Chapter 1: A Time For Honesty
Lila didn't get a wink of sleep that night. This was a bad thing, in that she went to school the next morning with dark circles under her eyes and the mental processing speed of a smashed laptop a decade out of date. But it was a good thing, too, in that she had hours of uninterrupted moping with which to replay the day's events in her head and sort out her thoughts.
It was the first day of attending her new school in Paris, and somewhere along the line, she'd decided she needed to make the best impression possible. So what if she was… exaggerating things a bit? Sure, she didn't have a line to Steven Spielberg and hadn't walked the red carpet, but she'd been to Hollywood. Sure, there wasn't a song written for her by Jagged Stone, but she'd attended several concerts by now and had an autograph. Sure, her father wasn't an important diplomat, but his job did require him to move a lot, all over Europe and America... Except this was apparently the last move.
"To Paris?" She'd asked, when he'd broached the topic. That hadn't been unexpected, but the idea of settling down there for a much longer term than the usual four to six months was. That and… "Isn't that kind of dangerous?" They'd seen the news reports lately, how actual supervillains and monsters had begun showing up, wreaking havoc in the city before being stopped by some magical superhero called Ladybug. Sure, it seemed the mysterious woman was able to set things right each time, but the idea of moving into the center of all that chaos put Lila on edge. Dad was adamant he wouldn't let anything happen to her, though, and two weeks later they were on the plane to France.
So she decided to make her inconsistent childhood into a strength, something to make her seem more… interesting. Getting lost in strange new places became grand adventures. At first, she'd started small, but the more she talked, the more she got swept up in her own stories, and the more wildly she projected. Yet it was all done with a sort of suave confidence that left everyone unwilling to doubt the authenticity of her stories. And frankly, she had no regrets about that. It was working, people liked her and wanted to hear more from her, and nobody was getting hurt, so as far as Lila was concerned, even now, she'd done nothing wrong.
Then Adrien had arrived, a beautiful boy with just the right mix of good looks and genuinely charming attitude, and it was… perhaps not love, but certainly infatuation, at first sight. For a liar, she could at least be honest with herself about that. So she'd claimed to be best friends with Ladybug, but so what? Plenty of people already did, including that obnoxious blonde girl who threw around her last name like a medieval knight with a flail. Even if the superhero knew, Lila figured she was probably used to it by now.
Well, apparently not. After school, at the park, while Lila was in the midst of claiming to have an even more powerful superhero for her grandmother, (In hindsight, Lila supposed that one was stretching things a bit, even with that book she'd 'borrowed' as backup.) the spotted superheroine had shown up in person, acting snide and humiliating her. Lila's mood had calmed over the course of the evening, but replaying that moment in her head still made the italian girl's blood boil. What gave her the right? Why would she let slide so many other fraudulent claims of friendship, but target Lila specifically? Did she have something against Italy or something? It made no sense, and it made her angry.
After that… after that was where the guilt started. Her memories became blurry here, beyond the image of a black and violet butterfly, and vague impressions of the color orange, but she'd been filled in by others - something had happened to turn her into yet another supervillain like the other ones that had plagued Paris for the past year. This time was different, though, the self-proclaimed Volpina posing as a hero and then using illusions to spread Ladybug and Chat Noir thin and upset their trust. She'd spread panic with visions of a burning comet approaching the Louvre, and then later by making everyone believe an apartment building was about to collapse, before finally threatening to throw an illusory Adrien off of the Eiffel Tower.
Nobody had gotten injured, she'd been reassured, but Lila knew that didn't mean nobody was hurt by the incident. She couldn't bring herself to feel sorry for what she'd put Ladybug through, but she was deeply sorry about the rest.
And despite what everyone else said, she couldn't just blame all of that on Volpina and move on with her life. She was Volpina, memory notwithstanding; her lies from that morning becoming the basis of her illusions as surely as the illustration from the book resembled the foxy orange supervillain she saw from hastily-recorded footage.
She didn't regret her stories. She didn't see how she could be even remotely at fault for Ladybug's decidedly unheroic behavior at the park. But she did regret Volpina, and she knew she had to come clean.
