#and like half of Les Miserables the movie as a child but my mother turned it off bc we were both bored

[bumblingbabooshka]

In a sort of first contact scenario, if you could show a group of Vulcans with little experience with humanity one musical, what musical would you make them watch?

I think West Side Story is my pick, even if they’d view it as an example of the danger of uncontrolled emotion. It’s based off of a human classic and the music is very good, plus I think it’s a good look at both the vices and virtues of human society. Also I think exposing Vulcans to 50s slang is funny

C.......ats.

[medea10]

My Review of Trapp Ikka Monogatari

Chances are you are quite familiar with the story of the Trapp family of Austria. Whether you read the memoirs of Maria von Trapp or if you watched any version of The Sound of Music…

More than likely, it’s the latter. Yes, The Sound of Music is one of those musicals just about anybody has seen. Even me! Whether on stage, the Julie Andrews & Christopher Plummer smash hit movie, or that abomination live for TV with Carrie Underwood, you more than likely have seen something along the lines.

But did you know that Japan had its own take on the story? In 1991, Japan’s World Masterpiece Theater released “Trapp Ikka Monogatari” or The Trapp Family Story. World Masterpiece Theater had several animated stories loosely based on books like Anne of Green Gables, The Swiss Family Robinson, and in later years Les Miserables.

Maria Kutschera arrives in a little Austrian town to become a nun and asks to be put in the strictest abbey there is. At Nonnberg Abbey, Maria was a bit of an odd-duck there (and that’s putting it lightly). Maria’s a bit of a wild child and is constantly getting in trouble with the head sisters of the abbey. And worst of all, she whistled! Gasp! How do you solve a problem like Maria? Well, the sisters decide to have Maria stay with a family for nine months to a family with seven kids. Maria is to be a governess to one of the children but she eventually hits it off with all seven kids. That’s right, Rupert, Hedwig, Werner, Maria, Johanna, Martina, and Agathe.

Oh, I’m sorry! Do those names sound foreign to you? Well unlike The Sound of Music, this adaptation found it necessary to use the REAL names of the von Trapp children.

BETWEEN THE SUB AND THE DUB: As it turns out, only a few animes part of Japan’s World Masterpiece Theater has been dubbed and released in North America. And this was not one of them. On top of which, this anime is not available for streaming purposes. Not even on Retro Crush. Sigh. Someday, dammit! The sub cast, holy shit I am familiar with literally the entire cast. Yes, it’s because most of them were from Pokemon or Sailor Moon. I know many seiyuus are able to sing, but there were several people I was blown away with, especially Masako Katsuki. Here’s what you might recognize these folks from.

*Maria is played by Masako Katsuki (known for Cassidy on Pokemon, Michiru/Neptune on Sailor Moon, Tsunade on Naruto, Cecile on Kyou Kara Maou, and Sheffield on Familiar of Zero)

*Georg is played by Katsunosuke Hori (known for Fu on FMA: Brotherhood, Fersen on Rose of Versailles, and Tsuneyoshi on Tokyo Ghoul)

*Rupert is played by Shinobu Adachi (known for Aunt Daryl on Little Witch Academia)

*Hedwig is played by Maria Kawamura (known for Dr. Fennel on Pokemon BW, Eudial on Sailor Moon S, Mamiya on Revolutionary Girl Utena, Naga on Slayers, and Asuka’s mother on Evangelion)

*Werner is played by Yuuko Matsuoka (known for Bertha on Pokemon DP, Madame Christmas on FMA: Brotherhood, Queen Metalia on Sailor Moon: Crystal, and Alvida on One Piece)

*Maria (von Trapp) is played by Yuri Shiratori (known for Roxanne on Pokemon AG, Charlotte on Berserk, Yukina on Yu Yu Hakusho, Noriko on Golden Boy, Sayo on Negima, Tsubame on Rurouni Kenshin, and Mei on Love Hina)

*Johanna is played by Hiromi Shikawa (known for Bugsy on Pokemon)

*Martina is played by Saori Sugimoto (known for Sanae on Green Green)

*Agathe is played by Naoko Watanabe (known for Chi Chi & Pu’ar on DBZ)

DISLIKED CHARACTER: Well folks, at the beginning of the series I had quite a few characters that left a bitter taste in my mouth! I let Hedwig go early on. I can’t blame her for her disgust and distrust of new adults.

