"You know, he roars a lot for a lizard. You would think he would hiss more, or at least give a hissstory." Chat muttered.

"Focus, Kitty Cat, we need to work on saving the victims and to find the Akuma. Make speaking puns later."

"Of course, Princess." Chat cheerfully agreed, "Perhaps it is in the head piece?"

Ladybug looked, narrowing her eyes in an attempt to see further and clearer. "Maybe, but I can't tell if it is a headdress that houses the Akuma or an embelishment made by the Akumatization process. It could also be the lizard tooth necklace."

Chat nodded, seeing the point. "I can only use Cataclysm once, whats the plan?"

"Let's try the necklace first, you shouldn't need Cataclysm for that." Ladybug said, before tossing her red and black spotted yo-yo into the air, calling out, "Lucky Charm!"

In the air, hearts fluttered out of the yo-yo before turning into a large can of spray lubricant. She held it in her hands before glaring at Chat. "No comments."

He held up his gloved hands, each finger clawed. "I would never say anything inappropriate like that we need to get something slick."

"Not helpful." Ladybug muttered as she looked around. She smiled as she saw a pair of scissors on the ground. She continued to let her eyes dart here and there, before seeing a hole in the street where construction was on-going.

"See the hole over by the construction?" Ladybug asked as she tossed him the can.

"Yep, want me to get him stuck?"

"That would help. I will go for the necklace as you do."

Chat Noir saluted, "I hear and obey, Princess!"

"Switching things up then?" Ladybug asked as she leapt forward, picking up the scissors as she rolled.

The chuckling blond black cat extended his staff to leap over the Akumatized Lizard. As he landed, he shook the container and sprayed it all over the ground. When he was done, he stood on the far side of the hole and tapped the ground with his staff a couple of times. "I hear your mother is a hamster and your father smelled of berries!"

Ladybug shook her head as the lizard turned towards the loud and sometimes annoying Chat. As the lizard neared, Ladybug got ready to jump. A clawed foot stepped on the slick ground and immediately slid forward. Front foot sliding directly into the hole as Chat leapt backwards.

Ladybug jumped onto the lizard's back and soon cut the necklace off. As she did, a shimmering black and purple butterfly floated out.

"No more evil doing for you little Akuma." Ladybug said as she used her yo-yo to capture the Akuma.

She tapped on the yo-yo when it returned to her and away flew a pure white butterfly. Ladybug took a deep breath before tossing the can of lubricant into the air, calling out "Miraculous Ladybug!"

As the world returned to order, and the giant lizard shrunk back into the size of someone's pet the two superheroes bumped fists. "Pound it!"

Ladybug's earrings gave a short beep just for her as one of the spots flickered out. "Well Chat, I would say it has been a pleasure, but you know it is just business."

"You wound me, Princess. With you my life is a pleasure."

Ladybug arched an eyebrow at him. "You may want to rephrase."

Chat scratched under his chin, standing up straight. "No, I said what I mean and I mean what I say. Unless and until I don't."

The young man grinned sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his head. "Well, I mean, yeah."

"Don't bother explaining, I don't want to know." Ladybug said as she threw her yo-yo inhumanly far to the roof of nearby building. As she started away, Chat sighed.

"Sure, bug out when I am being a dork. Just purr-fect."

With that, he used his pole to start leaping away on the Paris rooftops as well. Not chasing her, of course not, cats are not so needy. No, he needed to head home as well. It was just in a similar direction.

Ladybug shook her head as she disappeared into the Paris nights, electing not to mention her thoughts on the matter. After all, Chat was a good kid, very helpful.

/\/\/\/\/\

Marinette Dupain-Cheng slipped in the back door of her family's bakery and up the stairs to the Dupain-Cheng home above. The bakery, the Tom & Sabine Boulangerie Patisserie, was fairly quiet. After all, it was almost suppertime and most shoppers had returned home. Marinette was just glad she hadn't been supposed to work and could focus on the Akuma today. The attack's were fairly nice most of the time like that, not always though.

Marinette always appreciated when Akuma attacks didn't interfere with class at the College Francoise Dupont. That and with an early afternoon attack, she would have most of the evening to do homework. Unlike those midnight attacks where she needed to haul herself out of bed to respond to the threat.

The days after were never as peaceful as she would like, thought to be fair some of that was her inability to work on short sleep very well. She could, but it was not ideal.

Though anytime an Akuma attack cancelled a test was a good time.

She had a wonderful dinner with her mom and dad, hugging them before heading to her room.

