Marinette's parents dropped her off at the cross country field as she wasn't able to walk from the school like everyone else. They gave her a quick hug goodbye and left as she went to sign her name off with one of the teachers. Ms. Bustier was the teacher in charge of surnames A to E so Marinette walked over to her. She was also the teacher in charge of Marinette's class and she was also wearing the yellow shirt.

Ms Bustier smiled at Marinette as she walked over and looked at the roll in front of her to cross her name off.

'Good morning Marinette, I'm glad you could make it.'

'Good morning Madame. I-I've made some name things for our class shirts.' Marinette said as she reached into the bag she was carrying and pulling out the decorated material strip with 'Ms Bustier' written on it. She had made one for everyone in her class including their teacher and she was quite proud of them. She had been up until quite late making them and although they definitely weren't her greatest works ever, she was sure they would make people happy.

On Ms. Bustier's she had decorated her name with pictures of crayons and chalk and other school themed images. Her teacher's eyes lit up as she saw it.

'Wow Marinette! That is such a great idea, thank you very much!'

She reached out and gently took the one with her name on it.

'Would you mind helping me put it on?' She said, standing up so Marinette could pin it to the back of her shirt with the safety pins she had brought for that purpose.

When Marinette had finished she did a small twirl and sat back down, grinning at her student.

'Thank you Marinette. I'm sure your class mates will love these too!'

Marinette smiled back and blushed a little at the praise before going to the area designated for her class. She sat in one of the chairs and stretched her leg out, wincing a little at a twinge of pain but overall she was pleased with how little it hurt. Tiki was right, and the wound seemed to be healing very fast.

She had only been there for a minute when Alya and Nino turned a corner in the path and came into view. Marinette smiled and waved at them and they waved back, got their names marked off, and went to join her.

'Marinette! Good to see you girl. What's in the bag?' Alya asked, noticing the bag next to Marinette straight away.

'It's a few name things for you guys. I'll get yours.' Marinette said as she reached into the bag and dug out their personalized names. For Alya she had decorated it with cameras, laptops and ladybug spots. For Nino she had decorated it with a drawing of some headphones and music notes scattered throughout. They took each of theirs with delight and quickly helped each other put them on.

'I love it Marinette!' Alya exclaimed.

'Yeah, these are sweet man.' Nino agreed, trying to see his on his back by looking over his shoulder and slowly spinning.

'Thanks.' Marinette smiled, 'Hopefully with these our yellow uniforms won't look too bad.'

'Excuse me? Do you have a problem with yellow?!' Came a loud and bossy voice from behind Marinette.

Marinette turned to face Chloe, who was standing next to Sabrina. Both girls had their hands on their hips and were glaring at the three friends.

'Yeah Marinette.' Sabrina piped up, 'Don't you know Chloe chose this colour herself? It's the best.'

Alya came and stood next to Marinette and crossed her arms, facing the two girls.

'Yellow is a terrible colour to wear. I don't care who chose it, but the fact that you chose it makes it even worse.'

Chloe sniffed and glared at Alya.

'If you're worried that it doesn't suit you don't worry about it, because you look terrible anyway.'

Marinette didn't feel like holding Alya back from hurting the blond girl so she decided to try to change the topic.

'Hey you two, I made some decorations for the shirts if you want. Here.' And she brought out the two she had made for them.

Sabrina's eyes looked between the pretty piece of material with her name on it and Chloe, obviously wanting to take it but waiting to see what her leader would do. Chloe hesitated, also torn between accepting the gift and her selfish pride, before laughing scornfully.

'I don't need one of those, everyone already knows who I am. Come on Sabrina.' And she walked off before she could change her mind. Sabrina quickly moved to follow her, giving her name decoration one last, longing look.

'Well, she misses out then.' Came a boys voice from behind them. Nino, Alya and Marinette turned to see Adrien, who had approached silently just as the other two were leaving. He grinned at Marinette. 'Do I get one of those?'

