Adrien didn't know how to respond. He let his mouth hang open as he tried to come up with something to say while staring back into Marinette's shocked bluebell eyes.

Before he knew what he was doing, he nervously let himself give he a slight nod and muttered "o-oh, I see..."

He didn't know why he kept prolonging his lies to Marinette. This was his first time being partnered with his shy classmate and he wanted to use this opportunity to strengthen their friendship, but relationships filled with lies never end well.

He mentally groaned to himself, if only he had told her the truth, or most of the truth, from the start. Why didn't he just tell her that he left Emma with a friend during the akuma attack? But it was too late for that, there's no way he could tell her now.

Marinette on the other hand was in complete shock, but for a much different reason than what Adrien thought. Her first thought which coursed through her brain was 'why would anyone want to steal Emma?' Out of all the dolls they could have chosen to steal, why would they want the demon baby? Her second thought passed by with a brief feeling of excitement at not having to deal with both her Emma and Chat's Emma at the same time, but that feeling quickly faded when she realized that this situation could possibly jeopardize both her and Adrien's grades on this assignment.

"We should look for her" Marinette blurted out "...I guess." She added the last part under her breath.

"R-right." Adrien said and they started to make their way out of the school.

Once they were outside Marinette started to look around, not sure which direction they should go.

"Where do you suppose we should start looking?" Marinette asked, but Adrien could only shrug. What was he supposed to say, 'let's find someone who is akumatized and wait for Ladybug to show up?'

"Well," he started," all we really can do at the moment is walk around and keep our eyes out for anyone who has a blonde haired, blue eyed doll, right?"

Marinette sighed. "I guess you're right, that's really our only option at the moment."

"And while we're at it we can also look for his parents." Adrien held up Chat's Emma.

Marinette nodded and gave him an uneasy smile. She could only hope that Chat retrieved Emma in his civilian form rather than as Chat Noir, she had no clue how she would explain why she had Chat's baby to Adrien, or explain to Chat why she had his Emma instead of Ladybug.

The two began walking through the streets of Paris in silence. Neither of them could deny the awkward tension between them, it was just like when Adrien went to Marinette's house to practice for the video game tournament.

Adrien was the first to speak up, trying to start a conversation. He had decided that it was his job to try and bond more with Marinette.

"So, what should we call him?"

"Hmm?"

"The baby," he said looking down at Chat's Emma, "we should probably call him something while we've got him."

"Oh," Marinette smiled and placed a finger to her lip as she thought of a new name for Emma. "How about...Louis...?"

Adrien laughed and held up Emma. "Louis? Well, he does look exactly like Emma, and Emma's name was originally Louis. Sounds good to me!"

Marinette leaned in towards Emma. Chat's Emma had been almost as big of a pain to her as her Emma has been and as pathetic as it sounded, she wanted to get revenge on at least one of the dolls. With a taunting voice she smirked and said, "how about it, Louis, do you like your new name?"

The moment the words left her mouth, Emma erupted into a shrill, ear-piercing cry. Marinette leapt back, startled by the sudden outburst, and held her hands up in front of her.

"I didn't touch him, I swear!"

Adrien chuckled. "Don't worry, I'm sure he's just hungry or something."

He reached into the bag of Emma's stuff and pulled out a bottle. He tried feeding it to the doll, but nothing happened.

"Hmm," putting the bottle away, Adrien looked around until he spotted a bench a little ways off. He motioned for Marinette to stay where she was. "Wait here, I'm just going to try and change his diaper, hopefully that'll work."

Hurrying over to the bench, he gently placed the doll down and rummaged through his bag for one of Emma's diapers. Once he was all set, he undid the velcro straps holding Louis' diaper in place and took it off.

Adrien froze.

"What's the matter, don't know how to change a baby's diaper?" Plagg flew out from his shirt and stared from the doll to Adrien.

"Louis..." Adrien pointed at the doll, "Louis is a...girl? But didn't Marinette already say that she checked the gender?"

Plagg lazily looked down at Emma. "Hmm, it seems so. Maybe Marinette lied to you."

"No," Adrien shot, "Marinette wouldn't lie, she wouldn't even have any reason for lying about this in the first place." He paused for a moment, unable to make any sense of what was going on, "But still... why else would she tell me that Louis is a boy?"

"Hmm, I wonder," Plagg drawled with a smirk. "Maybe she's hiding something."

Adrien's eyes grew wide as realization struck him. "No, of course not, it can't be...can it?" He turned to Plagg, face full of seriousness. "Plagg, you don't think that maybe, just maybe, there's a possibility that Marinette..."

Plagg leaned in close. "So, did you finally figure it out, that Marinette-"

"Doesn't know what a boy looks like!" An explosion of pink spread across Adrien's face as he pointed to the spot inbetween his legs, "You know, down there?"

Plagg's eyes grew wide in shock as he stared back dumbfounded at the human fidgeting uncomfortably before him. He straightened himself, took a long and deep breath, then erupted into a series of loud strained laughs that echoed throughout the clearing.

