Disclaimer: I don't own ML.
Thanks to The Dimensional Reader, DragoonSensei, yellow 14, Guest and The Keeper of Worlds for your reviews :)
"– rinette! Marinette!"
"Hmm?" Marinette is forcibly yanked out of her thoughts by Alya's snapping fingers in front of her face.
"Finally!" Alya says. "You didn't hear a word of my rant about Mr Alternative News blogger. Man, wherever you were just now, you gotta take me there too."
"I wasn't anywhere. I was just…thinking." About her date with Chat Noir. But Alya doesn't need to know that.
"Mhm. If you say so."
"It looked like you were halfway across the solar system!" Lila says. Why she's here, Marinette has no clue, but either Rose or Juleka or Alix or Mylène had invited her along to their Saturday hangout at the Louvre, and it's not like Marinette and Alya can refuse to include her without getting labelled raging bitches.
"I really am fine," Marinette says. "I've just had a lot on my mind lately."
"Like your crush on Chat Noir," Alix teases. Marinette's cheeks start to boil.
"What? No!" Had someone seen them on their date? No, of course not, the girls already know she's crushing on Chat Noir.
"That's so cute!" Rose says.
"If you two get together, tell me!" Mylène says with a mischievous smile. "I want to be sure I win a bet against Ivan, since our Adrienette one was a bust."
"Mylène! You cheater!" Juleka says. Mylène's cheeks pinken.
"What?" she says. "I just…have inside information."
"I hate you all," Marinette mutters. "And even if I did get together with him – which is not happening –" Lies, but necessary. "– why would I tell anyone? He's a superhero. I'm a civilian. Hawkmoth would love that."
"True, true." Alya raises her hand, like she's going to clutch at her chest, but then aborts that movement and lowers her hand. Marinette resists the urge to smirk, since she's not supposed to know that Alya is Rena Rouge and wearing the Miraculous under her shirt.
"You and Chat Noir would make the cutest couple!" Lila coos. "It sucks that I wasn't here for the Adrienette hype!"
"Does everyone call us that?" Marinette throws her hands in the air. "What are we, fictional characters?"
Before anyone can reply, Rose and Juleka scream. The reason for this becomes apparent when they try to jump away from each other but can't due to literally being attached at the hip, with Rose's pink dress melting into Juleka's black one.
"What the –?" Marinette leaps away from them, immediately scanning her surroundings for any sign of the perpetrator. "Akuma!"
"Where?" Lila immediately leaps behind Alya.
"Alya Césaire!" An orange blur soars off a building and lands in front of Alya. "You think the Ladyblogger can compete with Faux News?"
"Faux – wait, Lars?" Alya's eyes bulge. "Lars Vos? The Alternative News dipshit?"
The orange man – Faux News – snarls at Alya. He's…a fox. Or, to be more accurate, a guy in a fox costume, just like Rena Rouge. Unlike Rena Rouge, however, his orange suit is skin-tight, with a white torso and white down his inner upper arms and thighs. He also has short, chunky black gloves and boots, an orange and white bushy tail that looks like it sprouts out of the back of his suit, thick black rings around his grey eyes, and short fox ears poking out of his pale blond hair. Also unlike a Fox superhero is the lack of flute on his back and, instead of a Miraculous around his neck, there's a little black cravat like a high collar. It's like someone had tried to create a Fox wielder but left out just enough that it feels…wrong.
"You think you're the best just because your little blog's so popular?" Faux News growls.
"Uh, no," Alya says. "I think I'm the best because unlike you, I actually get my own footage. I don't jack it from someone else and then whine that it's shitty quality."
"At least I don't harass people for the fun of it!" Faux News says.
"Harass you? How? All I did was leave a comment asking you to shut the fuck up and stop taking jabs at me for actually doing my job! And at least I post the truth!"
"What the heck did you do to Rose and Juleka?" Marinette demands. Oh, how she wishes she could get away to transform, but she's right next to Alya and Faux News will most definitely notice her trying to slip away.
"I guess they're just such good soulmates that they're joined at the hip," Faux News shrugs.