Out of her small handbag, a small creature floated out. The creature was about six inches tall and had small wings, but a big head. "Well, Marinette, it seemed like things went well today."

Marinette smiled at her Kwami. "Yeah, Tikki, I agree. And once I get done with my homework, we can get moving on those couple of gifts."

"It isn't even the holidays though."

Marinette shrugged, "Sometimes, people just need a bit of a pick me up."

As she spoke, she pulled out her math and literature homework. Sitting down at her desk, she started to work on math. It wasn't that she was bad with it, no she was a good student across all topics and her designing needed a good amount of math involved.

That didn't mean she enjoyed the homework or class. Math was, at best, confusing, especially the word problems. Marinette didn't know anyone who liked those, not even Max and he loved math. Still, she needed to finish these up and so she settled in.

That was the nice thing about Akuma attacks. They regularly only occurred once every few days. Having the time to focus on other issues was wonderful, otherwise it would be a lot harder to juggle.

Still, homework was never fun. It was homework. It took a while, but nothing too bad. She smiled softly to herself as she packed her bag for the morning. When she was done, she pulled a sketchbook out. The bound book had blank pages and she thumbed through previous designs until she came upon an empty page.

"Alright Tikki, I want to make some thing for Mom and Dad, Alya, Nino, and of course, Adrien."

The ladybug kwami floated over, watching as Marinette pulled out a pencil. "Who are you going to start with?"

Marinette leaned back in her chair, spinning it around once. "Mom and Dad are easy, I am going to make them matching shirts. They love that. I think I have a design in there for them. Alya always loses her scarfs running after me and Chat, a replacement would be good."

She tapped the pencil against her lip, before turning back a few pages where a pattern of ladybug spots inside claw marks from a cat's claws was highlighted. Letting her pencil lightly touch the bottom of the page, Marinette quickly sketched out the outline of a scarf before looking at the pattern carefully. "This will work great."

She turned back to the blank page, "Nino could use some gloves. That will be pretty easy, but I will need to come up with a pattern later. Adrien is the hard one, he pretty much has everything."

"He seemed to really like the scarf you made him," Tikki said.

"I guess he did. Ah, Alya should have something fox themed instead. She looked really powerful as Rena Rouge." Marinette muttered, starting to sketch again.

Her pencil darted around the blank page, and soon she had drawn a pair of gloves. It was not obvious, but there was definitely a fox inspiration with nine tassels in orange tipped in white hanging from the wrist. The gloves were mostly black, with the Ladybug print cat scratch on the back of the hand and grey tipped finger pads. "What do you think?"

Tikki smiled, "She will love it. Why grey?"

"It will be of that fabric that communicates touch to the phones, so she doesn't need to take off the gloves to film or anything."

"She might wear them all the time."

Marinette smiled before she turned the page. "Right, so Adrien. I won't do something bird inspired. He is allergic after all, he was so awesome wearing that hat anyway."

Tikki didn't respond, just watched her friend.

After a moment, Marinette's pencil danced across the page and she turned it around. On the page was a hat. Seemingly designed as woven, the wide brim seemed to droop in the front. Still, it had a clean line and didn't seem too strange to wear. The dark grey was about as far away from Adrien's bright hair as possible.

"I don't get it." Tikki said.

"Adrien gets recognized all the time, his face is all over the place as a model. Remember that time we had to help him hide from his fans? This hat doesn't scream model and the brim should shade his eyes. Hopefully it would make it so he can go out undetected."

Tikki nodded, "Ahhh, yeah, that sounds very thoughtful."

Marinette sighed, putting the sketchpad down before looking over at the clock. "Not the reception I was hoping for, but it is starting to get late. I guess I will get materials tomorrow, I don't really have what I need for any of these projects. And I guess I need to rework Nino's and Adrien's. I mean, I don't know if I should do gloves for both Alya and Nino."

The young girl stood up, stretching. "Tikki, is it wrong that I want to focus on being friends with Alya and Nino, getting to know Adrien better, and worrying about homework?"

"No, not at all. It is something every Ladybug has had to deal with in some form."

The young girl took a breath before leaning on her windowsill, looking out over Paris. "Did any of the other Ladybugs run away?"

Tikki hummed a moment before shrugging behind Marinette's back. "Sometimes. This is not an easy calling. Many of the Ladybugs have struggled to understand why it was down to them to stand up. Some struggled with the fighting, others with the understanding they needed to do something against their culture. I and the Masters tried to choose as best we could. All of you were chosen due to your kindness and dedication. Every Ladybug has had some regret and concern, but all of them did their duty."

