The fifth time Lila got called out on her lies, it was Marinette who had had gotten fed up and didn't hesitate to set the record straight before she left school.

Nobody missed the furious look on Lila's face. After all, it was an expression they were fast becoming familiar with.

"Do you think she'll be akumatized again?" Alya asked as Lila stormed off in a fit of not-very-righteous rage. "This would be, what? The fourth time? The fifth time? The sixth? You would think that she would stop lying to everyone at this point."

Nino made a noise of agreement as Adrien froze. The idea of sweet, kind Marinette being targeted just because she pointed out the obvious lie (Lila had tried to take credit for something Marinette had done, which was completely and utterly uncool) was awful. She hadn't done anything wrong, and just like when Juleka called out Lila for a lie a week ago, she had been fairly nice about it and had tried not to make a big spectacle out of it, like Chloe had a week and a half prior. Normally, such a thing wouldn't cause an akumazation.

Lila was not normal. It seemed that having her lies pointed out made her feel personally victimized, and feeling personally victimized got her akumatized in a flash. Adrien suspected that she still would have become Volpina the first time even if Ladybug had found a gentler way to point out that she and Lila had never met, were not friends, and did not "share the same secret".

"Is Marinette going home right away? She could be Volpina's next target," Adrien said, glancing worriedly in the direction Lila had vanished. Thankfully he had the entire afternoon free (a rarity, it sometimes seemed), so if need be he could transform and hang out with Marinette so that she would stay safe.

Because he was not going to stand for his friend being targeted by a rampaging supervillain.

Alya shook her head. "Nah, she's going to a junior ballet studio. She's been working on the costumes for their next performance."

Impressed, Adrien was momentarily sidetracked. "Wow! How'd she find that job? That's fantastic!"

The grin Alya flashed him was a little unnerving- too enthusiastic, too many teeth, and strangely knowing, all at once. "It was thanks to Jagged Stone and the publicity he got Marinette, really. The studio is doing a ballet-rock fusion performance with the younger classes and Mari has that aesthetic down."

"She really does. I loved the cover she made." He had the CD case (signed by Marinette) hung proudly on the wall, next to the case with Jagged Stone's autograph. "She deserves the publicity. She's really talented."

Alya's grin only grew. Adrien hadn't known that it was possible to have so many teeth shown in a smile.

"Well, I gotta get to my job," Nino spoke up, checking his backpack to make sure he had everything he needed before slinging it on his back. "Hopefully Lila comes to her senses and doesn't get herself transformed again."

"I should get going as well," Adrien agreed, knowing full well that every moment longer he spent with his friends made him more likely to lose track of Marinette was going. He hoped that Lila wouldn't transform again as well, but he wasn't so naive to believe that the current pattern she had going on would break anytime soon. Then he perked up as an idea hit him. "Hey Alya, what's the name of the studio that Marinette's doing the costumes for? I want to check it out and see her work."

Alya snorted. "You do realize that the performance isn't for a bit yet, right?"

"I want to look it up before I forget."

"Fair enough, I suppose." Alya bit her lip as she tried to remember before checking her phone. "I don't remember the name off the top of my head, but it's two or three blocks north of here. You could walk up there and check if you really can't wait, or you could ask Marinette about it tomorrow."

"I'll do that." Adrien pulled out his phone, pretending to make a note of it when in reality he was calling off his driver with claims of needing to stay in the library to look things up for a project. "Right, I should go. Have fun at your job, Nino. Don't get in Volpina's way, Alya."

With that, Adrien took off down the hallway, veering into a hidden stairwell as soon as he was out of sight from his friends. Making sure he was alone, Adrien pulled Plagg out.

"You really think Hawkmoth is going to go after Lila again?" Plagg asked, hovering in midair and gnawing on a piece of cheese. He picked off a piece of lint with a grimace and dropped it on the floor before continuing. "That's getting really old, really fast."

Adrien sighed. "I know. And it's such a stupid reason to get upset, really. Lila keeps putting herself in these positions. There would be nothing to call her out on if she stopped lying."

They were such ridiculous lies too. I met such-and-such a famous person just didn't cut it with Lila; no, she went and claimed that she was besties with that person, or she did them a huge favor, or otherwise impressed them, bla bla bla bla bla...

Yeah, it was pretty blatantly false, especially now that people had caught on to her game. But still she didn't stop.

