25. Chapter 25

"I never thought having our friends over would be so stressful," Adrien told Marinette as they waved good-bye to Nino and Alya at the train station Sunday evening. Even though there had been no further close calls with Marinette's stuff in Adrien's apartment, there had been a few instances when they had found themselves being a little too friendly with each other, particularly when they were tired. "But after those first few times when we found stuff we had forgotten to take care of, then I was just on high alert all the time looking for stuff that was out of place."

Marinette blinked up at him. "What other stuff? I thought it was just my things in the bathroom that we had forgotten about."

"Oh, I wish." Adrien slid his hand around her arm as he led them back towards the bus stop. "Not even close."

"He's being dramatic," Plagg grumbled from where he was hidden in Adrien's scarf. "There were two other times when he found stuff that maybe could have given you away."

"It would have straight-up given us away," Adrien said. He squeezed Marinette's arm lightly. "I'll tell you when we get home."

She nodded.

"So what else did we forget?" Marinette asked the second they had stepped into their building. "Whatever it was, both Nino and Alya must have missed it, or we would have heard about it."

"Yeah, but only because I just managed to catch it in time." Adrien let out a huff as he remembered. "You left some, ah, clothing in my room."

She just looked puzzled.

"It was pink and lacy," he told her, and was pleased to see the blush spread across her face as she caught on. "And tangled up in my sheets. Nino had followed me back to the bedroom so we could keep talking while I looked for my phone charger, and I spotted it then."

"Oh, that would have been hard to explain."

"Try impossible. I'm lucky that Nino was busy talking about his job and wasn't paying attention." Adrien unlocked his apartment and let Marinette in in front of him. "And then I was about to start getting ready for bed when I saw what was in the trash."

Marinette just looked confused.

"And then the trash in the bathroom had stuff in it that clearly wasn't mine, so I had to empty that into my trash can and take the bag out, and I think Nino and Alya thought I was crazy," Adrien continued, flopping down on the couch and pulling Marinette down to sit in his lap. He had missed all of the casual touches while their friends were there. "I had to make up something about how I had just remembered that there was an apple core in my trash from earlier in the day and I had to take it out before it stunk out the room, and that I had decided that I should empty the bathroom trash at the same time so I wouldn't have a half-empty bag." He rolled his eyes. "And of course, all of that required me to be dashing around like a madman, because taking out the trash couldn't wait two more minutes."

Marinette laughed at that.

"It made me wonder if it's really worth it, keeping our relationship a secret from them," Adrien said. "We could have just both slept over in my bed like normal and then had Nino and Alya across the hall in your apartment."

"Yeah, I wondered that, too," Marinette admitted. "I was thinking that if we told them while they were here and could explain why it needs to stay a secret in person then maybe it would be fine. Like, one of the things that I was worrying about when telling them long-distance is if Alya would just read half of a text and then go spread the news before reading the rest of it, or if they would zone our reasoning out if we just told them over the phone. And in person, surely we could explain everything first."

"But...?" Adrien prompted. "I'm getting the feeling that there's a hang-up there."

"But then Alya was telling me about how she has a bet going with one of our other friends back home- I don't remember who, exactly- about when the two of us would get together. And just the way she said it- and the fact that her phone is always in her hand- I don't know." Marinette let out a frustrated sigh. "It just made me think that maybe she wouldn't see the problem with just telling one other person."

"And we don't want to risk that," Adrien filled in. "Yeah, okay. We can wait until it's closer to the end of our time here to tell people. That's probably the smartest thing to do anyway."

Marinette nodded, relaxing into his chest. Her eyes fluttered shut as she curled up, resting after their hectic day.

"You know, it's odd that your neighbors always somehow manage to be quiet on the weekends that Alya and Nino are visiting," Adrien commented after a few more minutes of comfortable silence. "It only seems to be those weekends that they're quiet, actually. Do you go and talk to them or something?"

Marinette snorted. "Of course not. They would never listen to me, considering that they're inconveniencing the people on their other side all the time."

"Then it must just be good luck, then?" Adrien suggested. Marinette laughed, sitting back up on his lap.

"Oh, sure. You could call it that, I suppose." Marinette's eyes lit up with her grin. From her purse, there was a small giggle. "Or you could call it Tikki. She phases through the wall and messes something up in their speaker system, and then they have to take it in to be repaired. It works really well to shut them up."

"Are you feeling ready for midterms?"

