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Valedonte: Really? They seem to be going out of their way to make Lila as unambiguously evil as possible then. Not that she doesn't deserve it, but for the purposes of this story, to avoid overcomplicating things, Lila Rossi is who she says she is (at least when it comes to her name; not so much anything else.)
As Always, Please Review!
Ladybug left the two British heroes in the alley and jumped from roof to roof, Carapace and Rena Rouge just behind her.
She was fuming. Lila Rossi always had that effect on her.
"Every time I think that girl has reached rock bottom, she plumbs new depths," she said, whirling on her partners, who stopped suddenly and leaned backwards.
"You're preaching to the choir here," Rena Rouge replied. There had been a time when she, as Alya, had fallen for Lila's lies hook, line, and sinker, even going so far as to post an interview with her on the Ladyblog where Lila waxed lyrical about how well she got on with Ladybug. That had been until one day when, in an attempt to further impress Alya and pull her away from Marinette, Lila had tried to claim that she was Rena Rouge. That lie had produced the exact opposite of the intended result, though Alya had been forced to nod and play along at first to avoid outing herself, despite her very strong urge to attack the liar. "
Carapace nodded. "But don't we have bigger priorities?"
"Yes, yes, I know," Ladybug said. "I want to find Chat too, you know."
They had begun to move again, jumping quickly from roof to roof and constantly looking around their surroundings for a telltale black blur. But none came.
"Not just that!" Rena Rouge replied.
"What?"
"Your friends! Don't you know what you've got? Actual past Miraculous holders!"
"So?"
"One, tell me everything, and two," Alya looked pleadingly at her, "can I please interview them for the Ladyblog?"
"You'll have to ask them," Ladybug replied, grateful to take her mind off Chat Noir and Lila for a moment. "And I think there will be plenty of actual historians fighting each other for a chance like this too, so you'd best be quick about it."
"Yes!" Rena pumped the air. "Paris is going to love this!"
"Wait, wouldn't we be doing the same thing Lila just tried to do to Ladybird?" Carapace interjected.
"Of course not!" Rena replied. "I'm not going to make them reveal their identities, and if they want to it'll be on their terms, not Lila's, or mine. I've been working with you for years, I know what I'm doing."
Carapace accepted this answer, and Rena Rouge turned back to Ladybug. " So what happened when you were gone? How did you get sent back in time, anyway?"
Ladybug stopped so suddenly that she was nearly sent flying by Carapace.
"Oh, well..."
She was on the verge of making up some elaborate lie to explain how she had been sent back in time, but then a memory popped into her head; of another lie told on a rooftop in Venice to protect her identity, one that had nearly cost her her partner.
She sighed. She couldn't make that mistake again.
"It started off in class this morning. It was this morning right? How long has it been since the Akuma attack started?"
Rena Rouge looked around for any clock.
"Well, from the moment we were attacked by Timetagger, it's been about, what, three hours?"
"Three hours? It's been more than a week for me."
"What?" Her audience yelped at the same time.
"Anyway," she took a deep breath. "I was sat next to you, Lila was spouting nonsense as usual, then Timetagger jumped through the window, fought Chat Noir and I jumped in front of him."
As she had spoken, Carapace's eyes had become progressively wider and his expression more shocked, as he put the pieces together.
"Hold on, but that means-" Rena Rouge started, looking equally surprised.
"Are you telling us-" Carapace said.
"You're Marinette?" They exclaimed together.
"Shush, not so loud!" Ladybug replied. "But yes, the one and only."
"This is great!" Rena said. "I'm best friends with Ladybug! I can't believe it!"
"You were best friends with Ladybug anyway," Ladybug pointed out. "You do run the Ladyblog. And no, you can't tell anyone."
Rena had the good grace to look offended at that, even while grinning at the revelation. "What, girl, do you take me for Lila? I like a good scoop, but I am an ethical journalist."
She paled.
"Wait, that means I've been-"
"speculating on intensely personal aspects of Ladybug's life, right in front of me?" Ladybug asked, smirking.
"...Yes." Rena Rouge was clearly fighting the urge to bury her head in her hands.
"I found it very entertaining," Ladybug told her. "But no, I am not from the future like Terminator."
"That one was Nino!"
"Guilty," Carapace held his hand up. "But I don't see what the problem is, Terminators are cool!"
"Yes, but I'm not secretly dating anyone either," Ladybug pressed. "Or any of the other things."
Now Rena Rouge did bury her head in her hands in embarrassment.
"Sorry," she muttered. "I was only speculating. And I never posted any of it on the Ladyblog!"
"It's alright!" Ladybug replied brightly. "I never minded too much anyway. I'm just teasing you, Aly-Rena."
"Were there any Ladybug rumours you did mind?" Rena asked, recovering from her embarrassment at that.
