Keeper of the Lost Cities: The Second Moonlark (a KOTLC/MLB crossover)

Chapter Eight: Marinette

Marinette stuck her eraser against the page yet again. Her mind had been wondering lately. About Adrien. About Cat Noir. About Keefe.

All three of them clearly had something going on.

But they weren't willing to tell her what it was just yet.

And Cat Noir... he seemed so scared that she would've stepped into the beam, yet didn't even know why he was "protecting" her. Sure, there was a split second where she was colorless, but that was literally it. She would've been fine!

So why was he trying to keep her away from something neither of them knew about?

Marinette grunted to herself and heavily crossed her pencil over the design she had been working on for a while now. She'd barely been able to focus on much anything since she'd began to notice the strange things going on.

"Why can't they just tell me?" she moaned, dropping her head in the middle of her sketchbook.

"Marinette, sometimes people don't want to tell you if something's wrong because they're afraid of how people will respond," Tikki tried to reassure her. "I'm sure once they figure things out, they'll be ready to open up to you."

"But that's only part of the problem," Marinette fiddled with her pencil. "Keefe barely talks, which I guess is fine, but that means he's not gonna talk, and both Adrien and Cat Noir have been acting pretty tired lately, and last night's akuma? He nearly fell asleep when we were trying to hide to form our plan! Not to mention he got super mad at me when I was just being curious!"

However, Tikki didn't seem to be listening as she suddenly ducked into Marinette's purse.

Great, she thought. Even a Kwami can't stand to listen to this.

"Mind... if I... sit here?"

Marinette paused. She knew that soft voice. She turned to see Keefe sit down next to her, noticing the Eiffel Tower looming in front of them.

"I like to come here to get inspired," she said. "Only it doesn't seem to be working today. I don't know; I haven't been able to think up new designs lately."

Keefe perked up a little at hearing "designs."

"You wanna see them?" she tried to translate, and he nodded.

And when she flipped open to a page she'd drawn a few years ago, she noticed Keefe's ice-blue eyes seemed to light up, like he was experiencing his own memories. Not that the dress on the page was entirely amazing; Marinette didn't even remember why she'd made it. She did notice the layers on the skirt, a small butterfly design on the right shoulder. She remembered feeling so proud when she'd finished it and showed pretty much everyone she knew the drawing. But because life was a thing, she hadn't been able to fulfill her wish of actually making it. Who knew? She could wear it to some fancy gala that could possibly happen sometime in the future.

As Keefe kept looking through the sketchbook (she was lucky she didn't use that one to make her daydream doodles), Marinette couldn't help noticing his carefully styled messy blond hair, his eyes glowing, and for a split second... she saw Adrien.

She shook her head. Keefe was just a friend.

"Do you draw?" she asked, trying to stay away from thoughts of "I need to figure out what's happening with these three guys."

Keefe nodded, pulling out brown, green, and gold notebooks.

"Cool," she said, opening the cover on the brown one.

The first image was of a girl.

No more than thirteen or fourteen in the drawing, but that wasn't really what Marinette was focused on. It was more on the impeccable detail in it, like Keefe had some special photographic memory or something. The girl had brilliant brown eyes, flecked with gold, and long, silky blonde hair, wearing a warm smile.