Marinette Dupain-Cheng (Parallel Universe)

* Marinette Dupain-Cheng
* Shadybug
* Ladybug

**Marinette Dupain-Cheng** is one of the two titular main antagonists (alongside Adrien Agreste) of *Miraculous World: Paris - Tales of Shadybug & Claw Noir*. She is the villainous version of Marinette Dupain-Cheng from an alternate universe. When Tikki inhabited the Ladybug Miraculous, she transformed into **Shadybug**, a ladybug-themed supervillain.

In "Miraculous Paris", after Betterfly crossed space-time to get help from Ladybug and Cat Noir (the heroic versions of his villains), she followed him along with Claw Noir to steal the Butterfly Miraculous. After realizing the power that her Miraculous and Claw Noir's possess together, she betrayed him to get his Miraculous and try to summon Gimmi so they could allow her to switch lives with her counterpart, failing only because of the seal placed on Tikki and Plagg of her universe. In order to both retrieve the Butterfly Miraculous and have her wish granted, she allied herself with Monarch. After her counterpart was able to inspire her to get the life she wanted to have, Shadybug gave up on her evil purpose, using her Lucky Charm to repair everything and, in this way, get a new costume. Now allying herself with Betterfly, she adopted the name **Ladybug**, becoming a superhero.

## Appearance

### Physical appearance

Being Marinette/Ladybug's counterpart in her universe, she has an identical appearance. The details that differ her from her counterpart are the hairstyle which, despite still having two pigtails, has now bangs that cover her left eye, with a pinkish streak. She also wears a dark eye shadow and her nails are painted black. Prior to healing herself with the Miraculous Shadybug, Marinette also had black lines on her skin from overuse of her Miraculous, with these lines crawling up her face after her failed attempt at summoning Gimmi.

### Civilian attire

Unlike her counterpart, she uses a more gothic style, having a white shirt under a dark gray jacket, dark pink trousers that have rips above the knees and legs and black high-top boots with grey soles. She also wears dark fingerless lace gloves that go up until the half of her forearms and a black ascot with grey ornaments.

### As Shadybug

Shadybug wore a jumpsuit that conjugated a contrast between red with black dots and black with red dots. While her front and the back of her waist were red with black spots, the rest of her costume (her arms, shoulders, legs, back and sides of her torso) were black with red dots. On her feet she had red platform soles (similar to those of Queen Bee's) and her mask was connected to her jumpsuit through the black turtleneck, covering her eyes (with that part being similar to Ladybug's face mask with the red and the black spots in a symmetrical design) and her chin (with that part being black). Her hair was styled with two twin buns (similar to those of Multimouse's) with strands of red hair acting like ribbons, resembling a ladybug's antennas or a ladybug flying when she was moving, while having also a red streak on her bangs and strands of red hair on the sides. Her eyes also changed color, becoming red.

### As Ladybug

She wears a jumpsuit similar to her counterpart where most of the black fades except on her sides, upper arms, lower legs, extended turtle neck while keeping her pendant and her hair changes to her normal civilian style and her eyes change back to blue.

## Personality

Unlike her counterpart, Marinette was not able to make any friends. Because of that, she didn't have the support she needed to stand up against Chloé Bourgeois, whose heavy bullying caused her to develop a bit of depression that led to become cynical and unable to find any joy. The amount of loneliness and sadness in her heart turned her into an easy prey for the Supreme, who managed to convince her to work for him as the holder of the Ladybug Miraculous.

As Shadybug, she released all of her frustrations, becoming a merciless holder towards her enemies. Because of that, she was not afraid of using her powers for evil, even if that overrode the security countdown that prevented underage holders from suffering damages with the overuse of their powers, causing her own health to start to decay.

Much like Ladybug, Shadybug was very clever and always coming up with a variety of plans, which she combined with her power of luck when using the Lucky Charm. The greatest vulnerability on her plans was normally Claw Noir's impulsiveness. Unlike Ladybug, however, she used her power of luck to get weapons or objects that could help destroy her enemies.

