Chapter Text
Marinette couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face as she leaned forward, her eyes quickly scanning the script that was laying flat on the table before her.
This episode of The Miraculous Tales Of Ladybug & Cat Noir was going to be a doozy. In a good way. She could already tell.
She could also already imagine how all the fans were going to react online after its premiere.
“Alright people, we have a month until deadline for this one and no time to spare.” Gabriel Agreste, her boss and director, a balding man in his late forties, clapped twice. “Chop chop. Everyone to their seats.”
She glanced up furtively to note that Adrien and Chloe had paused their conversation to walk over and take their places at the reading table.
Chloe sat directly across the table, and Adrien slipped into his seat beside Marinette.
She swallowed and kept her eyes glued to her script.
“Where in the blazes is my Ladybug?” Gabriel did a full three-sixty before looking down. “Has anyone seen- Ah. You’re already in your chair, Marinette. Right beside my Cat Noir. Good. Adrien, look alive.”
She gave Gabriel a polite little nod when being addressed, before reverting her attention back to the stapled sheets of paper in front of her. Embarrassment crept up her cheeks in the form of a blush at the awareness made of her designated spot next to Adrien James Agreste.
[He’d never told her his middle name. She only knew thanks to Wikipedia.]
“Camera crew...” Gabriel sighed deeply. “Where is the camera crew?”
Everyone looked around, and then a young woman named Alya - an intern - cracked the door open and poked her head into the room. “They’re in the restroom.”
“All three of them?” He asked in disbelief.
“Um, yes, sir.”
He sighed again, exasperated. “Can you tell them to hurry up?”
Alya blinked. “Um…” she repeated. “It’s the men’s restroom, sir.”
“I am quite literally carrying two television shows of two entirely different genres on my shoulders.” The director said aloud, as if to himself and not to her. “I write. I animate. I direct. I produce. And yet I still have to do everything else around here.”
Alya looked apologetic. “Right. I’ll just go get them-”
“No need!” Voices from down the hallway outside their room exclaimed. In walked - rather hurriedly - the camera crew. The intern made herself scarce.
Gabriel clapped again. “C’mon people, c’mon people; alright, is that everybody?”
“That’s everybody,” Sabrina, who was seated beside Chloe, piped up cheerfully.
“Get excited, folks! Yes, Nino, that means you.” Standing behind Nino’s seat, he shook his shoulders, and the young man jolted up from his slumber. A bit of drool was on his chin. “Come on people!” Gabriel clapped loudly enough to rival thunder. “Everyone in your places, smiles upon your faces, faces on your scripts! There’s no time to delay; carpe diem and focus!”
His rapid-fire pep talk was met with obedient silence and straightened postures.
“Cameras rolling in five…” one of the cameramen began.
Everyone shifted and adjusted themselves in their seats.
“...Four…”
Gabriel fixed his bowtie at the front of the table.
“...Three…”
Adrien cleared his throat.
“...Two…”
The cameraman pointed his finger in their direction and began filming.
And just like that, Marinette was all business.
“Good morning, everybody!” Gabriel boomed to everyone seated around the table, purposefully ignoring the multiple cameras in various locations in the room.
Good morning despite the fact that it was currently four am.
Well, that was technically morning, despite it being entirely sadistic.
Their director had strange tendencies and beliefs; one of them being that all their voices sounded stronger and better at ungodly hours of the night.
He continued in an overly friendly voice. “Great work on the last episode, everyone. Great, great work. Just three more episodes before Season Two wraps up, and I couldn’t be more proud of you all.”
Sighs were stifled at his attempt at a touching sentiment.
“So we’ve got more work to do than ever before if we wish to finish this season out with a bang before the hiatus. Of course, it’ll be a hiatus for the fans; not a hiatus for us.” He looked down at his clipboard. “Our most recent episode’s premiere left us with a viewership rating of 1.12 million. Our goal for the season’s finale is to exceed our pilot episode’s rating, which was…?” He gestured to them for an open answer.