Then we go to Matilda! I’m on a half and half with her as she wants the children to be safe, but she’s often looking out for her own best interest than what’s best for the children. She does mean well. Except for a few times! One is when she’s telling the children what’s best and whenever Maria intervenes, Matilda constantly brings up that Maria is nothing more than a governess and to butt out. She brings it up at every opportunity. And then there was this sucking up to Lady Yvonne (who we’ll get to in a second) to a point where she’s literally forcing the children to do this and that for this woman.

And now let’s talk about Lady Yvonne. The atypical soon-to-be step-mother to children who put their birth mother on a pedestal! Rightfully so! No matter how much Yvonne looks like the von Trapp children’s dead mother (because they are blood cousins), no way in hell could she ever replace her. Yvonne has no interest in being tied down by Georg’s seven children. I’ll betcha anything she has no intention of having any of the children live with her if the marriage is to go through. Probably ship them off to a boarding school knowing her! Several episodes down the line and I was right. Believe it or not, there’s something worse than Hedwig on the rag, Matilda on her high-horse, and Lady Yvonne. That answer is…

The Nazis! Worst characters in damn-near every show, book, anime, or what-have-you!

SHIPPING: Much like the real life account of Maria Kutschera, they’re definitely going to cover her eventually marrying the patriarch of the Von Trapp family, Georg.

But before that, we’ve gotta get through this engagement between Georg and Lady Yvonne. Because Georg isn’t after her vast wealth, her father approves of this marriage. The deal-breaker was unfortunately the seven children. Yvonne has no interest in being a mother and even gives the children extravagant gifts to win them over. She really wants a nanny to take care of all the children or send them to a boarding school and just have an empty house with Georg. But kudos to Georg for sticking with having all 7 children decide for themselves and not be sent off against their will.

Another strike against this match came when Yvonne tried to get on the youngest Von Trapp child (Agathe) good side. That went as horrible as you would expect. Yvonne even tried to show Maria that the children think nothing of her. That went even worse! All of the children love Maria. And as for Yvonne, they never really warmed up to her and she finally noticed it. Finally, Yvonne confronted Georg on what we started noticing after episode 20. Does Georg love Maria? Come on dude, she’s like 20 years younger than you, she’s barely an adult, she’s like four years older than your eldest son! But yeah, he admits it! Surprisingly, Yvonne accepted it. The engagement was called off and she ends up with some random wank.

Okay, we’re finally going to get Georg x Maria happen, right?! Throughout these nine months together in the house, they really didn’t have as many ship-worthy moments as one would think. After all, Georg was engaged throughout that time. But they both had some blush-worthy moments that make you think, oh yeah, they’re gonna hook up. After Yvonne and Georg called off their engagement, it was around the time Maria was supposed to head back to the abbey as her nine months at the Von Trapp household were going to end. But the kids were all in an agreement that they don’t want Maria to leave and that they love her. Georg felt the same way and he ends up asking for Maria’s hand in marriage. But did Maria really love Georg? It sort of felt exactly like what the real Maria wrote in her memoir. She stated that she loved the children the most and she learned to love Georg later on. But I didn’t see Maria upset or angry during the wedding ceremony. Whatever!

HEY! IT’S A MUSICAL: Don’t expect to hear the songs from Sound of Music or anyone to have the voice of Julie Andrews. But what we’re given isn’t half bad! Maybe it’s the over two decades I spent watching anime that I’m fine with any Japanese songs. When I say that it’s a musical, I don't mean the characters suddenly bust out singing like in the Sound of Music. Usually, all the singing was just Maria and the children bonding and later it became something bigger.

Now, here’s something you might not know. When Japan was first broadcasting this series, there was an opening sequence featuring Do Re Mi. You remember Julie Andrews teaching those kids Do Re Mi? Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to locate an actual video of the opening and just the audio. In later broadcasts and releases to the anime featured the song “Hohoemi no Mahou”. But Do Re Mi still ends up on the CD release. I do believe that’s the only song that is similar to the musical.

