Dear Diary,
First off, if anyone but yours truly is reading this, I want to make one thing clear: I am not the bad guy. According to Mayor Bourgeois' My-Daughter-is-the-Best-Daughter-in-Paris Act, any and all brainwashed civilians working for supervillains cannot be held accountable for their actions. It's the law around here, all written in black and white. Second elephant in the room: Why are you reading a 17-year-old-girl's diary? You have to be a top-notch creep to be doing this.
But as long as we're being meta here, I suppose I'll start off this unusual journal the unusually usual way: Telling you about myself. My name is Lila, and at the time of this writing, I've spent three weeks in my new home in Paris. I'm in highschool, and I've already made tons of friends. I'm the kind of girl that likes to think before she talks. It's commonly referred to as 'compulsive lying,' but I like to think of it as 'selective truth-telling.' And as long as we're on the subject, if you're reading this to find out what I've been telling people is true and what isn't, you're wasting your time. If you want the truth from the horse's mouth, just as ask me face-to-face. After all, asking me if I'm lying gets the same response as you get for reading my diary: A QUICK SMACK UPSIDE THE HEAD. I SAY IT AGAIN: YOU'RE A CREEP.
But enough ranting, I need to get to the point of this little memoir: I'm turning into a supervillain. Frequently. And I no memory of it. Every. Single. Time.
I suppose at the beginning, it was technically my idea. This is going to sound clichéd, but I made up a background to impress a boy. I know this is supposed to be a storage for my private thoughts and everything, but I sounds almost shameful when I write down like that. Never the less, I stand by my decision. This was Adrien Agreste that we're talking about. Quick list off the top of my head:
-He's rich. Loaded. Absolutely rolling.
-He's a teen model that is, no exaggeration, handling puberty flawlessly.
-Is friends with every person in school, faculty or otherwise.
-Is sweet without even trying.
-Gorgeous green eyes.
-Wears some kind of smelly cheese cologne that he pulls off so well that nobody has the nerve to mention it to him.
-Wears white like some kind of angel.
-Blonde hair like an actual angel.
-Smooth AF while still coming off as some innocent schoolboy.
-Teeth as white as the sun.
-Basically, the perfect human being that no mere mortal should ever have to try to impress. You know, without a good cover story.
So yeah, despite all that, apparently he's got someone that he looks up to: Ladybug. Look, as long as you're reading this, I'm going to tell you it like it is: The affection is wasted. Ladybug's a bigger liar than me, and that's saying something. Sure, she's got the whole of Paris behind her back, but trust me on this one, she's the worst. The absolute worst. I'm speaking from experience here, creep. This tomato-arsed she-devil had it in for me since day one. Just thinking about her leaves this horrible taste in my mouth. I honestly can't believe that someone this two-faced can exist. I bet she keeps that secret identity just so she can be horrible to people when nobody knows it's her. She didn't do that for me, though. I got called out her mask on and everything. That's how much she hates me. FOR NO REASON, BTW. That's the part that pisses me off the most. How does that overgrown INSECT come off as some kind of savoir while treating the new kid in town like something she scraped of the sidewalk?
Hold up creep, something just came up. I'll be back real quick.
Sincerely,
Volpina
Dear Diary,
Yeah, you can probably guess that I blacked out last time I wrote. I suppose on the positive side, Chat Noir and Ladybitch have gotten used to this, maybe even more than I have. Chat suggested that I stop getting hung up on things. Yeah, shows what that pun-making doofus knows. Ladybug still gives me dirty looks, and she's the one that started this anyway. She's the one who's not letting go.
Anyway, before purchasing this book, I've wanted to boil this Volpina girl I've been transforming into down to a science. And by 'boiling down to a science' I mean 'ask as many questions as possible to the next person who knows remotely anything on akumas.' First source of information: Chat Noir. Time: Immediately after I was de-akumaized again.
Question #1: Why does this keep happening to me?