"You're twisting reality!" Lila gasps. "Faux News! Alternative News!"
Faux News' grin is more like a shark's than a fox's. "Exactly. Whatever I say is true! And I think that little girls such as yourself should be seen and not heard."
Lila opens her mouth to say something else…but no sound escapes her. Her eyes widen and she once again tries to speak but again, she can't. While Faux News is distracted by Lila's predicament, Marinette grabs Alya by the hand and hightails it the hell out of there before he can remember that they exist.
"Marinette!" Alya tries to yank herself free. "You can't – I need to –"
"Césaire!" Faux News bellows. Marinette ducks into the first store she encounters.
"Go and hide!" she hisses to Alya. "I'll go and see if I can find Ladybug and Chat Noir!"
"But what if he gets you?" Alya says, grabbing her upper arms.
"It's not me he's after," Marinette says. "I'll be fine! Just go and hide!"
Alya bites her lip and her eyes flick down to her own chest for a split second. Then she nods and pushes Marinette away before weaving through the racks of clothes in the direction of the changing rooms. Reassured that her best friend is now able to transform and is therefore safe from Faux News' hunt for Alya Césaire, Marinette barrels out of the store and down an alleyway to transform.
"Tikki, spots on!"
"Chat Noir! Down here!"
At the sound of his name, Chat Noir automatically leaps off the rooftop to the street below. Ladybug's waving at him from inside a store, and he takes a quick look around before sprinting inside.
"What the hell kind of an akuma is this?" Chat Noir says as Ladybug shuts the door behind him and beckons him further into the store, away from the windows. "Some guy was barking up a tree! Literally! And a woman tried to talk my ear off about how climate change wasn't real!"
Ladybug snorts. "His name's Faux News and he can warp reality. He attached R – uh, two girls at the hip because they were "soulmates" and he took another's voice because "little girls should be seen and not heard"."
Chat Noir wrinkles his nose. Ick. One of those people.
"It's my fault." Rena Rouge emerges from one of the changing rooms. "He's this Alternative News blogger who I told off for not telling the truth."
"And for taking cheap shots at you," Ladybug says.
"Yeah but –"
"Hey. We talked about this when I found you in here, remember? You're not responsible for his akumatisation. Hawkmoth is. And if he hadn't been targeting you and your blog, you wouldn't have attacked him."
"I still might have," Rena Rouge says. "If he reckons he's a "real journalist", he can't go around telling lies. I mean, saying that you hate cats? All we need is for one person to grab that lie and blow it up, especially because he had no sources!"
"I don't think that's the point right now," Chat Noir says. "How powerful is Faux News? Can he just take our Miraculouses with his powers by making it the truth?"
Ladybug purses her lips. "I'm not sure. And I'm kind of hesitant about finding out. But we can't just sit in here forever."
"He might not be able to just will them to him like that," Rena Rouge says. "Otherwise, Hawkmoth would've made an akuma like that ages ago. Every akuma you've faced with control over something has had to brainwash you, but they still didn't figure out who you were or get you to reveal yourselves. Like Dark Cupid, remember? He totally could've made Chat Noir take the ring off. But he didn't."
"Hmm," Ladybug says. "You know…I think you're on to something. Wait here." She ducks into the changing room and there's a bright flash of pink light as she detransforms. Chat Noir and Rena Rouge exchange awkward grins as Ladybug talks to her kwami in a hushed voice, both very much aware that all they'd have to do is slam the door open to see who's behind the red and black spotted mask, and then Ladybug's once again transformed and is pulling the stall door open.
"Tikki says that part of the Miraculous magic means that we can't compel each other to give them up," Ladybug says. "If we get immobilised or brainwashed into standing still or whatever and they physically take them off us, sure. But an akuma can't force us to take them off ourselves or to reveal our identities if we're transformed. The only one of us who could directly affect a Miraculous is Chat Noir with his Cataclysm, but then it'd take my Miraculous Ladybug to fix it. And Tikki says that the Butterfly can akumatise a Miraculous, but it still can't make that person reveal themselves unless they want to. Hawkmoth's kwami must have told him all this because Rena Rouge is right: he would've made an akuma like this one ages ago if that worked."
