I'm back! I must confess, this chapter is the product of a barely functioning brain, teetering on the edge of collapsing from exhaustion, so let's see how we're going to perform. I don't have any particularly amazing hopes for this chapter, but mediocrity is what you came for when you clicked on this fic, so it's entirely unsurprising. Hopefully.

Unnecessary author's notes aside, we should begin now.

Marinette and Plagg were running. Well, technically, Plagg wasn't running because he could fly, but you get the gist. He was mildly enjoying the luxury of flying out in the open, considering that everyone around them was confused enough anyway for them to not really take notice of a black blur breezing past.

They were banking on the fact that the akumatized student wouldn't really have any knowledge of the Miraculous stones, other than the fact that he was supposedly to retrieve them. He wouldn't know what hit him. Literally.

The glass door of the nearest comic book store they were headed towards was thrown open as Marinette ran in, any sort of reputation she had for being clumsy shredded as she ran around the corners with a surefire grace befitting her superhero counterpart.

She screamed at the first attendant they found, scaring the poor guy out of his wits as they interrogated him about the whereabouts of the cosplay pieces.

Plagg internally laughed at his misery. He was probably some college kid looking to earn a couple dollars, it was obvious that dealing with panicky insect women was not on his job requirement list.

Then Marinette screamed at him. This woman showed no mercy, whatsoever. He couldn't understand why his kid called her sweet.

Some cheeses, however, held subtle flavors that gave a sweet hint to those heavenly beauties. He could get behind being around those sweet little things. Ladybug, however, was evil enough to withhold camembert, and really, demonic people like her were the reason that the supply of camembert was lessening in the local dairy mart.

Never mind the fact that it was him that had snuck out and ate the cheese one too many times, forcing them to stop stocking it in their stores for fear of a thief.

Tikki waited semi patiently as Adrien stopped bouncing long enough to take a seat on his ginormous bed. His face still held traces of eager kitten, but she supposed that there was no going back from that, was there?

She flew up to his eye level and gave him an expectant look. The young Agreste tilted his head curiously at her until he realized what she was hinting at. Quickly grabbing a notepad from his bedside table, he sat there poised to take notes like an underpaid secretary from his father's company, except for the fact that was considerably happier about his situation.

Tikki cleared her throat.

Adrien started. "Tikki, um-won't Ladybug be upset that you're helping me figure out who she is?"
Tikki sent him an exasperated look. This was the twentieth time that he had asked her this. He immediately shut up.

"First. What does Ladybug smell like?"
Adrien flipped his hair what little he could. This was his time to shine!

"Ladybug smells like freshly baked cookies, with just the slightest hint of nutmeg and cinnamon. In autumn, she sometimes carries the scent of peppermint, too. If I were to talk about what cookies she smells like most often, I'd say vanilla scented butterscotch nut cookies. And I once caught a whiff of chocolate croissant from her, too."

Adrien took in a deep breath as he finished his tirade. Tikki looked at him wide eyed, at a loss for what to say. She wondered whether he thought of Ladybug as an actual woman or a delicious pastry, with the way he talked about her. Maybe that was why he was so fond of her, considering the fact that his sweet tooth rivalled hers.

Right. This was going to be easier than she thought.

"Where would you find all of these things?"
Adrien sat up straight. "In a bakery?"

"Correct!" Tikki squealed. "What bakery?"
Adrien's smile fell. "There are a lot of bakeries in Paris. How would we know what bakery Ladybug's favourite is?"

…Oh, boy.

Tikki shook her head furiously. "Alya goes to the bakery a lot, doesn't she? Does she smell like a bakery to you, too?"

Adrien shook his head no.

"Why would a person smell like a bakery?"
He pondered the question for a couple minutes. "If the person lived in a bakery, they might smell like one?"

Tikki resisted the urge to do a victory dance.

"And who do you know that lives in a bakery?"
Adrien looked up at Tikki questioningly, wondering what she was getting at.
"…Marinette?"

"Correct! Now who do you think Ladybug is?"
Resisting the urge to scowl in frustration, Adrien settled on a mild look of discontent. "Marinette surely isn't the only person who lives in a bakery in Paris, Ladybug could be anyone, Tikki!"

Tikki stilled for a moment. Did the little boy forget that she was Ladybug's kwami and had a perfectly clear image of just who she was as a civilian?