Adrien quickly looked behind him and caught Marinette's eye as she gave him a curious look, obviously confused about the sound. He quickly whipped his head back around, hoping she didn't catch sight of Plagg or his bright red face.

He grabbed Plagg and covered the kwami's mouth with his hands, able to feel the vibrations from his laughter on them. As a cover up, Adrien let out a couple of fake laughs, loud enough to cover up Plagg's obnoxious laughter.

"HA HA HA, OH LOUIS YOU'RE SO FUNNY, HA HA HA..." He then brought his hands up to his face and hissed for Plagg to shut up.

After what felt like forever the kwami's hollering laughter was reduced to snickers and he clutched his stomach after straining it due to all the laughing.

"Are you done?" Adrien whispered.

Plagg nodded, let out a couple more stifled laughs, nodded again, then smiled a sly cat-like smile. "You know what kid, I think you may be on to something. Maybe Marinette doesn't know what boys look like down there." He paused briefly before adding with a snicker, "You should show her yours, just so she kno-"

Adrien cut off the annoying cat with a swat and stuffed him into his shirt.

"Just stay here and be quiet."

Plagg grumbled to himself but obeyed.

Adrien snatched up Louis and hurried back to Marinette.

"S-sorry it took so long."

Marinette paused gave him questioning glance. "Is everything alright, you were making a lot of noise over there?"

"Y-yeah!" Adrien turned away hoping she wouldn't see his face as it turned bright red again after remembering the reason as to why Plagg had been laughing so loudly in the first place. He definitely wasn't going to question Marinette on something like that. "A-anyways, we should get going. Emma is probably getting worried about where we are right now."

"What's the rush?" Marinette asked. "I'm sure she can't even tell the difference between us and whoever it is that took her."

"No," Adrien stopped to look at Marinette with an odd form of parental pride in his eyes, as though Emma was actually his daughter, "that's not true at all. Emma is a smart baby, she knows exactly who her parents are."

"O-okay," was all she could say in reply. She was starting to get the feeling that Adrien was taking this assignment a little too seriously. But then again, she couldn't really argue with his point since Emma was a little demon child who seemed to give her, and only her, a hard time.

Ok, so maybe they were both taking it a little too seriously.

The two continued to walk around the city aimlessly, both focused on finding Emma and searching for Louis' parents. Marinette could only imagine how frantic Chat would be about getting his Emma back while Adrien was worried over how mad Ladybug would be over him ditching her with his baby.

Neither of them had any idea where to start looking, and while they were in each other's company they weren't able to find a way to break apart and transform into their hero identities in order to contact their partners.

But even so, neither of them were able to transform yet until their kwamis had gotten something to eat. Maybe if they could recharge their kwamis then they could make an excuse to get away from one another.

Adrien scratched the back of his head, not sure how to approach the topic. "So, I'm actually starting to get a little bit hungry, how about you?"

Marinette jumped in surprise at his comment, as though he had read her mind.

"I was just about to say the same thing!"

"Great!" Adrien smiled, this was the perfect opportunity, "then what do you say we grab something quick to eat before continuing our search?"

Marinette nodded happily in agreement. This would be her chance to get Tikki some food.

"So," Adrien asked, "what are you in the mood for?"

"Cookies," she smiled, "some nice chocolate chip cookies. What about you?"

"Camembert."

Silence.

"Camembert?"

"Yeah."

"...camembert?

"Mhmm."

"Just camembert?"

He nodded.

Marinette gave him a weird look. "You're saying you want to eat a roll of camembert, no crackers or anything, just the cheese?"

He nodded again, cheeks lightly tinted with pink embarrassment. Why did Plagg have to like camembert if all things! Now what did Marinette think of him? She didn't think he was weird or anything, did she? Was she going to comment that he stunk like the cheese because he knew he did, ever since Plagg entered his life everything he owned smelled like it.

Much to his surprise however, Marinette began to giggle.

"That's a little odd to have for a snack, but I guess I'm not one to judge since I eat some pretty weird things as well."

Adrien's worry about what Marinette thought of him quickly vanished and was replaced with a large smile. Now that he thought about it, he didn't even know why he was worried in the first place.

Marinette was the kindest, sweetest and most understanding person he knew, of course she wouldn't think badly of him for something little like this. People such as Chloe would for sure criticize him for it, but not Marinette. She was the sort of friend he had always dreamed of having, and now more than ever he was overjoyed at finally being able to have the chance to spend more time with her to deepen their friendship.

"So, what do you say?" Marinette interrupted his thoughts. "How about we grab some cookies and camembert to eat before continuing our search?"

He flashed her a smile that thousands of girls would die to see and held out his arm for her to take.

"Shall we go, puur-incess?"

~.~.~.~.~

Chapter 8 is finally finished, it took me a little longer than usual. I continue to reflect myself onto Plagg as his reactions are pretty much how I would have reacted to everything!

I really hope you enjoyed this update and that it made you laugh, and once again, thank you all for being so understanding with my inconsistent update schedule!