A/N: So, I lied... instead of the main PatBC story being updated, I'm doing a just-written outtake of the outtakes ft. the Darth Vader helmets, followed by another outtake that is TECHNICALLY set during the next main chapter (but doesn't spoil much anything), so that the next outtake and next chapter can be posted at the same time for reasons.

But because of all that, my schedule is getting a little more crunched than normal so that I can get more posted before I go up to Canada (since I will only have very sporadic internet access then), so there should be more frequent updates for a bit :)

"Well, that was interesting," Marinette told Tikki as they headed away from Master Fu's place Friday evening. "Plagg is interesting. Is he always like that?"

Tikki sighed. "A bit, yeah," she admitted. "Obsessed with cheese, a bit of a loudmouth, and very stubborn. I'm surprised that wanted to be in charge of planning at all, but that's probably just the stubborn coming into play. He can be very competitive when he wants to be." A pause. "Which isn't very often at all."

Marinette giggled.

"I feel like it's going to get frustrating to have to talk through you and Plagg all the time," Marinette commented a few minutes later. "I understand why, of course, but there were times today when I just wanted to blurt something out, but I had to wait to whisper it to you instead." She frowned. "I feel like one of us is going to end up blurting things out eventually. I'm used to saying what I'm thinking, and Chat Noir tends to blurt stuff out, too."

"Well, you can't transform," Tikki reminded her. "Plagg and I need to listen, too, and he is the one doing all of the exploring. If you could figure out how to change your voice to talk all the time then it would be okay to talk, but you would have to remember to talk that way all the time when you're at Master Fu's place."

Marinette frowned in thought as she continued down the road. She could maybe try to change her voice- maybe she could pitch it higher or lower than usual, or maybe look up a tutorial to see how voice actors changed their voices to voice characters- but it would be super-hard to remember to do that consistently.

Was it really necessary to change their voices? What were the chances that she and Chat Noir would know each other outside the mask?

"Remember that Chat Noir just happens to be close enough to Mr. Agreste's house for his kwami to go over and explore on a regular basis," Tikki reminded her. "And you've said before that Chat Noir is probably your age."

"So he probably goes to the same school I do," Marinette filled in. "Unless he goes to some private school or something. Except he always shows up pretty fast at school whenever there's an akuma there, so he probably does go there, just in another class or something." She frowned. "I don't think I would recognize anyone from any of the other classes by their voice, though. We don't get together with the other classes enough for that."

"Well, you might grow to learn how to identify Chat Noir's civilian voice and then happen to overhear him talking in the hallways at school," Tikki pointed out entirely reasonably. "Or he might happen to overhear you. That's why you have to be careful about your voices whenever you're out of costume."

Marinette sighed. So much for that.

She puzzled about the problem on and off for the next couple days, trying to think of what they could do instead of talking through the kwamis. So far her best idea was to try to talk with an altered voice, just far enough off that Chat Noir wouldn't hear her at school and immediately go hey, that's Ladybug, but it wasn't that great of an idea. There was too big of a chance that she would mess up and talk like normal when they got really into talking strategy or when Plagg and Chat Noir dropped a bombshell of information on them.

Besides, both she and Chat Noir already had enough to do without learning how to talk with an altered voice on top of that, and Marinette really didn't want to risk overhearing Chat Noir practicing his changed voice at school with his friends. That would completely defeat the point of the altered voices.

Marinette was about to give up on the whole idea of trying to get around the whole identifying voice thing when her mother had her run to the store for a few things. On her way to the check-out counter, Marinette stopped by the clearance shelf to see if there were any art supplies there. There weren't, but there were several Darth Vader masks sitting on the shelf among the dented cans and partially crushed cereal and cracker boxes. On each box, it read Voice-changing helmet!

"Oh, perfect!" Marinette exclaimed, picking one of the boxes up to inspect it. The helmet inside was in such bad condition that Marinette was surprised that it was out at all. The paint itself was a bit mottled in places to start with, and then there were some scratches as well. The boxes were a little crushed, but it looked like the important part- the voice-altering mouthpiece- was intact.

"Can I check to make sure they work?" Marinette asked a passing worker. She pointed at the helmets. "Or is that not allowed?"

The worker gave her a slightly puzzled look, but shrugged. "Sure, go ahead."

Marinette pulled the box open, checking the clearance sticker as she did. The price had been slashed heavily, meaning that Marinette would be able to buy two easily, without having to dig too deeply into her monthly allowance. She pulled the mask out- and yikes, there was a crack in the plastic in the back of the mask, but that wasn't that big of a deal, she could just tape it up- and pulled it on. "Hello?"

Tikki's eyes blew wide open when she heard Marinette's altered voice. "Oh, that's crazy! It doesn't sound like you at all!"

Pulling the helmet back off, Marinette put it back in the box and then in her basket, grinning the whole time. "Yeah, it's perfect! And there's a bunch of them on here, so there's bound to be another one that works." She grabbed another box, making sure to check that clearance sticker, too. She had learned from experience that even if there were two of the same product on the clearance shelf, they weren't necessarily priced the same. This time, the voice changer didn't work.

"I think they need to mark this one even further down," Marinette said as she put the mask and the box back. "That voice-changer is the whole point of the mask."

She sifted through the other three boxes, grabbing the cheapest of the ones left to try. There were more scratches and once again, the back was a little cracked, but the voice-changer worked.

