The Killer and Her Cat :hearts: Ch. 9

Hey, everyone! Another chapter is here!! Sorry yet again for the delay :weary: :pray: :pray: I’m trying my best.

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┊ Written by : me

┊ Cover art by: me

┊ Ship : Adrienette (sorta)

┊ Genre : Romance, Comedy, Adventure & Action

┊ Characters (excluding spaces): 6607

┊ Word Count : 1489

┊ Trigger Warnings: Implied violence (physical fighting), description of resulting blood and injuries.

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Marinette checked her watch. They should be here already. She held a case in her hand, stacked with cash. It was heavy.

Marinette hated meeting with these guys but she hated Hu Shen more for making her do it. He knew exactly what they were like.

Hu Shen also refused to tell her what he needed the money for. He loved rubbing it in whenever he could: that he ranked higher than her, that his title was more important than hers. “That’s for me to know and for puny little soldiers like you to never find out,” is what he had told her. “Maybe earn a title before you try discussing details above your pay grade.”

It gave him some weird power trip, Marinette thought. You’d think being the boss’s daughter would bring around some sort of immunity but no, in fact, it paints a big red target on her back. Despite her nepotism, and likely inheritance of the mafia one day, she, just like everyone else, had to prove their worth before receiving such a title; she too had to start at the bottom of the ladder, nothing more than a mere soldier.

So here she stood, in a dark alley with peeling walls, graffiti, newspaper clinging to rotted food clinging to fallen trash cans, waiting for The Sharks. The place was a mess and it stunk and once again Marinette found herself hating her life.

She heard footsteps from behind her but didn’t bother turning around.

“Nice day, isn’t it?” She called out. It wasn’t. Grey clouds were looming overhead and the sky was dark. It would storm later.

“Yeah, even the Ladybugs are out,” his voice was gruff like gravel. Like he had been smoking cigarettes his entire life. Leave it up to French culture to destroy lungs.

Why was Hu Shen making deals with these French thugs, anyway? Whose side was he even on?

The man strode up to her.

“Creatures of luck,” she mused. There was a bit of code talk they had to play around with before they could get down to the real business.

“You’ve got the money?”

Marinette wasn’t scared but she hated the next words that had to come out of her mouth.

“Only half.”

The man turned to her. She hadn’t spared him a glance yet, but in her peripheral vision, she could see he was a big buff guy, his arms probably as thick as her head.

“That wasn’t the agreement. You pay full now. Not half and the rest later. In full, NOW. Where’s the guy we made the deal with in the first place?”

There was a grumble from behind her. She knew there were at least another three men with him.

Marinette shrugged and finally looked at him. “I guess he got scared.”

A wicked gold-toothed grin, tattooes, and a shaved head like he had just walked out of a prison camp. A few fresh cuts and bruises of his own from god knows what. All Marinette knew that whoever had given him those bruises, had come out of the fight looking a lot worse.

However, the petite girl’s breaths remained calm. She knew what was coming and she knew what she had to do: dissociate.

When you didn’t have the money, you pay by other, not so pretty means: pain. And you just have to take it. It served as a physical reminder of your debt and a warning. So much for not shooting the messenger, Marinette grimaced.

She ed him the case and he ed it back to one of his other goons.

“Get it over with,” she mumbled, bracing for his first flying punch.

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Marinette climbed through the door of the bus-sized van, clinging to the wall.

“Marinette,” Tikki gasped. “What happened to you? Are you alright?”

Tikki rushed over to Marinette’s side to help her up the steps.

“I’m fine,” Marinette groaned.

She pressed her free hand into her aching abdomen, her vision blurry. Blood dripped to the floor below her feet leaving a splattered trail of red.

Marinette wasn’t quite sure where the blood was coming from. Just that her whole body was aching, her bones were aching, her skull was aching, her nose, lips, jaw, eyes, chest, stomach… everything just ached. But her body was used to this sort of pain, her mind was numb to it. So, her eyes stayed tearless and her head stayed clear and her heart stayed hard.

Tikki sat her down on a chair, not asking any questions. Immediately she started cleaning the cuts.

