Miss Bustier strode into the classroom Wednesday morning with a big grin on her face, a pile of what looked like fliers clutched in her hands as she called for silence. The whole class settled down, some people looking more interested than others as they noticed the papers in their teacher's hands. She started handing out the fliers, talking the whole time.

"All right, class. I saw these announcements just yesterday, and I just couldn't pass up the opportunity. The Grand Paris is hosting a cooking competition this weekend, and they have several categories. They have a category for eighth to tenth graders, but nobody has signed up for it yet." She finished passing out the papers and headed back to the front. "So I thought it was a great opportunity for an out-of-class assignment! You get to cook in pairs, and as a bonus the winners get gift cards to the store of their choice."

"I don't know how to cook, though," Kim complained loudly from his seat, and there were numerous noises of agreement.

Miss Bustier smiled. "I talked to them about that, and they said that for the younger categories, they would provide recipe cards that you could choose to use if you wish. You don't have to do well in the competition to get credit for the assignment, but you do have to go and at least try. I will be attending to make sure all of you go and participate. The time of the competition is on the forms. If you have any scheduling conflicts-" her eyes flicked to Adrien "-talk to me, and I will see what I can do. It will be good for some of you to get some experience, since I know several of you don't get any practice at home, and you won't always have your parents or personal chiefs around to cook for you."

She paused, waiting for questions. There weren't any, and she smiled. "All right. Now, for our class…"

The class started filing into the hotel lobby forty-five minutes before their time spot was scheduled. The previous group was finishing up, presenting their meal to the panel of judges. Alya's mother was among the judges, but wouldn't be there for their group.

"All of the cooks had to judge at least two groups, and since she's head chef she got to do the upper levels," Alya told Marinette. "I think our group is the one everyone wanted to avoid, because everyone in our group is only here because Miss Bustier made us come."

"I would have come anyway if I had known about it," Marinette said. She grinned. "A two hundred euro gift card to the store of our choice? Uuf."

"Thinking about all the fabric you could buy with that?"

"You know it." Marinette grinned. "You're pairing up with me, right? We'll be unstoppable."

"Of course." The girls fist bumped.

Rose and Juleka arrived next, followed by Alix and Nathaniel. Nino trailed in after them, and Adrien came in shortly afterward. The boys hurried over to join Alya and Marinette. Adrien was grinning broadly, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet as he walked over.

"Someone is excited," Alya teased. "Are you planning on sweeping the floor with us, Adrien?"

"Of course." Adrien crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall. "Nino and I are going to beat you guys, just watch. You're going down."

Nino made a noncommittal noise, looking incredibly doubtful. Adrien spun on him, betrayal etched across his face.

Nino held his hands up defensively. "Hey, I'm just saying- neither of us has ever cooked before. We're both complete beginners, unless you've had cooking lessons that you haven't told the rest of us about."

"Everyone else in the class is a beginner too," Adrien argued as the girls smothered their giggles behind his back. "We have just as good of a chance at winning as everyone else."

Nino shook his head at his friend's obliviousness. "Nah, dude. Juleka and Rose both have some experience, I heard them talking about it earlier. And of course there's these two jerks." He made a face at their amused friends and kept talking. "Alya is the daughter of the head cook here, and Marinette is the daughter of Paris' best bakers and the grandniece of the World's Best Chef winner. What about that screams inexperienced and easy to beat to you, Agreste?"

"That's no guarantee that they know how to cook, though. Right?" Adrien glanced over at the girls, both of whom looked very smug.

"I worked in the kitchens here last summer and over the holidays to get enough money for a good video editing program," Alya volunteered. She grinned at Adrien's sudden look of distress. "And I cook for my siblings all the time when Mom works late."

"I work in the bakery on weekends, holidays, and over the summer," Marinette added. "I help my mom in the kitchen a lot for our meals, and great-uncle Cheng taught me a lot when he was here."

"We are so hopelessly screwed," Nino sighed. "The poor judges. We can only hope that our food won't poison them."

"Miss Bustier said that we would get recipes," Adrien pointed out. "It can't be that hard, right?"

Both girls could only giggle.

As it turned out, the kitchen that they were using was one that none of them besides Alya had been in before. It was the kitchen that the hotel used for big events, where most of the prep occurred. The kitchen that Marinette was familiar with was mainly for warming things up, doing the last of the prepwork and getting things plated. The real kitchen was down another set of stairs and was positively gigantic. There were what seemed like a zillion workstations and it was connected to a giant pantry, fridge, and freezer.