"Sometimes, normal sounds so good. But, really, I am falling in love with being Ladybug."

Tikki smiled and bounced in the air. "Really?"

"Yeah," Marinette nodded, "I mean, we have been doing this for a while, and while Captain Hardrock in particular was difficult, mostly we have been helping people. It seems like we are able to do so much every day for so many people. Being Ladybug and being Marinette seems to be becoming less of a difference every day and I am looking forward to seeing the new Marinette I become."

"That is so awesome! What do you think about Chat Noir?"

Marinette slipped over to her bed where she flopped into the fluffy covers. "He is definitely nicer and kinder then I initially thought he was. He tries, which is fantastic. I mean, I could live without his cat puns and jokes, and his flirting can be a bit much. Still, I wouldn't change it for anything."

Tikki landed on Marinette's chest, "And Adrien?"

"I am glad I have gotten to know him a bit better. I mean, the more I see of him, the more I can see he is lonely. I don't know why and really it doesn't matter. If he wants to talk about it, I will be there for him. I am glad I can be there for him and to be his friend." Marinette blushed, "Plus he is really cute and yeah."

She stopped talking, hands covering her bright red face.

Tikki shook her head, "Marinette, you need to take some of that courage you talked about having and talk with Adrien. You might be surprised."

The dark haired girl chuckled before responding, "Maybe, but I just want him to be happy and I think the best way for me to do that right now is to be his friend."

The two continued to talk into the night, watching the stars peak out from behind the clouds.

/\/\/\/\/\

Ms. Bustier tapped the spine of the textbook on the table in front of the classroom, calling the students to order. "Alright class, today we are looking into the manner in which Louise Labe spoke directly to the hearts and souls of the populace. Ms. Bourgeois, if you would please read the poem of the day?"

Chloe huffed, muttering "fine, fine" as she stood up. She took a breath and read to the class:

"Long-felt desires, hopes as long as vain-

sad sighs-slow tears accustomed to run sad

into as many rivers as two eyes could add,

pouring like fountains, endless as the rain-

cruelty beyond humanity, a pain

so hard it makes compassionate stars go mad

with pity: these are the first passions I've had.

Do you think love could root in my soul again?

If it arched the great bow back again at me,

licked me again with fire, and stabbed me deep

with the violent worst, as awful as before,

the wounds that cut me everwhere would keep

me shielded, so there would be no place free

for love. It covers me. It can pierce no more."

"Very nice, Ms. Bourgeois, thank you. Next time, remember to consider the intent of the piece. This is a young woman writing about losing a deep connection, a potential eternal love. With this loss, she is hoping she can find a similar connection and worried that such deep love is a once in a lifetime emotion. Something, I am sure, most of us will experience in our lives. Poetry is always trying to say something, when we perform it, such expression is our goal. Now, Ms. Dupain-Cheng, if you would, please tell us a bit about the piece."

Marinette stood up, scuffing her feet as she did. "Long Felt Desires is on of Madam Labe's sonnets. There are some interpretations of the piece indicaiting the meter is iambic pentameter, but others argue there is an irregular meter. At fourteen lines, it makes a point and concludes rather quickly."

"Thank you, Ms. Dupain-Cheng. Now, let's move on to hear what some of you think of the piece. Mr. Agreste? Your thoughts and impressions?"

Adrien jerked up, running a hand through his blond hair, "It seems to me this is a sad poem. Madam Labe seems to be trying to find hope while mourning. Some ray of a future good to help her get through the immediacy of the loneliness and regret."

Before he could continue, the building started to shake. Ms. Bustier sighed, "Alright class, clearly there is going to be an issue. In case we don't get there in the rest of the period, I want an essay deconstructing any of Madam Labe's works by Friday. Normal standards and guidelines. Now,"

She paused, turning towards the window. Her eyes seemed to widen and she dropped to the floor. As she did, a giant spike smashed through the window and pierced straight through the classroom to the door. Marinette and her classmates all got up, starting to move.

From under the spike, Ms. Bustier called out, "Everyone get down! We have no idea how this attack will go."

As if precient, more spikes started to come. First, in the back of the room behind any of the students and essentially locking the second door. All the students got flat on the ground, covering their heads as window after window shattered.

When it was all over, Ms. Bustier and the students all crawled under and over the spikes. It was Alya who broke the silence. "Well, the only way out now is through the ceiling and I don't think any of us can get up there. At least not alone."