Answer: My negative emotions attract evil magic butterflies and their superpowered master likes to turn me into Volpina multiple times for some reason. (Ergo, the 'let go of Ladybug grudge' advice. This is a nice way of saying that I'm never allowed to get mad at anyone again. Yup. Much appreciated. Just never get upset. That's a completely manageable for a human being in high school. Oh wait, no it isn't. It's freaking impossible and totally unfair. Mr. Green Eyes and Leather Tights can officially kiss it.)
Question #2: Does this normally happen to anyone else?
Answer: No, not multiple times.
Question #3: If I'm supposed to let go, why doesn't Ladybug get evilized when she gets mad at me? Wouldn't she make a better supervillain?
Answer: No, she's a superhero. If she got evilized, there'd be nobody to purify her. (That's TOTALLY fair. Not.)
Question #4: So is Ladybug incapable of doing wrong now, or are you just saying this because you're secretly dating?
Answer: Conveniently, Chat's Miraculous was running out of time, so he had to bail. Ditto for You Know Who.
Yeah, that got me nowhere fast. I'm going take a wild guess and conclude future interviews with Chat Noir are going to be a bust, and prodding Ladybug for answers is going to insufferable for the both of us.
So, that leaves only one person who can give me fresh intel: Hawkmoth himself. A sane person wouldn't actively seek contact with France's number one magical terrorist, especially since the easiest way is to have the worst day ever. But you know what, creep? I'm watching myself on today's Ladyblog video, and our city's oh-so-beloved heroine was calling me some adjectives that meant less than sane. My options are thus:
Do what Paris P.D. couldn't do for months on end and locate Hawk Month's HQ.
Sit and wait to have something completely humiliating to happen to me.
Give up and unwittingly choose the option directly above.
Sit and wait while thinking of all the reasons why I hate Ladybug. (The most active option thus far.)
A variant of the third option, which has just occurred to me: Catch up on my Chinese homework because I went Volpina and wasted my whole Saturday. Crap. That cuts my options way down.
Until next time,
Lila
Dear Diary,
Volpina here. Writing fast. Got into a fight with Chloe over Ladybug. She made fun of me being akumaized so much, which made me akumaize. Yeah, laugh it up Chloe. Or don't, since that duct tape magically whisked away that sense of humor of yours. I need some major time today, so I made some clones of Chloe and I, then we spread out to as many warehouses I can find with Google Maps. With any luck, I can wear out Chat and She Who Must Not be Named or Praised before the real fight (Hawk Moth's idea) AND get some chatting up with Mothman Boss-man. Two birds with one stone.
Start interview.
Q: Wait, you can wear out a superhero? I thought the superpowers came from the Miraculous. Like, how much energy do they suck up?
A: I'm an 'insolent girl' for asking an 'evil mastermind' questions about a job that I'm passionate about, and the Miraculouses (Miraculi?) are powered by ancient godlike spirits called kwami… that require candy to recharge their powers.
Q: Candy? Effing candy? You sound too serious to be making jokes.
A: It's not necessarily candy, just any sugary dessert. Sugar's a quick rush of cheap nutrients, which are pretty handy for beings who can digest those but invulnerable to things like diabetes.
Q: So why me? Why not someone who would want to rid Paris of all of its sweets?
A: If there's a person that would want to do that, Hawk Moth would call them up. For the time being, he'll have to settle for somebody who gets miffed at the lack-Spotted Menace on a regular basis and has the power to create anything she wants. (I have to admit, he's got me there. Note to self: being Volpina is drop-dead amazing. Find a way to solve the memory problem first.)
Q: Can do something about the memory problem?
A: Not now, but get Hawk Moth both the Miraculous (that's the plural I'm sticking with) and he'll be powerful enough to make me Volpina whenever I want. Sounds fishy. Sounds like typical supervillain boasting. Sounds like he's stretching the truth. Sounds like lies. I. Know. Liars.
Q: How do I know if you're-
A: Hawk Moth as the ability to cause his akumas massive headaches to make sure that they do whatever he says. Ow. I take it back; being Volpina sucks.
I'll have to cut the conversation off there, future Lila. Sorry, but I thought I saw an annoyingly familiar red shape dart across the window. I'll get back to you after the fight.