“1.47 million,” Max, the statistics wizard in their voice acting department, completed for him.
“Thank you, Max.” Gabriel nodded. “Without further to do but read, let’s do just that. Our lovely Marinette is starting us out this episode.” He looked over at her. “Please begin… and remember that this is only rehearsal for the real deal, so don’t have too much fun with it now.”
Knowing fully well that only the very beginning of the script-reading would be filmed for the reality show, Marinette leaned forward, opened her mouth, and read her opening line as expressively as she could at four hours past midnight.
“Cat Noir, I’ve just about had it with you. If your attacks were as bad as your puns, we’d be the most laughable superheroes in Paris.”
Adrien leaned forward in his seat as well, and continued the dialogue in the script. “And if your comebacks were as purr-fect as your beauty, perhaps we’d be able to consider what we’re doing as proper banter.”
All around the table the voice actors chuckled. Gabriel smiled.
“And… cut.” The cameraman announced.
Everyone relaxed.
Gabriel, for his part, was already halfway out the door. “Marinette. Adrien. Green room in an hour. Everyone else: rehearse your lines and be in your studio booths by six. Remember that we need more background screams for some of the battle scenes, so-” he waved a flippant hand “-be sure to gargle some saltwater.”
Marinette gathered her papers and pushed her seat back, standing.
As she was silently leaving the room, sweeping her bangs to the side of her face with one hand, she overhead the beginning of another conversation Chloe was initiating with Adrien.
“You’re so good at what you do, Adrikins.” Her voice was flirty, dripping with sugar. No wonder she was renowned in the world of voice acting.
“Thanks Chloe; so are you. You make a great Queen Bee.” As always, he sounded pleasant and polite.
“Oh for goodness’ sake, forget about my secondary character. Cat Noir is all the rage and center-stage, and you know it. This cartoon would be nothing without you.”
Marinette suppressed a groan as she walked out. The last thing she heard was his response: “Maybe, but the reality show portion of all this wouldn’t have lasted two episodes without your natural flair for the camera.”
The reality show portion, indeed.
It was a little odd, describing what exactly they did here at Agreste Productions, Hollywood, California. Throwing the reality show into the mix made it even more strange and unlike anything the world had ever witnessed before.
When Marinette had emailed her audition tape to Gabriel Agreste over a year and a half ago, she couldn’t have dreamed that he would actually be in favor of her voice acting abilities. Her wonderful, incredible, selfless parents Tom and Sabine Dupain-Cheng had quit their jobs and relocated to California with her so that she could pursue her new career. And as it turned out, that decision paid off, because the cartoon became wildly popular; not only among children, but also teenagers, college students, parents, and even the older generations. The weekly ratings for Season One were off the charts; a shock to Marinette, a joy to Gabriel Agreste. A cartoon about a superhero girl named Ladybug and a superhero boy named Cat Noir in a fantasy setting of modern-day Paris became a staple of American television, and once the romantic angle was introduced in Episode Three (in which Cat began actively pursuing Ladybug, despite her refusal to return his affections), the characters became the darlings of the internet, with many fans burning with emotions for the unrequited love displayed.
Then came the odd twist. Between the first and second seasons for the cartoon show, there came a hiatus, and during the hiatus, Gabriel’s ambitions went skyward. After weighing his options and meeting with different executives who wished to share in his fortune, he eventually decided upon a newer technology to further the advancement of the cartoon and the company.
The technical term for it was “live-action motion-capture animation”. Essentially, the animation style was changed to that of the same style of movies such as “Avatar” by James Cameron and “The Polar Express” by Chris Van Allsburg. Each character’s actor - the real-life people behind the voices - were asked to sign a contract, to give Agreste Productions the right to capture every motion and emotion they possibly could of each individual actor in order to animate the cartoon in an almost life-like way.
