The time following Mr. Agreste's arrest was... uneasy, to say the least. Classmates weren't initially sure whether to comfort Adrien or give him space, and so compromised with talking to him like they would normally while making sure that students from other classes kept their distance. Teachers tried to figure out how to treat Adrien, not wanting to look like they were tiptoeing around. Nino and Alya attempted conversation, but there were too many topics to avoid, awkward pauses where they might normally make a comment about the latest superhero news.

Adrien was quieter than usual, but not nearly as much as most people had expected him to be. He seemed to be adjusting well to not having his father around, and Nathalie certainly seemed to be giving him more freedom than before. He smiled and even laughed at jokes, only becoming quieter when the topic of the akumas cropped up.

It was almost as though he had already gotten over the shock of his father being Hawkmoth, Alya had commented one morning as she and Nino watched Adrien discussing video games with Max and Marinette. Like he had maybe suspected something before it happened. Like maybe he was the one who had tipped Ladybug and Chat Noir off.

It was strange.

But the largest change was how much time Adrien spent with Marinette. Nino had kind of suspected that his best friend might end up sort of glued to his side while adjusting, but instead Adrien seemed attached to Marinette. Adrien had been closer to her in the weeks leading up to Mr. Agreste's arrest, but Nino had assumed that maybe they were just becoming better friends or were bonding over video games or something. Maybe Adrien was just taking advantage of the fact that Marinette seemed to be the only one of his friends that his father approved of enough for him to visit.

Maybe Adrien was just so close to Marinette because she had been with him when he got the news about his father, but then that threw off Nino's hunch about Adrien being the one to tip off Ladybug and Chat Noir about Hawkmoth.

Because there was no denying that Ladybug and Chat Noir had known about Mr. Agreste being Hawkmoth before they arrived. Their attack had been too planned out for it to have just been a hunch, and the supervillain hadn't exactly ventured out from his lair so that he could be tracked back or anything. They had learned something, and honestly, either Adrien or any of Mr. Agreste's staff would be in the best position to notice something like that.

"Yo, Alya," Nino greeted his girlfriend one morning, joining her on the top of the wall by the school stairs. She seemed to be staring at the Dupain-Cheng bakery. "What's up?"

Alya startled, as though she hadn't noticed him coming up. "Nino! Oh, I-" she waved a hand and then her reporter face slid on. "I've had a hunch over the past couple of days, and I was just trying to see if I could confirm it."

"What is it?" Nino asked, curious. He looked over at the bakery, too. "Or don't you want to share yet?"

Alya leaned closer to him. "I've been noticing that Adrien and Marinette always come to school together, and they leave from the bakery."

Nino's brow furrowed. "Yeah? I figured that Adrien probably goes there for breakfast or something. He loves their croissants, and their breakfast pastries, and their bread, and the omelets that Mrs. Cheng makes-"

Alya snorted. "Has Adrien spend all of his time with you waxing poetic about the food at Marinette's house?"

"Just the once, really."

"Okay, but I've come early for a few days, and I've never seen Adrien arrive," Alya continued, going back to their earlier topic. "I've never seen the Gorilla dropping him off, or heading away from the bakery, or anything. So I came super early today, before I usually even get up, just to see."

Nino frowned. "Wait, what are you getting at?"

"I think that he's staying over," Alya said seriously, nodding at the Dupain-Cheng house. "There's no way that Adrien came over before I arrived, because Marinette wouldn't even be up yet and I know that Adrien mentioned that he's sleeping in a little later in the mornings instead of getting up at the crack of dawn. Combine that with the fact that I overheard some reporters near Adrien's house talking about how they can never catch him in the mornings or when he comes home, and I bet that he only rarely actually goes back to the mansion."

Nino blinked, puzzled. "Does Marinette's family even have a guest room?" He hadn't thought so. He hadn't been over to Marinette's house that often, so he wasn't positive of the layout, but he was pretty certain that there was Marinette's room, the kitchen/living room area, a bathroom, her parents' room, and then the bakery. "I mean, Nathalie probably wouldn't okay Adrien sleeping on their couch, right? And Mr. Dupain and Mrs. Cheng get up pretty early to start baking and wouldn't they be in their kitchen area to get breakfast then?"

"I hadn't thought of that, but that's another question or me to ask, then." The gleam in Alya's eye grew. "And I've been trying to figure out if they're in a relationship, because it's really hard to tell."

