The old man paused in the subway station, looking at his phone. Consarn it, his grandkids had insisted that he start carrying this thing around, but he really just could not figure the durn thing out, to his complete frustration. He had only had it a few days, and already there was a box popping up on the screen over the interweb page he had been looking at, in big, red, scary flashing letters:
WARNING! 47 viruses found! Install HACK BLASTER 3700 now for fix you phone!
Well, that sounded serious. Quickly, he tapped "yes".
Then cried out in surprise as he looked up just in time to see a young lady popping out of the station monitors in a burst of bright static electricity. She hovered above the ground in a form-fitting suit of black and white latex, a glowing Wi-Fi signal on her chest, glancing at them with malignant, unnatural purple eyes. Laughing, she brandished a cellphone at the crowded station, then began flinging pink symbols at them in rapid staccato, freezing person after person before they could even begin to flee.
The old man wondered briefly if his grandkids knew there was an app that could do this. But only for a moment, before a pink circle hit him too and his world went still. The phone slipped from his hand.
"Whoops!" Lady Wifi zipped forward, grabbing it seconds before it could hit the concrete and shatter. She grabbed a bag off of a frozen passenger, and dropped the device inside. Then began zipping around the subway station, stealing phone after phone from the frozen pedestrians.
As fast as she was, it only took a handful of minutes to collect nearly forty phones that way. With a last evil smirk, she jumped back into the station monitors, feeling herself convert effortlessly into electricity and data, and pulling to take the bag of stolen phones with her.
When she broke out again, feeling the returning weightiness of flesh and bone, she was back in the empty hotel restaurant, looking at rows upon rows of tables with pristine white tablecloths. Hurriedly, she began spreading the phones out. Her little distraction wouldn't keep Ladybug and Chat Noir busy for long.
She could hear them coming! Even more than mere human senses, she was plugged into every electronic device in this building, could feel them humming along in the back of her mind. A security camera was picking them up running into the hallway just outside, a microphone hearing snarky banter and flirtatious puns being exchanged. Quickly, she flung a few more phones onto the last few tables, hoping it would be enough. Then she dove into the nearest one, ready to do battle.
On one of the tables, a cheap-looking phone, one of the simplified kind made specifically for old people, finished downloading a new program in the background. As the doors to the dining room opened, it began to scan the device's memory, searching for contact information, credit cards, bank details. Simple objectives: find, steal, destroy, delete. Only to have its processes interrupted as the supervillainess passed through it, laughing, preparing to strike.
.:|:.
Roughly seven minutes later, Lady Wifi's phone was thrown onto a concrete rooftop, and shattered. As it did, and an akuma slipped free from between jagged veins of glass, Alya began to blink away, struggling to think. She watched in a daze as Ladybug, standing right in front of her, captured the akuma in one swing of her yoyo, spinning it around and purifying the last of the darkness from Alya's mind. "Wh-what…" she murmured, trying to remember how she had gotten up here, on this rooftop so high above the ground.
"Bien Joue," the two superheroes said with routine smiles, bumping fists as a white butterfly flapped away from them as fast as it could possibly go.
Alya shook her head, suddenly coming to. "Ladybug? Wow!" she cried, hopping to her feet. "And Chat Noir! Can I film you for my blog? Let me just grab my phone!" Her words were coming out in an excited rush as she scooped up the device, eyes wide with excitement. She still didn't know what she was doing up here, but the heroes were right in front of her! She vaguely remembered being angry at Ladybug, but now, it seemed so silly that she couldn't understand it. Of course Ladybug could never have been as petty a person as Chloe was. Ladybug was brave, and selfless, and strong, and amazing, and-
And gone? She whirled around to find both of them disappeared. Oh… Of course. The longer she stood here, the more she could think clearly. Ladybug had just used her Miraculous Ladybug. She was going to detransform soon, and had to run off like usual. "That's fine," she said to herself, looking down. "I can just… get myself off this rooftop. Somehow." She pulled on the door leading to the stairs, but like most rooftop doors, it automatically locked at night, had clicked shut the moment the two superheroes had disappeared behind it.
She sighed, walking over to the railing. Not a big deal. The Wi-fi pole was right above her, fixed as good as new by Ladybug's superpower, and so was her phone. She just had to call the hotel, and have them come and let her back in. It was just a minor inconvenience, something not even worth being irritated about compared to…
Her phone was buzzing. Apparently people were messaging the Ladyblog, with a lot of excitement, exclamation marks and capitol letters. She opened up the notifications, scrolling through the tips and photos pouring in. Of course… She couldn't remember it at all. But she had been the villain this time, hadn't she? Lady Wi-fi, apparently. Her picture was everywhere.
She felt her face heating up. She was still going to update the blog, of course. Her audience would be expecting it. She couldn't make an exception this time just because it was embarrassing. Still, though… She thought she would wait, to vlog about this. She didn't want to think about it right now, seeing a bunch of people tomorrow, having them all know what she had done tonight.
Like her classmates. So far, only Nino and Ivan had been akumatized. She remembered reporting on it, eager to show footage from the source. She hadn't even really thought, at the time, about how it might feel to them, having everything broadcast when they hadn't really been in control of their actions completely. Nino seemed to have mostly laughed it all off, but Ivan had been teased pretty badly, hadn't he? She gripped her phone for a moment, having doubts about how she was doing this, about if maybe she should be handling this more like-
Static electricity. Or something. A zap, and an arc of blue energy between Alya's thumb and the screen it was touching. The phone went dark.
"No, no, no, no, no!" she said frantically, holding it up to the moonlight to better see. It could not be breaking down just when she was stranded on a rooftop. Silently praying in her head, she held down the power button, praying for it to turn back on.
After a moment, it did. She swiped in her security pattern, breathing a sigh of relief when the brand logo flashed across the screen. Only to frown when she saw her home screen. Where had all of these apps come from? They hadn't been there just a moment ago, and she definitely hadn't installed them. A notification popped up on her screen in broken French, then another, and another, and-
She switched her phone into airplane mode immediately. Then groaned and leaned against the railing, sinking her head into her hands. "I need this night to be over already."
With her eyes closed, she didn't notice the way her fingers flickered over her face for a moment, pixellating and shifting erratically before settling back to normal.