ACCURATE OR NOT?: Here we are again! The crappiest spot in the world where we nitpick people’s works and compare it to the original sources.

*The children’s names! If you’re a big Sound of Music fan and watch this, you might be thrown off by the names of the children. That’s because all of the children have the correct names of the real von Trapp children. Again, they are Rupert, Hedwig, Maria, Werner, Johanna, Martina, and Agathe.

*The children’s names might be all correct in this version, but the ages and positions are changed a bit. Hedwig and Agathe are kinda switched around. Agathe, the baby of the family is really the eldest Von Trapp daughter. And Hedwig was actually the fifth child (just ahead of Johanna and Martina).

*The dates are severely different from what they were in real life. I wasn’t entirely sure of what year the anime was in with this retelling until episode 36. That’s when we were all certain that this is 1938 with the annexation of Austria and Hitler’s takeover. Now if the anime stayed true, all the kids would be much, much older. Because originally, Maria came to the house in 1926, was married in 1928, and had her first child with Georg in 1929. The children might be a year or so older than when the anime began by the time we reach March 1938, but that’s it.

*Lady Yvonne exists! In the anime, it was clear that Georg was procrastinating or putting off meeting with her. In real life, it was the other way around. But everything else was pretty accurate about her as she was indeed a cousin of Georg’s late wife Agatha. I’m not sure if the anime said anything about her status in the world. In Maria’s memoirs, she referred to her as a princess. I just think she was a socialite of some sort.

*This is more of a swipe at the musical, but Georg was not a hard-ass on his children who hated merriment, fun, and singing. Yes, he does have some PTSD of losing his first wife and seeing things that brought her joy give him misery, but that’s just normal. Surprisingly, the only time Georg snapped in the anime was when Maria found his wife’s old sewing machine. It was more of the Baroness of the house that put restrictions on the children, telling them they must be quiet, not make a ruckus outside, and do what they are told. Despite Georg having status in the world, he doesn’t act like it because he was not born into that status, he was given the status after serving in the military. So he still believes the children should be children to an extent.

*Maria actually had three children with Georg. In the series finale, we see a baby. Now I’m not sure which one it is as the series doesn’t say. Every place I looked online says the baby was Johannes. And that does make sense as it is 1939 at the end of the series and that’s when the real Johannes was born. If that’s the case, Johannes is actually the youngest child of Maria and Georg. But in real life, they actually had two daughters before Johannes. Eleonore and Rosmarie were not featured in the anime. It would make sense due to the dates lining up as the Von Trapps escaped Germany in 1938 and Johannes was born in 1939. Then again, the anime doesn’t really follow year protocols until the 1938 incidents.

ENDING: The Von Trapp family experienced some hardship shortly after Georg and Maria got married. The bank Georg’s money was in went bankrupt and he had absolutely no money. They decided to turn their huge home into a boarding house. Mostly students and men of the cloth were the ones stopping by. But it wasn’t until the visit of famous opera singer Lotte Lehmann came to stay and noticed Georg’s children singing and suggested they enter a choir contest [true story btw]. This was kind of a domino effect for the family as they kept getting gigs. Georg was highly against doing this for money and that singing as a family is a thing they liked doing but wasn’t going to make a career out of it. But we all know how that’s going to go! Things started looking up for the family and then March of 1938 happened!

Austria had been taken over by the Nazi’s. Georg was loyal to Austria and hoped that one day Austria would break from Hitler’s grip. Everyone was frightened at what was happening. And everyone had to assimilate to their new overlords or risk being imprisoned or sentenced to death. Seriously, it was illegal to sing Austria’s national anthem. And the kids had the worst time back in school. All of their teachers were replaced with Nazis who are teaching the children that they must salute “Heil Hitler” every morning. I do find it funny that Werner had the rest of his siblings say “Tail Hitler” when they’re forced to do the salute.

