Alya didn't know where she was running to. All she knew was that running helped her try to organize her thoughts.

"Chat Noir… Adrien… Ladybug… Marinette… Can't be, can't be!"

As she sprinted down the street, she pulled two photos from her pocket: a rather bad shot of Marinette shielding her face from the flash of Alya's camera, taken shortly after she had designed the banner for Alix and Kim's race, and a candid picture of Ladybug during the Horrificator's attack.

Using a pair of scissors, she cut out the top pieces of both photos, and then held them up to compare. No matter which way Alya tried to look at it… it was the same cute, blue pigtails in both photos.

"Blue hair with pigtails… This can't be real…" She was saying to herself. "I would've known if Ladybug was sitting right next to me in class for a whole year, and slept over at my house…!"

As she tried to examine the photos more closely, a sudden bump caused them to fly right out of her hands.

"Oh my gosh, I am so sorry… Alya!?"

"Marinette?" said Alya, stunned to see her best friend having crashed right into her. "What are you doing here?"

A sudden heavy roar interrupted the pair. They looked up to see a great, yellow monster crouched over a rooftop. The monster was humanoid in form but burly and covered in a strange, yellow slime which left its facial features barely visible. A line of spiked cheese slices ran down its back, and its hands cascaded into stringy cheese fingers.

"An akuma!?" Alya gasped. "Made out of… cheese!?"

The creature extended its long string cheese fingers and grabbed a tree right off the ground, causing nearby civilians to panic and flee.

"We've gotta hide!" Marinette declared. "You go that way, I'll go this way!"

She tried to run off, but was stopped by Alya grabbing her wrist.

"Whoa, girl. Why don't you ever want to hide together during one of these things…? Maybe we'll catch Ladybug in action."

Marinette grunted in frustration. "There's no time, Alya!" she snapped, trying to pull herself away. "That akuma will snatch us up if we take too long trying to find a hiding place we can both fit in! And besides, uh… Adrien's still inside our bakery, so you should go back there and protect him!"

"But why can't you-"

She could barely get another word out before a giant slice of Stinking Bishop came tumbling towards them, forcibly separating them. Her arm freed, Marinette took off for real.

"Sorry, Alya!" she hastily cried out.

Alya picked herself up as she watched her best friend flee.

"Marinette's always running off somewhere when there's an akuma attacking…" Alya came to realize. "Just like Nino said Adrien always does…"

The photo of Ladybug brought back to her mind what happened during the Horrificator incident.

"Adrien left his shoe behind right before Chat Noir appeared… and… Marinette disappeared too! With her phone left behind! They must've used the exact same trick!"

She looked back at the photo of Marinette, and began thinking back to when that photo was taken.

"But then, that still leaves the question of how Ladybug showed up on the roof when Timebreaker attacked and Marinette was still next to me… Maybe I am wrong…" But then her eyes gradually widened. "Unless Max was right when he swore that he saw two Ladybugs that day!"

She made a loud grunt before the beast's roar forced her to shake it off and run down the park. However, she stopped herself…

A moment of deliberation as Alya realized that there was still a seed of doubt in her hunch. One that had to be quenched.

…

She turned heel.

Meanwhile, Marinette kept running until she finally found a disused alleyway to hide in.

"Time to transform!" She declared. "Tikki, SPOTS ON!"

Tikki appeared and initiated the transformation from insecure schoolgirl Marinette Dupain-Cheng into confident superheroine Ladybug.

Fishing out her trusty yo-yo, Ladybug hoisted herself up into the air and fled off to confront the gargantuan Gorgonzola beast.

…And Alya pressed click on her phone, having been peering into the alley the whole time.

"Welp," was all the stunned girl could say.

"I finally have the footage I've been seeking years and years to get. But I'm sure not feeling like a great deductive reporter right now…"

"Right behind ya, Ladybug!" she heard a voice say behind her.

She turned away from the alley to see Chat Noir leaping from building to building towards his beauty and her beast.

"How long has my best friend been keeping this from me?"

Her thoughts were interrupted, yet again, by bumping into someone.

"Oww!" she exclaimed. "Watch where you're goin- Oh my goodness! Nino! I'm so sorry!"

"No worries… Totally my fault." Nino straightened up his glasses, and gulped as he faced his girlfriend. "Alya, I… There's, there's something important I need to talk to you about. Can we go somewhere private?"

The two stood behind a bus stop near the park, as their conversation resumed.

"Okay, here goes…"

Before he could continue however, Alya shushed his lips with her finger.