"I have to follow Marinette. If Lila attacks her like she did Juleka, that would be bad." Lila- well, Volpina- tended to like dangling her "attackers" (read: people who didn't put up with her lies) off of the Eiffel Tower. She also liked making full use of her illusions to make it seem like she was about to blow them up with missiles.

Plagg chortled. "Are you going to show off for your girlfriend again?"

"She's not my girlfriend," Adrien sighed, knowing full well Plagg was never going to drop the nickname he had had for Marinette ever since Adrien's second day of school. "And it's not showing off, it's... okay, it's showing off just a little."

Plagg snickered.

"It's because she's such a huge fan of Chat Noir!" Adrien argued, trying not to scowl too much at his kwami's behavior. "She was fangirling over me- well, Chat Noir- so much the first time we met. I can't disappoint her."

He didn't miss the taunting way Plagg sang giiiiiirlfriend under his breath.

Once Adrien was transformed and running across the rooftops, it didn't take him long to find Marinette and follow her to the ballet studio. She was far enough ahead of him that he couldn't catch up to her before she entered the building.

Well, it wasn't like he'd have any trouble getting in. Being a famous superhero had its perks, after all.

"Chat Noir is here!" a kid squealed as he hopped down to the pavement and strolled towards the studio door. She tugged on her mom's hand and stared at him. "Do you think he's going to watch us dance? Can I show him my pirouette? Can I?"

Her mother hushed her as Chat Noir hid a smile and ducked inside. The halls were large and welcoming, and he attracted more than a couple stares as he prowled down the hallway, looking for Marinette. He wasn't entirely certain what his plan was once he actually found his classmate- should he hide in the shadows, ready to make an ambush attack once Volpina arrived? Should he make his presence known? It certainly would be more fun if he could just hang out with Marinette and make a few kids' days by watching them dance.

Yeah, Chat Noir did not do shadows. Besides, it was hardly as though he was being particularly stealthy about entering the building.

A tall, thin woman dashed out of one of the studios and up to the superhero. "Chat Noir! To what do we owe the pleasure?"

He let an easy grin slide on to his face. No sense in causing unnecessary upset if he could avoid it by turning on the charm. "I'm here to see Marinette, ma'am. One of her classmates got wrongfully upset at her earlier, so I wanted to be on-site in case she got attacked."

The woman frowned at his words. "Marinette upset someone? What for?"

"No no no no no!" Chat Noir blurted, not wanting what had to be a ballet instructor to get the wrong impression of Marinette. He would never forgive himself if his friend lost out on any jobs, present or future, because of a misunderstanding he had caused. "She didn't do anything wrong. This other person just has a habit of lying and then getting overly upset when someone points out the lie. She likes playing the victim. She was claiming credit for something Marinette had done and Marinette set her straight."

The instructor's expression relaxed. "Ahhhh. So we'll likely be seeing Volpina again?"

Chat Noir smothered a grin at that. Clearly Volpina had gained a bit of a reputation among the citizens of Paris. He couldn't deny that at this point, it was well-deserved. "Yeah."

"Good to know. I'll keep an eye out." The instructor glanced down the hall again, where a small knot of parents and students were gathering, staring at Chat Noir. He waved at them. "Marinette is in the empty studio, the last door on the left. She's probably buried under the outfits. If Volpina does show up again, I would appreciate it if you could take the fight elsewhere so we don't scare the children."

Chat Noir dipped his head in thanks. "Ladybug and I will do our best. Thank you." With a last wave to the little kids (so cute!) he headed down the hall.

The studio that Marinette had set up in was what he had imagined a fairly standard ballet studio room looked like: mirrors on the walls, bars on the walls (for stretching, he was pretty sure), gorgeous wood floors. Half of the room was completely buried in racks of outfits and cloth.

That...was a whole lot of outfits. How long had Marinette even been working on this project?

Marinette was bent over her sewing machine, the needle moving slowly as she carefully attached something to the costume she was working on. Chat Noir held his breath, not wanting to disrupt her work. He knew from experience that designers rarely appreciated having their work interrupted, especially when they were in the midst of doing something intricate. It was a full three minutes before Marinette finished the applique, pulled the outfit out from the sewing machine and snipped the dangling threads. She had turned to grab something else when she caught sight of Chat Noir in the studio's mirror.

