Miraculous: Tales of Scarlet Beetle and Ikati Black

🦋Stormy Weather☔️

"Welcome to the finals of our KIDZ+ competition! When today, one lucky winner will be announced as our brand new KIDZ+ weather girl!"

The crowd begins chanting Mireille and Aurore's names as they step out of their limo, Aurore waving and blowing kisses as she walks with her iconic parasol while Mireille just politely waves. Both are giving forced smiles, Nathaniel notices. Having learned how to draw different facial expressions over the years, Nathaniel can tell when a smile is natural or forced.

That, and he's waited on enough Bible-thumping Karens at his mother's diner to know what a fake smile is and how to pull one off as best as he could. This one lady nearly caused his lips to split in half.

"Screw you for pitting our friends against each other!"

"Boo! Cataldi sucks! Booo!"

The camera pans over to the crowd members cursing Alec's name, and Nathaniel instantly recognizes them as Mme. Mendeleieve's students. Unlike the other crowd members holding up signs and wearing shirts with just one girl's face, they have signs and shirts (No doubt made by Marinette) with both of their images surrounded by hearts.

A muscular student with curly hair points an accusing finger at Alec. "You just want drama, Cataldi!"

"What do they mean?" Asked Nooroo as he watched the scene play out on Nathaniel's laptop.

"Well, Alec Cataldi is sort of notorious for stirring up drama on his tv show and humiliating people just for ratings," Nathaniel explained. "People want to hate him, but they just love drama a little more." The Kwami nodded but didn't really understand his words. "Mme. Mendeleieve's class hates him the most out of every class in our school, but I never really knew why."

"Kiss my ass, Cataldi!" Ismael, a boy on the short side wearing a blue cardigan yelled, eliciting some cheers from his friends. The loudest one had to be...

"Marc?" Nathaniel was not at all expecting that. From their technically second meeting, he saw Marc as this shy student who probably hid his face behind a book whenever he was called on in class to answer a question... Kind of like him.

Alec nervously chuckled when the cameraman panned back to him. "We started off with five-thousand contestants-"

"All of whom you humiliated live on television so bad, that they ran off crying!" Marc yelled.

"But with the help of our audience at home, we whittled our talent down to just these two amazing young ladies!"

"Because they're best friends and you just wanna stir drama!"

"... So let's welcome our fantastic finalists! To my right, Aurore Beauréal, and to my left, Mireille Caquet! Who will be the lucky winner?"

"And who will have the honor of being humiliated by the one and only Alec Cataldi?!"

Alec pointed to the class. "Get those kids out of here!"

"HEY!" Screamed Lacey, a blonde girl with her hair cut short like Rose's as she and her friends are dragged away from the crowd by security. "We'll be back! We have nothing else to do today!"

As their screams of protest faded into the distance, Alec continued with a practiced smile. "Vote now! Text 1 for Aurore and 2 for Mireille! And remember, standard text messaging rates apply."

Nooroo giggled. "I like them. Are they always like that?"

"I heard they've been friends since we were ten. They've always been sort of... Chaotic." That's an understatement; they were the school's demons. Even when they weren't in the same classes when it was a new school year, they were always causing some sort of trouble. Though, there was one boy missing. Nathaniel doesn't really remember his name, but he wore all black, had black glasses, your standard emo one wouldn't expect to stir up trouble like say, Aurore, Simon, Mireille, Marc, and Reshma.