Before the final confrontation with her good counterpart, she read Marinette's diary showing her rare vulnerable side but naïvety about how her counterpart's life was better than hers to the point where she grew jealous and more so when she discovered the Ultimate Power, shocked that the Supreme hid this from them which pushed her to use the power to switch their lives. When talking to Sabine, she said the sewing machine was “broken” while looking at herself in the mirror, implying that was how she saw herself. Shadybug was also surprised to hear Sabine thinking that she was talking to her daughter that she loves her, this surprised Shadybug who reluctantly replied back “I love you too”. This seems to suggest that her own mother back in her universe never showed her any sort of affection or support, which only added to her insecurities.

During her final fight against Ladybug, Shadybug revealed all the anger she has been holding all her life, hinting she’s been holding these feelings of resentment and bitterness for a long time. Ladybug was able to convince Shadybug that she too could change her life if she chose to love herself and give friendship and a chance. This inspired Shadybug to stop her attack and give up on her mission to retrieve the Butterfly Miraculous, using her Miraculous Shadybug to restore everything instead. This results in her costume to change in order to adapt to her newly found heroism. Now deciding to become a superhero, she allied herself to Betterfly and adopted a new name, with that one being Ladybug, in honor of the superhero that showed her a better way.

## Abilities

### As Shadybug

As an alternate version Ladybug, Shadybug exhibited most of the same abilities as her heroic counterpart. Like Ladybug, she exhibited massively enhanced strength, speed and agility, to the point where she and Claw Noir proved superior during their two clashes against their heroic counterparts, though this could could be attribute to their unrestricted powers and their more aggressive nature. Despite her physical superiority however, Shadybug seemed less intelligent than her counterpart, as she was overall much more aggressive and wasn't able to realize Ladybug intentionally exposed herself.

Much like Ladybug, Shadybug also possessed the ability to summon Lucky Charms. Due to removed restrictions on her Miraculous however, Shadybug could summon as many as she liked, and unlike her counterpart, was able to use them to summon the exact items that she liked, generally being used to summon weapons or objects with the goal to cause harm. Shadybug could only summon one Lucky Charm at a time, but was able to disperse the object in order to create a new one, which she used to great effect.

However, Shadybug's power came at a price. As a result of the safety restrictions being removed on her Miraculous (be it due to the Supreme tampering with the Miraculous or of her using her Miraculous for evil), she suffered side effects as a result from using her Miraculous (shown as a series of black lines across her neck and face), alongside her partner Claw Noir. According to Shadybug, the effects were gradual, though Marinette attempting to summon Gimmi ended up accelerating the process, resulting in the affliction spreading to her face. It's unknown how the affliction affected Shadybug physically or what happened if it was complete, though according to her the use of their Miraculous Powers "will slowly destroy [them]". The affliction seemed to affect the user physically however, as both her and Claw Noir were able to feel the affliction when it was removed. Overall, the effects are similar to the effects caused by wearing a broken Miraculous.

After her counterpart convinced her to use her powers for good and become a hero, Shadybug used the Miraculous Shadybug to restore the damage from their battle, resulting in the removal of the affliction infecting her and Claw Noir. Since she now uses her powers for good, it's unknown if she still possesses the ability to summon multiple Lucky Charms, though presumably the modifications done by the Supreme still allow her to do so (though at the risk of restoring the affliction).

## Trivia

* In the original French dub, her supervillain name is **Toxinelle**, which is the combination of the words *toxique* (which is a French word for "toxic" or "poisonous") and *coccinelle* (which is the French word for "ladybug"), with her name literally meaning "toxic ladybug".
* Being her a villainous counterpart of Marinette/Ladybug, Shadybug is the first known holder of the Ladybug Miraculous to be a supervillain, following Gabriel Agreste who had used it to become Monarbug for a brief moment and to summon Gimmi, the kwami of reality.
* The style of this version of Marinette in her civilian form matches the one of Juleka Couffaine from the main universe, with both having a gothic appearance (including using a dark eye shadow, black nail polish, fingerless lace gloves and rips on her pants), but also possessing bangs that cover part of the left side of her face, including her eye.
* Her Counterpart has a mother that is the opposite of the main where she's calm and gentle. This could mean that the family dynamics of the parallel universe Agreste and Dupan-Chang families are inverted.

1. ↑ Miraculous Paris