"That also means that you can't just Lucky Charm Hawkmoth's Miraculous straight off him," Rena Rouge says. "Aww, man. But that's a relief, knowing that Faux News can't make us give our Miraculouses to him."
"And we also can't be exposed through, say, mind-reading akumas," Ladybug says. "Although there's nothing stopping a brainwashing akuma from forcing us to physically out ourselves by, you know, outright saying who everyone else is or ordering all Miraculous holders to come to them, which is why I'm so insistent that Chat Noir and I don't reveal our identities. It would be bad if Hawkmoth learned who Rena Rouge was, yeah, but figuring out me or Chat Noir would be a disaster."
"My life would be over if Hawkmoth knew who I was." Chat Noir closes his fingers around his ring, as though this is enough to shield it from Hawkmoth's greed. "Now that I've had this taste of freedom…"
"Well, Hawkmoth won't figure out who any of us are," Ladybug says firmly. She rests a hand on his shoulder and squeezes, and soft warmth seems to radiate from her hand through Chat Noir's suit. "Anyway, come on. We have to stop Faux News!"
To find Faux News, all they have to do is follow the trail of sheer chaos throughout the city, from a group of floating men shouting about defying the laws of gravity, to a child who's screaming and running away from a life-size, nightmarish teddy bear.
"This is sick," Ladybug growls once Chat Noir's torn the bear apart with his claws and Rena Rouge is comforting the little girl. "He can make anything a reality and he does that?"
"I told you he was an arse," Rena Rouge says. She pats the girl on the head and directs her to hide in the nearest building, then turns to Ladybug and Chat Noir with her arms crossed. "I just didn't know he was this much of one."
"Ladybug! Chat Noir! Over here!"
Chat Noir whirls around, raising his staff. The speaker is a middle-aged man who's got his phone trained on them and a wicked gleam in his eye.
"That's it!" the man says. "Only the best footage for Faux News!"
"Uh, excuse me?" Rena Rouge says. "Faux – uh, Alternative News is shit. Everyone knows the Ladyblog –"
"Ladyblog? What's the Ladyblog?" the man says. Rena Rouge's eyes widen.
"No," she breathes. She yanks her flute off her back and swipes to extend a little screen out of the end, just like with Chat Noir's baton. "Are you fucking kidding me? That son of a bitch – all that work –"
"What happened?" Ladybug says. A fuming Rena Rouge thrusts her flute out at them to show her search results for the Ladyblog…which is nothing. Well, there's technically one result, but when Chat Noir taps it, it brings up an extremely poor-quality webpage with one pixelated, clearly amateur video. In contrast, when Rena Rouge takes her flute back to search for Faux News and shows Ladybug and Chat Noir again, they're taken to a crisp, professional webpage with scores of posts and videos and comments.
"That – he stole my work!" Rena Rouge's eyes fill with tears. Thankfully, the man nearby doesn't hear, or it would be bye-bye Rena Rouge and her secret identity. "All that effort – I've put so much work in – and he just – he just spoke a few fancy words and now I'm the amateur knock-off! He even stole my superhero look!"
"Hey." Ladybug grabs Rena Rouge by the biceps and squeezes gently. "We'll take care of it, okay? We'll defeat Faux News and the Ladyblog will go back to normal."
"What milady said," Chat Noir agrees. "Like we're gonna let some ugly Rena knock-off win. Hawkmoth deserves our Miraculouses if we lose to this guy."
Rena Rouge snorts and wipes her eyes, even though her mask conceals any traces of tears. "Thanks, guys. I just…god, I can't stand people who steal others' work."
"You hear that?" Chat Noir calls at the recording man. "Faux News is going down like the fake he is!"
The man's jovial smile darkens into a horrific scowl. Before any of them can react, he's scurrying off down the street and around the corner.
"Well," Ladybug says. "I can't say that was the smartest move, but at least now we can find Faux News, assuming that guy's gone to tattle. Let's go!"