And so here she was, hesitating halfway into the door and staring at the classroom. Yesterday, she'd all but pushed her way in between Adrien and his friend with the baseball hat, but today she knew she'd have to find a better seating arrangement. But of course, the teacher had yet to arrive, and there was something else she had to do first.
"Hey, everyone?" She said from the door, not quite quietly but not quite loudly either. It had the desired effect, though, with fourteen sets of eyes turning to her with various degrees of curiosity. She'd be lying (ha!) to claim not to be intimidated, but after the initial panic, she put on a more confident not-quite smile and raised her stance. Telling the truth couldn't be that much different from ly- er, stretching it, she figured; they were all just words in the end. So with that in mind, she was able to keep her voice steady and expression open yet somewhat remorseful. "I have some confessions to make. I… do move a lot, but my dad's not a diplomat. I've never talked to Steven Spielberg. I don't have a Jagged Stone song written for me. I haven't met Prince Ali, and I haven't set any sort of fashion trends back in Italy. And… I am definitely not friends with Ladybug." She tried to keep the venom out of her voice during that last part, but she saw a few students give her momentary frowns. "And I… was Volpina yesterday afternoon. I'm not a hero, just a fraud." It was perhaps too easy to keep her voice steady there, but she really didn't want to be dramatic or play the "Oh look at me I'm sooo sorry for what I've done so you have to accept me" card. She just wanted to make amends. "So with that in mind, I hope you'll still… tolerate me. That's all."
There was an awkward silence. A chubby girl with a multicolored hairdo and bandanna clapped briefly. Others just nodded. After a few moments, everyone turned back to their own conversations.
Lila blinked. What was that? I mean, I didn't want to make a big deal out of this, but this isn't what I had in mind. Do they hate me? Do they not-
"Here, Lila, you can sit with us." The italian girl's train of thought was interrupted as a girl in the second row scooted to the middle of her bench, leaving a small space by the aisle. Lila briefly considered refusing, as there was more space by the abnormally bulky boy with the crossbones t-shirt, or the shy-looking redhead behind him, but after a moment, she found herself settling in the proffered seat.
"Thank you very much… uh," She still hadn't properly attached any names to faces with her new class, but she was completely blanking on the blue-haired girl beside her. It was like she'd been avoiding even acknowledging the newcomer yesterday, yet now she was offering her a seat. Weird.
"Marinette Dupain-Cheng," her unexpected benefactor introduced herself, "And this is my best friend."
"Alya Cesaire," said friend interjected, looking reluctant about the seating arrangement but still awkwardly reaching around to shake Lila's hand. "It seems we've all gotten off on the wrong foot, but it's nice to meet you. Just try to be more honest from now on; I know it must have been nerve-wracking to move to a new school, but dishonesty is the enemy of journalism."
Lila blinked, confusion only growing. "And you're not mad or worried about the part where I turned into a fake hero and spent all afternoon leading Ladyb- er, Paris's heroes on a wild chase?"
Alya gave a good-natured but hearty guffaw, while Marinette put on a strangely apologetic expression. "Please!" The dark-skinned girl laughed, "For whatever reason, this class has had the most Akumatized victims from this past year than any other in the school. I was Lady Wifi," she gestured to herself, then gestured at other students. "Ivan there was Stoneheart, tried to kidnap Mylene and smash the whole town to dust. Juleka there became Reflekta, and turned nearly everyone into pink floofy copies until Ladybug stepped in. Alix was Timebreaker, making people disappear and traveling back in time just to fix a family heirloom that got broken. Marinette… Well, Marinette and Adrien haven't done anything yet, but still." Alya's expression became serious, yet oddly comforting. "Nobody here is about to hold what happened yesterday over your head. You're in good company."
Marinette simply smiled, and Lila felt her face go warm. It was strange, she felt, but it was oddly comforting to know that she wasn't alone in this guilt, and that Ladybug was able to save all of these people.
Which made her behavior yesterday make even less sense, Lila was reminded, but she buried the sudden spike of anger. She wasn't about to let her grudge go, but it was clear that the whole city had good reason to be thankful to the hero, so she wasn't about to alienate herself by telling them all what she really thought.