Jesus, this was going to take even longer than she had anticipated.

"Right. So, how does Ladybug wear her hair?"

"In two perfectly adorable pigtails with cherry red ribbons!"
Tikki was beginning to feel a lot like she was conducting a trivia quiz.

"Who else do you know that wears their hair in pigtails?"
"Aurore and Marinette. But Aurore is blonde, so she obviously isn't Ladybug."

Yes! They were getting somewhere!

"So, Marinette lives in a bakery and smells like Ladybug. She also wears her hair the exact same way that Ladybug does. What do we conclude from this?"

"How do we know that Marinette smells like Ladybug? I've never smelt her. And there could be a lot of girls with pigtails in Paris. We don't know for sure."

Tikki face palmed. If kwamis needed to be paid, this was as good a time as any to start.

With the advent of Ladybug and Chat Noir, comic book shelves had begun to become overloaded with near identical superhero merchandise, to the point where it was difficult for even Marinette to differentiate between her own Miraculous (while transformed) and the fakes. Of course, it was a small mercy that the earrings turned a dull black upon not being in use, keeping them safe from being taken.

Plagg had told her that Chat Noir's ring was plain, a dull gunmetal silver band with a black center, which was easy enough to locate amongst dusty merchandise of superheroes of ages past. The problem was finding as many as they needed, and quickly. But between fairy Gods, and determined Ladybugs, rings were salvaged from every nook and cranny of every comic book store on their side of Paris, until they'd collected enough for their plan.

Plagg's plan was simple. The akuma was born of confusion and frustration, and he wanted to get rid of his own befuddlement by aiding Hawkmoth in his plans. It just so happened that in the end, Plagg wasn't one to be particularly helpful.

Tikki had to try something else. Every obvious hint she'd dropped so far had been countered with either a "You're wrong, Tikki!" or an "It's obviously not Marinette, it could be literally anyone else. How would you know anyway, Tikki?"

It's like the boy was purposefully forgetting that she knew who Ladybug was.

Thankfully for her, Plagg knew how dense his charge was, and had come up with an incredibly idiotic plan, one that she'd scorned initially. Luckily for them, an idiotic plan was just what they needed while dealing with the Agreste.

She then sat Adrien down and briefed him through their plan of action. Plucking out a tiny antenna from the back of her head after a little bit of embarrassed searching, Tikki proudly displayed it to the sunshine child.

"What is that?"
Tikki's smile turned upside down. She'd thought that her plan would have been obvious. Never mind, she could fix this.

"It's an antenna. It lets out a shrill whine as soon as Plagg gets closer because he has the remote."

She looked at Adrien to make sure that he was following. He nodded slightly, a mild frown adorning his gentle face. "And Plagg is with Ma-" she backtracked, horrified, and rephrased her words more carefully.

"Plagg is with Ladybug, obviously," she gave a nervous laugh, hoping against hope that Adrien hadn't caught onto what they were doing yet, "so we can find her, and then you guys can exchange kwamis!" her words grew in volume and confidence, the last ones being practically shrieked out. Adrien winced.

Tikki had never really been sure whether she actually required oxygen to live, but the simple action of taking a deep breath still calmed her down slightly in frustratingly stressful situations.

Adrien, having been used to logic all his life, could not make sense of the situation. How could two kwamis who barely had any knowledge of technology make up an antenna to detect other kwamis? And without him finding out anything about what they were doing?

But now that he thought about it carefully, Plagg had asked him something about antennas a couple of weeks ago. There was something fishy here if this had been in the works for that long.

Adrien had experimented for months, and had discovered that Plagg never really cared about anyone or anything for more than forty three minutes, so what could have happened to capture his attention for this long?

He looked up to eye Tikki carefully, the kwami taking note of his suspicious stare with an apprehensive expression.

"Tikki, what's going on?"

Aaaaand I've successfully managed to churn out another chapter! Tell me what you thought in the little review box, and follow and favourite the story if it caught your fancy! I've already mentioned in a previous chapter that updates will be highly infrequent, which is another reason to follow so you won't have to keep checking when I do update. I'm happy with what's going on in the fic so far, but I haven't planned anything out yet, so if you want the story to go a certain way, leave me a review, and I just might take you up on it. With that being said, I'll see you the next blue moon. Au revoir. :D