A few minutes later, the students scattered out of the room to go to eat. Most of them followed Lila, eager to hear more about her fabulous heroine adventures.
Strangely enough, when they should normally have been at the forefront of admirers of Lila, Alya and Nino decided to join Marinette and Adrien. With gloomy faces, they retrieved their trays before meeting their friends at a separate table.
It was in silence that Alya sat down to Marinette's right, while Nino imitated her by settling down in front of her, next to Adrien.
Pretending not to notice the inner torments which were visibly agitating their friends, Marinette and Adrien merrily began the discussion.
"Well, what a morning!" Adrien cheerfully exclaimed, grabbing his cutlery.
"Yes," Marinette added, nodding her head vigorously. "Who would have thought Lila was Ladybug? I was completely wrong about her."
If Marinette seemed for once absolutely delighted to be able to praise Lila's merits, Alya, on the contrary, seemed to hesitate between banging her forehead against the table or digging a hole in the ground to bury herself.
"I… I don't know," she tried to temper, a tight smile on her lips. "After all, there is no proof that Lila was really Ladybug. "
"Why would she have lied otherwise?" Adrien retorted, raising an intrigued eyebrow. "She admitted that she was not really in Achu nor at the last concert of Jagged Stone, nor at any meeting for the charities to which she claimed to belong since these charities do not exist, nor with Clara Nightingale..." He enumerated ruthlessly.
"Yes, exactly!" Added Marinette. "A sane person cannot tell so many lies without a good reason!" "
The two teammates made a point of ignoring the slightly greenish hue that Nino and Alya's faces had taken during their little exchange.
"You know, I'm not sure we can take Lila's word for it," Nino also tried to intervene. "I don't know, I have like… uh… an intuition. That's it. An intuition. I find her story weird, and then all these lies, it's really too much…" He continued awkwardly, before his argument was dismissed by his two friends.
"No, I agree with Marinette," Adrien asserted, waving his fork dramatically in the air. "Lila is Ladybug. That explains everything."
"When I think I thought she was lying just to try to get attention or to skip school. I couldn't have been further from the truth! Ladybug, do you realize? Ladybug!" Marinette exclaimed ecstatically.
The enthusiasm she displayed was such that one might have thought that she had swapped personalities with that of her best friend. Usually, it was Alya who marvelled at the exploits of Lila and Marinette who encouraged her to take a step back.
There, it was quite the opposite.
Marinette kept covering Lila with compliments, each more rave than the other, helped in this by a particularly zealous Adrien. Alya, on the contrary, closed herself up a crestfallen silence. She mechanically pushed her food in a heap in a corner of her plate, as if a knot in her stomach prevented her from enjoying her lunch.
If nothing could have made the young blogger happier than never to hear from Lila again, Marinette, on the contrary, continued her ruthless praise.
"Do you think Lila will give you an interview for the Ladyblog?" She asked happily. "That would be great for you, wouldn't it? It would be the scoop of the century! "
Her appetite definitely spoiled, Alya pushed her tray away from her.
"I don't know," she replied uncomfortably. "Yes, that would be a scoop, but it would be so huge, I could never publish this without proof. I would have to be able to do some checks first…"
"But we have Lila's word," Adrien said, innocently batting his eyelashes. "Isn't that enough ? "
Alya now seemed close to being sick.
"Oh!" Marinette exclaimed, bringing her hand dramatically to her lips, as if an idea had suddenly crossed her mind, before turning to Adrien. "What about Chat Noir? Do you think she knows the identity of Chat Noir? "
"I'm sure she does," Adrien replied with a huge smile. "After all, she's Ladybug, isn't she? She must know the identities of all the superheroes. "
Arms crossed over her chest, Marinette nodded vigorously.
"In any case, she certainly knows those of Rena Rouge and Carapace," she said in a confident tone.
"Yes, I wonder who they are," Adrien added thoughtfully, his chin resting in the palm of his hand.
"Good question!" Marinette said, imitating his gesture, as Alya and Nino grabbed their respective glasses to pretend to be at ease. "I'm really curious," she continued, leaning towards her partner. "Maybe they're in our class too."
If Nino nearly choked on his drink at that exact moment, neither of them pretended to have noticed it.
