see the different types of brushes and sizes and colours, but somehow it inspires Marinette. It makes her smile, and she draws a red circle. She spends an entire hour testing out the different tools and working out how to use this new site with her drawing tablet, but she has to admit that Miraculous is far better than the other software she was using. Both of them free, but this is far, far better. The Tikki smiling at her from the screen is closer to how Marinette imagines her than ever.

In a burst of motivation, Marinette begins the first comic. She designs the villain first, based on the recent competition for weather girl. She's decided that she'll base all of her villains on people and events that happen in real life, but not use names or appearances. And, of course, in her comic they get akumatised. Aurore Beaureal, the girl who lost the competition for weathergirl the other week, becomes Stormy Weather, the very first villain. She loses track of time as she draws panel after panel. She smiles as she draws Tikki over and over again, finding civilians trapped under ice as Stormy Weather can control the weather, avoiding lightning blasts and finally using a rock to smash the parasol that Stormy Weather carries everywhere. By the time Marinette draws Tikki flying through the akuma to purify it, it's nearly dinner and she's missed lunch.

"Marinette?"

"Yeah?" Marinette asks, quickly posting the finished episode and closing Miraculous as her mother pushes open the trapdoor to Marinette's room.

"It's dinnertime, honey."

Marinette checks her watch.

"So it is," she laughs. "I'll shut down my computer and be down in a minute."

As Sabine closes the door, Marinette reopens Miraculous. She saved the episode name hours ago, and it makes her smile to see her own artwork sitting there, ready for anyone to read.

For anyone to read.

She suddenly takes reassurance in her pseudonym. How no one knows who she is, and won't base her, Marinette, on LadyBug's artwork.

She turns off her computer screen, and goes down for dinner.

"What have you been doing in your room all day?" asks her father, Tom, when she sits down at the table for dinner.

"Drawing," Marinette admits, and her mother, Sabine, laughs.

"What did you expect, Tom?"

"Now you mention it," Tom says awkwardly, and Marinette and her mother laugh.

"Peas?" asks Sabine, and Marinette nods in thanks. The three eat in silence, until Tom starts telling his daughter about the grumpy customer who was apparently allergic to raisins and yet continued to pick up various things containing raisins.

"His sister ends up coming in," Tom laughs, "and seeing the raisin bread promptly yells at me for letting the kid anywhere near raisins before she drags him out of the shop."

Marinette snorts as she finishes her dinner.

"I'm going to bed," she says, saying goodnight and going back upstairs. After changing into her pyjamas, she flops down on her bed and pulls out her phone.

"Miraculous, Miraculous..." she mutters, browsing the app store. Finding it, she downloads the app and logs into LadyBug. She's shocked to find in the hour she's been away, The Adventures of Tikki has been added to ten reading lists, and liked fifty times. She stares at Tikki's picture on her profile page, climbs down from her bed and turns on her laptop. Twenty minutes later, she's drawn herself, but as a superhero. A human version of Tikki, in a way, but with Marinette's blue pigtails. She uploads it as her profile picture, and smiles as she turns off her computer and phone and goes to bed.