"Wait, Nino. Before you do, I have something important that I need to get off my chest too. I just found out something huge and I should tell you before anyone else."

"But, Alya, I- Can I please go first?" Nino stammered. "I've been holding this one in for so long and I think I'm about to burst!"

"I'm about to burst too, Nino!" she pleaded. "I just have to get this out there!"

Their faces both winced up in anticipation, until finally…

"MARINETTE IS LADYBUG!" They both shouted. "WAIT, WHAT!? YOU KNEW ALREADY!?"

They immediately covered their mouths and whipped their heads around to see if anybody could hear them. Luckily, they didn't catch anybody's attention with their outburst. They both went "Phew" in relief.

"Okay, now we're finding someplace really private," Alya said sternly.

Ladybug watched from a rooftop as the cheese monster made its rampage across the streets of Paris. Chat Noir leapt over to her side, spinning his baton.

"Where does Hawkmoth keep finding these guys?" Ladybug asked.

"Got me," Chat responded. "But one thing's for sure, these villains are getting cheesier every day."

Ladybug shot him a look.

"Sorry, I couldn't resist. Bring it on, Gouda-zilla!"

The two leapt off the roof onto the ground to face the beast.

"Agh!"

Chat's landing was not as graceful as Ladybug's however. He clutched his left foot in pain upon landing.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Chat groaned. "I just… got my foot hurt a bit last night. I should be good as long as I walk it off a bit."

"I sure hope so. I don't know what I'd do with a Chat that can't walk on all fours."

Chat smirked back.

Nino watched the video on Alya's phone as the two sat in the middle of a dinner. Typical Parisian café, there wasn't a noisier place in the world for a private conversation.

The footage finished as Marinette completed her transformation and leapt off.

"…Wow," was all Nino found himself able to say afterwards.

He looked up at Alya for a reaction; she didn't have one. Her face was almost blank, but Nino could tell that she was thinking pretty deeply.

"I can't believe I just… never noticed any of it," she finally said.

"Any of what?"

"Just, the clues. The obvious clues. Like… like, it's what you said! A tiny voice! I always thought I heard one too! So many times, I heard Marinette talking to nobody. And I always thought it was just her being her usual, weird self."

She slammed her fist on the table, making Nino jump.

"Tikki! I knew I had heard that name somewhere when Plagg mentioned it. That's gotta be what her Kwami's name is!"

Nino nodded in agreement. But after a moment, he started to giggle to himself.

"I just thought about something," he said.

"What?"

"Well… you'd think sooner or later, we would've picked up on the fact that they're the only two people in our class who have never been akumatized!"

"I- Well, there's… Kim-" Alya's words halted, as she contemplated. A finger went around as she mentally checked off the akumatized classmates in her head. Her eyes widened. "Oh my gosh. You're totally right. We, are officially the biggest idiots."

They both giggled now. Once it had subsided, Alya went back to looking guilty.

"Nino… I'm sorry. We should've been honest with each other from the beginning."

"Yeah. I really wanted to," he solemnly agreed. "I just didn't know, how you… Alya. Would you have been mad, if I was the one who told you?"

Alya seemed uncertain. She reached over to grab her phone and held it in her hands.

"I mean, like… are you mad now?"

"No. I'm not." She sighed with resignation. "I guess… it was always their secret. For whatever reason, they didn't want to tell a soul. … Not even each other, apparently. Everything I ever knew and posted on the Ladyblog has been turned upside down."

"Speaking of the Ladyblog, you weren't gonna…?"

Alya looked at him quizzically. Nino gestured to her phone screen, where the video of Marinette's transformation was still open. Alya gasped, almost looking offended at the mere suggestion.

"Nino! These are our friends we're talking about, of course I'm not gonna upload this for everyone to see!" She sighed again, this time despondently. "Honestly, I was never gonna reveal it anyway, no matter who it was. Especially not after what happened when I became Lady Wifi…"

She looked ashamed now, reminiscing of the grief she had caused Chloé, and later Ladybug.

"Alya…?" Nino uttered, resting his hand on her arm.

"I think… I think I just wanted to know who she was… so I could thank her personally for all that she's done for us. For the city." She chuckled. "Not bad for a girl who never thinks much of herself outside of the mask."

Nino was smiling now. Alya looked up at him.

"What?"

He stifled another chuckle. "No offense, Alya, but… looking at the whole blog thing, I think it makes a lot of sense why Marinette was too scared to tell you."