Faux News does turn out to be in the next street over, with the tattletale man next to him and at least a hundred other people who don't seem to be affected just yet. Of course, 'don't seem to be' isn't the same as 'aren't', as they demonstrate moments later by turning around and staring straight at the superheroes like one many-headed, many-limbed being.
"Don't worry!" Chat Noir puffs himself up. Time to show Faux News who's boss! "We'll save you –"
"It's them! The criminals!" A woman points at Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Rena Rouge. "They're trying to destroy the mighty Faux News and Hawkmoth!"
"Ah," Rena Rouge says. "When we figured out that he could bend reality, we should have suspected he'd do this."
"Go and spread the word, my loyal fans!" Faux News announces, and half of the crowd around him starts to scatter in all directions. "I bestow the gift of gospel upon you all!"
"Gospel?" Chat Noir scoffs. "This guy's pretty up himself."
"Uh, yeah," Rena Rouge says. "It's not like I just told you that before."
Ladybug frowns. "He's making them go and twist reality to make others believe that we're the bad guys? Does that mean that he can only directly affect his surroundings, and he has to imbue his minions with the power to twist the truth for others?"
"What about the Ladyblog thing, then?" Rena Rouge says.
"With a phone or something connected to the internet, it'd technically be in his surroundings," Ladybug says slowly. "We have to keep him occupied to limit the damage!"
"That's something we can definitely do, milady," Chat Noir grins, then hefts his baton and shakes it to its full length. "Hey, Rena, wanna legally beat the shit out of this guy and not get in any trouble for it?"
"Chat!" Ladybug protests, but even she doesn't say anything when Rena Rouge's eyes start to gleam rather terrifyingly.
"For truth and justice!" Rena Rouge bellows and charges at Faux News, flute ready to strike. She's met with a wall of brainwashed bystanders forming a shield around Faux News, but this doesn't curb her enthusiasm one bit.
"Hey, that should be our catchphrase!" Chat Noir says. Ladybug rolls her eyes while simultaneously taking out two minions at once with a flick of her yo-yo.
"We are not having a catchphrase, you silly cat!" she says.
"Aww but why not?" Chat Noir throws his staff at a minion creeping up on Ladybug, then deftly dodges one behind him, kicks her to the ground by her back, and rolls under another minion's outstretched arms to retrieve his weapon.
"There's too many of them!" Ladybug says. "And Rena's too angry to focus on a proper Mirage!"
"You no-good fake!" Rena Rouge shrieks in the background, inadvertently confirming Ladybug's assessment. "Stop hiding behind your little fans and face me like a proper fox!"
"Rena, take a chill pill!" Chat Noir calls. Naturally, he's ignored. "Okay, uh, maybe it wasn't a good idea to let her take this one?"
"We should've made her sit it out," Ladybug agrees while elbowing a young man in the solar plexus and dropping him like a sack of bricks. "Too personal. I think I'll have to…Lucky Charm!" A little red and black candle falls into her hands.
"We're gonna throw him a party?" Chat Noir says as he ducks to let two minions slam into each other in their haste to grab him.
"No…I can't see what to use it for…" Ladybug frowns and turns on the spot, while Chat Noir covers her from the advancing minions and Rena Rouge continues to wreak havoc in her attempt to get to Faux News.
"Maybe you can smoke signal for help," Chat Noir jokes. Ladybug's eyes widen.
"Of course! I mean, it's not ideal…I'd prefer not to throw them into a battle with no training…but we need a shield!"
"Rock, paper, scissors to see who goes?" Chat Noir says. Ladybug shakes her head.
"Not necessary. I trust you to pick the right ally. I need to stay here and keep Faux News from getting away and turning all of Paris against us…and keep an eye on Rena Rouge. It wouldn't be a problem if she wasn't so angry at this guy."
Chat Noir winces when Rena Rouge bashes someone across the head with her flute. "Totally with you there, milady. I'll be back. Try not to miss me too much!"
"Finally, a break from you!" Ladybug calls at him as he bounds away. He flips her off over his shoulder with a cheerful little smirk, then leaps up to a rooftop and turns his sights in the direction of Master Fu's place.