Hello everyone! Thank you everyone who has been reading, reviewing, and joining me on this wonderful Journey of a story. My goal with this fic was to see how much and how fast I can write. Boy am I learning what I am pushing to here. I never expected to get this many views, or comments. It is absolutely mind blowing to me.

So a bit of possible fog in the horizon. I work at a school. The end of the semester is here and this week is going to be crazy for me. I am not sure if I will be able to punch out the next chapter in about three days, which has been about my pass so far. I'm not stopping, I'm just telling you guys Chapter 9 may not come until the weekend. It is still my goal to write this story as fast and beautifully as possible.

On another note: A lot of Marinette talking in this Chapter. I actually started writing part of this chapter as a flashback, but it quickly became too long and unattainable. I refuse to split up a plot point because of length, but over 5,000 words is when I decided I needed to stop and rethink how to write the. So this is what I have for you. I was going to have more detail, but then I think it would have ended up being over 7,000 words and that is too long for me. To stay consistent. I think this will move the story forward faster. I would love your opinions though. I would love to know what has been the best part of this story so far for you all, and what you would like to see in the future. Thank you all so much, and please enjoy

Traditional Twist

Chapter 8

The reporter held her friend close to her chest. How has she not realized that Marinette was Ladybug? She had never been akumatized. She was never around when Ladybug was there. She was always tired and constantly late to class. Marinette never exercised and yet was always in really great shape. They both had blue hair pigtails. All the pieces fell together, just as they had for Adrien as Chat Noir.

Alya felt Marinette lift her head. "Tiki! You're supposed to hide!" The blue haired girl let out a desperate plea.

"I refuse to hide, and watch you fall apart," the red Kwami argued. "You need help! I trust Alya."

"I'm sorry Alya," Marinette sputtered, "I didn't mean for you to find out like this. I have always wanted to tell you, but I never could."

"It's alright," Alya cooed, "I'm not upset at all. I am however worried about you. Tiki here is right. This is not healthy."

"I'm so sorry," Marinette's voice cracked. Tears began to trickle down her face. The trio huddled together as the designer continued to cry. Alya and Tiki rested against Marinette,betting her pour out her feelings until she could not cry anymore.

After an hour, Marinette's eyes were dried up. Her face was puffy; eyes red and bloodshot. Sniffles were now just gasps of a air. The girl sat up and rubbed her hand with her eyes before looking at the two others in the room.

"I guess you now know why I was never around during an Akuma attack. I just wish I could have told you in another way."

"I was going to tell Alya anyway," Tiki interjected.

"How would you have told me?" Alya asked. "This is the first time I've ever seen you."

"I've been talking to you on the Ladyblog," the bug confessed.

"Tiki! That's not allowed! You told me so!" Marinette was shouting. Alya couldn't tell if she was more disheartened or angered

Tiki flew to Marinette's face. Her tiny palms gripped the girl's face. "I have only lost two Ladybugs at young ages. I will not lose another. I don't care what the Guardian says."

"Oh Tiki." Marinette cupped her hands against her small friend to hug her.

Alya smiled. It was nice to see that even though she had not been there for her best friend had not been alone. "So you are Bug1," Alya responded.

"Yes," Tiki said pushing around Marinette's fingers. "I have not introduced myself to you properly. Hi, I am Tiki. I am Ladybug's kwami. I grant powers to Ladybug." She flew to Alya and stuck out her hand.

Alya smiled and stuck out her hand. "Nice to meet you, Tiki. I'm Alya."

The Kwami giggled. "I know that silly. I'm always with Marinette. So whenever you were with her, you were with me too."

Marinette smiled. "For the first time, I have both my best friends together."

"Yes, and we will both be in here to hear what that melt down was all about at the restaurant." Alya watched Marinette's eyes sink from her words. "But first you are going to shower. Then we will get comfy, and this will be just like a sleepover over when we were sixteen. So go shower. Tiki and I will be right here."

"Okay." Marinette stood up and gather her clothes for showering. She creeped out of her room and closed the door.