Every window and door had been speared by the spikes. Marinette looked around, even the windows to the inside were inaccessible. Alya was right. They were trapped. Ladybug couldn't save the world, not if Marinette couldn't figure away out of it.

"I hope there isn't a fire." Rose said, leaning into Juleka, "It seems like it would not be good."

"I am sure Ladybug and Chat Noir will deal with the villain soon enough. " Alya said, crossing her arms. "I posted on the Ladyblog last night that it seemed like we had all the attacks for the week. Clearly I was wrong. Still, I hope Ladybug is in good shape and can take this loser down."

As she spoke, she didn't notice Marinette starting to move around the room. Maybe there was some way, some otherwise hidden way she could lead a couple of them out and slip away. But it was no good. The spikes were well placed, walls not buckling or breaking. The spikes were rough, but rather consistent in diameter. There was not even a way to crawl between a spike and the window frame.

Anything not directly spiked had a spike so close as to make it useless. She reached out to the nearest spike and touched it. It seemed to be some kind of resin, a hard with kind of a rolling feel to it. Not rough, or scratchy, but definitely not smooth. There was no mucus or gunk. She tapped the spike, but there was just a very slight thump. Solid.

Marinette sighed, "Alya, I just hope the attacker left. We are completely trapped, there is no way to destroy these spikes. I mean, maybe the boys could chip it away, but that would take a lot of time and I am not sure how hard it really is. Probably the only thing you could upload to the Ladyblog now is that we are completely stuck and probably so is a good deal of Paris."

"No uploading anything, Ms. Cesaire." Ms. Bustier said, "Now I am not going to try and get you lot to focus on class, but do remember, you are in a school. We are safe for now, so we need to be patient."

Marinette rubbed her forehead with a pair of fingers. If she couldn't leave the room, would she have to transform while in here? Could Master Fu deal with the problem on his own? He couldn't cleanse the Akuma, but if he broke the spell long enough, she should be able to join the fight.

"When my Father hears about this, he will definitely get us out of here," Chloe said as she pulled her phone out and quickly called her day. "Hello, Daddy, another one of those creatures attacked and now we are stuck in our classroom. We are easy targets, there is no way we could escape a second attack."

She paused, blinking her heavily painted eyes before shaking her head and swinging her ponytail enough to knock her large designer sunglasses from the top of her head to cover her eyes. "What do you mean, you are stuck too? How does that stop you from helping me? The police are mostly stuck too? What does this creature have a fetish for trapping people?"

Again she paused before, "Thank you, Daddy, I love you too."

She hung up and tucked her phone in her small purse. "Well, the entire city is useless. I mean, just because emergency services have all been trapped doesn't mean that they can't come and safe us. We are just going to have to wait for help from outside Paris apparently."

Marinette, near the back of the group took a deep breath before slowly releasing it. She pulled her own phone out of her backpack, sitting down at her desk. Instead of calling someone, she typed out a couple of messages through an app to connect with her Ladybug device fairly quickly.

[LB – Chat, trapped in public, can't transform. Tying to find some help. You?]

[LB – Master, trapped in classroom with others. Can't transform in secret. PLS Advise.]

She tapped out of the Ladybug persona and back into herself before reaching out to her mom.

[MDC – Mom, trapped in classroom, unhurt. You okay?]

With that, she closed her phone, looking up to see Alya typing away herself. Marinette leaned forward. "What should we do?"

"Wait, I guess." Alya replied.

/\/\/\/\/\

Adrien ran a hand through his golden locks, Nino, sitting on a spike near the pacing boy spoke up. "You doing okay, man?"

That message from Ladybug, he knew she was his same age, but both of them were trapped? That wasn't good. He of course had responded fairly quickly.

[CN – Same. Trying to find a way out.]

He shook his head, no use worrying about Ladybug, he needed to get out of here.

"Adrien?"

"Sorry, yeah, you've seen my room, right? Lots of light? This is just close and dark and it is kinda freaking me out. What about you? You alright?"

"Yeah, man, I am doing just fine. This kinda thing just happens, you know. I mean, never been trapped like this before but hey whatever."

Nino paused, adjusting his red cap, "What about you Alya, how are you doing?"

The tan girl turned to face the two boys, arching an eyebrow as she crossed her arms across her stomach. "What, don't you think I can't handle something like this?"

"Sure, but Adrien is spazzing out over here and I can see Marinette's foot tapping incessantly from here. At least, I wanted to check in." Nino said with a shrug.