"This is amazing," Marinette breathed, grinning as she scanned the area. "Now I'm worried about getting lost in here." Next to her, Adrien and Nino nodded in agreement, worried looks crossing their faces.

"It's actually really well labelled," Alya spoke up. "And Mom said that they weren't going to have all of the pantry and fridges open, and the freezer isn't available at all. They have things concentrated at the front in the pantry and all of the ingredients we could need in one fridge."

Marinette relaxed, relieved. "That makes sense. They can probably keep track of what's being used better that way."

Miss Buster entered the kitchen five minutes before the contest started, herding in the stragglers. Most of the class was already there, paired off at the workstations. The teacher started around the kitchen, marking students off as present as Alec, the host, started listing off the rules and the cameramen (and women) started setting up their cameras to get the best angles while still staying out of the way of the contestants. Mic wielding workers swarmed in, mostly focusing on getting close to Alec until the contest really got going.

"All of you will work in pairs to make a dinner meal involving a main dish, sides, and dessert. You have workstations with the majority of the equipment you should need to cook, but we also have a rack of other equipment that you can choose to use." He turned to point to the equipment lining the wall opposite the door. "If you don't know how to use something, don't try to learn it on the fly. You aren't professional chiefs and I don't want anyone getting majorly hurt. Each pair has two ovens and their corresponding stovetops to use, and we have two microwaves on the equipment wall for everyone to share."

All of the students nodded.

"We have recipe cards for you to use if you wish. You will have an hour to make everything and get it plated. We have three judges, but you will make four plates so we have an extra for the camera. Are you ready? GO!"

Most of the pairs turned for their recipe cards. Marinette and Alya were the only ones who took off right away, Alya headed for the pantry and fridge while Marinette turned on their ovens and got a pot of water heating on the stove. Nino copied her, trying not to be too obvious as he peered at their ovens before setting one of his and Adrien's assigned ovens to 180 degrees Celsius and the other to 200.

"What do you want to work on, Nino?" Adrien asked, flipping through the recipe cards on their table and trying to pick out something simple. "Do you want to do the main dish while I work on sides and dessert?"

"Sure, sure." Nino swiped the cards for the main dish. It didn't take him long to pluck out a recipe for a stew. "Maybe a bread for a side? Could you manage that?"

"There's a recipe for a basic bread." Adrien plucked it out. Then he made a face. "Ugh. You do realize that my bread is going to be going up against Marinette's bread, right? We're screwed."

It didn't take long for the kitchen to become a complete mess. Kim and Alix had decided to pair up since Max and Nathaniel had both wanted to actually try to win, and they had already spilled a bag of flour all over their station. Apple peels decorated their bench, as did clumps of what might possibly be dough. Mylene had tripped and spilled an entire can of rinsed pinto beans across the floor. Nathaniel's mashed potatoes had splattered out of his mixing bowl and onto the counter and wall surrounding their station. Even Alya and Marinette's station was a bit of an organized mess, with most of their fruit and vegetable peelings tossed into a bowl in the middle of their counter. A smear of garlic juice decorated their counter from when Alya had smashed several cloves of garlic at once with the bottom of a frying pan, startling everyone in the kitchen except her partner.

"Wait, are baking soda and baking powder the same thing?" Adrien asked no one in particular as he looked at the bread recipe. When no one answered, he shrugged and grabbed the box anyway, measuring out the white substance and tossing it into his mix. He shoved his hair out of his face, adding powdering white streaks in his hair to match the smear of flour across his nose.

On the next station over, Marinette and Alya were already elbow-deep in preparation. Over on their stove, something was sizzling away in a frying pan. Surprising no one, Marinette had made bread from memory. She had already finished the dough and had it rising on top of the stove. She was busy whipping up cake batter as she waited for the bread to rise enough to cook. On her far side Alya was busy chopping, knife flying so quickly Adrien and Nino were worried she might cut herself.

At the other end of the kitchen, Sabrina was struggling. Chloe only helped when Miss Bustier was watching and even then she worked very slowly, trying not to let anything get on her hands. Juleka and Rose seemed to be doing pretty well, but they had forgotten to preheat their ovens and had spent a while debating if they could put their food in before the oven was fully heated. Several other teams had overheard their debate and had rushed to turn their own ovens on, grumbling the whole time.