But yeah, the Von Trapp family was uneasy about everything happening around them. Georg’s anger was visible to all the children involving this situation. And to make matters worse, there is a traitor in the household. Georg’s head butler Hans is a flippin’ Nazi! He was downright giddy when Hitler took over Austria. Things were getting harder for Georg and his family. Certain liberties they’ve taken for granted were suddenly taken away by secret police. Especially when Maria gets ill and the doctor they’ve relied on for so many years was taken away by the secret police. Because he was Jewish! Add to that, the secret police came to Georg’s home several times. Once because he didn’t hang the Nazi flag outside his home, another time to give him a special request from the German army to man a special submarine, and finally to have the Von Trapp children sing for Hitler’s birthday.

On the plus side Maria’s pregnant. There is no plus side. There’s never a plus side when Nazis are involved. Georg, get your family the fuck outta Austria!

Georg had to be careful planning as Hans couldn’t be trusted anymore and he could have spies. That also means leaving Franz the farmhand and Rosy the cook behind. Those two were very nice characters and you just wish they could have been saved too. So the story goes, they tell Hans that the family is going to go hiking in the mountains. Not too suspicious as that’s something they normally do. The family packed their things, gave their goodbyes to Franz and Rosy and head off to the bus station. Trouble did arise when meeting up with Rupert (who’s been away at a medical school) as he missed the connecting train. But everyone was able to meet up again near the Swiss border. The family stayed with Mimi (a former maid for the Von Trapp’s) and her husband.

Their escape was a nail-biting experience to watch. Mimi’s husband borrowed a funeral hearse to transport the family across the German border into neutral territory. And wouldn’t you know it, the secret police came searching and asking questions. Good on Georg to speak in Italian as he was in real life an Italian citizen at one point in his naval career. Good on you, anime! I was scared they were going to open the casket as a lot of the kids were hidden. Thankfully, they eventually made it to neutral territories and eventually the United States before war broke out all over Europe. During one of the singing competitions, they made a connection with a gentleman from New York. And that was their destination. Their escape was successful and in 1939 Maria gave birth to…I’m pretty sure it’s Johannes. The end.

Love it. Love everything about the story (minus the animation). Hey, Japan’s World Masterpiece Theater is great and all, but the character design isn’t the best. That was one of my criticisms of Les Mis and even then that was still in the top tier category for best adaptation. Now do I like it more than the Julie Andrews musical?

*groaning*

I can’t bad-mouth the musical. Julie Andrews is a bleeping goddess. Her voice brings the sunshine in every room. Music wise, it’ll hands down go to Sound of Music. You just can’t beat Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. In terms of the story itself, I do like this adaptation a smidge more than the musical. A three hour musical vs. a 40 episode anime series! Let’s just say, I really liked how Maria was able to connect to ALL of the kids on a deep level. In the musical, yes Maria did connect with the children, but I felt there was more of a connection between Maria and Lisel than any of the other kids. Not only that, but there were several episodes where we delved into Maria’s past.

The anime however had a lot of episodes so that Maria was able to learn more about the seven children individually. Originally, she was there to only be a teacher to Maria Von Trapp, but she also became a teacher to Johanna. Despite being only a Governess, she was able to help a lot of the children with their problems. Yes, these episodes are technically fillers, but some were worth it. In one episode, Maria helped Rupert decide what he’s going to do in the future and ends up wanting to become a doctor. Perfect choice as the real Rupert Von Trapp really became a doctor. In another episode, she’s stuck trying to help Agathe through a rebellious phase which connected to the arrival of Lady Yvonne’s surprise visit. Those episodes showed us who the children love and trust and who was trying too hard to become their new mother. And we even get an edgy episode where Hedwig gets her first period.

Oh yeah, this anime went there!

If you are able to find and/or download this anime, I say take a chance and watch it.

Okay, now we go back to my list of unlicensed gems…which is filled with unwatchable hentais! Be kind to me, Randomizer-kun!

Oh, thank you God! It’s another story from World Masterpiece Theater. Although, it’s a story I know absolutely nothing about. Wish me luck!