"No kidding. I was always so nuts about this thing." A sweeping realization washed over her. "I bet poor Marinette has gone this whole time thinking I'm gonna skin her alive."

"What, you mean you're not?"

"Ha-ha!" Alya replied sarcastically. "But you know, the more I think about it, the whole thing does seem kind of weird when you consider that I've basically built a shrine to my best friend without realizing it. Now I feel even worse about the whole Lady Wifi thing…" her voice trailed. "That was my best friend I was trying to expose."

"Hey, don't feel so bad! It's not like I'm not that much better. I'm the one who actually bought a Chat Noir shirt and hung a giant poster of him in my room!" Nino retorted, pointing two thumbs at himself. "My bro Adrien's been covering the wall beside my bed for like, a year! I always went to bed hoping those big cat eyes of his would keep me safe from nightmares. So really, I'm the one who should be feeling totally weird!"

"Oh, man," Alya laughed with a hand over her face. "And now I get why Adrien was so gaga over that shirt the first day you wore it!"

"Oh yeah! I forgot all about that!" Nino chortled. "Man, no wonder I fell in love with you so easily."

"Hmm?"

"Cause you're right. We're both big dummies."

Nino got a playful smack on the shoulder in return.

"ROOOOOAAAAARRRRR!"

The cheese monster bellowed to the air, before spitting out several projectiles the heroes' way. Chat Noir braced himself, as several pointed spikes of cheese came hurtling towards him.

"Now that's what I call sharp cheddar."

Frantically, Chat whipped out his baton and spun it around in front of him, shredding the cheese spikes before they had a chance of hitting him.

"A plan would be helpful sometime soon, LB!" he shouted.

"Lucky charm!"

Ladybug threw up her magical yo-yo, and in return received…

"A rope lasso?"

The monster descended over Chat. He leapt out of the way as the beast's mouth closed in on him.

"Looks like you're gonna need to round up this Mozzarella monster, m'lady! Before it makes a snack out of me!"

Ladybug looked around. Her lucky vision allowed her to spot a protruding spike on the monster's back: a perfect target.

"Hold him steady, Chat!"

Chat threw his baton down into the monster's jaws, keeping his teeth from chomping down on the slick feline.

"What do you think I've been doing!?"

With a wind-up and a yell, Ladybug tossed the lasso. It landed over its target swiftly, and Ladybug gripped tightly. The monster roared however, and began charging away, dragging Ladybug along with him.

"WHOOAAHHH-OHHHHH!"

Chat leapt behind her.

"I've gotcha, Ladybug!" he yelled.

Chat grabbed onto her feet and tried to pull the monster back. However, just then, his foot gave out… and Chat quickly lost his footing on the ground. Now they were both being launched.

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" they screamed as the lasso thrust them forwards.

The next thing Nino and Alya knew, a large splat shook the whole diner silent.

The entire window lay covered in cheese, dripping downwards. In the middle of it were Ladybug and Chat Noir themselves, their faces pressed against the window and their whole bodies covered in yellow slime.

Alya and Nino stared at them with wide eyes, as did the whole café.

Chat Noir waved meekly at them, before they both slid down and out of sight.

"Should… we tell them we just saw that?" Nino inquired.

"Actually… that brings up a good question," Alya realized. "We should… probably let them know that we found out who they are. Shouldn't we?"

"Yeah, I guess so. If this whole fiasco has proven anything, I definitely can't be trusted with secrets for very long." He took Alya's hands in his. "One question though, babe. How do you want to do it?"

"How do you mean?"

"I mean… are we telling them together, or not? I'm cool with whatever you think is best."

Alya stared back at Nino, and then over to the window as she thought long and hard. Outside, she could barely see through the melting cheese as Ladybug picked a dazed Chat Noir off the ground and carried him away, arm over shoulder. She looked back at the patrons, spotted Alya, and gave an innocent smile her way.

Alya smiled back, chuckling to herself.

"Separately," she decided. "We should definitely do it separately. It'd be one thing for them to find out that we know their secret. But, I don't... think Marinette would be ready to find out that Adrien of all people is her partner. I think Ladybug would be on the next train out of France if I told her that."

"Yeah she would!" said Nino.

They both laughed.

Alya took note of the Ladyblog, which was still open on her phone. She seemed to gather an idea from gazing at it. And then within the blog, she saw an article she had posted regarding Chat Noir the other day. And that also got some gears turning in her head.

"You know what?" she said, looking up at Nino. "I think I just figured out the way to do it. For both of us."