"I think so," Adrien said as he handed one of his printed-out paper drafts to Ben. "I don't have many, really. It's mostly papers and rough drafts and project write-ups, and I have most of those close to done. It's just this one I have left to get cleaned up."

Ben nodded as he read through Adrien's paper, red pen in one hand as he went. He made a few marks in the margins, a quick suggestion for wording here and a small correction there. Adrien pulled out his notebooks and textbooks while Ben worked his way carefully through the paper, keeping an eye out for any spelling or grammar mistakes.

"It's a really solid paper," Ben said after a few minutes more. "A couple small mistakes and one sentence that was a bit awkward and then your bibliography is a little out of order so I would check that again, but it's really good. You've done some really great research."

Adrien nodded, glancing over. He had tried his hardest on that assignment, working to get a solid paper done and all of the research that he might need finished, and it was good to heard that his efforts had paid off. "Thanks for proofreading that, by the way. I know I heard someone in the tutoring center say that that isn't usually a normal part of tutoring."

"Oh, it's no trouble." Ben handed the paper back to Adrien. "With you, I'm not trying to improve the content at all, really, because it's already fabulous. It's just catching a couple English errors, and that's easy."

"And the bibliography this time, apparently." Adrien scanned the section and- yep, Ben was right. Three of his sources were out of alphabetical order. "Oh, that's a ridiculous mistake. I'll fix everything tonight and get it turned in early, I think. Just to get it out of the way."

"Good plan. Have you gotten the other things in?"

"Some. Others can't be turned in early, so I'm still polishing them up." Adrien glanced at the other corrections Ben had made. They weren't large- the things he found never were- but it would make his paper sound that much more professional, and all without Adrien having to spend an hour agonizing over it in an attempt to find all of the mistakes before handing it in. "It's mostly making sure that I have all of the information I need in them and that I'm not forgetting to mention part of an experiment or something."

Ben grinned and nodded. "Yeah, that wouldn't be good! You would think that the professors would miss something like that after reading so many lab reports, but they catch everything. One of my classmates last year forgot to write down one of the main steps in a lab report for one of the classes you're in now, and they got marked down an entire letter grade for it."

Adrien winced at the thought. It would stink to have so many points taken off from what would otherwise be a perfect paper. He had been careful in his double-checking of his work, though, and he was positive that all of his lab reports contained all of the steps in just the right amount of detail.

With the paper editing taken care of, Adrien and Ben moved on to working on the concepts that Adrien hadn't quite fully grasped during class. Their dynamic wasn't quite that of teacher and student, which was something that Adrien hadn't quite anticipated when he first signed up for tutoring. He and Ben had become fast friends even if they were only seeing each other for the tutoring sessions two to three times a week.

With only a year's difference between them and similar interests in Physics topics, they had enough in common to chat about when they weren't focusing on Physics. Adrien was glad that the two of them got along so well; after all, they were meeting up several times per week for nearly an hour. It was easier for him to be comfortable interrupting and asking questions when Ben wasn't just a tutor, aloof and detached. They had managed to develop a nice balance between a focus on teaching while still being friendly, which Adrien thoroughly enjoyed.

"Words cannot express how easy you are to teach," Ben said with a laugh when Adrien let out a loud "OH!" and quickly started scribbling down some notes to help him remember a rather important point about a concept. "I've tutored people where you have to walk them through a concept and several problems super-slowly and multiple times, but you? I just break a concept down a little bit and suddenly you catch on. It's very rewarding, as a tutor. I feel like I'm doing so much more than I actually am."

Adrien just grinned.

The rest of the tutoring session flew by, and then Ben had to leave for class. Adrien waved good-bye, then turned back to his work to try to finish the problem set he was on before packing up. He did his best not to rush, even though all he wanted to do was head back to his apartment, where there was leftover chocolate cake calling his name. It was made even more enticing by the fact that Adrien hadn't had any cake since he and Marinette polished off the last of his birthday cake earlier in the fall, and this time Marinette had tried a new and ridiculously delicious flavor to distract herself from the (admittedly less crazy than last year) Fashion Week.

...aaand now he was thoroughly distracted. Great.

Adrien gave himself a good shake to refocus and looked back down at his work. Right. Two more problems to go, and then he could head back home and eat his cake. He could do it.

