The classroom was smaller than he expected, and much noisier than he expected.
Leo sat in the seat assigned to him, next to a boy wearing a cap and headphones around his neck, who grinned at him as soon as he sat down.
“You’re the new student?” the boy said in fairly good English.
“I’m Nino.”
“Leo!” he said with sudden enthusiasm, quickly reaching out his hand.
“Really happy to meet you, Nino.
Tell me everything about this place—are there secret rules no one tells me about?
Does the teacher bite?”
Nino laughed out loud.
“No one bites, man.
You get comfortable fast, huh?”
“Life’s too short to stay nervous all the time,” Leo said with a wide smile.
“I tried being nervous.
I didn’t like it.”
“So, where are you from?” Nino asked with genuine curiosity.
“Your accent is weird, and you’re definitely not from Paris.”
Leo thought for only a second, then smiled with the confidence of someone who had prepared exactly for this question.
“From somewhere very far away,” he said enthusiastically, as if telling an exciting story.
“Very, very far.
Imagine the farthest place you can imagine?
Farther than that.”
Nino looked at him with a mix of confusion and admiration.
“So…
where exactly?”
“Secret,” Leo said playfully, putting his finger to his lips.
“A very big secret.
If I tell you, I’d have to transfer you to my new home permanently.”
Nino laughed louder.
“Weird, but funny.
I can accept that.”
From another seat, a girl with wavy hair and a phone almost always in her hand turned toward him.
“You’re Marinette’s friend?” she asked directly.
“I’m Alya.
I run a blog about everything weird that happens in this school, so—a new student in the middle of the school year, no clear records, suddenly living with the Dupain-Cheng family?
That’s a story.”
Leo’s eyes lit up.
“I love this!
You’re a real journalist.
Do you have a business card?
You should have a business card.”
Alya looked at him with unexpected confusion.
“…No?”
“Huge flaw.
Fix that immediately,” he said with completely fake seriousness.
“So, what exactly do you want to know about me?
I can be interesting if you ask nicely.”
Alya laughed despite herself.
“Okay, you really are weird.”
“Thank you very much,” he said, giving a little bow from his seat.
The class started.
The teacher spoke quickly in French about a subject Leo understood only half of, but he soon noticed that the other half—the equations on the board—was much easier than he had expected.
He solved them in his head before she finished explaining, and wrote the answer while practically whistling with happiness.
Nino looked at his notebook in amazement.
“How did you do that so fast?”
“Hidden talent,” Leo said, winking at him.
“And also—numbers don’t need French.
The first good thing to happen to me in this school.”
“Why can’t I be both?” Leo said with a smile that hid nothing.
Nino laughed and happily smacked his palm on the table.
The class was unexpectedly fun.
Leo found himself actually enjoying it—Nino whispering little jokes, Alya taking notes about him half-seriously and half-jokingly, and Marinette smiling from afar whenever their eyes met.
Then he heard the sound.
A distant scream from the courtyard outside, followed by louder noise—running footsteps, and something crashing into something, then more screams.
The teacher stopped talking.
Everyone looked toward the window.
Through the glass, Leo saw something.
A huge creature of metallic gray, taller than any building he had seen so far, was moving in the neighboring street with heavy steps that shook the ground, while people ran in every direction in front of it.
“Well,” Leo said, and this time there was some weariness in his voice instead of his usual enthusiasm.
“This is going to be really annoying.”
The teacher shouted an order in French, and Leo clearly understood only one word.
“Évacuation.”
Evacuation.
He stayed silent for a moment.
Then he thought of something specific.
“Okay, I know my luck is bad,” he said to himself in a completely sarcastic tone as he stood up, “but a real super-powered attack on my first day of school?
That’s really annoying.”
Nino looked at him as he hurried toward the door.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing!
Let’s just run!”
Everyone rushed toward the door in the greatest amount of organized chaos that twenty-five panicked kids could achieve.
In the middle of the crowd, Leo turned, searching for Marinette.
He didn’t find her.
The seat she had been sitting in seconds ago—empty.
Her bag was still on the table.
He said nothing.
He pushed himself against the flow of the crowd for a moment, his eyes quickly scanning the room.
There was a side door slightly open at the back of the room.
No one else noticed it amid the panic.
He looked at it.
Then he smiled a faint, completely inappropriate smile for the situation.
“Interesting,” he whispered to himself.
Then he followed the crowd, because it was the logical decision for someone with no armor and no working watch.
But he kept the location of the side door in his mind, adding it to a small list that had begun to grow without him intending it to.
Outside, the students stood in the front courtyard under the teachers’ orders, all eyes turned toward the sky above the neighboring street.
Leo looked at the sky too.
Something red and black was moving quickly between the buildings, crossing paths with something else black and faster.
Ladybug.
And Cat Noir.
“They’re handling it,” Nino said beside him in the tone of someone who had watched this scene dozens of times.
“They always do.”
“Amazing!” Leo said sincerely, his eyes shining as he watched.
“I mean—terrifying, yes, but truly amazing too.
Does this happen every week?”
Nino looked at him with confusion.
“You’re weirdly excited for someone who just ran from a monster.”
“I have the ability to be scared and amazed at the same time,” Leo said proudly.
“A rare talent.”
Twenty minutes later, the noise died down.
The danger was declared over, and the students began gathering again toward the building, while excited voices exchanged what they had seen or heard.
Her hair was clearly hurriedly fixed, and her breathing was faster than it should have been for someone who had spent the time standing in the school courtyard.
She approached Leo with a quick smile.
“Where were you?
I was looking for you—”
“I’m the one who should ask that question,” Leo said in a teasing tone that didn’t hide his real curiosity.
“You disappeared impressively, honestly.
If there were a disappearing competition, you’d win easily.”
Marinette stopped.
“I was—hiding.
In a safe place.
Like everyone.”
“Where?”
“Far away,” she said quickly.
“Very far away.”
Leo smiled a wide smile, as if he enjoyed something inside him that he didn’t share with anyone.
“Very far away,” he repeated playfully.
“The same two words you said to Nino an hour ago.
What a beautiful coincidence.”
Marinette’s face immediately turned red.
“That—was really just a coincidence!”
“Of course,” Leo said, laughing quietly as they walked together toward the building, enjoying a little too much a small puzzle that had begun to form in front of him piece by piece.
Somewhere, far from everyone’s sight, someone was moving among a collection of devices and scattered parts with astonishing, frantic speed.
“Finally…”
He stopped for a moment, then let out a long breath.
“Finally, I found a solution to this damn mess.”
He looked at the set of components laid out in front of him.
He reached out, and a glowing portal appeared in the air.
“But I still have to prepare everything.”
He began collecting some pieces carefully, one by one.
Then he stopped.
He looked at one of the pieces in his hand.
“This one will be the hardest…”
He stayed silent for a moment.
Then he opened another portal.
And on the other side of it…
Leo appeared.
He was walking beside Marinette, talking to her normally, completely unaware of what was happening.
The person watched him for a few moments.
Then he muttered:
“This is our last chance.”
He closed his hand around the piece.
“I can’t waste it.”
He opened another portal, this time in a completely different place.
He pushed the set of components through it.
The pieces disappeared one by one to the other side.
They appeared in a dark, quiet place, inside a small space that no one seemed to use.
“The components were placed carefully on a metal surface, and beside them a carefully folded note.”
The person looked at the place for a few moments.
“Now…”
“He’ll have to find them.”
He stayed silent for a few moments, then smiled a faint smile.
“I’ve done what I could.”
If you fail in the end, you bastard…
then damn you, you son of a bitch.”
He closed the last portal.
And the place remained quiet.
End of Chapter Seventeen