Ladybug considered.
"I don't think so. Only when someone insulted Chat. But you never did."
"Do you know who Chat is?" Carapace asked. But Ladybug only shook her head. "He tried to reveal his identity to me, but I refused to look."
"That would have been helpful," Rena muttered.
"Anyway," Carapace pressed. "You were saying?"
And so Ladybug told them. Of crash landing in 15th century Mexico, meeting past Miraculous holders, fighting a sentimonster and then Timetagger again, ending up in Venice a century later, meeting a Hawkmoth who wasn't evil, but a Wasp who was, and the mistake that had landed them in Britain in 1794. She told them about the connection that allowed her to talk to Temoli without sharing a common language, and about their disguise as Royalist exiles.
She hesitated. Would she tell them about the argument? It didn't paint her in a flattering light, but it was necessary. So she told them about how she had accidentally revealed herself to her partner, and about how they had had an argument that had ended in yet another Timetagger attack. Then she told them Hawkmoth's plan and the rescue by Ladybird and Chat Noir.
"I think you know the rest," she finished. "That was just before the fight on the rooftop."
"Sounds like you've had a hell of a day. Or week. Time travel is confusing." Carapace sighed.
"What about you?" Ladybug asked, curiously. "How did you end up in the Louvre being attacked by two Akumas? And how did you get your miraculouses?"
"We thought it might give some clue as to where you were," Rena replied. "They generally have something about past Ladybugs there, these days. And some old man in a Hawaiian shirt gave them to us."
"And it did!" Carapace said brightly. "Some huge painting with a massive fight next to a river."
"Oh, they painted that?" Ladybug asked. "And you met Master Fu."
"Well, we didn't meet him as such..." Rena answered. "He tossed our Miraculouses at us and left."
"Yes, and he outed your identities to Hawkmoth in the process," frowned Ladybug. "I guess it was desperate measures, but..."
The words wildly irresponsible flashed through her mind, but she did not say it. She wasn't about to badmouth her mentor like that.
"It worked, didn't it?" Carapace reasoned. "We've won. We got him, and his Miraculous too."
He gestured to the brooch.
"So it's over."
"I'd like to think so," Ladybug reasoned. "But the Peacock is still missing. And so is Chat Noir. We're going to have to keep our guard up."
"Great," Rena sighed. "Even when we win, we lose."
"Hey, I wouldn't go that far!" Ladybug replied optimistically. "We've won. We just need to finish the job."
"Alright," Rena said.
"Let's just focus on finding Chat first," Ladybug told them. "We'll deal with Gabriel and Mayura later."
With that, the search resumed, although Rena Rouge and Carapace still seemed distracted. Ladybug supposed she couldn't really blame them; they had just found out who she was, after all.
But half an hour later, they had still had no luck. By now, the news that it seemed to be all over had well and truly spread throughout the city, and the result had been an impromptu street celebration. Wherever they went, they were cheered by the eager Parisian crowds, who seemed enormously relieved that one bad day would no longer cause them to be forced to hurt those around them. Ordinarily, Ladybug might have stopped to at least wave; she hadn't done it for the sake of public approval, but if she was being honest with herself all the adulation she received from Paris didn't hurt her motivation.
"Chat?" She called instead. "Chat, where are you?"
But there was no response.
Ladybug felt confusion and worry as the search continued to drag on. Something had caused her partner- her flirty, eternally optimistic, and witty partner- to react incredibly badly when Hawkmoth had been revealed as Gabriel Agreste. It could have been that he felt betrayed that such a major public figure had turned out to be a terrorist, but there had to be something else. After all, Marinette Dupain-Cheng was an aspiring stylist who idolised Gabriel Agreste. If that was it, his betrayal would hit her harder than it hit him.
She was so lost in thought that Rena had to grab her to stop her crashing into a chimney. Coming back to her senses just in time, Ladybug managed to style it out, just as they heard shouting in the distance. She turned around to find one figure in red and one in black racing towards them over the Parisian rooftops, recognising the green glare of the black-clad man's helmet as he drew closer.
Ocelotl landed on the roof in front of her and started babbling excitedly in Nahuatl, gesturing frantically to make his point. Ladybug shook her head apologetically, wishing the Black Cat were there so he could translate. Instead, she looked at Temoli.
"We were searching the city when we saw some kind of moving picture," the Mexica woman explained, her connection through Tikki allowing her to directly communicate with Ladybug.
"Oh?"
"We think we've found out why Chat Noir reacted so badly to Hawkmoth's defeat."
Ocelotl nodded.
"What? Why?"
The two Mexica heroes exchanged a look, and Temoli took a deep breath before she spoke.
"Chat Noir ran because Hawkmoth is his father."