"You are going to tell me everything about yesterday!" Alya demanded, plopping down on the chaise longue in Marinette's room as though that was where she belonged.

"I-I'll try." Marinette was sure that her version of 'everything' wasn't going to include any mention of kwami or her and Adrien's true first kiss, but she was willing to offer her curious best friend enough information to quell her inquisitions.

Marinette recalled the opening moments of the visit, becoming flustered all over again about her lack of self-expression; this resulted in a scrambled retelling. Used to her friend's excited sentence reconstruction, Alya nodded along - understanding most of what would be unintelligible rambling to one unacquainted with Mari.

"First, I got there and the door answered me! Uh... I mean, I couldn't answer the door. The door asked who I was... I mean... that camera." All right, Alya had seen the Agreste's security camera before, and she knew it terrified Marinette. That much was easy to understand. "I couldn't answer, but I was recognized! The secretary did! She let me in and Adrienhuggedme! Next, we played Ultimate Mecha Strike III." That sentence came out not scrambled at all, indicating that Marinette had been calm for that portion of the experience. Fair enough; she had proved herself a master at that game, and it created a comfort zone for her where she felt a higher level of control. "We introduced each other t-oops, hehe, and we ate lunch. The end!" Introduced each other to whom? That was the only part of what Marinette had said that Alya was unable to make sense of. She took that as meaning something happened toward the end of the visit that was of great embarrasment to Marinette.

"What are you hiding?" Alya accused her friend.

Marinette squealed a bit and sat down in her swivel chair, taking a breath to gain composure. When she was ready, she announced clear as day, "Adrien and I kissed."

Alya pumped her fist in the air "Way to go, girl! WOOHOO! That's a step in the right direction! How exactly did it happen? How did it feel?"

The answer to the first question might very well qualify as classified information, so Marinette chose to answer the second one. "I really didn't know how I was going to go through with it. I was afraid I'd chicken out like I always have - about trying to confess to him, but it felt so natural." Outside, somebody screamed. As screams had become all too commonplace in their lives, neither girl took too much notice. "It was like a jolt of electricity when we kissed, and it just felt... right. He seemed to like it too! In general, it just feels like we have a chance together." Marinette's cheeks were now stained the color of the blood rushing up behind them.

"Amazing, girl! But don't think you can get away with only answering one of my questions. You need to tell me every detail that led up to the kiss."

Well, what was she supposed to say? "It all started when I realized that he had already been my first kiss, except that time I was Ladybug and he was Chat Noir." Marinette needed not to tell Alya every detail leading up to the kiss. A second scream sounded, giving Mari an opening for escape. "Hey, we should go see what that was!"

"Fine, but I'm coming with you, and then we'll get right back up here and continue our little interrogation."

Out on the street, they found a local seamstress garbed in the dramatic apparel of an akumatized villain and wielding a pair of sewing shears threateningly. "I am The Cutter! This morning I finished my greatest masterpiece yet - an outfit specifically to the specifications of Miss Bourgeois. She takes one look at it and demands I redo it! She'll never speak again! Tell me anything without a please and thank you and I'll shut you up for good!"

"Not Chloe's work again," Alya sighed. "She deserves to be shut up - right, Marinette?"

"Yeah, but I'd like the opportunity to do that myself!"

Just then Chat ran by, chasing The Cutter. "It's not the cat that's got their tongues this time!" He shot a pleading look that said "Hurry up and help me!" to Marinette. She nodded and ran back inside the bakery.

Alya turned at the sound of her friend running away. "Marinette?" She saw the bakery door still swinging on its hinges. Phwew, she'd gone back inside. Alya followed, but when she went up to Marinette's room, it was empty. "Marinette?!" The hatch above the bed was propped open. Alya shook her head, "The lengths that girl will go to to avoid questioning!"

Meanwhile, Ladybug was leaping off her balcony, chasing after The Cutter and Chat Noir. She'd barely made it out when she heard Alya entering her room... That was a close one! As she approached her partner, his cat ears flicked - a signal that he was aware of her presence.

"So you decided to quit hemming and hawing around and sew up. Thank you, M'Lady, you know I needle you with me."

"Yeah, sorry, I got held up." Ladybug merely chose to ignore the three puns her partner had managed to get out in one breath. The older lady, however, clapped her hands.