Once everyone agreed to the change and signed their contracts, every voice actor was brought together and introduced to one another in a group setting. The “green room” was built; a gigantic room with green walls, green floors, and a green ceiling. Costumes with tiny motion-capture spots were designed to cover the actors from neck to toe, and props and actual-sized buildings were built within the green room so that the actors could perform real-life stunts. Body trainers and exercise coaches were hired to get the actors in shape. What had once started out as mere voice acting had now been kicked up every single imaginable notch to an actual, physical, mental, and emotional performance, week after week after week.
And then Gabriel Agreste breathlessly waited on the night of the Season Two premiere for the viewership ratings to either go up… or down.
They went up. Very much up.
The live-action motion-capture animation was almost unanimously considered a fantastically fresh improvement by fans of all age groups. The show garnered thousands of new viewers. The episodes were loved, the acting was adored, and Ladybug and Cat Noir became something of a pop culture phenomenon, due to their… admittedly attractive physiques. All thanks to Marinette’s and Adrien’s body coaches.
Then, Gabriel came up with an idea that shocked and rocked everyone’s world off its axis. A reality show to take their superfans behind-the-scenes of the production of the cartoon. Every voice actor would eat, exercise, sleep, and live at Agreste Productions Apartments (conveniently built on the third floor of the same building), and the camera crew could follow the actors, prop builders, wardrobe designers, writers, animators, interns, and whoever-the-heck-else around during work-hours and occasionally off-the-clock. A “step further”, as he explained it, “for the beloved viewers.”
More like a dollar further for his beloved wallet… but that was besides the point.
And so another round of contracts were passed out, read carefully and thoroughly, then signed and returned.
Now here they were: three episodes (read: months) before the end of Season Two and another half-year hiatus.
Work never ended.
Not that Marinette minded of course. She was living the dream life, working her dream job, with a dreamboat who was tall, blonde, sweet, green-eyed, rosy-cheeked, humble, kind, and sweet.
Now if only she could muster up the courage to talk to him outside of the acting world.
There’s a fresh thought, Marinette rolled her eyes sarcastically at herself in the mirror of the ladies’ restroom.
There was no getting around it; she harbored a major crush. And why wouldn’t she? Despite being the son of a famous Hollywood director, a hard worker in his own right, a voice actor with an impressive repertoire of indie video games and a successful cartoon and even an internationally popular English-dubbed anime film, and a beautiful human being with model-like attributes, he always remained down-to-earth and never acted as if he were every crazed fangirl’s idea of a wet dream.
And yet… she couldn’t strike up or carry on a conversation with him longer than a brief minute, due to her terrible stammering. Here she was, Marinette Dupain-Cheng of beloved Ladybug fame, whose character had merchandise in her image in every Hot Topic retail store in the nation, and she didn’t have the confidence to simply talk to her co-star.
She sighed miserably.
She was hopeless.
A notification from her phone interrupted her pity-partying reverie, and she took it out of her cardigan’s pocket, unlocked it, and after a moment, grinned.
Yet another comment on her latest piece of online fanfiction.
She eagerly checked it to see who’d written her a critique, then raised her eyebrows. A new username. Not any of the familiar ones from her usual followerbase.
BugabooBoyfriend: Saw that this was one of the rare oneshots on this website with over a million bookmarks, and my curiosity was piqued. So glad I checked it out. Your writing style is effortless and the words flow together beautifully. Not to mention, the plot itself was phenomenal. Thank you for sharing your gift with the world. I scrolled through your comments section, by the way. Your follower count is impressive, and completely justified. You are TALENTED. You can call me your newest subscriber. Can’t wait to read the rest of your stories… I’m so glad there’s a long list!
Marinette couldn’t help but let out a squeal as she reread the high praise.
Then a second notification alerted her to her profile page.
A private message.
She clicked on it to open it.
BugabooBoyfriend: Hi. :) I have a question about “The Miraculous Masquerade”, if you don’t mind me taking up some of your free time.
She considered briefly whether or not to reply.