"I'd say no, just because I think they're both smart enough to not jump into a relationship," Nino said, frowning. He could tell that Adrien and Marinette were close, but they hadn't seemed kissy or anything. Cuddly, yes, but Adrien liked hugs and Marinette liked giving hugs, so that fit. "Not when Adrien is still adjusting to his dad not being there. They're probably heading there, but not quite there yet."

"I just want to know if they've discussed it, though." Alya glanced towards the bakery, then leaned forward, pointing. "There! See, Adrien and Marinette are coming out together, and no sign of the Gorilla or Nathalie having brought him there!"

Nino looked. Sure enough, Adrien and Marinette were exiting the bakery side-by-side, talking quietly as they hurried over to the school. Adrien was grinning, clearly in a great mood.

Which, well, Nino didn't want his friend to be depressed or anything, but if his father had been arrested, Nino would probably be a bit more upset about it.

"I don't know where he's sleeping, but Adrien is definitely staying over at Marinette's house," Alya decided, hopping off of the ledge. "I'm not going to badger him, of course, but Marinette is free game."

Nino just groaned and followed her.

"So is the Gorilla on vacation?" Alya asked as they approached the duo. They both looked startled by her sudden appearance. "I don't see him around."

"Yeah, yeah," Marinette said, clearly doing her best to not look guilty. Which was very interesting. "So have you guys started on your Lit paper yet? I just tried last night and I didn't get very far. I think I need to change my thesis."

Well, that was a dodge if Nino had ever seen one. He and Alya exchanged a look as they fell into line on either side of their friends and headed inside. Alya started talking about her own paper- with no akumas to cover, she had suddenly found herself with a fair amount of free time- while Nino watched Adrien and Marinette.

He still didn't think that they were dating, but they were definitely really close. Like, best-friends-for-years close, which didn't make sense considering that Marinette had only been able to talk to Adrien normally starting more recently, only a month or two at most, and she and Adrien hadn't started talking a lot until a few weeks prior. Maybe they were made for each other, like Alya always said, but even people that were made for each other had to actually, like, talk about things and do stuff together and everything. Even if people immediately felt comfortable with each other, there was a difference.

It was weird. It seemed like a lot of things about Adrien and Marinette were weird lately. There was a lot of stuff that just didn't quite make sense, details that didn't add up and things that they did that weren't quite right. Nino didn't want to push too much- not now, not when it wasn't critical- but it was really, really odd.

Nino could hear a lot of whispering going on behind him as they settled into their seats in class. Alya was clearly trying to get information out of Marinette and although Marinette was a frankly alarming shade of red, it didn't look like she was budging.

Maybe he or Alya would have to drop in on the Dupain-Chengs some evening to bust the two of them.

Without akuma attacks interrupting the day, the teachers had decided to plow full steam ahead on the curriculum, trying to make up for lost ground. It meant that there wasn't a lot of time left for wondering about what was going on with Adrien and Marinette, especially since Nino had to actually listen to keep up with what was going on.

Exams were going to be awful this year, with everything crammed in on such a condensed schedule. The other option was to extend the school year into the summer, though, so Nino wasn't going to complain too much about the teachers deciding to just speed things up and only add on a little extra time.

He'd still complain a little bit, though. Just a little.

The weirdness had continued for a full month. Alya was nearly ready to start whacking her best friend over the head with the nearest only semi-hard thing she could grab, but it would probably be hard to hit Marinette without accidentally hitting Adrien as well. The two of them seemed even closer, as impossible as that seemed.

Alya was 90% positive that they were dating or at least nearly there, but the maybe-couple would neither confirm nor deny and there was never a good time to properly pester them about it.

"Do you want to come over after school?" Marinette asked Alya and Nino one day, partway through the day as they waited for their next class to start. "Adrien doesn't have anything after school, and the police are all done talking to him."

"I still can't believe that they pestered you at all, man," Nino told Adrien. "Like, are they serious? But at least they cleared you."

"It- it wasn't about the Hawkmoth thing, not after the first day," Adrien admitted, looking small. "They wanted to know how my father had been treating me after my mom vanished, and all these different details. It was really obvious they were trying to see if there was any- any abuse." He worried his lip, just a little, and it was clear that he wasn't entirely comfortable with talking about it. "So it wasn't the police talking to me, really, just these therapist people."

Alya glanced over at Nino, feeling a bit uncomfortable. Adrien didn't look comfortable with sharing, not entirely, and, well, she and Nino had talked about if Mr. Agreste was abusing Adrien, back before he got exposed and arrested as Hawkmoth. They had never known how to bring it up to Adrien, mostly because Adrien had still loved his father.