“Take these,” she handed Marinette some pills. “It’ll help for a bit.”

Marinette took the white cylindrical tablets and popped them in her mouth, swallowing them dry. Closing her eyes and relaxing back into the well cushioned seat.

“I’m hungry, what’s for dinner?”

Tikki hummed, “I can order Vietnamese?”

Marinette frowned. “Okay, but don’t order too much this time - I can hardly finish the meals; they’re so big.”

Tikki raised a brow. “I’ve been getting you the same portions as usual.”

Marinette opened an eye. “You… got Plagg food last time?”

Tikki nodded, “Yeah, I got enough for four.”

Marinette paused. “Oh, crap…”

She must have been eating Adrien’s share as well. She would have laughed if she wasn’t in so much pain.

Tikki’s eyes widened. “You haven’t fed Adrien for three days?”

Marinette gawked. “I thought you had been feeding him!” She smacked a hand to her forehead despite the sudden jolt making her head ache. “I thought… I’m not sure… I didn’t realise you were giving it to me to give to him...”

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It was nearly midnight and Adrien was starving. It had been three days since he’d been captured and still, no food. Perhaps this was his captors way of torturing him? Or perhaps they were trying to starve him to death?

He had been given a plastic water bottle, at least. It was empty now though.

Adrien had been entertaining himself by lying on the ground and staring up at the ceiling. He had counted two cracks, five black smears, three holes and a struggling weed trying to squeeze its way through a crevice - it wasn’t particularly inspiring.

He would then try to think of ways to escape, but everytime he did, his mind would just circle back to Plagg. He knew if he did anything to anger that Ladybug girl, Plagg might be killed for it.

It was during Adrien’s second day of imprisonment that he had discovered how fun a bottle cap could be. He had started by throwing it against the wall and counting the number of times it bounced on the floor. One… Two. Three. He’d wait for it to still, then he’d pick it up and throw it at the wall again - a little more entertaining than counting ceiling holes.

By the third day, he was back to lying on the floor. But the bottle cap still kept him company. He’d toss it into the air and catch it on its way down - it was a good distraction from the hunger pains, at least.

It was going well until he threw the plastic circle up at a weird angle. Adrien had to stretch his arm out awkwardly to catch it. Except this time, he didn’t catch; he missed, and it hit his pinkie finger instead, rebounding off and rolling away.

Adrien shot up, lunging for the bottle cap just as it rolled under the bars of his cage. He watched in dismay as it traveled out of his reach.

Suddenly, a shoe came down on the bottle cap, stopping the escaping plastic in its tracks.

Adrien cursed under his breath.

“My my, what’s the little kitty up to now?”

“Don’t call me that,” Adrien muttered. But his disdain didn’t last long.

Because he smelt the most magical smell in the world: food. Herbal and warm, sweet and spicy. It made his mouth water.

The first thing he noticed when he glanced up was the bowl of steaming soup. The second thing was his captor. Or rather, the state she was in.

“What happened to you?” He blurted out before he could stop himself.

She had a large welt in her forehead that had been stitched up. A heavy bruise beneath her eye; mottled red and bluish-purple. A few bandages on her cheek, across her eyebrow, over her nose. And a small cut that split down the corner of her lower lip.

The girl didn’t reply to him. She just sat down in front of his cage and lowered the bowl of soup to the floor, opening the tiny trap door and sliding the hot meal through.

Adrien looked down at the bowl, his stomach growling, then warily brought his gaze back up to The Psycho Girl.

“Eat,” she ordered.

But Adrien couldn’t. Instead he asked a question most people wouldn’t be caught dead asking their own assassin.

“Are… Are you okay?”

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Summary:

Marinette is sent to return money Hu Shen (her boss) had borrowed from some French loan sharks. However, she can only cover half and pays the price (physically). After Tikki tends to Marinette’s wounds they realise they haven’t fed Adrien in days. Marinette brings Adrien - who’s bored out of his mind in his prison cell - a well needed meal.

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Thank you for reading once again :relaxed: :relaxed: have a lovely day!

Read chapter 10 here.