A/N: Our story comes to a conclusion. Thank you for joining me along this journey!
Chapter 11
Leading Adrien by the hand, Marinette led the way down the stairs from her attic bedroom.
"Mom? Dad? Can we talk to you for a bit?"
Sabine looked up at the two teenagers coming down the stairs and smiled. "Congratulations, you two! It's about time."
The two secret superheroes looked confused for a moment before they blushed nearly as scarlet as Ladybug's costume.
"Mom! This is so not the time for that. We have something else we need to talk to you about."
"Will it explain how you were able to sneak a boy past us?" Tom Dupain said with crossed arms.
"Yes. But not for the reasons you seem to be thinking. You see, um…"
Always his Lady's protector, Adrien decided to speak up. "I'm Chat Noir. I came in through the roof access."
"And… I'm Ladybug."
Marinette's parents looked at each other, silently communicating. "Well, Tom… looks like I won."
Tom Dupain sighed as he realized she was right. "Why do I even bother to bet against you?" Then he smiled. "You were right that they frequented our bakery, but you still didn't realize who they were."
"Mom! Dad! Can we focus, please?"
"Oh, right! The Hawkmoth thing," Sabine said, getting serious. "What are we going to do about that?"
"Wait, wait, wait… aren't you at least a little surprised that it's me? Us?"
"Yes. But we can get to the details later. I assume there's a reason you're revealing yourselves to us now?"
"Hang on a minute…," Marinette paused as she realized what her mother had just said. "What do you mean 'we'?"
"You don't really think we're going to let our daughter tackle Hawkmoth alone, do you? Not now that we know you're out there risking your life for us."
"And what am I, tuna pâté?" Adrien was feeling a little left out of the conversation.
Sabine laughed as she walked toward him, then startled him by giving him a big hug. Adrien was so overwhelmed with the happenings of the past few hours that he just couldn't take any more, and started sobbing as he was held in the woman's arms.
"Oh, Adrien, honey. What's wrong?"
Adrien couldn't speak, so he just looked toward Marinette.
"That's the other thing we needed to tell you. Mom, Dad, Hawkmoth is Adrien's father."
"Merde!" the giant of a baker exclaimed. "So the woman he's trying to revive is… "
"My mother," Adrien sniffed. "And the whole reason he decided to go to the convention was to ask Ladybug and Chat Noir for help. He didn't even think about spending time with me until we were already there." He wiped his eyes. "As I told Marinette, I don't know what to feel right now."
"Well whatever you feel, let it out. You're in a safe space here, and holding it in doesn't do you any good."
"I'm just so glad that Milady turned out to be one of my best friends out of the mask, too..."
"So, how long have you known each others' identities?" Tom asked casually.
"Um, well… you see..." Marinette stuttered.
"How long did it take us to come down the stairs, Bugaboo?" Marinette just stared at Adrien. "Yeah, about that long," he smiled.
"Hah! Told you, Tom." Sabine smiled as her husband groaned at losing another bet.
"Anyway, the reason we're telling you now is that I'm pretty sure I need to examine Mme. Agreste tomorrow during school, and I was hoping for an excuse note."
"I think we can classify this as a 'family emergency', don't you think, Tom?"
"That sounds reasonable, my love."
"Um, I have one more request," Adrien said shyly. "Can I maybe… stay here tonight? With everything going on, I just don't think I can sleep in that house."
"Of course you can! Let me make the couch up for you. But you should really call your father and let him know where you are, or at least that you are safe."
"I'll text Nathalie. Not sure I can handle him right now."
As Sabine gathered the bedding, Marinette joined her partner by his side. "Try to get some sleep, Kitty. It's going to be a long day tomorrow."
Two Weeks Later…
"He's getting better, but I still feel like strangling him with your yo-yo most of the time," Chat Noir said as they were preparing for the press conference.
"Yeah, well, there are times I want to use your cataclysm on him - especially after the way he treated you. But I also feel sorry for him in a way. The monks said they don't know if they can do anything for your mother, but Nathalie should be fully healed in a few weeks. Having Duusuu with the monks has helped a lot."
"I just wish Father could have been less… well, him. I'm amazed the monks lasted three whole days with him before banishing him back to Paris."
"They didn't."
"Huh?"
"They lasted two days, but since they're still trying to catch up to modern technology it took them a day for Su Han to get the message and then reach us."
"Well at least he can't terrorize Paris any more, since the price of the Guardians' help was that he turn over the butterfly miraculous." After a pause, Chat said, "Well Hawkmoth can't terrorize Paris any more. I saw an intern at Gabriel Fashions crying in the hall last week."
"Your father is intimidating, that's for sure."
"Yeah, well, one good thing came out of this whole mess."
"What's that, Kitty?"
"You, Buginette. And your parents. I can't believe they came with us when we went to examine Mother."
"I'm just glad I didn't have to be alone when I revealed my identity to your father. That was one of the scariest things I've ever done."
Chat Noir squeezed her arm in sympathy. "Well, thank you for everything." He sighed. "Are you ready to face the public?"
Ladybug laughed. "That's going to be easy after everything else we've done since Convention du Comique. Come on, Kitty. Let's meet up with the other heroes. We've got some explaining to do."
FIN
A/N: Here is some background stuff I came up with that didn't make it into the story.
* Alya had the added bonus of being the Superhero Jeopardy champion - which some claimed was not fair since The Ladyblog was the source for many of the questions.
* Marinette and Sabine playing each other in Miraculous All-Star Brawl at the Ubisoft booth, Adrien (or Markov, or Alya, etc.) recording it so they could send it to Tom.
* Max will sign copies of the game at the Ubisoft booth. Adrien will ask if he can buy two copies so he can give one to Marinette's dad, since he had to stay behind.
* Ubisoft will be talking about unusual things about the game. One of the unusual things is that the game was designed and created by one person (or two, if you count Markov), when it usually takes a team of people YEARS to get a game out. There are more people on Max's legal team than on the game's design team.
* Acknowledgements in the game go to his beta testers, his cover design artist (Marinette), his legal team, and Markov.
* The legal team includes Sabine Cheng and several lawyers employed by Gabriel Fashions. Gabriel, instead of getting a cut of the profits, has negotiated to be the costume designer for the upcoming Assassin's Creed movie. The mayor adopted the superheroes as wards of the city, so he could legally give permission for their likenesses to be used in the game - for a cut of the profits to be paid directly to the city, earmarked for Akuma victim programs.