She froze, wide-eyed, then spun to face him.

"Princess!" Chat Noir exclaimed, spreading his arms grandly in greeting. "You've done some impressive work here. I heard and just could not resisting coming to see." When Marinette continued staring at him, wide eyed and stunned (no fawning? He was disappointed), he dropped his arms and offered up a toothy smile. "Care to tell me what all you have going on here? There's so many outfits here, my head is pawsitively spinning!"

"I- sure." Marinette gave him a slightly wary look. "Um, I've been doing the outfits for the youngest two groups. There's a lot of kids, but I'm not doing costumes for all of the groups. There've been a couple other designers working on the other age classes, but they work earlier in the day than I do."

So not all of the outfits were hers. That made him feel a bit better. He had to be about to worry about the amount of sleep that Marinette had been getting in order to get all of the outfits to the stage they were currently at.

"Show me which ones are yours?" Chat Noir asked hopefully. He glanced around the room, scanning the racks. While most of the outfits appeared to be in whites and pastels, a whole section was made up of vibrant colors. "I'm guessing the really colorful ones?"

Marinette smiled and nodded. "Right. I have a blue-green-purple color scheme for all of my designs here." She gave one of the racks a little tug, making the hangers on it swung slightly before settling.. "The actual leotard base got produced somewhere else after I designed the base patterns, because it was just a lot easier than trying to do all of the fittings myself."

Smart, smart. Trying to fit little kids- and with a stretchy fabric, no less- would have been a nightmare. Adrien knew because he had once been a little kid, and he remembered his father complaining endlessly about what a nightmare it was to try to fit things on a squirmy kid.

"There's only four leotard patterns, but I mixed and matched with three skirt patterns so it looks like more." Marinette smoothed a hand over the dyed fabric and straightened a few hangers as she talked. "And the embellishments only really vary a little bit. It's mostly the colors that change for those."

Looking closer, Chat Noir could tell that Marinette was telling the truth. She had mixed up the patterns just enough that the similarities weren't immediately obvious. It wasn't as though no two pieces were the same- he was pretty sure that there were some pretty similar ones- but the similarities weren't immediately obvious.

"I designed the prints on them," Marinette said proudly. She pulled out one of the leotards so Chat Noir could see the gorgeous blend of colors. "That took a while, since it had to be a large enough pattern that people would be able to see it further back in the auditorium, but small enough not to overwhelm the smaller kids."

"Even the small ones are dancing?" Chat Noir asked in surprise. There had been some very tiny kids outside the doors.

"Mmm. They don't have a very difficult routine, of course, but it's cute." Marinette straightened the leotards she had pulled out. "I've seen it a few times. There's a lot of tumbling over. Only some of it is on purpose."

"Maybe I'll be able to come in and see it sometime." It sounded absolutely adorable, and he definitely loved making little kids' days. They were just so innocent and easy to please.

Marinette looked up, eyes wide in surprise. "That wasn't what you came for today? I figured that the owners must have asked if you could drop in and you just decided to wait here until classes started."

"No, no. I came to see you, Princess." Chat Noir grinned as he swept into a low bow. This was the part he had been looking forward to. Marinette had seemed to enjoy his grandstanding enough the last time he had worked with her that he couldn't resist showing off a little again. Straightening up, he flashed another wide smile. "I heard you had a little run-in with the infamous Lila, so-" he flexed once, because why not "-I wanted to make sure that Volpina wouldn't attack you."

Marinette's slight eye-roll went completely unnoticed by the black cat.

Chat Noir rolled his shoulders and flashed a ten-megawatt smile at Marinette before turning to flex from another angle. He would probably die of embarrassment if Marinette ever found out it was him being this over-the-top - after all, flexing at girls was more Kim's forte than his - but for now it was fun. "I wanted to assure you that you're in excellent paws in case Volpina does show up again."

As he turned slightly to show off from another angle, Chat Noir's eyes caught on a part of the mirrored walls not covered by racks of leotards. To his surprise (and amusement), Marinette seemed to have her hand under her chin and was opening and closing it like a mouth and she seemed to be mouthing something-

Was she seriously going meow meow meow under her breath?

Thoroughly amused, Chat Noir decided to keep on going. He gave his hair a theatrical toss, ran a clawed hand through it, and twisted a little to show his best angles- all of which was lost on Marinette, of course, but he was a model, darn it, and he wasn't about to half-ass his act- before scrambling for more of his grand speech.