It was really hard to tell if that was still the case now. Adrien liked avoiding that particular topic.

"But anyway, coming over," Marinette said, breaking the tension. "Are you free after school?"

"Yeah," Nino said immediately, while Alya pulled out her phone to check her schedule. If she could spare the time, then obviously she would go over. It seemed like this might be the opportunity she was waiting for, where she could pester their friends about what was going on with them without risking other people overhearing.

And it looked like she was lucky, with her older sister finishing classes early enough to come back and keep an eye on the twins until their parents came home.

"I can come, too," Alya announced, checking one last time before putting her phone away. "Nora is babysitting today, so I'm free."

Marinette grinned, though the look that she and Adrien exchanged was a little nervous. It piqued Alya's interest immediately. "Great!"

"So I happened to notice that that question was just aimed at Nino and I," Alya spoke up, trying to make the mood light again. "Is Adrien not invited, or is he just a given, or...?"

"Don't think that I don't notice what you're doing," Marinette told Alya, her cheeks pink. "And the invitation was from both Adrien and I, because we were talking about it earlier."

"So is this just a social visit, or is something going on?" Nino inquired, echoing Alya's thoughts. "Because you two look mighty serious right now."

Adrien made a face at his friend. "Uh, who says social visit anymore? You can't just say, like, literally anything else?"

"Okay, then, is this just to hang or-"

"All right, all right, I'm here!" Miss Bustier burst into the room, looking a little hassled. "Sorry that I'm late, everyone. The copy machine in the staff room was acting up. Today, we have a worksheet to go along with our latest reading, so I'll pass that around- thank you, Adrien- and I want you to work independently on the worksheet and then break up into groups to compare answers. And I'm going to assign the groups," she added, much to the disappointment of most of the room. "So that you can work with people that you don't normally team up with. Any questions before we start?"

Alya sat back in her seat, disappointed. She had hoped to get an answer out of Adrien and Marinette, but it sounded like she would just have to wait. Even passing notes wouldn't work, because Marinette could just ignore them.

Ugh.

The rest of the day crept by at a snail's pace. Alya was practically dying of impatience by the time the final bell rand and they all headed towards the lockers to gather up their things. Adrien and Marinette hung back with their heads together briefly, then led the way out of the locker room towards the bakery.

This did not feel like just a typical hang-out. Did Adrien have more bad news to share with them before it hit the main news? Hadn't he had enough trouble in his life already?

Suddenly Alya was dreading their get-together. She wanted to be there for Adrien, of course, but it was always so hard to know what to say in response. Like, everything she could think of sounded too generic and not personal enough, considering that they were friends.

They passed the counter, waving to one of the bakery workers that Alya recognized as Mrs. Cheng's occasional substitute for when she stepped away from the counter, and then headed up the stairs. Alya realized with a small jolt of surprise that it had been ages since she last went to Marinette's house. There had been a visit or two right after Mr. Agreste's arrest, to hang out with Adrien, but she and Nino had been letting Adrien have his space since then.

Maybe they shouldn't have been doing that? Alya didn't know. Her parents sometimes talked about Adrien and his father's arrest, but they always stopped whenever she got within hearing distance.

"Hi, you guys!" Mrs. Cheng called as they entered. She beamed at Nino and Alya. "Nino! Alya! I haven't seen you in too long!"

"School's gotten crazy," Nino told her, following Adrien and Marinette towards the couches. "The teachers are trying to get us all caught up on stuff, since we fell behind with the interruptions this year."

"I wish they had rolled some of the stuff over to next year, but I suppose it would be hard for anyone who is switching schools or anything," Alya chimed in. Her sisters- both older and younger- didn't have the same problems, since they hadn't been quite as much in the epicenter of all of the attacks (and besides, it wasn't as though Ella and Etta were really learning all that much at school, at their age). "All of the fun projects have been taken out, because we just don't have the time for them. And the end-of-year picnic, and our last field trip, and our study period before exams is getting shortened."

"I hope I can have a normal school year next year," Adrien said with a sigh. "This year has just been..."

"Insane?" Nino suggested. "Really weird?"

"Yeah, that."

Alya rounded the end of the couches, and her eyes widened as she spotted the black and red boxes sitting out in the middle of the cleared coffee table between the couches. She recognized those boxes- or, well, she recognized the pattern, at least. It was impossible to tell if either of those specific boxes was the one that she had gotten Trixx in.