Meanwhile, Adrien and Nino were going to be lucky if their creations were edible. Nino had had trouble figuring out the pepper grinder, finally ending up accidentally dumping several times as much pepper as was called for into the mix when the lid came off the bottom of the grinder. Trying to scoop out some of the extra pepper proved to not be terribly successful. Adrien's dough didn't seem to be acting quite right, so he had given up on it in favor of trying to figure out was dessert to make, crossing his fingers and hoping that maybe cooking it would fix some of the problems.

Pretty much the only thing they had going for them at that point was that their ovens were fully heated when they were ready to put things in, and Nino was fairly certain that his meat was actually pretty well cooked.

Although the contest's production staff weren't supposed to help, there were so many poor cooks in the kitchen that they occasionally had to step in just enough to keep the kitchen from burning down. A grease fire started at Alix and Kim's station and a cameraman only just stopped them from tossing a glass of water on it. Max forgot to put oil in his pan when he was cooking his chicken and nearly smoked out the kitchen before Miss Bustier had enough and squirted oil into his pan. Ivan let his gas stovetop leak when he couldn't figure out how to get it to light and a sound check guy had to step in and teach him how to turn the burner on.

Forty minutes in, everyone had things on the stove and in the oven. Adrien and Nino were both side-eyeing their stew and bread, neither of which looked particularly tasty.

"Maybe it tastes better than it looks," Adrien suggested, ever-hopeful even as his bread let out a few bubbles and deflated a bit with a sigh. "Something smells good, at least."

"It's probably something of Alya and Marinette's, then," Nino sighed, poking at his incredibly lumpy soup. Across the counter, both girls giggled at the comment. They were both doing well. Marinette's cakes and her bread were both in the oven, as was Alya's main dish, and the girls had already started to return things that they didn't need any more to the pantry and fridge. As Marinette started whipping up frosting and buttercream to decorate her cakes, Alya grabbed a stack of plates so that they would have them on hand.

"You two are exhausting," Nino groaned, wiping the sweat off of his forehead. Their dish wasn't anywhere close to being done. "How are you already done?"

"We're not done. It's the calm before the storm," Alya joked, grabbing some herbs and starting to chop. "I think better if my workspace isn't cluttered." She tossed a pinch of the chopped herbs into the sauce that was bubbling on top of the stove before turning the heat down.

Five minutes later, Adrien realized that he hadn't set a timer on his bread. He yanked it out of the oven, poking it as he tried to figure out about how long he had had it in and if it might be done yet. Marinette took pity on the flustered model, trotting over to the boys' station to give his bread a few good whacks and inspect it before prescribing it five more minutes. To add insult to injury, she set his timer herself before heading back to her own station.

As the timer ticked down, it seemed that Alya and Marinette were the calmest group. With ten minutes to go, Marinette had taken out her cakes and stuck them in the fridge so they would cool enough to frost. Her breadsticks were on a cooling rack, covered by a cloth napkin. Alya took her meat dish out with enough time to rest (whatever that meant). With six minutes to go, Marinette took out her cakes and started to frost them as Alya loaded the icing bags with the colored buttercream.

"I wish we had the time to watch Marinette work," Adrien commented a bit breathlessly as he jogged back to his station with plates and bowls. "I don't understand how she's getting the frosting so smooth."

Nino didn't look up from where he was cutting the bread into slices. "Bro, I don't even have time to look at what the clock says, never mind what other people are doing."

With three minutes left, Marinette started adding decorative buttercream to her cakes as Alya sliced up her meat and served it onto the plates with an artistic smear of sauce on the side. The breadsticks were divided up onto the plates, though Adrien didn't miss the way Alya set four breadsticks aside in the cloth napkin.

"One minute remaining!" Alec yelled over the clamor in the kitchen. "Get things plated, because the judges can't taste what's not on the plates!"

When the timer went off, everyone stepped back. Adrien winced as he looked at the plates he and Nino had set out. Something had very obviously gone wrong with the bread, because Adrien was positive that it wasn't supposed to look like that. Nino's soup's consistency hadn't improved at all and there were little dribbles over the sides. The pudding Adrien had whipped up looked a bit sad and lumpy, even with the chopped strawberries and oranges Adrien had tossed on top.

Nino let out a huffy laugh as he glanced to the side and caught sight of Marinette and Alya's plates, which looked like they could have come out a five-star kitchen. There were no stray dribbles of sauce or meat juice, and Marinette's cakes were impossibly gorgeous and impeccably decorated. Her breadsticks looked like they had been taken straight out of a food advertisement.

