Marinette ran to the front of the school with her arms loaded with extra textbooks and three notebooks Max had lent her to pass on to Adrien. She tucked the card she had worked on all afternoon (and had got the class to sign) on top. Crossing the threshold at the front doors Marinette tripped, and the contents of her arms went everywhere.

"No, no, wait!" Marinette called out, but it was futile. The pages were lifted on the breeze, just out of reach. Crawling forward, she tried to gather one after the other. The trail of pages led to a designer shoe, and Marinette looked up the white capri-wearing leg of none other than Chloe Bourgeois. Marinette had managed to avoid her all day, but apparently her luck had run out. Sabrina couldn't help but take a tiny step back, because both she and Marinette knew what had been building up in Chloe all day, and what was coming...

Chloe looked down in disgust, sucking in a deep breath as if she were about to dive into the ocean, and then in a single breath the onslaught began: "DuPAIN-ChenG your sorry excuse for hair looks like Bigfoot stuck his finger in an electric socket! You don't need a brush, you need a weed-wacker! It looks like a hairball a cat coughed up! It is totally, utterly ridiculous! "

At this point Chloe ran out of air, but just as she was about to take another breath in Alya 'stumbled' on the step right behind her and 'accidently' spit her gum right into Chloe's ponytail.

The piercing scream Chloe let out may have shattered a window down the street, and local Parisian's looked up spooked, sure that some akuma or sentimonster was on the loose again. Sabrina's eyes flew open in absolute horror, and she frantically started diffing in her bag for a jar of olive oil that might just loosing the gum's hold. This task however had to be done on the run, since Chloe brushed past everyone (still screaming nasty words back at Alya), and dove into her waiting limo.

"Thanks," Marinette smiled at Alya, who smugly handed her friend one of the pages that gotten away from her. "You really shouldn't have. It's not like Chloe hasn't given me a hard time before."

"Oh I know...maybe not my most mature of responses to Chloe, but it was something about the 'furball' comment that made me just want to 'blah!'" Alya imitated spiting out a furball (or gum) dramatically.

Marinette couldn't help giggle at her impression, and stood up next to her BFF. "You always stick up for me!"

"Haha...'stick' up for you! I get it!" Alya smiled, putting her arm around her bestie.

Marinette looked stunned, and then groaned, "how do the puns keep coming out!"

A car door slammed, and an engine accelerated interrupting them. A dark grey luxury sedan pulled away from the front of the school, and Marinette realized that it was the Agreste company car!

"No! No! Wait!" Marinette tried to chase after it, but nearly dropped all of her papers again.

Nino was standing where the car had just pulled away, holding a oversized cardboard box filled with items that were heavily patterned in red with black spots. he seemed a little surprised to see the girls rush up to him.

"Oh, no! I missed him! Was that Adrien!" Marinette watched the car round the corner.

"Oh, naw. That was just his bodyguard," Nino shook his head, shifting the box in his hands. "My man, Adrien totally hooked me up though! He must've been bored staying home from school and started spring cleaning or something. He texted me saying he had enough Ladybug stuff, and wanted to know if I'd like some of his collection."

"Woah! No way!" Alya breathed peering into the box. "Limited edition Ladybug and Chat Noir action figures! All the collectors cards...wait, wait...that can't be a genuine Ladybug yoyo alarm clock! Hey look! Even Ladybug's face on a fanny pack!"

Marinette's eyebrows shot up, "I...I never knew Adrien was so into Ladybug." Marinette caught Alya giving her a wink, and nudging her with an elbow for good measure.

"Oh yeah, that dude has spots on the brain! He's always been crazy about her...you know, in a totally normal way...I mean who wouldn't admire Ladybug, the perfect savior of Paris right?!..." Nino rambled, clearly trying to cover up a potential overshare blunder. He looked from Alya to Marinette, confused by the expression on their faces. Misreading the situation entirely, he decided to hastily add, "...yeah, Ladybug is great, no doubt, but I'm more a Rena Rouge fan myself. Yep, I've got it bad for the Foxy superhero alright!"

Alya rolled her eyes, pecked him on the cheek, and poked her fingers into the box, "Soo...Christmas came early! What do I get?!"

"Hey! I don't want to split up a perfect set!" Nino pulled the box away teasing, and making Alya chase him.

"Not fair! Get back here! You gotta at least give me the Ladybug lunchbox...Nino! Nino you said you loved me!" Alya giggled in hot pursuit of the boyfriend who would undoubtedly end up sharing most of his haul. "I'll see you tonight!" Alya called back to Marinette with a wave over her shoulder.

Marinette watched them go. She and Alya had already planned to meet up at the Eiffel Tower at 8pm to try to get the drop on Shadowcat.

She looked at her phone quickly, and Tikki poked out of her purse. "We've still got enough time after dinner to drop this by Adrien's place right?" she gestured to the notes and books in her arms.

"Ah, yep I think there might be time," Tikki assured her weilder.

"I'll just call Shadowcat first to set up the meeting. Then I'll stop by home and check-in on the Kwamis, and grab a quick dinner with my parents. After that I'll quickly swing by and check to make sure Adrien's feeling okay, before the showdown with Shadowcat. If Adrien is doing spring cleaning he must be feeling a bit better," Marinette reasoned out loud to Tikki. "Wow! If that is how much extra Ladybug stuff Adrien's giving away, I wonder how much other Ladybug stuff he has!"

Tikki nervously wove her tiny arms together, without responding. This tiny being suspected that if Adrien Agreste was purging himself of spotted items, it was not a good sign.