"Delightful! A charming young gentleman being a chivalrous romantic - and he knows how to say 'thank you', too! For your exemplary behavior, I will spare you, young man. Now excuse me while I go close the vile mouths of other youngsters." With that she leapt away from them, the akuma lending her an agility that time had long since taken away from her.

"I suppose we'd better follow her. I don't feel purrsonally thread-tened anymore, but I have the feline she must have most of Paris in shear terror."

"Oh Chat, why do you only get worse when you know that I love you?" If her partner had heard her musings, he didn't acknowlege it - for which she was grateful. She didn't think she could stand to be confronted on that romantic point quite yet.

"You little brat! Now you'll never use that mouth of yours again!" When they found The Cutter, she was just finishing stitching together the lips of a boy who looked to be around eleven or twelve. When she let him go, he fled with a group of his friends, who also had their mouths stitched shut.

Ladybug noticed that, while it must be incredibly difficult to wield both tools at once, The Cutter never put down the shears as she sewed. "The akuma must be in her shears."

"Excellent deduction. You're so clever... but, you know, I've always had a bias toward you, Bugaboo."

Ladybug didn't quite know how to react to that one. The pun was subtle, and she might have missed it entirely were it not for her own interest in sewing. Also, he was being incredibly sweet. "Aw, shut up!" she blushed.

Apparently deaf to the affectionate tone of the exchange, the akumatized old lady flew into a rage. "Don't you dare tell that fine young gentleman to shut up! I'll shut you up!" That was no empty threat either, before she could comprehend anything else, Ladybug found her mouth stitched shut.

"She's got you in stitches! Why can't I ever do that to you?"

Ladybug could only glare at her partner. Really, that's all she could do. She tried calling out for her lucky charm, but that didn't work so well. In the end, she mimed to her partner to use cataclysm.

Chat Noir shook his head. "I don't think violence is the answer to this situation." He turned to the old lady and smiled. "May I borrow your shears, please?" He put out his hand.

The old lady beamed. "Since you asked so nicely, of course you may!" As she handed them over, a glowing pink mask appeared on her face.

"What do you think you're doing?! You are supposed to take their miraculouses, not hand them your akuma!" Hawkmoth screamed at her. He sent waves of pain rippling down her arm.

She winced. "Oh, there is my arthritis again!"

"We can help with that." Chat Noir passed the shears to Ladybug, who deftly broke them and silently purified the akuma. The old lady turned back to normal, but nothing else did. To undo the stitching on Ladybug's lips, she needed to throw her lucky charm - but to do so she needed to first summon the charm. Before she could do that, she needed to undo the stitching on her lips... oh boy.

"Hold still!" Chat used his claw to slice the threads away as gently as he could, but he still managed to cut her accidently. She winced at the stinging, but otherwise ignored it - knowing she could now easily revert everything to what normal had become for them.

"Lucky charm!" She summoned a red thimble with black spots, briefly wondering what in the world she could have done with it other than just throw it up in the air. She shrugged and lobbed it up far above her, and it exploded into many red and pink sparkles. "Miraculous Ladybug!" The threads dangling from her lips disappeared, and the pain vanished. All around the city, other victims were also filled with joy and relief at their own liberation.

"It's so good to have my lips free!" she exclaimed, touching her mouth.

"Not for long," Chat told her with a smirk. He pulled her into a kiss, but she didn't - couldn't - really mind.

"Beautiful young love." The old seamstress wiped a tear from her eye.

A/n - I was looking back on my earlier chapters, and when I looked at the part where Gabriel says he could put Marinette through a better college than her parents could ever hope to the line "You have talent, darling, don't squander it!" popped into my head. Then I realized how utterly appropriate it really is. That line is from 101 dalmations (or at least the version of it that I had a VHS tape of and played over and over and over as a little kid). What skill of Anita's is Cruella talking about? Fashion designing! She is opposed to Anita getting married because she doesn't want to lose her as a designer, here I've gone and written the opposite. Now I have other lines swirling in my brain such as "Some day one of my competitors is going to come along and swoop you away!", "What kind of sychophant would you like me to be?", "Would you like another cup of marriage? Tea, I meant tea.", "I think you're going to have a puppy!", "The puppies darling, I have no use for babies.", and "My faith in your limited intelegence has been temporarily restored."