Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Tikki, if I was being trained by Fu, then why did he make Chat Noir the new Guardian?”

Tikki’s answer was rather simple. It was because currently, Chat Noir was more mature than Marinette.

“Ok, then why was I being trained in the first place?”

“Because Chat was less mature than you when Fu made that decision.” Tikki said, an amused smile on her face.

“Wha—“ Marinette was only more confused. “How did Chat mature that much in one year?”

“Chat Noir is currently just over two years old. The first two years of a cat’s life are equal to the first 25 years of a human’s. Chat had simply grown fifteen years older in the single year you were being trained by Fu.”

“But we’ve only had our Miraculous for two years?” Marinette exclaimed. “Are you saying that Fu gave a Miraculous to a newborn child!?”

Pulling Marinette’s hands away from her hair so she didn’t start ripping her pigtails out, Tikki answered “Well, no. According to Plagg, Chat was a few months old when he got the Miraculous Ring.”

“Oh. Ok. That… that makes a lot of sense now. Why Chat was barely able to say hi when we first met, why he grew so quickly”

Tikki was counting down the seconds until her lovely holder realized what this all implied.

3… 2… 1–

“CHAT NOIR’S A FRICKEN CAT!? HOW!?”

The kwami of creation couldn’t stop herself from laughing.

“I don’t know. Probably because the Miraculous can give anything any form the wielder or kwami want, including giving a cat a human body. Cats and humans are both mammals, so the Black Cat Miraculous has always had an easier time intertwining itself with either of them and blurring the lines between the two species.”

Marinette needed to sit down to process all of this, but before she could, another thought came to her.

“SO FU MADE A LITERAL CAT THE FUCKING GUARDIAN!? WHAT!?”

“Language, sweet pea.” Tom called from the floor below.

Chapter Text

“Hi Adrien, what are you doing here?” Caline Bustier asked the figure making his way through one of her second storey windows.

“The usual.“ Chat replied, feet barely making a sound as they hit the floor. “How are you this fine evening?”

“I’m fine, although I’d be better if you explained why one of my students is breaking into my home.”

“Oh. You mean that Adrien.” Chat said, rolling his eyes at his roommate’s squinted ones.

“First off, I’m not Adrien Agreste, he’s just the person I based my human form off of; and second, where do you want this?” The cat asked, raising the new Miracle Box up with one hand and gesturing to it with the other.

“I want it out of my house.” Caline said firmly.

Sighing, Chat Noir set down the Miracle Box and detransformed.

Caline was quickly rendered speechless at the fact that the Adrien sitting in front of her wasn’t her student, but her failed foster cat.

“While I’m barely surprised at how your students still believe those rumours, I wasn’t expecting you to buy into them Caline.” Adrien said, an amused smirk on his face.

Plagg was moments away from shoving a whole wheel of roquefort cheese into his maw before someone decided to retransform.

Picking up the black suitcase that was the new Miracle Box, Chat left Caline to process what had just happened in favour of finding a place in his room for his new godlike friends.

“I wonder if Plagg will be happy to see me play with Mullo and the others.”

What Chat would call “playing”, Plagg would call “target practice”; and yes, Plagg would be very happy to not be on the other end of his holder’s games.

∩^•3•^∩

Once Caline had gotten over the fact that her cat was a superhero and could speak perfect French, and had remembered why she came into this room to begin with, she went back to grabbing the shopping list her wife had left on one of the unopened boxes left from their recent move, and texted Gisèle what was on their list.

[Camembert? Do you know how expensive that stuff is?]
[I love you, but we’re not getting camembert cheese no matter how many times you lift Adrien up and swing him around to make Harmonie laugh.]

What? She didn’t—

Chat. This was you, wasn’t it?

Chapter Text

On its side and in a corner underneath one of his wall mounted stairs seemed to be the perfect place for the Miracle Box; Chat could use it as an alternate way to get up onto his cat shelves, and it’s not near any food bowls, water bowls, or litter boxes.

Jumping on top of it, Adrien pressed down on the green paw print in its center and admired the many coloured lights that sprouted out of the Box.

Once the kwamis had fully reformed, the little gods swiftly proceeded to dart about Adrien’s room and explore their new home.