[miraculous-nights]

Supervillians

Title: Chapter Five

Summary: Marinette was kidnapped when she was 6 and her cage was next to a boy in a similar situation. Tikki and Plagg renamed them to be Ladybug and Chat Noir, but they still don’t know who their companion really is. Suddenly, they are let loose into the world with no explanation.

Word Count: 2692

Rating: T

Note: This definitely is a short-ish chapter. Whoops, I posted this on both A03 and Fanfiction.net at school and forgot you wonderful people! So sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you waiting longer. I went through some writer’s block, so I think the next chapter will be up sooner.

Disclaimer: I sadly do not own Miraculous Ladybug or any of it’s characters…

“Lucky Charm!” Ladybug shouted for the first time since the current Tikki had used it a few weeks before a young girl named Marinette could be her only new friend.

A red paintbrush covered in black polka dots fell from above Ladybug’s raised fist and dropped into her other hand. There was white paint ready on the brush.

“You need to go home soon, so do the second half of the spell that fixes everything and then I’ll give you a bit of food before your dinner tonight,” Tikki said as Ladybug nodded.

“Miraculous Ladybug! How do I get out of this spandex?”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. It’s called Spots Off!” Tikki began to get up and walk around for a minute while Ladybug rolled her shoulders.

“Spots Off!” A flash of pink light filled the room and Marinette collapsed to the floor. She sighed as her stomach growled.

“That’s it. Here’s some high protein granola bars. Up you go, keep hold of me and we can get back to the park very soon. Yes, we still have over twenty minutes until you have to be home, and guess what? It only takes ten minutes to get you home!”

“Okay,” Marinette mumbled as Tikki began to drag her towards the door. “I can walk, let me go,” she slurred before Tikki let her go. She promptly started to fall yet again before Tikki grabbed onto her once more.

“Nope. Eat your granola bar. It’s like you’re drunk and tired. If you puke on me, you are most definitely buying me new designer shoes. Maybe a Chanel purse.” Tikki said as she opened the packaging of one bar and stuffed multiple bars into her hands. After gaining back some strength that she had lost, Marinette unhooked herself from Tikki and rolled her neck.

“How long do I have until I have to be home?” Marinette asked Tikki as she grabbed onto her arm in order to disappear before they left Miraculous.

“Fifteen minutes, it takes ten to get you to the park and we originally had twenty if you hadn’t acted so stupidly,” Tikki snapped at her and set a brisk pace. She was annoyed, Marinette could find that out herself beut she didn’t understand the why. Then again, she had never understood the why from Tikki’s point of view. “Meet me at the park tomorrow night right after school.”

“Why?”

“Do you think I deserve to tell you my plans? I haven’t told you my plans for the past nine years.”

In the metro, Marinette almost let go of Tikki before realizing what that would ensue. Panic among the people around her, a girl showing up out of nowhere. Although she stepped out of a dark van that sped off quickly from a park that nobody cared about her.

In the train car, she let herself loose the time to the clicking of the tracks without being afraid of her magic taking over the sound. Tikki was right that her magic would be mostly blocked off as Marinette now, which wasn’t bad. Sitting in class with a pencil writing for her would be nice, but it might scare Alya, her only friend. Unless you counted Adrien and Nino, but Marinette thought she worried them because of her stumbling through words. It was just Adrien, really, that she was worried about. Adrien, whose golden head was nicer looking practically every period throughout the day.

He had a nice head, and cute eyes, she had decided. Sure they were very green, a pleasant reminder of her kitty. Chat always had to wear these weird contacts as he got older that made his eyes look like cat eyes. He hated them, but if he took them off Plagg would have done something worse to them that beatings. Plagg would have turned off the light. Plagg could have them separated and kept in different places, alone with or without lights. Being alone in the dark was the worst fear either of them had in that place.

Tikki let her off at the park and nobody noticed a girl magically appearing out of thin air. Tikki explained that anyone who saw her before she let go couldn’t see her until they saw her a second time. She was just a passing face between strangers to anyone.

Dinner was an interesting thing that night. Marinette was less hungry than she thought, and had already surprised her parents by taking so much food. It was delicious, but those protein bars that she ate had filled her up much more than she thought. Tom ate her leftovers, and he finished them quickly.