Volpina
Dear Diary,
Lila again. You're more level-headed than I thought, Volpina. You don't sound like a crazy villain being mind-controlled by an evil spirit. I mean, you found out that Ladybug isn't invincible, and that's something all of Paris can't see. She's powered by desserts; who knew?
The headache part's a tricky thing to work around. I might need help. Problem is, I don't who can help. I don't know anyone that can stand I chance against Hawk Moth.
Wait. I do. I see her twice a week.
Crap. Crap. Crap. No. No. I'm not doing this. No. I have to do this. Crap. Crap. I really have to. I'm actually going to do this. Craaaaaap.
Sincerely (but oh God, reluctantly),
Lila
Dear Diary,
It's Lila. Researching a way to contact Ladybug. The hero's harder to track down than the villain. I need an expert. I talked to Loserbug's #1 fangirl/reporter, Alya. She doesn't like the way I talk about That One Girl I'm Running out of Nicknames For. I told her a pity story about a helpless girl that's getting tortured by a malicious voice in her head. This was technically true, and nobody would blame me for playing up the drama I'm going through. She says that she goes on 'stakeouts' around the Bourgeois residence to try to catch an akuma kidnapping Chloe. And when there's an akuma, there's Ladybug. Sounds reasonable enough. I tell her I'm in.
Then, I swear by my awesome skin tone, not TEN SECONDS later, the neediest friend in the world shows up: Marinette. A quick flip through this book shows I haven't mentioned her in until this point, so I'll have to bring new readers (i.e. totally creeps who don't even go to my school) up to speed: There are two settings to Marinette Dupain-Cheng: move-over-Chloe-I'm-taking-over-this-school-for-the-good-of-our-grades-mode, and a nervous, spazing, wreck. Alya has made it her personal mission that Marinette gets her crap together and erases the latter part of her personality completely. As a result, Marinette clings to Alya like they share a heart. Oh, and Marinette has a crush on Adrien. Don't tell anyone, or the other half of the planet might find out. I don't really know if Adrien caught on or not, though. It's either that his incorruptible pure powers of nice prevent him from ever fully rejecting a girl, or that he's completely clueless. In either case, it's a stalemate.
I couldn't tell whether this particular case of panic attacks was Adrien-related or not, since Marinette's talking over 300 words per minute. Fortunately for me, Alya speaks fluent nutjob. Unfortunately, she doesn't bother to translate, and I end up listening to only half of the conversation. There is one important part that Alya said, though:
"Sorry homegirl, something just came up with Lila. We're… doing a thing tonight."
Okay, make that two important parts:
"I'm allowed to have other friends than you, Mari. We're still BFFers!"
Marinette slows down. She looks like Alya just told her that she's going to enlope with me. Marinette will live, though. I've been in worse moods myself, and I get assaulted by butterflies to prove it. Come to think of it, I thought then, has Marinette ever been akumaized? Doesn't she have it coming? Don't get the wrong idea, I don't particularly hate the girl or anything. I mean, not that much. But doesn't Marinette have bad days? Scratch that, I've seen Marinette have bad days. I've seen her have outright tantrums. She had argued with Chloe so much, she cried in anger and heartbreak on two separate occasions. Maybe Marinette plays up the way she feels to get attention. Maybe she isn't as hurt by Chloe as she lets on. I mean, after locking horns with Chloe as many times as she has, maybe Marinette's just numb.
But between me and whatever creep's reading this, you know what I've never seen? Marinette being hurt by people she actually likes. I've never seen Alya cancel plans with her. It's a pretty big gamble, but maybe today's the day that Marinette turns into an akuma.
And when there's an akuma, there's Ladybug.
I tell Alya that it's time for a change in bug-tracking. She's all for until she actually hears my plan. Stalking Ladybug and filming her without permission? No problem. Stalking the Mayor's house and hoping that his daughter gets kidnapped? A weekly activity. Stalking Marinette for a single afternoon? Golly gosh, that just feels wrong, Lila!