"Oh, we should have mixed up the groups," Nino groaned, leaning over to sniff their friends' completed plates. "It's not fair to have two experts in one group."

Adrien laughed. "Rude. You would ditch me, your best friend, just to win a class contest?"

"Yes."

Both girls laughed. "Harsh," Alya commented, grinning. "But I wouldn't have wanted to switch anyway. What makes you think that I would have wanted a cooking lightweight such as you in my group anyway?"

As Nino feigned offense, hotel employees descended on the prepared plates and loaded them onto carts to bring up to the main area as fast as possible. Domed silver lids covered the plates, keeping them relatively warm as they were hustled into the elevator. The students themselves were herded up the stairs to the main level. As soon as they were all shoved into a straight line in front of the judges, the cameras started rolling again and Alec pasted a smile onto his face.

"Today we have our eighth to tenth grade cooking contestants! After a disappointing sign up, one of the instructors from the fabulous Collège Françoise Dupont had her students join! This should be interesting, as we have contestants ranging from utter beginners to confident in the kitchen!" Stepping to the side, Alec gestured to the judges. "Our judges are all chiefs here at the hotel. Our first judge is the handsome Raphael Tissot!" He paused to let Raphael wave to the camera. "In the middle, the gorgeous Marie Giraud! Finally, we have the fabulous Dimitri Sordeau!"

"Hello, students! I can't wait to see what you have achieved over the hour of cook time!" Dimitri smiled before dipping his head towards Alec, indicating that he should continue.

"We'll start on this end of the line," Alec announced, gesturing to Nathaniel and Max. There was a pause as hotel employees brought the two boys' dish forward, uncovering the plates and setting them out before retreating quickly.

The judging went fairly quickly. Nathaniel and Max did fairly well. Kim and Alix's dish was deemed edible, but only just. They were also docked points for their sloppy plating. Sabrina and Chloe did even worse and by the looks of it, everything was severely undercooked with the exception of their lettuce salad "side dish".

"At least our stuff is cooked," Adrien commented, keeping his voice low as Ivan and Mylene's dish was set in front of the judges. It looked fairly good, and the judges seemed to enjoy it. "Poor Sabrina, trying to do everything by herself."

Once Rose and Juleka were judged and also deemed good, the boys' dish was up next. The judges looked a little dubious as they poked at the meal, and Adrien found himself hoping that his father never, ever watched cooking shows. He could only hope that Nathalie and the Gorilla would never see this as well.

On the other hand, maybe he'd finally get cooking lessons if his cooking skills were slammed on city-wide television.

Nino's stew was on the chopping block first. They watched with bated breaths as the judges all took a sip, then spluttered practically in unison, their spoons clattering back into their bowls.

"Far, far too much garlic," Raphael coughed, making a face. He stirred his stew, glancing at it. "Your chopping skills are all over the place. I have some things that are cut up fairly small, but then I have giant chunks as well. Here I have a potato that is large enough that I suspect that it isn't cooked through." He fished it out and set it on his plate, trying to cut into it with his spoon. "As I thought. This is undercooked."

Nino frowned. "But I didn't even put in all the garlic that the recipe called for."

"It tastes like you put in ten times as much garlic as it called for," Marie agreed. "Also, there was way too much pepper. A little goes a long ways."

Adrien's bread was up next. It was obvious that part of it had collapsed in on itself.

"Clearly something went wrong here," Dimitri spoke up, picking up his bread. "The cutting skills are sloppy. You have a nice color on the crust, but that's the best part of the bread." He took a bite and immediately made a face. Swallowing with some difficulty, he added, "Your proportions are all off. It tastes like perhaps you were going off a recipe by memory and didn't remember the measurements quite right. You were given recipe cards to use if you wanted, correct? Why didn't you use the recipe on there?"

Adrien frowned, completely and utterly confused. "I did. I've never cooked before, so I had to go off the recipe card. I had to eyeball amounts when it was less than a spoonful of something, though."

There were frowns from the judge's table. "What do you mean, less than a spoonful?"

"Like, when the recipe called for half or quarter of a spoon."

"Adrien, you do know the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, right?" Marinette asked quietly, suddenly realizing what might have gone wrong. Adrien only looked confused.

"The pudding is decent, but it has an incredibly odd texture. The strawberries and orange were a good addition, though. They work very well with the chocolate. It's probably the best part of the dish."

"Last group!" Alec called out, cutting off the judging for Adrien and Nino. The judges looked exhausted, then promptly perked up as the dishes were unveiled. "These plates were made by Alya Cesaire and Marinette Dupain-Cheng, and they look absolutely stunning! Judges, do they taste as good as they look? I might just have to snitch a bite for myself!"