Adrien's midterm exams went by in a flash, and then it was time for his fall break. His father had only bothered him a little bit about returning to Paris for his break this time around, giving up after only a couple nagging texts and phone calls with Nathalie. That, combined with the fact that Marinette had plenty of saved up time off that she had to use before the end of the year, meant that they could take a week to themselves to travel around the country. After some consideration, they had decided to head north to investigate an area that, according to their kwamis, had once had a couple active Miraculous holders there (though not a Ladybug-Chat Noir pair). Since neither of them knew much about the other Miraculous and they were rather curious to learn more, they decided to head up and see if they could find anything.

So once again, they dragged themselves out of bed early to catch a train for their several-hour journey northwards.

"I hate everything," Marinette grumbled, burying her face in Adrien's shoulder. "Ugh. I hate being efficient with our time when it requires getting up early."

Adrien tried not to laugh as he yawned and ended up making a strangled sort of sound instead.

They headed steadily north, and eventually both Marinette and Adrien were awake enough to enjoy the trip. Adrien alternated between staring out the window at the scenery flying by and reading one of the several papers he had brought along for his classes, while Marinette sketched in her sketchbook, working on possible designs for Madam Rosalie's winter collection. Once their stomachs started to growl, she pulled out the sandwiches that they had prepared the previous night. They had been sure to pack enough for the train ride up and for their first dinner, but after that they would either have to buy things from the grocery store as needed to make sandwiches or eat out at restaurants.

Honestly, that wasn't a bad thing, even if it could get a bit expensive. He and Marinette never ate out in London unless they had been invited out to lunch with Marinette's coworkers, so now they could. They would just have to be careful to not let it appear too date-like, in case anyone recognized them.

Partway through eating his sandwich, Adrien happened to notice that there were a lot of people heading through their train car. They passed through to the car in front, and then came back several minutes later with food in their hands.

"Uh, Mari, do they sell food on this train or something?" Adrien asked after seeing about a dozen people come back through with food. "I keep seeing people coming through with sandwiches."

Marinette glanced up as a whole family came through, clutching paper-wrapped sandwiches, and she made a slight face. "Oh. Yeah. They sell food on most trains, apparently. One of my coworkers- Emily, I think? Yeah, it would have been Emily- almost died laughing last year when I told her that we were starving on the way back from Bath and didn't get to eat until we got home. She told me about the dining compartment then, and then brought me part of a sandwich that she had gotten on the train during her weekend trip." Marinette's face screwed up in disgust. "It was...not good. I don't think their sandwich bread could even be considered bread. It was dry, and dense, and ugh."

Adrien hid a smile at that. "Someone is a bit of a bread snob, huh?"

"I am not! I just have standards!"

"You're totally a bread snob."

Marinette gave him a sour look. Adrien tried his best not to laugh. After all, even if he hadn't grown up with completely fresh, amazingly tasty bread like Marinette had, he wasn't in any hurry to sample the train food. He much preferred their homemade sandwiches. Still, he was curious about it and they still had a while to travel, so he re-wrapped the rest of his sandwich and followed the next group of people forward through several carriages until they got to the dining car. There, he saw a team of workers handing pre-packaged sandwiches to riders. A menu- if it could be called that, considering how limited it seemed to be and how much of the list seemed to be snacks rather than anything that would be considered a meal- hung on the wall. The sandwiches seemed fairly simple, and didn't sound appealing at all.

Okay, so maybe Marinette wasn't actually a bread snob. Maybe she just appreciated decent food, and the train wasn't the best place to find that. In the few minutes that he had been hanging about, he had already heard a few muttered complaints about the food. The bread was dry, there wasn't enough meat, there wasn't enough of the other fillings, there were no condiments and the whole thing tasted like cardboard...

Yeah, Adrien was glad that he and Marinette had brought their own food. They would have to try to make something for their return trip, too, so they could avoid having to resort to the train sandwiches.

"What did you find?" Marinette asked when Adrien flopped back into the seat next to her. "Was it as bad as I thought it was?"

"Worse," Adrien told her. "Well, worse than I thought it would be, at least. It looked like they put in the bare minimum effort required to call that stuff 'sandwiches'. I saw someone picking through their sandwich and it just looked sad." He bent down to dig the rest of his sandwich out of his backpack. "I've never seen something so awful-looking sold before, but then again I'm pretty sure that my mom always brought a lunch with us whenever we went on day trips. We probably never bought food while actually on the train."

"No, probably not," Marinette agreed. "I think the people who do buy stuff on the train are either unprepared or maybe they just like the taste of sawdust. Who knows."

