The Fox of Marseille by GwennhaduBug is a Miraculous Ladybug fanfic.
Alya Césaire is new to Paris, but she isn't new to the life of the Miraculous. In her dangerous hometown of Marseille, Rena Rouge was the crime fighting vigilante who wasn't afraid of breaking a few bones or crushing a few spirits to keep her city safer. So she doesn't mesh well with the Sweetheart Superhero of Paris, Ladybug, and her softer ways of keeping the city clean from disaster- and the feeling of hate is mutual. But out of her costume, Alya is quickly charmed by the beautiful, kind Marinette. She falls hard and fast and thinks she may have finally found her match.
With a frustrating but promising new job, old and new friends, and a cute new love interest, Alya may have found a home in Paris. If only it wasn't for that annoying Ladybug...
The fanfic can be read on Archive of Our Own here
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The Fox of Marseille contains examples of:
- Abdicate the Throne: After Gabriel is outed as Le Papillon and sent to prison, Adrien inherits everything, including the family fortune, the mansion, and Gabriel's fashion empire. Rather than keeping it, he gives away the company, has the house converted into a school, and donates much of his fortune, keeping just enough to live comfortably as he becomes a teacher himself.
- Adaptational Sexuality:
- Alya is bi, Marinette is bi, Marinette's grandmother is bi, Kagami is bi, and Nino suspects that Adrien is bi (later confirmed when he, Nino, and his wife Kiki experiment with Polyamory, so that makes the Lahiffes bi as well). A better question would be who isn't.
- And there's Chloé as the cast's Token Lesbian.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: While Marinette's parents are nothing but understanding of Marinette's sexuality, they sometimes can take that support just a bit too far, including trying to hook her up with Alya before she has even met her and proceeding to talk about things like marriage when they have only dated for a month. Knowing them, they really are just teasing to get a rise out of their daughter.
- Amazon Chaser: While Alya thinks Marinette is cute enough when she is being her meek and altruistic self, Alya is quick to demand that they leave Adrien's party to have sex when Marinette voices her passionate opinion about how much of an Alpha Bitch Chloé was in high school.
- Anti-Hero: Rena Rouge has been openly referred to as an Anti-Hero due to her rather violent way of doing things.
- Closet Key: This seems to be the case with Nino and Adrien, having had various unusual circumstances leading to them kissing, Adrien eventually being invited by Nino and his wife into a polyamorous relationship.
- The Cowl: In contrast to Ladybug and Chat Noir's Cape status, Rena Rouge is much edgier than the two. While Ladybug and Chat Noir are very public in their activities, Rena Rouge avoids actively contributing to the media (ironic, considering that her civilian job is as a reporter). While Ladybug and Chat Noir prop themselves up as inspirations to the people of Paris, Rena Rouge prefers focusing on being feared by the criminal population.
- Happily Adopted: After Gabriel was outed as Le Papillon and sent to prison, Adrien was more-or-less adopted by Marinette's parents, treating him as the son they never had. Even after he and Marinette broke up and they eventually moved out as adults, they still insist on treating him as one of their own.
- Jade-Colored Glasses: While Alya used to be a Ladybug superfan, she would later find her methods lackluster when she received her own miraculous, being more used to fighting more realistic monsters like thugs, rapists, and drug dealers rather than comic book supervillains like Le Papillon.
- Likes Clark Kent, Hates Superman: Rena Rouge and Ladybug do not get along. Rena Rouge thinks that Ladybug deals purely in half-measures with no real comprehension of the gravity of their jobs, while Ladybug thinks that Rena Rouge is a cutthroat loose cannon that goes too far in her tactics and can very well kill someone at any point. What makes this funny is that Alya ends up falling in love with Marinette the moment she meets her (and was a Ladybug superfan), and the feelings are mutual.
- Living Lie Detector: Her miraculous powered by the kwami of illusions and deception, Alya has a natural instinct towards telling whether or not people are lying, and can even tell if someone is telling half-truths. As Rena Rouge, this is much more powerful, describing how she can literally "smell" lies radiating off of someone.
- Noodle Incident: Apparently Marinette briefly dated Chloé. Very briefly.
- Not What It Looks Like: When Marinette and Adrien voice their concerns about Rena Rouge's method of handling things, using her illusions to psychologically mess with a group of bank robbers, Tikki and Plagg insist that it is in the Fox's nature to look worse than it actually is.
- Platonic Life-Partners: While having dated shortly after revealing their secret identities, life ended Marinette and Adrien's relationship at some point, though they still live together in an apartment as close friends.
- Point of Divergence: In the show, Alya's family moves to Paris and she meets the others during high school. Here, she does not come to Paris until after school, Ladybug and Chat Noir having defeated Le Papillon and have been working as heroes for years while Rena Rouge has a few years of experience herself. She is also familiar with Nino, having moved to Paris from the same hometown in his teens.
- Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up: As a teenager, Chloé was the school bully and frequent catalyst for akumatization. While Chloé has grown out of some of that, she now gets paid to be a bitch in her career as a fashion critic.
- Terror Hero: Due to the much higher crime rate and the seedier nature of Marseille's criminal underworld compared to Gay Paree, Rena Rouge has adopted a much more brutal (usually leading to permanently debilitating injuries) tactics, seeing them as a more effective deterrent than the Cat and Bug's method of handling things.
- Token Lesbian: In a cast where everyone is either bisexual or some other undeclared orientation, the fact that Chloé is just a straight-up lesbian feels unusual.