Alya and Tiki moved to Marinette's bed. Alya had become more serious as her friend left. The reporter realized they had maybe fifteen minutes to talk to Tiki. She would need to be straightforward and blunt.

"I'm sorry I cannot take this time to get to know you, Tiki. But I need to have a very tough conversation with you."

"I understand," the kwami nodded. "What do you need to talk about, Alya?"

"I'm here because of Chat Noir. He hired me to come back and find Ladybug so he can reunite with her."

"Oh wow," Tiki's antennas drooped.

"Yeah, so now that I have found Ladybug, and that it is Marinette, I should tell Chat Noir that I found her." Alya's brown eyes saddened. "I mean that is what I was hired to do right?"

"That's a tough question. It is your job, but they are both your friends. Does he just want to know that she's out there?"

"No, Chat want's to meet up with ladybug." Alya glanced around the room. She noticed beside her there was a Chat Noir doll. Alya picked it up and held it in her hands. "Looking at all of this, I'm not sure if I should tell Chat who she is while Marinette is so sensitive."

Tiki sighed. "Marinette is not in good place.

"I know. I'm sure. What do you think, Tiki? Should I tell Chat Noir I found her?"

"Would he come after Marinette?"

"He may. I'm not quite sure. I may talk to Plagg."

"You speak to Plagg?"

Alya nodded. "Yes, he is Chat Noir's kwami."

"So does that mean you know Chat Noir's civilian form?"

Alya nodded. "I do."

Tiki's eyes filled with worry. "How is Chat Noir, according to Plagg?"

"He's really desperate," Alya said with a despairing tone. "When he asked me to take on the task, I had never seen him so sad. Plagg asked me to not get him too hopeful."

"Plagg has lost quite a few Chat Noir's in his time. I can understand his caution. You should ask Plagg if you should tell Chat."

'And should I tell Marinette why I am actually here? Should I let her know who my client is?"

Tiki shook her head. "Don't tell Marinette yet. As you can tell, she misses Chat more than anyone. After the trial, she came in here and did nothing but hold that doll of Chat and cry. She doesn't know how to forgive herself for what she said about him. If you told her Chat Noir brought you here to find her, she will totally freak out!"

"What did she say about Chat in the trial that has upset her so much? Was it just the events of her date with the Evilistrator?"

The kwami floated on Alay's shoulder. "No, she's more upset with Hawkmoth's argument and how she didn't defend Chat Noir."

The reporter's eyebrows rose. "I didn't know Hawkmoth was there. I only knew all our classmates were there."

"You will need to get Marinette to explain it first. I don't want to say what she should be saying, yet." Tiki hung her head.

"Then we will need to get Marinette talking, because I need to know what happened."

The reporter hung her head and sighed. Tiki floated over to the brunette. "Alya, you are a really good friend. I've been around for thousands of years, and have been with hundreds of Ladybugs. Most of the time when someone discovers my chosen's civilian form they are hurt and angry. They think of their feelings before their others. You are different Alya. You put your friends before yourself, and you're handling all this information quite well."

"Thanks, Tiki," Alya pressed the red bug against her face. "That means a lot coming from someone with such experience. I just wished I had your amount of experience to figure out if I should tell Chat Noir i found Ladybug. This is just so stressful."

"You may not have my experience, but you do have me to help with Marinette."

"And I have Plagg to help with Chat!" Alya's head shot up so fast she had to press her glasses back up her nose. "If I can get you two together, then the three of us can discuss this and figure out some course of action."

"I don't want to leave Marinette alone. If you could get Plagg over to me somehow then we can plan."

"I can get Plagg away from Chat. Chat is busy throughout the day, and I can tell him it's some sort of Ladybug tracker idea I have."

Tiki did a flip. "Excellent! Then if you can come to me, we can all talk. Now we just need to get Marinette to talk about what happened tonight."

"I want her to talk about more than just tonight, and if we are going to get her to talk then that means we need to make her a comfortable as possible." Alya took a moment to think. What would make Marinette comfortable; baking! "Come on Tiki, we are going to go bake some cookies." The reporter hopped off the bed and headed for the kitchen. The red kwamia grinned and followed.