Ordinarily she wouldn’t, simply because there were so many private messages always flowing into her inbox, and she didn’t like the idea of showing favoritism. Not to mention, no one in the fanfiction community knew her true identity: that she wasn’t just a fangirl of the fictional universe she wrote stories about, but was also an actual voice actor for the same exact show, and she could be fired, or worse, sued if her secret was found out. But this person had been very kind, and had put her in a good mood, and there was no way they would be able to tell who she was as long as she simply kept them at arm’s length, right? Right.
Her fingers flew on the touch-screen keyboard.
CatGotYourTongue: Hello! I don’t mind at all. What’s your question?
She checked the time - there was only a half hour left until it was time to head to the green room - and decided that if she were to wait before work, it would be better to do so in her comfy little apartment rather than in the public restroom.
----
Adrien sat up straighter on the recliner in the fourth-floor hallway of Agreste Productions and stared down at his phone’s notification in disbelief.
The popular writer he’d written a lengthy review and a private request to had actually responded - politely.
For perhaps what was the millionth time in the past two years of his life, he bashfully recognized how ironic it was that he was a voice actor and a secret superfan of the same cartoon. It was his biggest secret, his greatest weakness, his comforting vice, his escape from reality.
Indeed, how very ironic.
But now was not the time to mull over his confusion between fantasy and reality. Fanfiction was the place where fantasy and reality collided into one. It was his most exciting passion - reading, that is. How he wished he had the ability to write as eloquently as the thousands of contributors to the website. But alas, writing anything past a good review was not his forte.
Focus, Adrien. Respond to their question about your question.
He began typing, and then when he was finished, he thoroughly checked it for typos.
BugabooBoyfriend: Thank you so much for being willing to hear me out! I hate to sound needy; I bet you receive unwanted requests all the time, but I simply must ask in hope anyway. Do you think there’s any chance at all you could turn this oneshot into a multi-chapter fic? If your answer is no, I’ll back off right away. I understand you must be very busy with all the hard work you do on this site. But it’s just that the masquerade dance setting you chose for the plot is chock-full of future potential (in my opinion), and I bet Ladybug could even fall in love with Cat Noir given the chance to dance with him. I guess that’s what drives me so crazy about this story… they never shared a dance! A romantic waltzing scene in a future chapter could really amp things up, you know what I mean? There seems to be unresolved tension between them, and it’s well-done, but I’m craving more. But like I said, I completely and totally understand if you’d like to leave it as it is. I admire writers like you for being able to so vividly describe a good story. Thanks again for hearing me out!
Satisfied with what he’d typed, he pressed send.
Then he checked the time.
“Looks like I’m gonna have to wait for a reply,” he sighed, then brightened. “Duty calls.”
And so he stood up, walked toward the elevator, pressed the button, waited for it to open, then stepped inside.
It was almost time to perform some fun, exciting stunts with his co-star, Marinette. Speaking of her...
He really wondered about that girl sometimes.
She was a quiet little mouse most of the time; she kept to herself, she barely spoke to anyone without being spoken to first, and she very, very rarely talked to him, but when she was at the reading table or in the studio booth or in the green room? Man, that girl came alive with expression and passion and emotion. No wonder his father had hired her after hearing only one audition tape.
He only wished he could get to know her as well as he’d gotten to know everyone else in the acting department. But she always seemed to have somewhere to be, somewhere far away from him.
Truth be told, it hurt a little. He admired her talent, and he wanted to be friends. That girl was truly going places someday. Places beyond voice acting. She had the ability and agility and the looks to be a bonafide movie star. She was made for Hollywood. He knew it, his father knew it, and he was certain that she knew it too.
And… maybe that’s why she didn’t want to be friends. Because she was aware that he was beneath her. Maybe she didn’t care about the cartoon; she just cared about the paycheck.
He sighed sadly.
It was a real shame. Perhaps in a different universe, they could've been fantastic friends.