Adrien tried not to laugh. He didn't entirely succeed.

After that, it wasn't long before they were pulling to a halt at their stop. Adrien and Marinette hopped off, along with only a couple other people on the train, and then headed into town. This time, their hotel room was under Marinette's name, and Adrien stayed outside with their luggage while Marinette got checked in.

"It has two beds, because that's all they have here," Marinette told him after she had checked in and they were heading down the hallway with their bags. "But both are big enough for two people."

Somehow Adrien suspected that they would only be using one bed. Still, it would be good to have two so they could spread out a bit more, considering that they would be in town for several days.

"We're looking for room 108," Marinette said over her shoulder as she led the way down the hall, checking the doors as she went. "Aaand 104, 106, 108! Right here!" She dropped her bag into Adrien's hands so she could pull out the room keep. A swipe, a beep, and a click later, and they were in the room. It was a fairly standard hotel room, from what Adrien could tell. Nothing to write home about, but not bad at all. There were two beds, a tiny bathroom, a desk, a couple lamps, and best of all, a mini-fridge.

A mini-fridge that meant that they could keep food there.

"We could get stuff for sandwiches for lunches," Marinette suggested when he pointed it out. She crouched down to check it out. "I don't think we'd be able to do our own dinners, though. We don't have any cooking stuff."

Adrien didn't mind. He would rather have meals out then eat in their hotel room, but it was nice to know that they could make their own lunches, at least. They wouldn't have to rely on deli sandwiches from the grocery store.

"It's not super cold, so I don't know if we could keep meat in here- oh, wait, there's a dial we can turn," Marinette said. She twisted it all the way up. "Hopefully that will work."

"We could also take it out of that cupboard," Adrien suggested, peering over her shoulder to inspect the poorly-designed cupboard. "It's not ventilated at all, so the fridge is essentially fighting the laws of thermodynamics to try to cool down. If we take it out, then it might do a bit better. I'd say just open the door on that cupboard, but it would just be in the way."

"Somehow I don't think the hotel would appreciate it if we unplugged the fridge," Marinette said, peering at the cord leading behind the very large piece of furniture. "Maybe we should just keep the cupboard door open during the day while we're gone and then use the bed closer to the bathroom so we can leave it open at night, too."

Adrien grumbled but had to agree. Unless he transformed, it would be difficult to move the furniture to get the fridge unplugged so they would be able to remove it from that ridiculous cabinet.

Why had they made that awful choice to close the cupboard, anyway? Just for aesthetics? Had the room designer never taken a thermodynamics course in their life? Ugh.

"So what do you want to do with the rest of the day?" Marinette asked, flopping back on one of the beds. "It's late enough that there wouldn't be any point in going out to the castle Tikki and Plagg told us about."

Adrien gave it a few seconds' thought. "Maybe grocery shop for lunch and scout out restaurants nearby for when we want to have dinner?" he suggested. "Then maybe we can just explore the town."

So that was exactly what they did. It didn't take long for them to figure out how to navigate through the town so they could pick up some sandwich fixings and get them back to the hotel before wandering around to explore the town. Once dusk had properly fallen, the two of them made a beeline to a restaurant and settled in at a table.

Neither of them noticed the man in a corner booth pulling out a camera.

"So were the Miraculous holders people who lived in this castle?" Marinette asked Tikki after they had hopped off of the shuttle at the old castle the next morning. A couple other people had gotten off with them, but she and Adrien had been sure to not walk up to the castle too close to the others so they could try to get more information out of their kwamis without anyone else noticing. "Or did they just live nearby?"

Tikki giggled. "What fun would it be if I told you now? See if you can figure it out first."

Both Adrien and Marinette groaned. "Really? We have to do this just like Alya, with just a place and time period to work with?" Marinette complained. "Why?"

"Because I want to know what two humans with knowledge of the Miraculous could pick up. These users were fairly typical of the time, and I want to know if people noticed anything out of the ordinary."

"Or at least if they noticed enough out of the ordinary to make it through a couple centuries' worth of time," Adrien corrected. They started climbing the stairs to the castle. "I'm curious to see if we can pick the users out, actually. We don't even know what they were fighting, if they were fighting anything at all."

Tikki just giggled and vanished back into Marinette's purse.

In the entrance hall, the small group gathered around the designated tour guide. There were only a few people working in the castle at the moment, their guide explained as they waited a few minutes more for anyone who might be coming by car. It wasn't their peak season for visitors, so they were down to a skeleton staff, the year-rounders.

