I'm going to do it, Marinette told herself.
Marinette knocked on Master Fu's door, a determined look in her eye. The answer came almost immediately and she opened the door, marching in with purpose.
"Marinette!" Master Fu exclaimed, standing up quickly, "I'm glad to see you are all right."
"Yes, I am now," Marinette sighed. She was genuinely touched by Master Fu's concern for her.
"MARINETTE!" came a high-pitched squeal as a red blur streaked straight into her face. Tikki spread her arms as far around Marinette's cheek as she could get them.
"TIKKI!" Marinette shouted with equal enthusiasm, hugging her back, "I'm so glad to see you!"
"I was so worried about you!" Tikki pulled back to look her own in the eye. Marinette had come to love her bursting optimism, but she had gotten to know her well enough to tell when she worried, and there was certainly concern in her eyes.
"I'm all right now, Tikki, don't worry!" she reassured her, "We can always trust Cat Noir to take care of me, after all." She gave a small smile, but a brief one, remembering the task at hand.
"Is that the akuma, Marinette?" Master Fu asked, eyeing the shoe box.
"Yes," she nodded, "But first…" She hesitated, searching for words. Master Fu held his hands behind his back and looked at her expectantly. Beside her head, Tikki, now joined by Wayzz, was watching curiously.
"Master," she said, falling to her knees. She placed the shoebox beside her and bowed her head in shame, "I've failed as Ladybug. I let myself get akumatized, I put all of Paris in danger, and I put you and the miraculous in danger. And then I… I wasn't careful enough and… I let Cat Noir discover my identity."
Tikki gasped, her eyes wide as she put her hands over her mouth. Master Fu looked solemn, but Marinette couldn't interpret his expression when she chanced a glance up at him.
"I don't deserve to be Ladybug anymore," Marinette pushed on, "I knew I wasn't up for it, and now I've proven it. I'm going to give you back my miraculous."
Silence pervaded the room. Tikki and Wayzz watched both the humans anxiously, uncertain what was going to happen. Master Fu regarded her with a grave look for a good long time before saying anything. This is how it has to be, Marinette told herself, I can't be trusted with my miraculous anymore. There needs to be a new Ladybug.
"Indeed, this is all true," Master Fu said finally, speaking in careful tones, his voice not betraying his intentions, "but the very fact that you make this offer shows how worthy you are."
"What?" Marinette looked up at him in surprise.
"Marinette," he said gently, a smile forming on his wrinkled face, "you may be a superhero, but never forget that you are still human. All people make mistakes, sometimes big ones, even a superhero. But you are brave enough to admit your mistake and to accept the consequences of your actions. That is a true act of heroism."
"But…" Marinette tried to protest, "my identity isn't safe anymore…"
"Cat Noir can be trusted to keep your identity safe," Master Fu assured her, "I am not concerned about that. I do hope you take a lesson from this and try harder to protect your identity from others, but I'm fully confident in your ability to do that."
"So…" Marinette felt hope rising in her breast, "I don't have to give up being Ladybug?"
"Of course not," Master Fu assured her, "Not so long as you cleanse this akuma."
"You're the best Ladybug I've ever served, Marinette!" Tikki informed her, tears welling up in her big eyes from the emotional rollercoaster she'd just experienced.
Marinette stood back up, wiping away her own tears as they were forming. "Thank you, Master Fu," she said, bowing her head toward him, "I won't let you down again."
"You haven't yet," he smiled back at her.
Cat Noir bounded across the rooftops, feeling more alive ever. Marinette is Ladybug! he told himself again. There was no one else he would rather it be. She was everything he told her: smart, pretty, talented, kind, funny… he felt he could list her qualities forever.
The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. With a smile, he remembered when Ladybug had to go on a "secret mission" when he was dealing with Evillustrator. She was there the whole time, he told himself, amused at having not seen it before, as Marinette!
As he landed back in his room, he felt a refreshing wave wash over him as the magical ladybugs were sweeping over the town. Outside, he knew that all the people still enveloped in the throes of despair would finally recover, and all the damage they had caused during their fight would be repaired.
"Claws in," he said, watching the magical ladybugs pass by outside with a smile, "She's back." He lay back in his bed, satisfied with a job well done, and thinking of the possibilities now that he knew Ladybug's identity.
"That was a wild ride," Plagg said, flying close to Adrien's smiling face, "but aren't you forgetting something?"
"What?" Adrien chuckled. All he could think about was Ladybug. The chances that Marinette was Ladybug were so unlikely that he had never considered it before. There must be thousands of girls in Paris with black hair and blue eyes across the city, but it was the one that sat behind him in class all along.
Blue eyes, he thought, memories of earlier that day coming back to him finally, memories that seemed so distant he could hardly believe it had happened that very same evening. He remembered looking deep into those blue eyes, thinking only of Ladybug. Of course I was thinking of Ladybug, he laughed at himself now, they were Ladybug's eyes!
Then the other events of the night came back to him, the events that led to Marinette's akumatization. The smile began to fade from Adrien's face as he remembered now. They had gone on a date, and when the date was over…
Oh no, Adrien sat bolt upright in bed, holding his head in his hands, his face contorting to despair as it finally dawned on him what he was forgetting, lost in the mess of the night's events. "Marinette is Ladybug," he said aloud, but this time his voice was filled with regret, "I dumped Ladybug!"
END OF PART 1