"You know what else feels wrong, Alya?" I told her. "Spending half your life doing things a criminal wants you to do without even remembering what happened." It was then when I took the guilt tripping a little too far and Alya called me out on it. Or as she put it, 'emotional blackmail.' I decided to play a bit dirty then. I still gave Alya a choice though: Help me with my supervillain problem, or I drop a hint to Chloe that Alya's trespassing private property in the name of blog clicks. I'm a known fibber, but Alya doing something like that is scarily believable. This situation had three outcomes: Chloe calls the police, Chloe buys a few Rottweilers, or we follow Marinette around until she gets akumaized or her mood improves.
We start at three-o-clock when the bell rings. Until then, I'll just have to put up Alya's scowls.
Best of luck to the both of us (but not so much to Marinette, I guess),
Lila
Dear Diary,
Hoooo boy, I did not sign up for this. No, Marinette didn't go full akuma. In fact, the evening was mostly boring. Marinette walks home from school, so at least she's easy to follow on foot. As it turns out, when Alya's not around, Marinette talks to herself for emotional support. At least, it seemed like she was talking in to herself. Fifteen minutes into her monologue, and we picked up that Marinette has an imaginary friend named 'Teekee.' Twenty-five minutes in; Alya noticed by the way Marinette's facing, Teekee's general direction is inside Marinette's purse. So, of course, our eyes focused on the purse. Miss I-Don't-Stalk-People went so far to videotape a zoom-in of the purse. We rewatched the video a few times. The pixels are blurry, but we definitely saw a head popping out every now and then. Seems like Teekee isn't so imaginary. She looks like a crossbreed between an anime mascot and (get this) a bipedal ladybug.
Now, Hawk Moth didn't exactly go into detail on what an all-powerful kwami looks like (or maybe Volpina didn't care to write it down), but when a pocket-sized toy starts talking and it looks like a certain luck-based beetle, you'd have to be oblivious to not know that something supernatural is going on with your classmate.
This is where the teamwork with Alya stops and the arguing begins. She goes full denial. Her reasoning is that she and Marinette share everything, and that Marinette would spill within the hour she first turned into Ladybug. My argument started with the reasons why Ladybug wouldn't reveal her identity to anyone, period. Then, Alya tried to name all the ways that Ladybug and Marinette are different. She tried to put it nicely, but I connected a few dots (heh, pun) and basically, Marinette's an insecure, hot mess while Ladybug's an egomaniac with a messiah complex. (Holy crap, does Marinette moonlight as Ladybug for a self-esteem boost? She does! She totally does! It's so shallow, but it makes so much sense! No wonder Chloe looks up to her.) Anyway, at the side of the page, you can see where I took a minute to write down all the ways I could name off the top of my head that Marinette and Ladybitch could be one in the same. I find it easier to win arguments when you put down all your points at once.
1) Blue hair
2) Identical pigtails
3) Eastern heritage
4) Red earrings
5) Roughly same height (we don't have an exact comparison)
6) We don't have an exact comparison because they're never in the same room at the same time.
7) Roughly same voice (ditto)
8) Red earrings!
9) SHE'S A FASHION DESIGNER AND SHE WEARS RED EARRINGS WITH A PASTEL PINK SHIRT. THAT'S A TERRIBLE CHOICE, ALYA. HOW DO NOT SEE THIS?
Long story short, Alya skipped from denial/bargaining to depression. We've quit following Marinette/most definitely Ladybug ever since we started fighting, and now Alya doesn't have the motivation to catch up with her because the waterworks won't stop. I tried to get her to recover, but I keep getting a slurred rendition of 'How could my best friend 4ever lie to meeeeee?' So yeah, I'm stuck sitting with her behind a bush, filling the massive time gap writing this. TL;DR: Shocking revelations, not much progress on the akuma.
Hold that thought, I see a fluttering black thing in a tree. Problem is, we're nowhere near Marinette, and I'm more frustrated than full-throttle livid right now.
…Oh.
I'll write soon. Lady Wifi has a plan.
Lila
Dear Diary,
Akumas are uncomfortably revealing about the host they're possessing. Lady Wifi's a huge attention whore that's aggressively determined about exposing Ladybug's identity to a creepy extent. Alya and I's little deductive reasoning session won't do, oh no. Lady Wifi wants physical proof, she wants it on camera, and she wants the video to go viral. My little 'get Ladybug's help to defeat Hawkmoth and stop turning into an akuma' plan obviously takes a backseat, but agree to give Lady Wifi a hand anyway.
