To the anonymous guest who asked about my intent re: Gabriel and Hakwmoth. I'm doing my best not to make it obvious to the characters but as far as where I stand on the debate, I'm fully in the "Yes, he is" corner.

Something was off about the way Adrien acted.

Marinette looked up from her sketchpad at the boy who was leaning against the chaise near her legs and watching her. She didn't understand why he would find that relaxing but they had spent several evenings this way and she had come to accept it. Adrien liked to watch her when she worked on her designs. It was actually flattering, once she got over the initial embarrassment.

But there was something different about tonight. He was looking at her but he wasn't seeing her. She didn't think that the dinner with his father and the unknown guest had gone badly. He would be more upset and trying to hide it. Instead, he just seemed lost in thought.

Marinette looked over to where Tikki and Plagg were talking in hushed voices. If anything was really wrong, Plagg would have told her the moment he had left the ring. So whatever was on Adrien's mind was personal.

She closed her sketchpad - she had finished the general design of her dress and had been only playing around with embellishments so it could wait - and leaned over to catch Adrien's eyes.

"Is something wrong?" she asked. "You're a million kilometres away."

Adrien ducked his head embarrassedly.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to ignore you."

"I'm not saying it wasn't nice to have some peace and quiet with you around for once," she said and bopped his nose playfully to take any sting out of her words. "But this is not like you."

"It's just..." he started, paused and then he sighed. "It was a weird evening. And not normal people weird. Our standards weird."

"Oh."

"I have never told you about my Aunt Valérie, have I?"

"I thought you didn't have any close family other than your Dad," Marinette said and Adrien nodded.

"She hasn't been around in years. Her job requires a lot of traveling and the last time I saw her I was ten. I didn't even recognize her at first."

"She's in Paris now?"

"Yes, she was the special guest." Adrien stood up and took a seat on the chaise instead of the floor, turning to face Marinette. "She's not my real aunt but I always called her that. She was my Mom's best friend since they were kids. They lived close to each other, went to the same schools until university, she was a maid of honour at my parents' wedding, she visited often. She was a family in all the ways that matter."

Marinette reached over and took his hand, squeezing it. Adrien squeezed back, smiling a bit.

"She said she wanted to make up for the time she had been gone."

"Isn't that a good thing?" Marinette asked before something occurred to her. "Your father doesn't like that, is that what's wrong?"

Adrien grinned and shook his head.

"Actually, Aunt Valérie can handle my Dad just fine. It seems all my Dad needed was for someone to tell him off. I'm going to have more time to spend with Aunt Val and with my friends and Dad will probably find more time for me, too."

"That's great," Marinette said and leaned over to hug him before she could talk herself out of it. Friends could hug each other when they shared good news and yes, they were taking things slow but that didn't mean they had to be *that* slow and if she wanted to hug Adrien, she would. He had no similar qualms about hugging her back and it was actually nice, just sitting in her room and hugging.

"It feels sort of unreal," he murmured into her ear. "Like it's just a dream and I'm going to wake up soon and nothing would have changed."

"But it's not," she assured him. "You're going to wake up tomorrow and it will still be real."

"She wants to meet you," he said so quietly she almost didn't catch it. Almost. She let go of him and leaned back to take in the flush that was slowly overtaking his face.

"Why?"

Adrien looked down.

"I may have talked about you a lot," he mumbled. "Since the main course all the way to dessert and cheese."

Their faces probably matched at that moment.

"I-ah-well-that's..." Marinette stopped trying to say something coherent. She wasn't going to succeed.

"Dad wants to meet you, too. Eventually. He remembered your name from that contest."

"He did?!" she squeaked out because yes, she didn't like the way the man was treating Adrien but his work was among the best and to be remembered by soomeone of that skill and influence... Well, it was validating.

"I got the feeling he would approve of us. When we get together. I mean, if we get together. Because I wouldn't mind being with you but you have a say, too, and I'm not going to push you and-"

She put her hand over his mouth to stop his rambling.

"It's okay. I know what you meant."

