Chapter 2: Now She Knows

Timeline 2: Marinette knows Chat Noir is Adrien. He doesn't know who Ladybug is.

Ephermeral didn't know how things could have gone so wrong. Telling Adrien destroyed everything? However it happened, he knew he had to do something different this time.

He flipped back to right after the defeat of Wishmaster and overrode the decision to tell Chat Noir. It would be better to tell Ladybug about Chat Noir.

Ephemeral in Luka handed the Snake Miraculous back to Ladybug.

"Thank you, Luka. Thanks to you, our secret identities were preserved and no one discovered who Cat Noir and I really are."

She started to turn away, but turned back.

"Uhh... not even you, right?"

"You saw me deflect a shot from Chat Noir, didn't you?" asked Ephemeral.

"Yes," said Ladybug. "Y-you know his identity now?"

"He said his childhood dream was to be what his parents wanted."

"Don't!" said Ladybug putting up a hand.

At the same moment, Ephemeral said, "He's Adrien Agreste!"

"No! I didn't want you to tell me. Wait... he's Adrien?"

"Yes."

"But that's imposs-... that means... oh no!" Ladybug said, her face first showing shock and then red-faced embarrassment.

"I guess you didn't want to know," said Ephemeral, faking sadness. "I'm sorry."

"I'm about to detransform, I'll have to think about this. Goodbye!"

Ladybug swung away.

"Fast forward."

Ephemeral didn't have to stay with Luka's body. He could move outside it if he wished, and his intangible, transparent form was easy to hide.

The mental link to Shadow Moth wasn't working, because this was a time before it was created.

He decided to keep a close eye on Marinette to see what she would do.

Marinette was meeting with Alya in her room in the evening of the day of the revelation.

"What am I going to do, Alya?"

"It's all good, right? Your two love interests are one and the same."

"I'm not talking about that! It's about Ladybug and Chat Noir as a fighting team."

"Why does anything have to change about that?"

"I'll be too distracted. When I tried to fight Desperada with Adrien as the Snake holder we got defeated over two thousand times!"

"I don't remember that."

"Time got reset that many times, and then I got a new Vipereon."

"Interesting," thought Ephemeral. "She can work with me, knowing who I am, but not him. Does that mean she loves him more?"

"You just have to put his identity out of your mind."

"I feel like I want to protect him. I'll just have to call on other heroes more, and him less."

"You can always count on Rena Furtive and Carapace."

"That reminds me, how did you work things out with Nino? You found a good cover story?"

"I told him the truth, that I was still using the Fox in secret."

"You what!? After asking me if I trusted you, you went behind my back and told him the one thing I said not to tell him?"

"You said you trusted me."

"I trusted you to do the right thing, not spill a major secret!"

They began to argue, and Ephemeral got bored. "Fast forward!"

Paris was in flames. There were craters everywhere. Now what?

Ephemeral found Luka and possessed him. He opened his phone to the Ladyblog.

"This is Alya Césaire reporting, with very bad news. Today there was a huge fight between Chat Noir and Ladybug. I wasn't able to get as close as I would have liked, but it seems Chat was very angry with her. He yelled that she didn't trust him anymore, that she was keeping secrets from him, and that she was replacing him with other heroes.

"Ladybug became very upset and got akumatized. She called herself Princess Justice, but she was a mega-powered version of herself with unlimited Lucky Charms. The fight went on for almost an hour, with Ladybug using every kind of weapon and trap imaginable. Chat Noir finally managed to subdue her enough to Cataclysm her akumatized object, which was the earring which contained her Miraculous power.

"Ladybug is in civilian form, and free of the akuma, but without her Miraculous she can't fix the damage to the city. Even worse, she can't purify the released akuma. It'll be like Stoneheart all over again. I recommend evacuating Paris before the akuma multiplies and fills the city with paralyzed copies of Princess Justice."

Ephemeral sighed. This was another disaster. Shadow Moth would never get his wish in this timeline!

"Rewind!"