Retreating to her room after some awkward conversations between both parents about her day and appetite, she laid down on the chaise that still had dust in it. She figured it would probably stay there forever, woven into the fibers of the cloth. She ran fingers over the seams of it, and studied the embroidery. It was simple stitching, back and forth in the pattern by a machine.

She stood up and looked at the dress form she had. There was plenty of supplies to start learning and she had the computer her parents got. She looked up how to make dresses and started her first project.

After an hour, Marinette looked at what she had accomplished. It was decent, something between a dress and something unknown. The torso was there, but the sleeves were all scrunched up around where she had tried to connect them to the dress. A spot in the middle of the torso had also been messed up and was curled in on itself. She wasn’t sure how she did it, but attaching a brooch to the spot made it look intentional. Marinette didn’t know what to do with the sleeves, so she bunched up the collar and made it a bit wider to look like it went with the dress theme. Pleated sleeves and a pleated collar made it seem like a thing, but the pleats and brooch made it too much.

Pretending like the way she cut out the fabric wasn’t the issue, it was an okay attempt. Feeling happy with doing something, she put it into the corner and got ready for bed. Her homework was mostly finished, and she finished it up before climbing up to her bed.

Marinette was ready to fall asleep, but she stayed up thinking. It was hard not to contemplate the reasons behind Tikki’s methods of teaching her. To take her where Plagg was, to let her know what the place was called. She focused on Miraculous, the gym on the outside and secret… lair on the inside? If Tikki wasn’t lying about the mysterious Hawkmoth, then is the secret Miraculous still a secret lair? It looked more like a den where old friends that are the only ones able to see each other drink together.

She loved the studio, though. Everything about the studio was beautiful. The dust sitting in mid air, catching the light to make it glow silver. The wooden floor that was losing its polish and beginning to age, and the mirrors. The mirrors that lined up one wall that had her love from the moment she saw them. Beautiful things, mirrors were. Marinette liked the fancy ones as a child, and didn’t see them in the cage. Now, she understood that mirrors showed who she really was.

Mirrors carried her to sleep peacefully, but it was a nightmare that woke her up. She was in a room only made of mirrors. She stared in wonder that each mirror she focused on would lead to a fantastical world of myths, while mirrors around her showed her reflection. The mirrors started to break behind her until she turned, then the mirrors she had turned away from would break until there was nothing left but her and the mirror below her. Cracks formed before she woke.

She laid there until her breathing leveled out and she could sit up without a panic attack. Terrified about what it meant, she got up and went to her computer. The clock read 4:28 in the morning, and she opened up a search in Google and searched myths about mirrors. Her windows were beginning to let light through before she closed the tab and went to get ready for school. She looked at herself in the mirror and noticed a hairline crack in the mirror.

She arrived at school while the bell rang. Slipping quietly into her seat late, Mlle Bustier let it pass because of how good Marinette knew how to listen. She was lecturing on the last chapter they had to read in Les Miserables, just like the day before. The book started off quite boring, but Marinette was interested in what was going on in Fantine’s life before Jean Valjean had swept into her life. There was an american movie that she heard had cut out all of Fantine’s life before Cosette was in the innkeeper’s care, so she didn’t think she’d bother with the subtitles.

She listened to Mlle Bustier lecture endlessly, but really didn’t listen to the words. Marinette did what she did on the train that day. She took background sounds and focused on them alone, in order to pick out different sounds. There was a vent above her somewhere that was making a different sound than the day before, an almost breath as it blew air out of the ceiling. She quieted her own breaths, trying to make out sounds barely there.

It was just a game to her. An old game, actually. Her mom would have her sit on the ground as a child, and listen for the quietest things she could hear and describe them to her mother and see if she could find them. Then, her mother would repeat the game back to her until one of them couldn’t hear something that the other could. She played it with Chat when they were new friends and she had won most of the time.