I mean, this was a vital part of the plan, right? When there's an akuma, there's Ladybug. And besides, if Ladybug's identity gets revealed, that means I can just ask for her help whenever I see Marinette out in the open. I am 500% sure that she'd otherwise find a way to blackmail me into keeping my mouth shut and not help me at all. She's the savoir of all of Paris, save for the people that hit on Adrien. As they say, the truth will set you free.
So yeah, Lady Wifi has this 'fast forward' button on her phone, which lets us have super speed all the way up to Marinette's house. Wifi broke in through the second story window and confronts Marinette doing her pre-calculus homework.
Abridged version of her speech: "Hey, akumaized Alya here, and welcome to an unboxing video of Ladybug's secret identity. Transform, you backstabbing excuse for a friend!"
Hawk Moth's visor went up, and I wasn't exactly in tune with his telepathy this time. But if I were him? I'd be wanting my akuma to fight an untransformed Ladybug instead of having a peek of where she keeps her laundry. He didn't seem to be irritated enough to be causing hit-splitting migraines, though. But who knows? The day's still young.
In the hero's corner, Marinette seemed to be fumbling between 'How did you know?' and 'I don't know what you're talking about; I want my lawyer!' She took notice of me in the room and attempted a distraction.
"What are YOU doing here?" she said with an accusing finger. "Don't tell me you're actually helping an akuma. Wait, you were supposed to be hanging out with Alya earlier. Did you cause this?" She gestured to Lady Wifi. I mean, I sorta did. It was more like I pulled the pin on a grenade that's been live for the past six months.
"Nah," I shrugged off. "I'm just here to talk to Ladybug. I need her help."
Marinette 'Lila can't possibly do good in this world' Dupain-Cheng doesn't believe me for a second, and she verbally expresses it. Meanwhile, Lady Wifi, like most akumas, gets angry and impatient. She started tearing up Marinette's bedroom, looking for her kwami. The akuma must've killed a few of Alya's brain cells, because Marinette was holding her purse suspiciously close to her chest and Lady Wifi wasn't noticing it.
Some of my brain cells must've been compromised too, since in the escalating situation, I decided to take charge without my superpowers. I grab Marinette's arm and head for the roof. We made it about two meters before Wifi showed me how the 'pause' button on her phone works. I was frozen in place, but Marinette was flung forward out the door by the inertia. She scraped her elbows on the concrete. Wifi then spews out another rant about how she can't trust anyone anymore, and how she was going to 'delete' me then. I didn't have the flexibility to turn around, so I was stuck looking outside at Marinette. The look on her face was a mixture of fear and pity. Even when I was about to die and she was out of costume, Ladybug found a way to make me feel humiliated. Ever have your heart try to pound its way out of your chest when you're frozen in time? It kind of hurts.
That's when the miracle happened. "You want a transformation, Lady Wifi? You got one. Tikki, spots on!"
I'm not going to give you the play-by-play of how Ladybug revealed her civilian persona and laid the smack down on her best friend on a livestream video (because, as you know, it's considered a modern historical event now), but I will say that Ladybug doing all that for the sake of life made me feel more proud and guilty at the same time than I ever did in my life. And after that, the three of us talked about… things that I am not willing to discuss at the moment. Too mushy. End results: Alya and Marinette are best fwiendz 5evars again, Marinette and I agreed not to try to get each other angry (the subject of Adrien is still up in the air), Alya's not going to jail for trespassing on Chloe's house, and I am officially a part of the effort to take down Hawk Moth when I'm not Volpina. (Which, in theory, should make me a helpfully less effective and less frequent supervillain. Fingers crossed.)
Sincerely,
Lila
Dear Diary,
Remember when I said that the Adrien subject was yet to be decided. Guess what: He, as he claims, watched the big reveal video for seven hours straight last night, and now he wants to date Ladybug. He also opened this announcement by taking Marinette into a low dip and a kiss.
Effing peachy. Guess who's already in her favorite orange spandex.
With love (and burning hatred in my heart),
Volpina