"That's good," Adrien murmured to Marinette. "They'll be the ones that know the most about everything."

Marinette nodded.

Ten minutes later, the tour started. Their guide showed them around the old castle, pointing out rooms and what they had been used for. Most had been set up in the same way that they would have been back when the castle was in use, though there were a couple rooms that had been converted into an office and gift shop. The guide talked to them about what life had been throughout the castle's use, and about the major events during the different time periods. Adrien and Marinette listened attentively, but nothing sounded particularly strange. Nothing stood out, even though they knew during what time period the Miraculous had been active and had even asked several questions about the few things that happened then.

It was weird.

"So, do some Miraculous holders just, like, not really do much with it?" Adrien asked after their tour had finished, leaving them to wander and explore the grounds, and they still hadn't picked out anything strange or Miraculous. The people who had lived in the castle in the past sounded absolutely normal, and it hadn't sounded like the people who lived in the town and countryside nearby had been anything but ordinary, either. "They just happened across a Miraculous, maybe, and didn't want to venture out and join the army or anything?"

Plagg sniggered. "Nah, they definitely were fighting something. We got called to come in and help but they had things under control by the time we got here, so our holders just turned around and headed home."

"But there were no records of any fights during that time period you told us," Marinette argued. "In fact, that time period was so settled that they covered everything about it in about two minutes. Some people were born, some people got married, some people got old and died. That was it."

"Well, there was also a short famine," Adrien pointed out. "All of the crops just failed. But that happens sometimes, and it didn't last that long. Does that even count as a famine, then, if it barely lasts any time at all?"

"It was three years," Marinette corrected before their kwamis could say anything. "And it would have been a big problem if had lasted much longer, since the stores of food were dwindling down to nothing. But that was it."

Tikki and Plagg just exchanged a look.

"Wait, was the famine hiding something?" Adrien suddenly asked after a minute of silence. "Did the superheroes do something to end it?"

"Warmer."

Marinette frowned. "...was the famine not natural?"

"Right!" Tikki chirped. She zipped in a happy circle around Marinette's head. "It was supernatural. There was a dark spirit attacking the area, after a witch nearby summoned it and then lost control. Most of us were busy elsewhere in the world, so all we could spare was the Bee and the Goat. They were retired superheroes from two different areas and not fighting any immediate threat, so they gave up their Miraculous to send over here so new holders could be found."

"It was an odd partnership," Plagg piped up. "Two different levels of Miraculous, and not particularly complimentary powers. But odd superheroes are better than no superheroes when there's a dark spirit involved."

Marinette and Adrien exchanged a wide-eyed look. Fighting a very human supervillain had been hard enough, and they had had relatively normal lives outside of the mask. They hadn't had to worry about lack of food or destruction to the city (magic reset ladybugs were lovely, really). Fighting a dark spirit while simultaneously worrying about a lack of food and trying to keep the destruction to a minimum and keeping normal civilians from finding out about the superheroes in the area just sounded really, really tough. They would have had a clear limit to how long the fight could get dragged out, too, since there was no food coming in from elsewhere.

"It took a bit for the Bee and the Goat to find the spirit once they got the Miraculous, and then they spent two long years fighting it," Tikki continued. "There was a lot of damage done to the land, actually. A section of forest was completely leveled, as were some hills. When we arrived, there were gouges in the ground and entire sections of earth that were barren and I could tell that they wouldn't be able to grow anything in those areas for probably years. I'm sure the people in the area suspected that something was going on, but it was probably put down to the weird weather they were having. Everyone knew to stay indoors when the winds picked up and started howling."

"Now, you would get people driving out into the middle of the storm- or rather, the battle- in those ridiculous storm-chaser cars," Plagg said with a huff. "And then they would get footage of the fight and it would be all over the internet. It would be huge news. But in those days, it was different."

"It was a far better idea to stay inside and pray that their houses would stand the storm," Tikki continued. "From what we understood when we arrived, not all houses could tolerate the spirit's storms. Some families left the area when the famine and storms continued, but not everyone could afford to relocate. And the family in the castle didn't leave, because two of them were the superheroes. Besides, they had to stay so they wouldn't lose the castle to other people or be called deserters."

Marinette frowned at that, utterly confused. "Wait, did their family know that they were Miraculous holders, then? Did they know about each other?"