"Yes, it is very possible," replied Adrien, whispering loud enough to be heard by his three interlocutors. "After all, we're in Ladybug's class herself and we didn't notice anything. Maybe Rena Rouge and Carapace are also right under our noses. "
"Haha, maybe," Alya and Nino giggled nervously, a panicked glint in their eyes.
"What do you think about it ?" Adrien insisted, with a beaming smile. "I think it's a valid theory. "
"I don't know," Nino replied, mechanically running his finger along the collar of his T-shirt, as if to breathe easier. "I think that it would be odd that we had Ladybug, Rena Rouge and Carapace in our class," he concluded as Alya nodded sharply in approval. "Not to mention Queen Bee. "
"I don't agree," Marinette protested. "On the contrary, I think it would make a lot of sense. "
A conspiratorial expression on his features, Adrien leaned over to his friends.
"You think Rena Rouge might be…" he began slowly, as Alya squirmed nervously in her seat.
"… Alix?" Marinette completed, getting an incredulous look from her best friend.
"Exactly!" Adrien cried, triumphantly slapping his hand on the table. "She's never afraid of anything! She has everything it takes to be a heroine! "
"And Carapace, would that be Kim?" Marinette continued, raising a questioning eyebrow.
"Possible," Adrien approved without hesitation. "I have always thought him and Carapace looked alike. They have exactly the same body type," he clarified, waving his hand in the air.
This questionable statement, to say the least, earned him a startled glance from Nino.
While Adrien stared at him with a huge smile, patiently waiting for him to intervene in turn, Nino cleared his throat.
"Uh… maybe?" He replied in a tone that was hardly convinced.
"Anyway, nothing says Carapace and Rena Rouge are really in our class," Alya insisted.
A nervous tic twitched her lips, a clear proof of the uneasiness she felt in this conversation.
"It's true that on second thought, Alix doesn't really look like Rena," Marinette admitted, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "We would have to look for a girl with reddish-brown hair, a little dark skin, rather light eyes. I'd say she's about your size," she continued, gauging her best friend with a thoughtful look. "She must be more or less the same build as you, by the way."
"I don't think so," Alya protested hastily, panic causing her voice to rise an octave.
To say Alya was having a hard time was an understatement. Realizing that Lila was nothing but a liar who manipulated her to gain popularity had struck a hard blow on her ego. And just to rub a little more salt in the wound, the only people who were wary of her ex-friend until then seemed to be deceived in their turn.
Finally, when they were usually the last to want to develop theories on the identities of the various heroes of Paris, Marinette and Adrien had decided to choose this precise moment to discuss who could be Carapace and Rena Rouge.
If she had to choose, Alya preferred when Marinette praised the merits of Lila.
Fate definitely had a curious sense of humour.
"Anyway," Marinette continued, "if I were Ladybug - well, Lila, " she corrected, royally ignoring the grimace that Alya couldn't hold back, "I think I know exactly to whom I would have given the miraculous Fox. "
Something in the tone of her voice caught her teammate's attention.
Adrien knew his Lady by heart. Enough to hear the silent question hidden behind her words.
His slight nod in response to his partner's silent questioning was almost imperceptible.
"You do?" He said in a soft voice.
"Yes," Marinette replied calmly. "I would have given it to my best friend."
The exaggerated enthusiasm she was displaying just a minute earlier was gone.
Instead, her voice was calm. Clear. Determined.
A small smile curved Adrien's lip.
"Oh?"
The resolute glow that shone in Marinette's eyes was one that sparkled in Ladybug's gaze on the battlefield.
"Yes," she confirmed. "After all, Ladybug is known for leaving nothing to chance. She always has a plan. And a back-up plan. And a back-up plan for the back-up plan. If I were Ladybug and had such a big responsibility as choosing a new hero, I would never have left things to chance. I would have chosen someone I know and whom I trust completely. Ideally, I would have chosen my best friend," she concludes with confidence.
This last sentence, accompanied by the smile of connivance that she gave to Alya, froze the latter in place.
Hands gripped so tightly to the edge of the table that their knuckles were white, the young blogger stared at her friend as if she was discovering her for the first time.
"What about Carapace?" Adrien said, with what might have seemed like nonchalance to anyone who hadn't noticed the burning intensity of his gaze.
"I would also have chosen someone I know well," replied his teammate without hesitation. "A childhood friend, probably. Someone brave and loyal," she continued with a pointed glance in Nino's direction.
