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“Are you sure you want this?”
Tikki nodded. “Yes, for the last time, yes! You’ve done such a good job protecting me when Monarch was here - let me help you with Crisalide now.”
“I don’t know if there’s a way we’d be able to turn you back to normal after this-”
Tikki just smiled. “The point is to help everything become normal. We’ll work on the others later… plus, if this goes wrong, I'd rather not subject everyone to it.”
Marinette just nodded. Taking a deep breath, she began the spell.
The first thing of note was Tikki’s entire body shooting up in size. Tikki’s limbs grew out, paw-lines extending into fingers and toes. Her antennae appeared to jut out into multiple spiky shapes at first, with all the light surrounding her body, but that was just all the hair appearing on her head. She gained a tiny nose Marinette would find perfect for booping, too.
Lastly, clothes appeared over her body. They were precisely the sort of thing Marinette would design for a little girl having a Ladybug-themed birthday party. Marinette was personally a big fan of the mary-janes.
As the transformation finished, revealing Tikki’s new form, gravity took hold now that she couldn’t float as easily. Marinette caught her, embracing the little one and smiling as Tikki - or Tina, as they’d come to name her - hugged her back.
“Excuse me… are you Cerise Soldano?”
Cerise looked down at the red-haired little girl in an aggravatingly Ladybug-themed dress. Was there nothing in this imbecilic city that didn’t have some piece of that brat in it?
At least she knew her identity now. The move was all Cerise’s, whenever she wanted to make it. She couldn’t wait to take that stupid Marinette brat down… she’d ruin her, and then she’d take that Ladybug Miraculous, and then she’d be unstoppable! The people would fall over themselves to obey her whims-
The next thing Cerise knew, she was in the back of an alley, and the little shit had a coccinellid-patterned knife and gun to her head. “Imagine being both the recipient and unwitting cause of billions of years' worth of abuse and atrocity. Take all that rage and condense it into the body and mind of a human girl, just eight summers old… now you get to be the recipient of that rage.”
“What do you want…?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” this Ladybug giggled in a way that wasn’t at all terrifying, no, not at all. “I want Nooroo back.”