The judges dug in, cutting through Alya's meat and biting into the breadsticks. They looked impressed, and the two girls exchanged a discrete fist bump.

"This is absolutely fantastic!" Marie exclaimed, not even setting her fork down as she took another bite of the meat. "The meat isn't overcooked and it was clearly rested before it was cut. It was cut correctly, which is nice, so I don't have to chew it too much. The texture is fantastic, and the sauce works well with it."

"The bread is amazing." Raphael looked like he was in heaven as he practically inhaled the last of his breadsticks. "And I don't remember this sort of bread being in the provided recipes, so does that mean it was from memory?" At Marinette's bashful grin and nod, the judge looked doubly impressed. "That's fantastic!"

"I want to finish off the plate, it's so good," Dimitri admitted. He turned to one of the producers. "Can I get a doggie bag to go? Yes? Fantastic!" He pushed his leftovers to the side and pulled the small cake in front of him. "This is absolutely fabulous presentation right here. Do you work in a bakery, by any chance?"

Marinette nodded. "My parents own a bakery, and I help out when I can."

"This is delicious, just like the rest of the meal. Your ratio of frosting to cake is perfect, and the cake isn't overcooked. I approve."

Once the dishes were cleared away, Alec popped back up next to the table with a grin. "Well, our judges have dined! Some dishes were good, others... not so much. Now our judges will deliberate and decide on a winner! Contestants, please wait in the next room."

The class filed out as quietly as possible, though chatter still broke out the second they reached the waiting room. Adrien led their group over to a quieter corner before turning to Alya with an expectant look. "Alya, I noticed you snuck some breadsticks. Any chance of sharing, or...?"

"Oh, I suppose." Alya fished the napkin out of her purse and passed a breadstick to Adrien and Nino, taking one for herself and handing the last one to Marinette. "So what all was going on at your station? I thought you would do better than you did."

Nino shrugged. "The veggies were slippery and I was running behind after having to deal with all that garlic. The recipe must have been really messed up, because it called for three cloves of garlic and I stopped after one because I figured that was an awful lot of garlic and I needed to start doing other stuff."

Alya and Marinette froze, then turned in near unison to stare at Nino.

"Nino, you do know the difference between a clove and a bulb of garlic, right?" Alya asked. At Nino's blank look, she explained, "A clove is maybe the size of your thumb and is wrapped in a single layer of that papery skin. A bulb is a whole bunch of cloves. You never use a full bulb of garlic in a recipe unless the recipe is for a huge group or you're trying to ward off a vampire."

Both boys stared at her for a long moment before Nino let out an exasperated groan. "Everything makes so much more sense now. No wonder they commented on the garlic taste. But how were we supposed to know? At what point were we supposed to learn that?"

Both girls were snickering.

"Yeah, yeah, keep laughing." Nino grinned at the girls, ripping off a bite of his breadstick. "For all you know, we might be asking you for cooking tips."

"Go ask your mom, Nino." Alya finished her breadstick with a smack, licking her fingers off with a flourish. "And if Adrien wants lessons, I volunteer Marinette for your stand-in mom teacher."

Both Marinette and Adrien spluttered what might have been a protest as their friends laughed. Before any of them could say anything else, Alec called everyone back into the judging room. They formed a relatively straight line in front of the judges, though the show employees had to give Kim and Alix dirty looks before they settled down enough for the show to resume filming.

"The judges have made their decision!" Alec announced, beaming smile in place as he turned to the judges sitting at the table.

"Our winning team for the eighth to tenth grade category is... Alya and Marinette!"

"Congratulations, girls! Come up here, please!" Alec grinned as the two girls joined him. "You made a great-looking, great-tasting dish that impressed our judges, so you both will be getting a gift card to the store of your choice!" He patted both of them on the shoulder, flashing one last grin to the camera before they cut. Hotel employees rushed in to take away plates and bring them back to the kitchen to wash.

"Well, congratulations," Adrien said cheerfully as the girls finished talking to Alic about what stores they wanted gift cards to. "Do you think we could do this again sometime? I mean, not the cooking show, but just cooking? Together? I think it would be a lot of fun."

"Yeah, we should," Marinette agreed instantly. Her eyes slid over to Nino and a devious smile overtook her face. "I think the first thing we should make is garlic bread. Don't you agree, Nino?"

"HEY!"