_oOo_

Alya and Tiki managed to make a batch of cookies, cool them, and separate them onto plates by the time Marinette emerged from the shower. She walked out of her room tentatively. Her eyes searching all around the room. "Where are Nathaniel and Lila?"

"I sent them on a date night," Alya answered. "They shouldn't be around at all the rest of the night."

"Oh, Okay." The blue haired girl took a seat on the couch by the empty plate. She smiled as she watched Tiki down an entire cookie in one bite. She picked up a cookie from the plate in front of her.

"So," Alya started as she watched her friend bte into the baked, "You are going to have to tell me why you had to run out on our group date?"

"Alya, I don't think it's worth hashing…"

"It is worth it," Alya snapped. Her fists were clasps tight in her lap "You have been holding in a lot of things, and I am sick of it. I am your best friend. That means I'm going to do what is best for you, not what you want or like. I will get the information out of you." Alya leaned towards Marinette with vulgar eyes. "We have all night, and girl you are not strong enough to handle me right now. I know you are not. So where do you want to start? When you last saw Chat Noir? What happened at that trial? Or what happened less than two hours ago at dinner?"

"I guess I choose dinner."

"Alright, that's a fine choice. Go ahead."

"I couldn't handle Adrien being so… nice." Marinette's face flushed as she confessed. "I mean I am the reason he had to graduate early and begin working at the company. I am the reason his father is now arrested."

The pigtailed girl tucked her feet underneath her body, hiding from the words she was finally saying. "He never even got the opportunity to go to college. Anything he may have wanted is now gone, and all he can do is sit and think about offering me a job? And what is terrifying to me is I do want that job. I want it, but I don't deserve it. If Adrien knew who I was he would agree and kick me out. He would tell me he hates me. I ruined his family."

Alya's eyebrows pressed closer to her eyes. "You are not responsible for Adrien's family."

"I sent his dad to jail. I sent the Gabriel Agreste to prison."

"Gabriel sent himself to jail when he decided to be Hawkmoth. You and Chat Noir only did what you were supposed to do; protect Paris."

Marinette's eye glossed over at the sound of partner's name. "Chat protected Paris, I attacked Hawkmoth. I'm the one that went after him. Chat was just working to keep the civilians safe. He told me to go somewhere private. He told me to just tie Hawkmoth up, and take him to the police station. I'm the one who unmasked Gabriel in front of everyone. I should have listed to my kitty. He was right. He was always looking after everyone else. I was just trying to finish the job, but instead made the unmasking a much larger event. "

"I had no idea you two had discussed how to handle Hawkmoths unmasking?" Alya was shocked. How had she missed this moment?

Marinette smiled sweetly. "You are a good reporter Alya, but we kept a lot from you. You couldn't always hear us when we were too far up. Pus Chat's super hearing always let u know when you were in earshot. We let you see what we wanted you to."

"Is that why I never heard the last thing you said to Chat Noir?" Alya asked.

Marinette frowned. "That was the biggest mistake. All I could think about was myself. The last thing I told Chat was the only thing on my mind. That Adrien will never forgive me. And then I see Adrien and he doesn't even know. And Chat. I lost all opportunity to every possibly make it up to Chat. Not after what they made me say at the trial." A slow leak of tears dripped out of the girls eyes. Tiki picked up a napkin and

Alya nodded. "I heard you ended up saying that Chat is the reason the Evilistrator became so harmful."

"I wish it were that simple," Tkiki chimed in. "That lawyer was so cruel. If that was all Marinette would have been able to say, that would have been better."

"Why don't I have the whole story?" the reporter asked. "Nino told me everything, and he heard it all from Max who was at the trial."

"You should know better than to think secondary source would be viable, Alya," Tiki scolded. "Max didn't know the whole story, so there is no way Nino would understand the whole thing."

"Then I need to hear what happened from a primary witness. Marinette, I know you may feel uncomfortable about this but, I need to know what happened from the trial.' The report took in a breath to hold back tears. She could see her glasses fogging from the precipitation in her eyes. "I feel absolutely awful that I was not there for you during the entire ordeal. I am your best friend. I am the one you are supposed to unload these kinds of burdens on. I'm supposed to be the shoulder for you to cry on. I am here now, and I want you to unload everything you worry on me. "

"If you hear the whole story do your promise not to be upset with me?" The girl's bluebell eyes glistened with tears.