She picked out the sounds hidden between the low whispers in the back of class and the paper rustling between page flips when students looked for a certain passage. She smiled at the sound that was just barely there, a sound she had picked out everywhere. When she was alone, eating dinner, in class, even on a busy street. A thrumming sound, beating like her heart. She had taken her pulse and measured the sound. It was faster than her heartbeat, and she had come to one conclusion. Her magic was a beast, beating with its power inside of her softer than a heartbeat, yet when she listened for it alone it could have been the only sound in the world.

She listened to the softer sound she had heard before in the classroom. I beat that was opposite her own magic. They beat in time, in turn. She didn’t always hear it, but she had recognized it before. She had heard both of those beats before, in a dark room with a single lightbulb.

It was distant from the fact that the beat wasn’t coming from her, but a person in the classroom. If he didn’t sit near to her, she probably wouldn’t have heard it. She had figured out who Chat Noir most likely was, but she wasn’t going to tell him or Tikki. Or Plagg, since she most likely see him wherever Tikki wanted to go tonight.

The bell rang, and she stood up with Alya, following her motions listlessly for a moment. Alya looked like she wanted to snap in front Marinette’s face before Marinette smiled at her friend. She wondered why Alya liked her so much, the girl who spaced out in class and could barely keep time in order.

“Alya, remind me that I need to ask my mom for a watch, would you? With my luck, I’ll forget before I even leave the next class,” she said before sighing.

“Girl, with your luck, we’ll be late for the next class!” Alya huffed before grabbing her arm and dragging her to Maths Class with Mme Mendeleiev.

They sat in class together, time dragging on yet again. Marinette listened to Mme Mendeleiev, and she took more notes than she expected to take. She stared at Adrien’s golden head nod up and down while he looked up to listen and look down to write down his own notes. Then, she looked at the teacher again, studying her expressions when she took a pause and gave a pursed look at some students in the back.

“Nathanael, do you have any idea what the answer to this problem is?” Mme Mendeleiev was seeking a student who would have the right answer, but nobody wanted to raise their hands. He quietly answered her, with the correct answer. It was a setup problem, just how to take each variable and number out of the word problem and put it into the equation they had.

“Good, good,” Mme Mendeleiev muttered while she turned to the board, “And these numbers all add up to… 273.8. That was the number we were looking for but if you would like a double check, take all of the numbers and cross check the original equation with the numbers we took from the original word problem.”

She turned to the students and moved aside for students on the edge of the classroom to be able to see the full problem. Nobody seemed impressed, but it was a school classroom.

“So class, now that we have all the examples finished, the homework is page 165, numbers three through fifteen. You have the rest of class to work on that, about twenty minutes.” Mme Mendeleiev went to her desk and started to check papers while the class started talking about the latest gossip.

“I heard that a girl was found, strung high from smoking, in her teacher’s closet. It was across Paris of course, Daddy wouldn’t let me go to such a disgusting school. There’s rumors that she was even having an affair with the teacher, or she was at least doing more than just smoking in that classroom,” Chloé said loudly as the chatter grew. “I can’t even believe it, it could make the news it was such a huge scandal. There was a scandal I read about that made super international news from America. Some nasty boys did things to their cooking class icing nastier than their personalities.”

Marinette tried to tune out Chloé, really. It was just so hard with her annoying voice that didn’t know what an inside volume was. She looked at the clock and pulled out a tangled pair of headphones to help her tune out the gossip table, surrounded by more and more people wanting to be included in Chloé’s elite circle.

With only five minutes left in the school day, Marinette fretted about what Tikki would want tonight. She didn’t have any homework that would take too long, so Tikki’s mystery activity would probably be her homework. She didn’t slip into her Ladybug persona anymore, it was helpful even if she had no access to magic without it.

She left the school and ran home, depositing her backpack in her room and telling her parents a white lie that she was hanging out with some friends. She said they decided on a place and she didn’t recognize the name. It wasn’t a total lie, but she still felt guilty.

Finally, Marinette went to the park to find Tikki. She looked around, but could only find a blonde boy with Plagg. She didn’t want to talk to Plagg, and she figured it was Chat. Chat Noir and her had never seen each other’s unpainted face, and they were threatened with beatings if they exchanged names. If they saw each other, Plagg would probably threaten to have Tikki snap both of their necks.