But she knew them, and she knew what they meant, and she had absolutely no idea what they were doing here, in Marinette's family's living room.

Confused, Alya sat down next to Nino on the couch. He had given the boxes a glance before getting distracted by the pain au chocolat on a plate next to them, so clearly he had never seen them before- which wasn't surprising, since she had known where he was whenever other superheroes had been seen.

Alya couldn't pull her eyes away from the boxes, even as Marinette passed around the plate of pastries. Was Trixx in one of them? Would she get to see the kwami again? It would be great if she could. Even if there was no superhero to fight anymore, she had thought that running over the rooftops was the coolest thing ever.

She could feel her heart beating harder, faster. To feel that rush of power again would be amazing- and she was getting ahead of herself.

After all, the box could just be a common Chinese pattern that didn't mean anything, because why would Marinette's family be handing out Miraculous? That was just a reach. Maybe she and Nino were just getting gifts.

But if so, why put them in identical boxes instead of gift-wrapping them or putting them in bags or something? Something was going on, her reporter senses were sure of it.

"So, not that I don't appreciate the pastries or anything, but what is going on?" Nino asked as soon as he had polished off the last buttery bits of his pain au chocolat. "Are you going to explain, or are we going to have to play a guessing game, or...?"

"It might be easier to just dive right in," Marinette admitted. She nodded towards the boxes. "Alya, the one on your left. Nino, the one on the right."

Alya eagerly reached forward, grabbing her box. She tried to tamp down the excitement in her stomach- she had to remember that it could just be a normal gift, and she didn't want to look disappointed if it was- before opening the box.

The flash of orange and the orange bubble that immediately appeared left no question as to what the box held. As soon as the light cleared, Alya reached into the box and eagerly pulled out the necklace, ignoring the flash of blue and the shout of surprise from Nino as he frantically tried to scramble away from the light and the blue kwami that was floating in front of Nino. She fastened it around her neck, grinning up at Trixx. The kwami returned her grin and then dove into Alya's hair, burrowing through it just for fun.

"What is that thing?" Nino exclaimed, clinging to the back of the couch. "What is going on?"

"I'm Duusu!" the blue kwami exclaimed, zipping over to hover in front of Nino. "And I'm the peacock kwami!"

"The who what what what what?"

Alya grinned as she watched Nino warily listen to Duusu try to explain what was going on. It didn't take long for Nino to calm down, though, mostly because Duusu mentioned that he had the ability to transform Nino to be like Ladybug and Chat Noir.

"Okay, so why do you guys have these?" Alya asked while Nino warily pinned the Peacock brooch to his shirt. "Not that I'm not thrilled to see Trixx again, but..."

Trixx popped out of her hair with a giggle. "What do you think?"

"I think I'm confused and want answers is what I think."

Mrs. Cheng laughed from where she was putting dishes away in the kitchen. "Straightforward as always, Alya."

"Yeah, well-" Alya cut herself off when she looked up and spotted a purple kwami peering at them from around Mrs. Cheng's hair. She made a strangled noise and pointed. "Uuh?"

Sabine laughed. "Yes, Alya?"

"B-but I thought-"

"Nooroo was rescued and rehomed," Marinette spoke up, and Alya's gaze flashed over to her friend, who had a red kwami perched on her head. Next to her, a black, catlike kwami floated next to Adrien.

Alya's brain shorted out.

"That- that's five kwami!" she exclaimed, sitting up straight as a rod. "I- what? And I know there's at least one more, with the report of a Turtle- what is going on? I thought that Hawkmoth was defeated, so why are you getting more superheroes now?"

"Hang on," Nino finally spoke up, his gaze darting around. "You already knew about these- these-"

"Kwamis," Duusu helpfully supplied. Nino pointed at him.

"Yeah! What he said!"

"I was Rena Rouge for a couple fights," Alya told him, keeping a wary eye on their friends. "But I always had to return the Miraculous."

"Oh, I wondered why you never had footage of those fights!"

"But back to the point," Alya pressed, turning her gaze back to the Dupain-Chengs and Adrien. "Why are you guys- and I will end you for being Ladybug and not telling me, Marinette Dupain-Cheng- recruiting more superheroes now? The threat is gone- unless there's another one coming up?"

"No threat," Marinette confirmed. "But we do need all of the main Miraculous active for something. And I like how Adrien gets a free pass," she added. "Why are you going to go after me for not telling you and not Adrien?"

"Because his father was Hawkmoth, which I think deserves at least one free pass. And don't think I don't see you avoiding the point."

