Bunnix exited her burrow, appearing in Marinette's room, and de-transformed into Alix. Marinette was sitting on the floor, sorting through a large pile of photo prints of her and their friends from various occasions throughout collége and lycée. She looked up to greet Alix.
"So, finish cleaning up?" Marinette asked Alix.
"Hardly!" Alix exclaimed, rolling her eyes in frustration. She moved over to her bag to get a snack out for Fluff, who had been working extra hard today.
"Do you know how many times you and cat-boy have almost ended the world?" Alix continued. "There's a lot to go through!"
Marinette gave Alix an amused smile. She didn't seem surprised, but that made sense, since she had lived through most of the disasters Alix had been watching on the timeline.
"We had our troubles," Marinette admitted, "but I'm sure now you see why I was always so insistent on keeping our identities a secret, when we were fighting the original Papillon."
"Which adventure did you just get back from?" she asked Alix, putting a facetious emphasis on the word adventure.
"Well, I didn't actually have to jump in on this last one," Alix answered. She sat down to join Marinette on the floor, and started sifting through some of the photos. Some of these memories had a whole new context now that she had seen them a second time using her miraculous.
"I bet you don't even remember this one," she continued. "It was the time Sass had to use his power independently, and you and Chat had to fly up to some satellite and fix the world clock or something."
Marinette had a puzzled look on her face.
"I thought you were only reviewing potential apocalyptic events?" She questioned.
"I am," Alix insisted. "This one was bad, Sass definitely made the right move. And Luka too - I think I need to take Luka out for a beer to thank him for saving all our asses in this case, even if he doesn't remember it himself."
Marinette smiled softly, but Alix could tell she was trying to mask her concern.
"Alix, if you need to talk about it…"
Alix waved her off, dismissing the notion. This was not the worst end-of-the-world she had seen, not by far. But she knew Marinette still remembered the first time Alix had come back from a solo mission as Bunnix.
It was a stressful mission, and Alix had held it together in front of mini-bug, but as soon as she returned to the present and saw her friend all grown up and safe, the relief hit her and she ended up crying and hugging Marinette for a solid ten minutes, followed by an hour-long rant of how much she wanted to kill Gabriel Agrest, which Marinette politely sat through and let her work out her feelings.
"Nah, Marinette, I'm good," Alix assured her. Alix had to remind herself that she had only had to watch Chat Blanc destroy the world. Marienette had lived it. She didn't need to burden her friend with more trauma that she couldn't even remember.
"But just a reminder, if you ever change your mind about killing your future in-laws, I want to be your first call," Alix said, only halfway joking.
"I think my fiance might object to me starting off our mairrage while on trial for murder," Marinette joked back. "Although I definitely share your sentiment when it comes to how his parents treated him."
"I'll be honest, I neve knew model-boy was that tough," Alix admitted. "Man's really been through it but he never let it get him down, and he sure never let it stop him from loving you."
Marinette blushed and shuffled some photos to keep her hands busy. Alix jumped up and looked over at her kwamii.
"Fluff, you ready for another round?"
"You're going back in again?" Marinette asked.
"Yeah, but I need to run another scan of the timeline, so while that's running, Fluff helped me queue up a good Ladrien playlist we're gonna watch.
"A ladri-what?"
"Oh, It's what I'm calling the compilation of all the times Ladybug and Adrien interacted before you two knew each other's identities," Alix said, grinning from ear to ear. "You two both had such massive crushes back then, so whenever you met like that you both turned into total simps who were trying - and failing - to play it cool. Pure comedic gold."
"I'm not sure that falls into responsible use…" but Marinette was cut off as Alix transformed and activated her power. A portal to the time burrow opened up.
"Consider it professional research," Alix teased, stepping into the portal. "And good job on your photo scrapbook, it turns out great!"