Marinette nodded wordlessly, eyes wide, and scrambled through the bag causing a few to fall out. She triumphantly grabbed Adrien's and handed it to him, watching closely to see his reaction. He took it and smiled at the design. Marinette had spent the longest trying to decide what to put on his. She knew everything about him and it was difficult to narrow down. Eventually she had chosen a science theme with various test tubes, conical flasks and beakers filled with different colours. She didn't think it was the greatest design, but it was the best she could come up with at 1am.

Adrien didn't care what the design looked like, he was just pleased she had made him one. The fact that it was related to a subject he loved made it even greater and it helped him to recover from the negative emotions he had felt after speaking to his father this morning.

'This is great Marinette! I love it! Can you help me put it on?'

Marinette turned bright red at the thought of touching his back and sat stunned in her chair. Alya rolled her eyes behind Adrien and took the pins out of Marinette's hands, doing it instead of Marinette. Adrien didn't seem to mind though as he was still feeling too excited to notice.

Once it was on he pulled a few modelling poses, making Nino and Alya snort while Marinette blushed even harder. Then he looked up and saw Nathaniel about to sit down a few chairs away from them, and quickly waved the boy over. Nathaniel approached cautiously, unsure about why he was being called over.

'Hello, what's up?' he asked.

Adrien showed him the name on his shirt and spoke to Marinette.

'Hey Mari, what's Nathaniel's like?' He said to Marinette.

Nathaniel instantly glanced at Marinette and blushed.

'I-I get one t-too?' he stuttered in shock.

Marinette nodded, 'Of course you do! You're an important member of our class.'

Nathaniel's face went the colour of his hair and he looked like he was going to faint from happiness. Marinette handed him his own name tag and he took it and gazed at it for almost 20 seconds before he was able to speak.

'I love it.' He whispered.

Nathaniel's was possibly Marinette's favourite work. She had decorated the background with various art splotches, and instead of outlining the butterfly symbol in black like she had done with the rest of them, she had used a rainbow of different colours so the butterfly had more energy. She had also used Nathaniel's favourite cartooning style and drawn a small picture of him in the right corner.

Nathaniel struggled for a few seconds more and seemed to be about to say something more, when the other members of the class crowded around and began talking about the patterns they had each got. Marinette was in the middle of them, handing out the name tags to everyone and helping them pin them, so Nathaniel went to go back to his seat.

'Hey Nathaniel,' Adrien called out, moving to stand near the boy.

Nathaniel looked up from under his fringe at Adrien.

'Yeah?' he said.

'Would you like to come sit with us today? There's no assigned seating today and I thought, you know, it'd be nice to not be alone.' Adrien cringed at his phrasing, hoping that Nathaniel wouldn't take offence and assume that Adrien was saying he was a loner. However, Nathaniel didn't seem to notice or care, and smiled shyly at Adrien.

'Sure, I'd like that.'

Marinette watched with curiosity as Adrien followed Nathaniel and helped him carry his bags over to where their group was sitting. She was pleased with the results of her hard work and even more pleased that Nathaniel was going to be hanging out with them that day. As she was finishing pinning the final name tag onto Alix, Mr. Damocles stood up out the front of the school and began to speak through a microphone.

'Good morning, students and teachers.' His voiced echoed out from the speakers strategically placed in front of the assembled students. 'We will begin cross country events shortly, beginning with the oldest year first.'

A cheer went up from a group of students in red shirts from the other end of the line of students from Marinette. Mr. Damocles raised his hand and the cheer faded away.

'Yes, it's very exciting. Please note the schedule for the day, if you haven't viewed it yet your teacher will have a copy for you to view throughout the day. Be sure to arrive promptly for your event so you don't miss out, and have fun!' He finished, passing the microphone to Ms. Briant amid a polite applause.

'Alright, can all final year classes please move to the meeting point near Ms. Mendeleiev? Your race will begin in 5 minutes, so go get ready!' She announced and quickly put the microphone down to go assist in race preparations.

Alya settled down between Marinette and Nino.

'This has got to be one of the more boring carnivals. They only get one year group at a time to run and it takes like over an hour each. Ugh.' And she brought out her phone to check her Ladyblog.

