Marinette played with her pencil as her eyes drifted to the back of Adrien's head. Even after a couple of months, she still had trouble talking to him. Need to figure out how to defeat a Pigeon Man using a coin? Easy street. Telling Adrien that she liked him? She'd rather die.

clunk*

Right. Need to keep a better grasp on that pencil. She was pretty sure it'd fallen into her purse at least, which was convenient for retrieval. Hopefully it didn't hit poor Tikki–

Wait.

She brought her purse up to her desk, fishing through it more urgently. Her purse wasn't that big, and Tikki wasn't that small. She shouldn't be able to miss her kwami!

"Marinette, are you missing something?" Ms. Bustier asked.

She blushed. "Oh, uh. Just my pencil. Sorry, it fell off my desk. I've got it now though!" She held it up.

Ms. Bustier nodded. "Very good."

Where could Tikki have gone? Sure, staying in her purse for the entire school day must get boring, but she was normally there! Why would she leave?

~In a nearby classroom~

"Plagg, we shouldn't be wandering around like this! What if our Holders need us?"

"Relax, Sugarcube, we're only gonna be gone for a few minutes. They're in class, how much could go wrong?" Plagg flew over to a plate of cheese. "This magically reappearing cheese isn't going to eat itself!"

Tikki groaned.

Oh man, if an akuma attacked now–

Footsteps running through the halls.

Ooooooh crap.

"Why is everyone making a ruckus out there?" Ms. Bustier questioned, looking at the window.

Marinette had a few guesses. She didn't have the time to verbalize any of them.

The door slammed open, and a giant… was that a purple teletubby? From that freaky American show for toddlers? Yeesh, girl got screwed worse than Nino had. At least the Bubbler still had human proportions, and didn't look like some baby space alien.

"I am Teleoracle!" the unfortunate Akuma victim announced. "And I am here to show you your futures! No one else will know the pain of breaking a promise they didn't know they'd be unable to keep."

Okay, clearly a story there. It'd be nice to find that out, but she doubted it'd actually matter much, fightwise. She'd never been able to talk someone out of being an akuma before, despite her best efforts. Seemed unlikely that her first success would be with someone she didn't even know.

Well, probably didn't know. She didn't recognize the voice at least. Her appearance was so warped, it was hard to tell who she might be. She was only assuming Teleoracle was a girl based on her voice, her physical appearance was impossible to gender.

More importantly, she needed to get out of here and find Tikki. She just needed to avoid being a victim of whatever this akuma could do–

Teleoracle's TV was lighting up. That couldn't be good.

Okay, so it was probably going to display some kind of beam attack. Just need to duck and move quickly to dodge the beam–

The light flashed over the entire classroom, and suddenly, she was somewhere else. Seemed that Teleoracle's power worked similarly to Pixelator's, with being able to trap anyone caught in the flash in some sort of pocket dimension. This one was more interesting than Pixelator's at least. Instead of being a blank white void, it was composed of a large, off-white, circular room with warm, dim lighting, and multiple bean bag chairs, armchairs, and sofas, all facing a large TV screen embedded in the wall.

All that seating would probably be needed, given that she wasn't the only one transported here. Her entire class – Kim, Max, Nathaniel, Mylene, Ivan, Rose, Juleka, Alya, Nino, Adrien, Alix, Chloe, and Sabrina – had been teleported with her.

Odd. Normally she'd expect this kind of akuma to teleport each of them to their own individual vision of the future. What kind of set-up would work for displaying all of their futures? Assuming that's what was going to happen, anyway. That would make sense with the TV.

Maybe they'd all take turns having their futures displayed? She hoped not, that could take awhile. Chat was still out there so maybe he could defeat the akuma, but he still wouldn't be able to set everything right.

"Awww, I wanted to record the akuma!" Alya complained. "I only got a few seconds of footage before she zapped us."

"You shouldn't be running after akumas anyway, it's not safe!" Marinette complained. The info Alya provided through her blog was invaluable, but she hated how much danger Alya put herself in to get it. At least she was able to protect her friend, that was the whole reason she became Ladybug in the first place.

"Don't worry, Ladybug and Chat Noir are always there to save the day!" Alya declared. She looked around. "Guess we'll just have to wait for them to take Teleoracle down. Not the worst place for an akuma to have sent us. At least we have nice seats." She took out her phone and frowned. "No reception though."

"If they take long enough, we might get to skip the school day!" Kim noted hopefully. His face fell. "Aww, but if they take too long, I'll miss meeting up with Ondine after school." He looked at the ceiling and yelled. "Ladybug, Chat Noir! Wait five hours before taking down Teleoracle, but don't wait much longer than that!"

"There's no way they can hear you," Max told him. "We don't appear to even be in the same dimension as them. Sound waves are not going to travel from wherever we are, back to Paris."

Well there was no way Chat could hear them. Unbeknownst to Max, Ladybug could hear Kim just fine. "I doubt it'll be that long," she said. "Chat Noir will– Adrien?"

He looked up, startled. "I'm not Chat Noir!"

"Of course not!" She would never make that sort of mistake. Alya might have proposed that once, but it was a ridiculous idea. Chat Noir was a goofball! He wasn't a reserved, dignified, but surprisingly sincere and emotionally vulnerable gentleman like Adrien was. "I was just wondering whether you'd lost something." She'd seen him messing around with his jacket, looking in an inside pocket for something.

"Oh, it was nothing," he said hastily. "Just a small toy I lost. I'm sure it'll turn up later. It'd better," he mumbled the last part quietly.

She'd have to be on the look out for that.

Alya elbowed her. "If you find it, you'll have an excuse to visit his house to return it!" she whispered.

Marinette blushed. Once this was over, she'd scour the classroom floor. She couldn't let him lose something he clearly cared about so much. And having an excuse to drop by the mansion was a nice bonus – assuming that the secretary would let her in, anyway.

The screen flickered on.

"Looks like it's starting," Alya noted, making her way to one of the bean bag chairs.

Everyone else made their way to their own seat, sometimes solo, and sometimes combined seating. Marinette took one of the bean bag chairs herself, those things were comfy.

Time to see what the future held, she guessed.