Plagg just smiled and shook his head, laughing as one of his kin spat out a bite of wet food. They wouldn’t find much in here and, after a minute, had all returned to float around the Miracle Box.

“Plagg, where’s the new Guardian?” Mullo asked nervously.

Plagg blinked twice in comical disbelief before answering Mullo’s question.

“He’s… on the Miracle Box?”

Turning to look at the Box, Mullo was starting to question Plagg’s sanity. “The cat? Your holder isn’t human?”

“Nope.” Plagg said matter-of-factly.

“Huh. Interesting…”

The rest of the kwamis had reacted much more positively than the mouse, and busied themselves with admiring their new feline protector.

“It’ll be interesting to see what a non-human guardian will be like.”

“They better get us more toys, nice art, or something. This place is boring.”

“How are they going to get usss food?”

“Chill Sass, they probably have an owner—“

“Roommate.” Adrien corrected, smirking at how the kwamis’ eyes widened.

“What?”

“My humans aren’t owners.” Adrien repeated. “They’re my roommates.”

“They can talk?” Pollen asked.

“Of course they can talk.” Plagg said. “All mammals can talk.”

“Ok, but not all of them can speak human languages.”

“Maybe not normally, but after you throw in a bit of magic to help their brain learn what human words actually mean, any cat can speak.” The cat god explained.

“Huh. That’s interesting…”

Muttering something about broken records, Pollen left Plagg to go explore outside the room, only to be sucked back into the Miracle Box.

“No one’s leaving this room until they’ve heard the ground rules.” Adrien declared, glaring at his smug kwami as they tried to sneak away.

“That includes you, Plagg.” Pressing down on the Black Cat section —every kwami had a curved rectangular button circling the main paw print—, Adrien gave a satisfied nod as his kwami was returned to the Box to grumble about cheese and rules.

Chapter Text

Once Adrien was satisfied that his mischievous kwami wouldn’t sneak away, the cat let him out and began explaining the rules.

“Starting off, I’m not demanding that you follow these. I’m pretty sure you’re all mature enough to do so without magic forcing you to, and I don’t like the idea of taking your free will away.

“With that said, here are my ground rules. Rule one: nobody except Caline and Gisèle can know that you’re here, or that I can talk. Knowing humans, if that got out, I’d probably be studied, you’d all be stuck in that box for who knows how long, and I don’t even want to think about what could happen if they discovered that you guys are forced to follow direct commands.”

Upon hearing that, the Kwamis’ expressions collectively went serious. They’ve heard about what Plagg went through with some of his holders, and could only imagine what poor Nooroo’s situation was like.

After a moment of silence, Adrien continued.

“Rule two: while I’m fine with you freely roaming in here, please clean up any messes you make. I can probably have my roommates buy things to keep you entertained, but that’ll only happen if I can trust you to not trash the place.”

As the kwamis nodded to each other, Adrien had a feeling he was forgetting something.

… right, I have to feed them. What am I going to feed them?

“Chat, you look like someone put wet sand in your kitty litter.” Plagg said, floating up to his holder’s face. “Is something wrong?”

“What am I going to feed you guys?” Adrien groaned. “Getting ahold of camembert was hard enough. I can’t imagine getting who knows how many more food types for the rest of you.”

“Good news. I’m one of the hardest kwamis to feed.” The god of destruction laughed. “Mullo likes most cheeses, although swiss is a favourite, Roaar’s partial to strawberries, Kaalki enjoys apples, Barkk likes cookies, Daizzi raspberries, Orikko seeds and Xuppo likes them bananas. Oh, and Stompp and Ziggy like croissants and chocolate respectively.”

“… ok then, umm. Can you go write that down somewhere? I don’t have unlimited brain capacity and am not going to remember half of what you just said.”

Plagg just stared at Adrien blankly before realizing that his holder’s brain and attention span were likely half the size of a human’s —which were already significantly smaller than his own, and went to get a pen and paper.

“I should go tell Caline about this.” Adrien said, before a red dot caught his attention. One of the kwamis had found the laser pointer, and was having fun watching their Guardian pounce on it.

… and then Adrien pounced on them.

Maybe they should stick to feathers on strings. Or they could lead Adrien towards the other kwamis.

Decisions decisions…