To Marinette's surprise, Adrien came and sat down next to her with Nathaniel on his right. While they talked between them she watched the line-up of students. She noticed a group that seemed particularly sporty and were very focused on the race ahead of them. As Marinette watched she saw a blond guy being pushed forward by his group of friends, and he approached unnoticed by the serious teens, bending down behind a guy with black hair wearing the fanciest sneakers Marinette had ever seen. The blond guy seemed to be tying his shoelaces, so Marinette stopped paying attention to him and instead brought her sketchbook out and began idle-mindedly drawing.

She didn't notice how, when the gun went off signaling the start of the race, the black haired boy that was in front of the blond boy who had tied his shoelaces tripped over while everyone else went past him. But she did notice the reaction of the crowd when they gave a mixed 'ooh' of confusion, humour, and pain.

The boy tried to stand up, but then fell onto his face again.

'What's wrong with him?' Alya asked, disrupted from her phone browsing.

Marinette looked closely at his feet, and sighed when she saw what had happened.

'His shoelaces have been tied together.'

The boy also saw the problem and began untying them but by the time he had finally untied the solid knots his classmates had at least a three minute head start. He stomped over to the teacher's desk and seemed to be having a heated discussion with them for a further two minutes while they just shook their heads, before he finally seemed to accept his fate and sprinted off along the race track to try to catch up.

Marinette sadly watched him go, hoping that he would still do well. They would find out in about 15 to 20 minutes when the fastest and fittest finished the 5km race.

When all the runners had returned from the first race, Marinette looked around the find the guy who had tripped over and started the race late. He had ended up coming 10th with a gap of only 2 minutes between him and the first person and she was sure if he hadn't fallen and wasted his time arguing he would have come first. He had taken a few minutes to recover from his desperate run, and now she could see him approaching the group that had caused his trouble.

As she watched, the guy began arguing with the group and she could see him getting increasingly angry when the group just laughed at him and didn't take it seriously. The only one showing some sympathy was the blond guy who had tied the laces together, and he was trying to calm the other guy down. Eventually the black-haired boy stormed off again, giving up on getting an apology from the group.

Marinette suddenly heard a laugh from her right, forgetting about the commotion when she turned to see Nathaniel covering his mouth with one hand to try to stop laughing while Adrien looked very pleased with himself. Nathaniel saw Marinette watching and quickly stopped laughing and let his fringe hide most of his face when he turned red. Adrien saw his reaction and turned to see Marinette, and grinned at her.

'Hey Marinette, you'll never guess what, but Nath here is a huge fan of puns!'

Marinette watched in surprise. She had rarely seen Nathaniel laugh because he was usually too shy.

'R-really?' She said, talking to Adrien too which made her stutter slightly. 'What d-did you say?'

Adrien's grin grew even wider as he said, 'Oh, I just gave him a couple of arty puns that I knew. For example, what did the blue say to the orange?'

Marinette could only watch in a mix of horror and surprise.

'Don't use that tone with me!'

Nathaniel snorted while Marinette's jaw dropped slightly. Nino and Alya looked around at them too now, and heard the last joke. Nino rolled his eyes.

'Come on dude, those puns are going to be the death of me.'

Adrien winked at him.

'When I dye, I think it'll be because of too many strokes, or perhaps a h-art attack. My puns only cause art-official injuries.'

Alya groaned and began to say 'Adrien…' but was cut off when there screaming starting on the other side of the school. They knew what that meant.

The teachers quickly started herding the students away from the commotion, and they all got up to run but Marinette was falling slightly behind, the tight bandages hindering her movement. She decided to use this to her advantage and started to move towards some bushes to the side so she could transform, when Nathaniel suddenly ran over to her to help.

'Here, Marinette, lean on me.'

Adrien looked back at them and was tempted to go help, but he knew he would be of more use as Chat Noir. He ducked behind a building, looked around to make sure there were no people around, and opened his bag to let Plagg out.

'Plagg, claws out!'