Adrien looked over and saw the tapping pink shoe. He slipped under the spike and kneeled down to Marinette, who was sitting under the desk, phone clutched in her hand. "Hey, Marinette."

She smiled wanly at him, having not heard from the person she wanted to hear from the most at the moment – Master Fu.

"Hey Adrien, you going to be okay?"

She wanted to do something, to act, to save the world, to be Ladybug. But. The big but, she was not allowed to reveal her identity. If she did so now, her entire class would find out. What would Ms. Bustier think? What about Chloe, after all Ladybug was her hero and Marinette was a pain? Or Alya? Nino? Adrien? The others?

She couldn't, she had to find a different way. Hopefully, Master Fu would have an idea.

Adrien snorted, "Well, I don't like small spaces, which is what the classroom has become, but yeah I will make it through. I was just going to ask you the same thing. Are you going to be alright?"

Marinette nodded, turning a nice shade of pink. She wanted to give him a hug, but thought it would be too much in the situation. "I will be okay, small spaces aren't fine. I just wish I could do something."

Before Adrien could continue, their discussion was interrupted by Chloe. "Come on losers, do you have to be so pathetic? I mean really, the disaster is I was supposed to have an appointment at the Salon today. I doubt I will be able to make it. Anyway, Adrikins, why don't you come talk with me instead?"

She grabbed him around the back of his shoulders giving him a big hug.

Nino rolled his eyes. "Chill Chloe. None of us are going anywhere."

"I am just being nice."

"Hard to tell." Alya muttered under her breath, a sentiment Marinette agreed with.

"Waiting is hard." Marinette said, "I would much rather do. Even at home, I do. I make things, I study, you know, all of that. But waiting? That is just a different form of torture."

"I get that completely," Adrien said, having given Chloe a small, tight smile before focusing on Marinette. "To me the worst part of waiting is it makes you feel in on yourself. Add in the dim and the small of the room. Well, it all adds up doesn't it?"

Alya, sat down against the wall, pulling her knees up. She leaned her head on her knees, keeping her friends in her line of vision. "Waiting, yeah, I see the torture. Anyway, hopefully Ladybug and Chat Noir will deal with this problem soon and we can all get on with our lives."

From above and behind, Le Chien Kim leaned on the spike. "Yeah, but normally they have a better response time. What happens if they can't help? I mean, maybe Ladybug is trapped and Chat is having to rescue her? We could be in a situation were we are stuck her forever."

"Not helping, bro." Nino snapped, "Either we hope or we do something."

"There is a statistically significant probability that Ladybug and Chat Noir will not retain a one hundred percent success rate. After all, the heroes have to be good and fight well every time. Any villain only has to succeed once." Max commented.

Adrien looked up and noticed most of the class was clustered around, talking and trying to work things through.

Juleka mumbled, from behind her long hair. "And this is just boring, I mean we don't even know where the attacker is now."

Rose nodded, leaning in slightly to Juleka, "I know, and while I do have snacks for everyone, they are just snacks. I mean, I made chocolate chip cookies."

"I am sure things will work out just fine if there are cookies." Adrien said with a smile as he stood up.

Alix tapped Adrien on the shoulder. "I don't blame you for pacing. It is hard to be still, especially in this small of space."

She had been pacing as well if Adrien remembered.

Marinette smiled softly from beneath the desk as she saw Ivan holding Mylene. The class continued to talk, moving on from the life threatening to small talk about classes. Adrien saw Marinette checking her phone every now and then, but made no comment.

/\/\/\/\/\

Marinette glanced at her phone again. Finally, it had buzzed with an incoming message. And it was on her Ladybug connection.

[Fu – Was defeated, need LB and CN.]

[Fu – You must transform.]

Marinette frowned, [LB – I can't. In my classroom with all my friends.]

The text seemed to hang endlessly in the air. A moment passed. There was no way to tell if it was a full second or an eternity or something in between.

Her phone buzzed again. [Fu – Miraculous Ladybug may fix with everything else.]

[Fu – even if not, no other options.]

[Fu – Good luck, Ladybug]

Marinette took a deep breath, closing her phone. She slipped out from under the desk. She noticed Ms. Bustier had fallen asleep, leaning against the teacher's desk. A couple of other students were sleeping as well. But all of her friends and classmates who had been akumatized were awake and chatting. There was going to be no hiding this. She closed her eyes and looked at the ceiling. Ladybug should be able to bust through.

It didn't matter. It was the only option.

"Tikki, Spots on."

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