"I wasn't avoiding it, just pointing out an inconsistency," Marinette complained. Then she grew more serious. "We need all seven of the main Miraculous for a spell. We discovered that Adrien's mom was trapped by a booby trap at an old temple in Tibet, and the spell would be to free her. We were hoping that you would be willing and able to help."

Alya and Nino gasped in unison, looking over at Adrien.

"They found your mom? Dude!" Nino exclaimed. "That's great! Wait- Tibet?" he added, looking suddenly dubious. "Uh, isn't that in China? Ages away?"

"An adventure!" Alya exclaimed, promptly excited again. "That's great!" She was already envisioning it. Seven of them- who would the last two people be?- hiking over a faded trail in the middle of nowhere, traversing across the landscape in a rainbow of superpowered colors. They would go over a rise and there it would be, an abandoned temple. It was a rescue mission and a quest all in one, and Alya already couldn't wait.

"We would go once school lets out," Mrs. Cheng was assuring Nino. "We would come up with an appropriate cover story, of course, because I can understand your parents being wary about you traveling abroad. And I can propose the idea to them to start."

Alya almost didn't hear it. Her mind was already in Tibet. Would there be other quests that they would complete along the way? Would they meet other Miraculous holders? What kinds of wildlife were there? What kind of temple had a booby trap, and would they be safe from getting caught themselves?

"You'll get more information later, if you can stay for dinner," Mrs. Cheng told them, and Alya forced herself to focus. She didn't want to miss any information. "The Turtle is coming over to talk about the trip, and-"

"Oh, right, I almost forgot that you had already picked a Turtle," Alya blurted, unable to contain herself. "Who? Do I know them?"

Marinette- Ladybug, the imp, but at least she had picked Alya to be a bonus superhero- laughed. "It's the other way around, actually. The actual Turtle, not the one you saw that one time. That was a substitute, since the real one, well..."

Adrien was grinning, too. "You'll see. Marinette's dad was a much better choice for the faceoff. More intimidating."

Alya was spluttering. "Your dad, too? Next you're gonna tell me that your grandma stood in for you for one fight or something."

"No, but I bet she'd be boss at it."

Alya had opened her mouth to object- as cool as Marinette's grandma was, she would hardly make a suitable temporary Ladybug- before she spotted the teasing glint in her friend's eye and the smirk on her face. Marinette had apparently decided to break the heavy mood by joking around. Alya would have gotten exasperated by the clear distraction from the topic, but Adrien was snickering and even Nino looked amused.

Fine. As long as her parents were fine with her staying for dinner- and they should be, she had before- then there would be time to get more information about the trip that Alya was now desperate to go on. She would probably have to promise Nora that she would do a ton of babysitting for the parts of the summer when she wasn't gone and then do more than her normal half once school started again, just to make up for Nora having to do a large chunk of the summer.

That would stink, but at least Ella and Etta were generally happy to hang out at the pool, or at the nice, air-conditioned children's museum in the city. As long as Nora didn't rely too heavily on those, Alya could probably spend practically all of her babysitting time with them there when she got back.

"How soon is the Turtle going to get here?" Alya wanted to know as Nino and Adrien started up another conversation, joking around as Marinette listened on. "Soon?"

Mrs. Cheng laughed. "It'll be a couple hours yet. He's busy and it's nowhere close to dinner yet. I do have some fruit out, though," she added, and Alya was confused for a minute until Trixx let out a cheer and darted out from inside of her hair to make a beeline for the bowl of cut fruit that Mrs. Cheng was uncovering on the counter. "I even got some dragonfruit, since you liked it so much last time."

"Last time?"

"I borrowed the Fox Miraculous for the faceoff with Hawkmoth," Mrs. Cheng told her, and Alya's jaw dropped to the floor. "So that Ladybug and Chat Noir could sneak up behind him without him suspecting anything. So I got to hang out with Trixx for the week or so leading up to the battle, so that I could get used to the powers."

Alya had to admit that she felt a little jealous. She hadn't really gotten to hang out with Trixx ever. They had just had brief conversations before and after she transformed if they had the time, which normally wasn't much. Mrs. Cheng had gotten more time with the kwami, and had probably gotten in more practice with using the illusions, too.

Well, she would get to keep Trixx this time, right? She would get to hang out with him and apparently have to keep the purchase of lots of fruit secret from the rest of her family, if the way Trixx was going after the bowl of fruit was any indication.

Good-bye, allowance. It had been nice having it.