Pale and petrified with amazement, the young man could easily have passed for a wax statue.
"If Rena Rouge is Ladybug's best friend," Adrien said mischievously, "then Carapace would have to be Chat Noir's best friend. Wouldn't it be fairer? "
Nino and Alya's gazes converged on Adrien at the speed of lightning hitting the ground.
With a huge smile on her face, Marinette leaned comfortably against the back of her seat.
"It would be perfect. "
A heavy silence fell on the table. If the oppressive atmosphere did not seem to bother Marinette and Adrien, it was not the same for Alya and Nino.
These latter two remained motionless, paralyzed by the enormity of what they had become aware of. They hardly dared to breathe, as if this simple act might set off an explosion from which they doubted they could recover.
"Having said that, to come back to Lila, it's true that there are a couple of details that I find a little hard to believe," Adrien suddenly blurted out, while Marinette let out an amused little snort.
"Which ones?" She asked.
"Well, for a start, I have a little trouble believing that there was a battle as grand as the one she described to us without anyone being aware of it", Adrien replied nonchalantly. "Even admitting that she had the help of Rena Rouge. "
A strange glint in her eyes, Marinette leaned over him.
"What do you think happened?"
"In my opinion, there was simply no battle," replied her interlocutor. "Hypothetically speaking, if I had been Chat Noir, I would probably have discovered the identity of Hawkmoth eventually. I would have informed Ladybug and we would have devised a plan to stop him without having to fight."
"Still hypothetically, of course," Marinette said with a small smile.
"Of course," her teammate confirmed with a slight wink.
Adrien mechanically ran his hand through his hair before resuming his speech.
"Hypothetically, " he said, "if I had been Chat Noir - and if you had been Ladybug, for example -"
"- hypothetically -" Marinette repeated once more, a mischievous glint dancing in her clear eyes.
"- we would have entered the hypothetical office of Hawkmoth at a time when he was not transformed", continued Adrien without being disturbed. "He wouldn't have been able to resist us and we would have got hold of his miraculous without having to fight him. Then we would have taken care of him discreetly," he concluded in a falsely detached tone.
Only his teammate noticed the slight tension that briefly transpired in his mischievous words.
"It sounds horribly definitive," she pointed out, without failing to note the baffled looks their friends were giving them.
"Within reason, of course," retorted the young man, waving his hand in the air. "But we would have neutralized him, which is the main thing. And since all this would have happened right between us, Rena Rouge and Carapace would not have known. That's how we would have done," he finally concludes. "Still hypothetically. "
Pale, Alya seemed on the verge of bursting into hysterical sobs. Her eyes went from Adrien to Marinette and vice versa, as a wild glow burned in her eyes.
"Can we stop talking by hypotheses?" She asked them pleadingly.
Adrien and Marinette exchanged a brief glance and nodded slightly. The time had come for them to end the suffering of their friends - in the non-lethal sense of the word, of course.
All traces of mischief had left Adrien's features when he turned his attention to Nino and Alya.
"Very well," he conceded. "This is how we did it. "
Alya immediately buried her face in her hands.
When she raised her head, after an interminable minute, it was eyes shining with tears that she looked at her friends.
"It's you," she articulated in a voice trembling with emotion. "It's you. Them."
"Rena," Marinette replied calmly, before turning her gaze to Nino. "Carapace."
"Oh my god," Alya blurted out under her breath, while Nino remained petrified, unable to utter a single sound.
"If you want proof right now, I can tell you something only Ladybug could know," her best friend continued. "For example, I know you know your respective identities because one day I gave you your miraculous at the same time. It was in front of the lockers, on Heroes' Day. "
"Oh my god," Alya repeated.
"As far as I'm concerned, I think you can take my Lady at her word for now?" Adrien asked. "I could always give you a demonstration later," he clarified, waving his ringed hand in front of him.
As if hypnotized, Alya and Nino remained for a moment unable to take their eyes off the metal band which encircled his finger. Their gaze then focused mechanically to Marinette's earrings, perfectly visible on her alabaster skin.
A kind of reverence had taken place on their features as they stared at these two teenagers who were both so familiar and completely unknown to them.
In front of them were Ladybug and Chat Noir.
The one who could restore an entire world in the blink of an eye and the one capable of destroying everything with a simple caress.
Those who brought hope, instilled courage, stood up against injustice.
Their heroes.
Their real heroes.