Anyway. "Thank you," Lila said, returning to the topic at hand. "I'm… thank you both." It really was touching that even after all the outrageous claims she'd made, and the whole Volpina thing, that they all seemed willing to look past that.
"Oh, teacher's coming!" Marinette suddenly froze up and turned forward, and Alya fumbled to conceal her phone beneath the desk. Class was beginning, so Lila focused on unpacking her own books and notes.
The morning moved slowly as always, Marinette half-dozing while scratching down the occasional phrase or name from the lecture, mind wandering. The girl beside her, still guarded but seeming less… conniving than yesterday. Her hostility towards Ladybug wasn't as well-concealed as she probably thought it was, but Alya, infamously defensive about the spotted heroine, hadn't confronted her over it. It was odd, to contrast the newcomer's angry expression after being freed from Volpina against her perfectly amiable attitude now. Of course she had no way of knowing that Marinette was the same person, but that didn't stop the twinges of lingering resentment and guilt in the bluenette's heart. Still, the fact that Lila had owned up to her dishonesty had gone a long way towards clearing up the former feeling, so perhaps this wouldn't be as bad as she'd thought.
Her thoughts also meandered in the direction of what had happened yesterday afternoon, after the whole mess with Volpina had ended. The close call with Adrien that still made her blush, and a certain meeting that had answered a lot of questions yet left her with a fresh set of questions in exchange. There was just no winning, it seemed.
But soon enough, the bell rang to signal lunch break, and Marinette was heading back to her parent's bakery and home. "You were right, Tikki."
The red Kwami in question poked her head out of Marinette's bag with an uncharacteristically egotistical expression. "As always. But what am I right about?"
"That Lila doesn't know about me and… you know…" She hesitated to say Ladybug, glancing about for potential eavesdroppers. "Maybe if I can befriend her, I can bring her around while making up for what happened yesterday."
"Just be careful," Tikki responded, "that you're not befriending her for the wrong reasons."
Marinette looked down at her bag, confused and hurt. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"I'm not saying that that's what you're doing," Tikki backpedaled, "Just that you want to be sure that you're befriending her for her, too, and not just because you feel bad. Anyway, I'm sure you know what you're doing, and-"
She pulled herself back into the bag just in time, as someone stepped out of the bakery and right into Marinette's path. "You'll regret this!" The burly man yelled, raising a fist in anger. "'Not even food' my ass." He shoved past Marinette rudely, and she only caught a glimpse of his bleached porcupine-spiked hairdo and earrings before he stalked away around the corner.
Marinette sighed and walked past her home entirely, tucking herself behind a pillar. Just as expected, only a minute later, the ground began to rumble as a massive bellow echoed across the city.
"WE'RE TAKING THE BUS TO FLAVORTOWN!"
"Spots on, Tikki," Marinette sighed, trying to ignore her rumbling stomach. "Let's get this one over with quickly."
Ten points if you can guess the name of the Akumatized fellow. ;)
So this chapter was mostly serious, but it was mainly to set up my interpretation of Lila and establish some things, but the next few chapters will be a bit more relaxed/humorous in tone. I don't have a strict plan for where this will end up, per say, but I have a few ideas. Shenanigans await.
I also wrote this as a way to get my view of Lila out there. I mean, I actually will be taking her in a different direction than I expect her to go when Season 2 comes (I feel Akuma!Volpina will be making a few repeat appearances as Hawkmoth will press the advantage of having a villain who actually aims to screw Ladybug over) but still. I've seen some different reactions to the Volpina episode, and a lot of people seem to either love Lila and view her as a blameless woobie, or hate her and say that she makes Chloe look like an angel by comparison.
Personally, I fall somewhere in the middle - stealing and then throwing away that book was definitely not cool of her, and I don't think she's the type to regret her self-aggrandizing, but she's still not on Chloe's level of horribleness, and she's not completely unjustified in taking issue with Ladybug's behavior in the park. Above all, I think she's interesting and shows a lot of potential to upset the LadyNoirMariAdrien dynamic in compelling and entertaining ways.
Also, the Volpina outfit is cool. I'll admit that that's a factor.