"Your knight will keep you safe, never fear," Chat Noir said, deepening his voice a little as he gave another fantastic flex. He peered at Marinette in the mirror out of one green eye. She was still in the middle of her teasingly mocking meowing, though he could see how the corners of her mouth were twitching upwards in amusement. He let his gestures become a little more exaggerated as he continued, just to see how she would react. "I'll keep the ill-tempered villainess away from you should she show up, so you can continue your fantastical work unhindered."

Marinette's meows got a little bit louder. Chat Noir grinned and finally started meowing back, keeping up the flexing and hair-tosses the entire time. He kept his eyes trained on that little bit of mirror, waiting for Marinette to finally catch on to what he was doing.

She didn't.

Stifling a snort, Chat Noir rolled his shoulders back and swung out his arms in ever-grander gestures as his meows got more and more sing-songy. Just when he was about ready to seriously contemplate meowing to the tune of Jagged Stone's latest single to see if she would notice, Marinette finally froze. Her eye got absolutely huge as she realized that she had been caught and her hands clapped over her mouth. Chat Noir let himself laugh.

"I caught you there, princess," he teased, enjoying the way her cheeks flushed pink as he turned back to face her. "Did you really think I wasn't going to notice? You were in your own little world for a bit there."

Marinette huffed, crossing her arms as she wrinkled her nose at him. It only had the effect of making her look cuter instead of more intimidating. "You didn't notice last time."

Rather than feeling offended that Marinette hadn't been fawning over him like he had thought, Chat Noir was amused. Getting to finally see this new side of Marinette was like getting a new toy, and it was honestly far more interesting than believing that Marinette was merely another fangirl. Not many people would dare make fun of a superhero to their face, no matter how playfully it was done.

Chat prowled forward, smirking a little when he saw the edges of Marinette's mouth twitch in barely concealed amusement. "Last time? Surely you weren't making fun of your knight when he came to escort you to your rendezvous with the Evillustrator?"

Marinette sniffed at him. "You were flexing at me."

"I wanted you to see how well protected you would be, with these guns in play." Chat Noir flashed another grin at Marinette before bringing his biceps up to his face and kissing them, like he had seen Kim do in the past. As expected, Marinette's face immediately screwed up in a combination of disgust and laughter.

"That was awful. Never do it again."

Before Chat Noir could even pretend to defend his move (yeah, it was awful and yeah, he was never doing that again, he felt like a complete and utter tool just by doing that), a door slammed in the dance studio.

"MARINETTE DUPAIN-CHENG!"

The roar echoed throughout the building and seconds later, footsteps thudded loudly down the dance studio's hallway. Both Marinette and Chat Noir jumped, startled by the sudden noise.

"Completely abandoned the subtly there, hasn't she," Chat Noir commented idly as he pulled out his baton and lengthened it to a good fighting length. He had to resist the urge to pout that his time with Marinette had been interrupted- they had just started to have fun, did Volpina really have to show up again already?- as he turned to his friend. "Find a good hiding place while I drive her away, okay? Ladybug and I will have everything back to normal in no time, I promise."

Marinette grinned and pretended to flutter her eyelashes at him. "My hero!"

Chat Noir snorted as he waved good-bye to his classmate before charging out into the hallway to meet Volpina. He would definitely have to come again, he decided as he blocked a blow from the flute and countered, partly to see the kids dance and partly to hang out with Marinette again. It might not be a great idea to hang out with his friend while he was transformed, but she never acted like that with Adrien.

Purrhaps he should act more like Chat Noir as Adrien, he mused even as he pushed Volpina out of the dance studio and waved a greeting to Ladybug as she landed nearby. It was worth a shot, though, even if doing so might be risking giving away his identity. Marinette wouldn't be the worst person in the world to figure him out, not by far, and the possible rewards would be well worth the risk, as far as he was concerned. If he became good friends with Marinette, he wouldn't need an excuse to go over to the bakery more often.

Yes, Adrien decided as he Cataclysmed Volpina's flute into glittering dust, that was what he was going to do. It would be fun to be able to act more himself with someone besides Ladybug and, to some extent, Nino. He and Marinette were going to be great friends.

He could just feel it.

A/N: As with most of my stories, this IS a one-shot and is therefore complete.

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