"I don't promise to not be upset, but I do promise to not be upset with you. Girl, I love you and you will always be my BFF, no matter what has happened."

The girl smiled and blinked away tears. "I just need you to listen alright. I'm not quite sure where to start, and I may be all over the place. It's just a lot, and I don't want to have to stop. I just want to say it once and not explain."

Alya moved to sit next to her friend on the couch. She grabbed her hand and held it gently. "Start however you want. I will listen."

Marinette took a deep breath before beginning her tale. "I was so vulnerable at the time of the trial. I had tried to forget about Chat and Adrien, by dating Nathaniel. We were only together a month, because my heart was not in the relationship at all. Nathaniel offered me such a great opportunity. I could start a studio with him. That solved a lot of problems for me. Mom and Dad were going to move out of Paris to start their Baking chain. They were going to be traveling all over. We had not figured out a living situation for myself, but when Nathaniel said we could be business partners and live together, it answered so many problems."

"I kept thinking of my kitty. I started to make things. Like I made a doll, and I decided to make a hat to give him the next I ever saw him. Just hoped I could find Chat Noir. I realized I had left without any way to contact him. I would transform every night and sit in my room staring at my Yo Yo hoping he would call. I wanted to call him, but I was never sure how.

"Then I get a call from Juleka. She told me she hired a lawyer and was going to sue Chloe with other classmates. The whole concept seemed so bizarre to me. I didn't understand why she wasn't suing Gabriel Agreste. Turns out when Gabriel pleaded guilty to being Hawkmoth he made a settlement with every Akumatized victim. Every victim signed an agreement and could not sue Gabriel a second time. Juleka decided to go after Chloe on the grounds that her bullying made all their classmates susceptible to the Akumas.

"I said no to Juleka and thought that I was going to be free of all this. Then Chloe contacted Lila, and informed her that she was being sued. That got Lila and Nathaniel involved. Lila and Chloe began to spend every possible opportunity with Nathaniel to get him on their side. I'm not even sure if he believed their view at first, but I know Lila worked very hard to make sure Nathaniel was completely on their side.

"I thought I could sit on the side lines and not be involved, but then I was informed by Nathaniel he wanted me to be there as a witness. He told me I don't have to pick aside, but He wanted me to know that Chloe's lawyer was going to subpoena me. I thought I could handle it. So I got the summons and went. I worked really hard on what I would say to be a neutral as I could. What I didn't think about was who else would be involved.

"Chloe's dad got involved, of course. He contacted the one man that could do something, Gabriel Agrest. He was asked to come to the defense of Choe and he did. Gabriel went up to the court and discussed his motives. It was the first time I ever felt empathy for the man." Marinette began to choke on tears.

Alya squeezed her friend's hand. Take your time girl, this is a lot."

"He said he found the moth miraculous while on a business trip in Tibet. He said he was hoping to find his wife out in Tibet. A few months before his trip his wife had vanished from his life. She disappeared without a trace. She left every item behind; her cloths, books, money, her son, everything. He was devastated, and was willing to do anything to find her. Finding that moth miraculous was his idea of destiny being on his side."

"He said he didn't know what to do with the miraculous until he arrived back in Paris. He said he could sense the miraculous of others. Upon research he discovered that he could use the miraculous of two particular heroes, Ladybug and Chat Noir, to obtain ultimate power. If he would be able to have ultimate power he could find his wife. So he decided he would need a way to lure the Ladybug and Chat noir miraculouses out because even though he could sense the miraculous, he could not identify exactly where they were outside of Paris.

"We need to explain a little Marinette," Tiki interrupted. "I will do it so you can take a break. " The red bug looked up at Alya. "What you don't know, Alya, is that miraculous holders cannot sense each other. Kwamis can sense other kwamis in the area because the levels of magic fluctuates. We don't know where we are, we just know there is more magic in the area. Chat Noir's kwami and I have a different type of magic. We can't sense it, but other kwamis feel our different types of magic unifying as one. It's because we are two haves like Chat Noir and Ladybug. Ladybug is the creative side, and Chat Noir is the destructive side."