"They knew about each other, but their family didn't know," Plagg told them. "They were a brother-sister pair, or maybe cousins? I don't remember. We only met them the once."

"They were cousins," Tikki scolded him. "You should have remembered that, considering that they were both men. And their kwamis told us that when the whole family discussed leaving, the two of them were clearly against it, though they just claimed that they didn't want to go and leave the villagers and farmers around here stranded. With people in the castle, those who lost their homes but not their lives could have somewhere to stay while things got rebuilt. Besides, if they left and the castle got damaged during a 'storm', then it would just get worse and worse instead of being fixed right away."

"Well, they had their excuses lined up," Adrien said with a laugh. "Those actually sound like good reasons. I don't know how many of our excuses were actually decent when we were trying to justify being missing."

Tikki giggled. "Well, you're comparing long-term excuses that they had time to think of with immediate knee-jerk excuses. I'm sure the Bee and Goat had some sketchy excuses as well."

"So why have us come up here to look for clues if you knew there wouldn't be anything to find?" Marinette wanted to know as they finally turned and headed back up over the bumpy ground towards the castle. "I mean, it's gorgeous up here, but..."

"We were curious."

Adrien sent their kwamis an incredulous look. "Really? That's it? You just wanted to see if there were any tales?"

Neither Tikki nor Plagg looked at all guilty about it. "Well, it's good to know what people noticed. There was a dark spirit loose, after all. Legends pop up around those sorts of things all the time."

"Personally, I'd be interested asking more questions about the famine," Adrien said. He reached out and linked Marinette's arm with his as they headed up the steeper part of the hill towards the castle. "Just to hear if there's any stories about that. I'm sure the guides here will think that we're crazy or weird or something, but it could be interesting."

"What I'm interested in is knowing why there were so many kwamis out at once," Marinette said. She leveled a look at the two kwamis. "You said that everyone was busy, but now there's only three Miraculous out and Master Fu has the rest. Why were there so many needed back then?"

Plagg's shrug was utterly disinterested. "Lots of sorcerers accidentally summoning spirits that they couldn't control. Some wars and rebellions. Lots of little stuff."

Wars and rebellions and dark spirits were little stuff? Adrien and Marinette exchanged a worried look.

Hopefully they would never have to learn what the kwamis considered big stuff.

"So I'm pretty sure that we can never return to that castle," Adrien said with a laugh as they waited for their dinner that night. Once they knew what they were looking for, they had spent a chunk of time quizzing their guide about the dark spirit-caused famine after returning to the castle. "They probably think that we're complete weirdos for asking so many questions about one three-year famine several hundred years ago."

Marinette laughed. "Yeah, they were giving us some strange looks," she agreed. "And all we learned was that people just though there were some strange weather patterns and that fae or something got blamed for the random patches of land that wouldn't grow anything for the next dozen years. Presumably they got blamed for the hills that got flattened and the river suddenly changing course, too."

"People probably just persuaded themselves that they had remembered things wrong," Adrien suggested. Their waiter arrived with their meals, and they both dug in. "Either that, or they decided that lightning or a flood flattened the hills."

Marinette just shrugged. There could have been a lot of fuss and confusion about the topographical changes at the time, but that had just been lost over the years.

"So what do we do with the rest of the week, then?" Adrien wanted to know. "Just go on hikes or something? We're scheduled to be here for the next three days."

"Mmhmm. Hikes and maybe do tours of some of the lakes and other castles around here, or explore some of the places that the Miraculous battles took place." Marinette beamed over at him and Adrien swore that he would follow her everywhere she wanted to go, just to see that look on his face. "It's gorgeous up here. Maybe we can't go on crazy hikes or anything, because I just have my sneakers along, but I'm sure there's plenty we can find."

Adrien just grinned back at her. "That sounds great, Marinette."

A/N: Yes, the thermodynamics thing is 100% a reference to a Katie Mack tweet. I saw it and couldn't resist :D

If anyone is wondering about who Ben is- he was mentioned (briefly) last chapter, so I figured I would properly introduce him this chapter so people remember him better. He's Adrien's tutor, if that wasn't clear.

Also for anyone going "holy crud this is dragging out foreeeever"- yeah, that it is. I'm very aware of that (mostly because of how much time it took to write and edit everything). No fear, though- I've learned how to use time skips for year 3, so there's still plenty of fluff but not QUITE so much filler (that being said, of course, there's still 8 more chapters between this and Year 3).