After Mrs. Cheng had gone back downstairs, Alya sat back and watched her three friends laughing about something. Now that she had had the opportunity to sit back and actually process the absolute tidal wave of information that had been flung at her, she could figure out how she felt about two of her best friends being the superheroes of Paris and not telling her a thing.

Part of her wanted to be betrayed. Like, they knew that she was obsessed with the superheroes, so why hadn't they said anything? But Marinette had tapped her for a temporary superhero and Alya hadn't said anything about being Rena Rouge to Marinette (because Ladybug had told her not to tell anyone) and Alya knew from her comic books that secrecy was key to being a superhero, so she really couldn't fault them.

(She was a bit smug about having guessed Adrien was Chat Noir, but she had never been that serious about her theory. It had kind of been her "if-anyone-in-this-class-was-a-superhero" guess, not actually a serious theory.

But she had been right. That sort of took away the sting of never even suspecting her best friend as being Ladybug.)

"So does Nathalie always let you eat over here?" Nino was asking Adrien when Alya had finished puzzling over how she could have possibly missed figuring Marinette out. She had had to conclude that magic was probably at fault, and the only reason it hadn't blocked her Adrien-is-Chat-Noir theory was because she was never really serious about it. "Or do you, like, have to text her every day to ask?"

A bit of pink appeared on Adrien's cheeks. "She knows I eat over here unless I tell her otherwise. Then she sends over groceries to help pay for everything I eat."

"Groceries and clothes and money," Plagg chimed in, grinning deviously. Alya perked up, grinning over at Adrien's kwami. She was suddenly getting the feeling that she was going to get along very, very well with the cat kwami.

"So you are living here?" Alya spoke up, expression and tone turning devious. "Should I even ask where you're sleeping?"

She had the pleasure of seeing both Adrien and Marinette light up like Christmas lights. That blush told her everything that she needed to know.

Adrien was definitely staying in Marinette's room. They probably only got away with that because the kwamis were there to supervise them all the time. He wasn't sure how Nathalie approved the sleepovers, unless she assumed that the Dupain-Chengs had a guest room that Adrien was staying in.

"I do go back to the mansion!" Adrien protested. "Occasionally. When I have to be somewhere early the next day. But Nathalie is busy enough with the transition over there to deal with keeping track of me all the time. And I like being over here better. It's not as cold."

"Dude, you're going to have to go back sometime," Nino pointed out. "Otherwise the reporters are going to pick up on where you're staying and it'll be a huge story."

"We have an eye out for any stories that they're putting out," Marinette assured him. "So that we can keep them from suspecting too much. And if we really need to, Adrien can just go back to the mansion as Chat Noir and be seen leaving in the morning."

"Right, I forgot that that was something you could do. That's so cool! You can go out after curfew whenever you want!" Nino exclaimed.

Duusu looked over at them from where he was sharing some of Trixx's fruit. "The Miraculous are to be used responsibly. And I've heard about how your studies have gotten sped up. You have to focus on your schoolwork. No sneaking out until summer at the earliest."

"Yeah, sneaking out is overrated," Marinette chimed in. "It's a lot of staying up far too late and then regretting it the next day. And I know you do enough of that yourself without even leaving your room, Nino."

They all laughed at Nino's downfallen expression. "Just once, then! Just to try it out!"

Duusu frowned. "Only once exams are over. Or on a Friday."

"Don't mind him too much," Trixx piped up. "He likes to play the responsible one at first and then he really loosens up."

Duusu gaped at her, appalled. "Trixx! Why did you tell him?"

"Ah, you gotta let your Chosens learn things on their own. It makes for more interesting stories later on." Trixx grinned at Alya, tiny fangs flashing. "And I'm sure that Ladybug and Chat Noir would agree."

"Oh, I'm sure." Alya turned her attention back to Adrien and Marinette, who were grinning as they watched the kwamis squabble. "But speaking of stories...Nino, wouldn't you say that these two probably have plenty of stories to entertain us with?"

"Oh yeah," Nino agreed. He turned to face their friends, crossing his arms as he did. "Start talking, you two. You've got a lot of explaining to do."

A/N: So this is the first chapter of the There's No Camembert in Tibet Outtakes! I have several more planned- Chloe getting her Miraculous, Adrinette getting together, and a compilation of all of Plagg's songs, plus a couple others post-trip for a total of (I think?) seven chapters. Unlike the PatBC Outtakes, these don't take place during TNCIT, but instead before/after.

As always, reviews make my day! :)