"Hopefully Chat Noir can get this on," Marinette said with a giggle as she rearranged the clearance shelf so she didn't leave it super-messy. "He has so much hair, and it'll get all squished down!"

Tikki giggled as well, covering her mouth with her little paws.

Marinette checked out, having the masks rung up separately from her mom's things, and then headed home. She gave her mom her purchases, then trotted upstairs with her masks to get a better look at them.

"I want to fix these up a little bit," Marinette told Tikki as she set the masks on her desk. "I want to tape over the cracks in the back so they don't catch on our hair. They both pulled a few hairs out before. Or maybe I can use some glue," she added. Marinette dove into her basket of assorted art supplies and came up with a specific glue. The tube was half empty, but fixing the helmets wouldn't take that much. "I apply it and stick things together, then wipe off the extra so it dries all smooth." She grabbed a few more things from the box, then gathered up the masks and headed up to the balcony. "And I'm going to work outside, because this stuff smells."

It didn't take long to fix the cracks on the first helmet. Marinette worked carefully, applying the glue and then sliding the pieces back into place. Tikki watched, flitting around to see what Marinette was doing.

"What are the markers for?"

Marinette glanced over at the pile of markers Tikki was pointing to. "Oh! Those are paint markers. I wanted to fix the paint job on these just a little bit, so they don't look so awful."

"Why fix them if you don't actually care what they look like? I thought you just cared about the voice change thing.""

"It's a pride thing," Marinette admitted, setting the second helmet aside with one last swipe to get rid of the extra glue. "I don't want to go in to Master Fu's with something that looks like it belongs in the dump when I know I can make it look better. It's not that much work, really. And I already have all of the supplies I need. See? I have loads of black paint pens. I have a few gold ones, too, but I used most of those up." She picked up one of the pens and the first helmet and started covering up one of the scratches, careful to hold the helmet in a way that wouldn't jostle the still-drying glue.

Tikki frowned as she watched Marinette work. "Why do you have paint pens?"

Marinette grinned as she covered up a second deep scratch. She couldn't do anything to fix the texture of the helmet, but at least the damage was less noticeable when it was painted over. The smell was awful, but the wind blowing across her balcony blew it all away. "I got a whole bunch when we updated the bakery logo! We wanted to put the logo on our delivery van, so I got a ton of these markers so I could do the painting. They're meant to be used to cover up scratches in car paint, but they work like this, too." Another little scribble, and Marinette adjusted her hold to keep working. "And I could use regular paint, but I think this matches the shine of the helmet a little better. Besides, it's convenient."

It didn't take long for Marinette to paint over both the scratches and the mottled paint job on both helmets. With one last check to make sure that the glued parts were still lined up properly, Marinette set them up to dry on her balcony (just out of sight, of course- she and Chat Noir had landed on her balcony before during akuma fights, and she was not going to get herself revealed through some Darth Vader helmets) and then headed downstairs to work on her homework.

After all, even being a superhero in the middle of planning to go after one's arch-enemy was no excuse for slacking off in school.

Master Fu had not looked entirely convinced when Marinette showed up on his doorstep with a bag of treats from the bakery and two Darth Vader helmets. He only agreed to let them try the helmets when Tikki assured him that there was absolutely no way that the two superheroes would be able to recognize each other's voices with the voice-altering mechanism in the mask. Marinette had tested the masks out once more before leaving home to make sure that the batteries were still working, even, just to make sure that things wouldn't get screwed up on the very first day.

"I tried using it too, and it made my voice sound really weird!" Tikki told Master Fu as they got set up. Marinette set one mask on Chat Noir's side of the screen and then set her own mask down on the opposite side before fetching the tea tray for the old Guardian. "All deep and distorted and weird!"

Marinette tried not to laugh at the memory. The mask had also had the somewhat odd side effect of making Tikki a bit louder, enough that her father had stuck his head up into Marinette's room to see what was going on. She had had to claim that she was repairing some old cosplay pieces for some of her classmates and that was why she had two Darth Vader masks in her room despite never having watched any of the Star Wars movies, and thankfully that was explanation enough.

"Look, I'll show you!" Tikki said, zipping into the mask. "Hi! I am the God of Creation, hear me ro- Marinette, this isn't working anymore!"

"You have to turn it on first," Marinette explained with a giggle. She reached over to flip the tiny switch. "That way, the battery doesn't run out so fast."

"Oh!" Tikki exclaimed, though her voice came out low and distorted. Fu and Wayzz both jumped, and Marinette had to leap up to catch Fu and keep him from falling. "Oh, it's working now! Isn't it fun?"

"That is... something, all right," Master Fu managed, one hand over his heart. "And it certainly changes the voice enough that no one would recognize it. Very good, Ladybug." He paused and turned to look at the clock on the wall. "Now, Chat Noir should be arriving soon. Why don't you set up his mask on the other side and make sure that it's on and working?"

"Okay!" Marinette said cheerfully. She snagged the other helmet and got it set up for her partner, trying not to giggle when she heard Wayzz trying out the mask for himself. The kwamis seemed quite amused by it, testing how talking in different voices would affect what would come out. They stopped as soon as they heard Chat Noir's footsteps approaching the door, zipping into place and allowing Marinette to pull her helmet on.

It wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world, nor the most fashionable, but it was functional, and hopefully it would provide a bit of a lighthearted moment during what was sure to be a fairly serious meeting.