"So when he started speaking, I realized that he wasn't telling the absolute truth. "The blue haired girl jumped back in. "Gabriel was definitely hiding the existence of kwamis. Although he had done something terrible, he was still honoring the miraculous and its ability. He then explained that he used his powers to collect butterflies. He could evilize the butterflies and turn them into akumas. He would then be able grant powers to any person who continued to feed the negative emotions. That's why he picked on people with poor mental states.

"He then added that he only sent out akumas in Paris because he knew it was Ladybug and Chat Noir. If those two heroes had not been I Paris he would not have gone after them, and he would have never used the miraculous because there was no other use for it."

"I then saw him look over at Chloe's father and lawyer. The lawyer nodded his head, while the Mayor mouthed 'keep going.' I don't know how I exactly knew then but I realized that there had to have been some sort of planned explanation with the lawyer. The lawyer then stood up and asked, who else should be blamed for the akuma attacks if not himself. Gabriel said; Ladybug and Chat Noir.

"I was so angry at his answer I ran out of the courtroom. How was I supposed to be neutral when Gabriel was saying such horrible things? He started this! I didn't even become Ladybug until after the first akuma attack! Yet, I was unable to defend myself without exposing everything, and possibly causing even worse problems. I went into a panic attack.

"Nathaniel ran after me. He asked me to go back into the courtroom. Instead I just yelled 'I change my mind! i don't want to be here. Tell them Marinette has changed her mind.' I was freaking out so loud I caused a fifteen minute recess. The judge explained to e that I was to be put on stand after Nathaniel explained his side of the date. I was subpoenaed, so i cannot leave. I had to stay.

I sat through as each classmate on the plaintiffs side explain how Chloe bullied each of them and that akumatizing them. They each explained how the akuma stigma has hurt their futures. I listened to Chloe explain how she was akumatized because of me, and that made Ladybug look less to jury. Finally Nathaniel went up and explained the time he had as Evilistrator. He was so angry at Chat Noir for interrupting the date.

"Finally I was called up." Marinette had tears free flowing down her face. "They asked me if I ever felt in danger while with Nathaniel in his akumatized state. I answered no. Did I ever feel like Nathaniel would do anything to me? No. Did I seek out Chat Noir's assistance? No he approached me. I explained I took the pen because Chat Noir told me too. That triggered the fight, and Chat noir started threw the first attack.

"The lawyer then began to get really unknowingly personal. He asked me if Chat Noir had made a mistake with the Evilistrator, he could he have possibly made mistakes with the other akumatized victims? He asked if Chat Noir was too reactive, and wasn't thinking of the akumatized civilian needs. He asked why Chat Noir would run off after so many victims were purified. Did he and Ladybug have any right to help out the civilian? Why didn't they try talking a deal out with Hawkmoth and his victims? There were so many questions. Answer yes r no, everything made it worse. There were so many attacks on Chat Noir.

"I asked why I didn't have any Ladybug directed, and the answer was they had no record of me having my interactions with Ladybug. Of course! I couldn't tell them I was Ladybug, and I couldn't defend partner. The person who put their life on the line, for me, and every other civilian. I should have stood up and taken Chat's side. I failed him."

"The court ended up ruling that it could not be Chloe's fault, as someone who had been akumatized by heroes, and by heroes who brought terror onto Paris purposefully or not."

Marinette fell silent staring at her feet. Alya squeezed her hand, and felt a light squeeze back. "Alya, I don't want to talk anymore."

"That's fine. You talk a lot. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it." She pulled her best friend to her side and wrapped her arms around her in a big hug. "How about we go back to your room and watch one of those one star horror movies on Netflix?"

Marinette laughed. "That sounds great." The friends Got up and went to Marinette's room and set up for the movie. Alya could not focus on the movie though. She had to process all the information Marinette had given her. She also had to figure out a way to get Plagg away from Adrien.