Adrien nodded before his eyes lit up with an idea and the next thing Marinette knew was a warm and wet sensation on her palm. He had just licked her palm! Marinette yelped and threw herself back, toppling off the chaise in a fabulously uncoordinated display of embarrassment-born clumsiness. She could hear Adrien's chuckles but she refused to lift her head up. Out of all times for this to happen!

"Are you okay?" he asked, his grinning face peering at her prone form. She glared up at him and he lost the grin. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," he aplogized and she let out a big sigh.

"I should be used to this. You can be such a cat at times."

"Hey!" Plagg spoke up suddenly. "That wasn't a cat thing, that was a stupid teenage boy thing."

Marinette realized that the kwamis must have been watching the whole time and it made the embarrassment worse. Adrien seemed to realize the same thing because he stood up and offered her a hand.

"I should be going, it's getting late and we have the meeting with Eveline tomorrow. I'll stop by at one?"

"I'll be waiting," she replied. "The Jardins excuse again?"

He nodded.

"I'll see you then, Mari. Good night."

"Good night, Adrien."

There was a flash of green light and Chat saluted her cheekily.

"'Til tomorrow, My Lady."

And then he was gone. Marinette shook her head, a soft smile on her lips.

"'Til tomorrow, Kitten."

"We're calling it Project Akuma for now," Eveline Laurent said to the silence that filled her office after she handed Marinette and Adrien a thin folder each. "We have been compiling data for several months now and we're ready to proceed to the next stage, depending on what you two think about this."

Marinette flipped through the papers in the folder. There were a lot of graphs and tables and equations and frankly, a lot of it was over her head. She had reasonably good grades in science but this was a whole another level.

"Can you summarize it for us?" Adrien asked, frowning down at the papers.

"Well, we know that an Akuma is created when someone feels a strong negative emotion - anger being the most common. At the most basic level, it's all about the body chemistry. If we could influence the Akumas' bodies' chemistry, we could eventually find a way to neutralize them without you needing to fight them. It would be safer for you."

"How would you do that?"

Eveline pushed around some files on her table.

"We're currrently looking for volunteers to become Akumas. As proven by Lady Wifi, the magic contained in Akumas has no negative influence on electronics. We would have the volunteers wear monitoring devices which would be ensured to stay on them, or in them in some cases, even when they were turned into Akumas. We would be able to see how being an Akuma alters their bodies' chemistry and we could develop some kind of a sedative to counter those effects."

Marinette carefully set the folder down and met the older woman's eyes, making sure she would be understood.

"No!"

"But Marinette, think-"

"You heard her," Adrien cut Eveline off, his face as serious as Marinette's. "No! We're not doing this. You're not doing this."

"Be reasonable," Eveline pleaded. "This could mean an immense breakthrough. If we can understand how Akumas work, we will eventually be able to stop them even without you. We wouldn't have to keep dragging you away from your daily lives and into danger, all you would have to do would be to show up when it suits you to purify the butterflies. It's a win-win for everyone."

"You're talking about Akumatizing people on purpose," Marinette pointed out. "It wouldn't be win for those people."

"We would only use volunteers," Eveline protested. "People who would know what they're getting into."

"That doesn't make it any better," Adrien said. "Most of the Akumas so far were innocents who got caught up in the mess mostly because they had a bad day. You're talking about using people who want to become Akumas. That sounds like a really bad idea. What kind of person would want that?"

Eveline sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"I thought you would like it. It would make things easier for you two."

"It might," Marinette agreed. "But the price would be too high."

"And we're not so selfish we would be willing to pay it," Adrien added. Marinette reached for his hand to squeeze it in acknowledgment. He flashed her a quick smile and she was really glad they were on the same page regarding this. Some things were just wrong, no matter the justification. This was one of those.

"Fine," Eveline said and took the folders back, throwing them to the side. "We'll stop the project at the theoretical part." She looked at them and shook her head. "You are such heroes," she grumbled.

"That's what we do."

Eveline sighed again but didn't try to persuade them to change their minds.

"Let's go over your fight with Le Mallefieux, then. Étienne left you these notes," she started and soon it was business as usual.

A/N: A bit fillerish but necessary chapter. See you next week.