"Oh, Marinette, it can't have been that bad," Alya's voice chided from Mari's computer.

"He's never going to speak to me ever again," Marinette said, dropping her head into her hands.

Alya chuckled, and Marinette glared at her— well at the pixely video of her. The indirect eye contact somewhat ruined the effect.

"Mari, girl, you need to just relax. I promise, if you can manage to be yourself around Adrien, he'll like you," Alya said soothingly. "Besides, what happened to all the progress we made? A few days before I left, we were all hanging out and you were forming sentences just fine."

Marinette sighed. "It's different with other people around. The second it's just the two of us, I freeze up."

Alya shook her head with a smile. Oh, her adorable, socially-inept best friend. "So what did you do?"

"Well, he invited me over to play video games," Mari started.

"So you've been in his room?!" Alya asked excitedly. "Nino says it's insane. Does it really have a second story? And a rock climbing wall?" She asked excitedly. Mari opened her mouth to respond, but was cut off. "No, no, wait. Sorry. Important date details first, room descriptions second," she insisted.

"It wasn't a date," Marinette muttered sadly.

"Semantics," Alya brushed off.

"Fine. It was a disaster. I could tell he was trying to be nice, and he tried to get me to talk about my summer, but I just clammed up! I started telling him about a dress I'm making, and then realized that was stupid because boys don't care about dresses and Adrien probably gets enough fashion shoved down his throat during all those photo shoots his dad has him do. So he smiled at me really politely and said he'd love to see it when it's done, but I'm pretty sure he was just saying that, and I'd feel weird showing it to him anyway because his dad is Gabriel freakin' Agreste so it's not like he's going to be impressed by some silly little thing I threw together when he grew up with a real fashion designer!

Ugh, and then we played Mecha Strike, and I won a lot, and he wasn't a sore loser or anything, but I felt bad, so I let him win, and Alya, you should have seen his face! He knew! He knew I'd let him win! But he didn't say anything of course because he's a prefect gentleman, but I felt bad, so the next round I didn't hold back and I accidentally beat him in like four seconds, and then I didn't even know what to do for the next round so I said I had to use the bathroom, where I spent way too long talking to Ti— uh, to myself. Trying to get some self control.

"When I finally came back out, he suggested we get lunch, so we went to a café where, Alya, I kid you not, I knocked over a waiter's tray with my head in the first five minutes, and then almost choked twice because I couldn't manage to eat and breathe and try to talk at the same time."

Alya had both her lips bitten between her teeth as she shook with the effort of not laughing. "It's like you have a disease," she finally teased when she felt capable of opening her mouth without chuckling.

"I knooow!" Mari groaned. "Can we talk about something else now?"

"Sure," Alya conceded gracefully, deciding to come back to describing Adrien's room later when her friend looked less desperate. "I heard there was an akuma attack yesterday. Did you get me any pics?"

"I'll send it to you," Mari said, pulling up her phone and sending Alya the one picture she had managed to take before transforming. It was kind of far away and weirdly angled, but you could clearly see Overgrowth surrounded by his shrub army and Chat mid-vault flying over them to attack.

"It? You only got one!?" Alya demanded. Her phone pinged a second later, and she fished it out of her pocket.

Alya huffed dramatically. "Oh good, it's Little Hedge and Fourmi Noir," she said sarcastically.

"Well unlike some people, I don't generally run headlong into dangerous situations!" Marinette lied.

Alya laughed. "You're no fun. Where's Nino when I need him?"

"When you need him?! Where's Nino when I need him?!" Mari retorted.

Alya looked up from her phone quizzically. "What do you need my kinda-sorta boyfriend for?"

"An Adrien buffer!" Mari insisted. "If either of you had stayed, I wouldn't be in this situation right now!"

"I'm telling Nino that he's just a buffer to you," Alya quipped.

"Well tell him he's not a very reliable one," she grumbled back.

"Then again, maybe I should just let you tell him yourself. He's closer to your timezone after all."

"Speaking of which, what time is it there in Martinique? It's only 11:00 here."

"5:00 in the morning," she admitted sheepishly. "I'm jet-lagged bad."

Mari laughed. "Okay, I'm hanging up and you're going to sleep," she ordered.

Alya laughed and rolled her eyes. "Sure, mom, whatever you say. I'll talk to you later. Love you, Mar."

"Miss you, Al."