Cataclysm

Still a hero

The fire department's trucks and people were outside her house, after a long night of making sure no fire would spread and the danger was gone. Lila hugged her mother, who came back after hearing about what happened to her house from a colleague. Her daughter apparently spent hours alone on a destroyed house after an explosion took most of her room out, not calling for help and not wanting to move from the couch on the living room. Mdme. Rossi decided she needed to have a long talk with her daughter about safety and proper protocols for such situations.

Lila, after finally looking at what was left of her room once people arrived at the scene, woke up from her shocked state. The first thing she did was mentally scold herself for her stupid reaction to the whole thing. She was extremely scared, yes, but she should have used her free hours to plan what was best to do from now on. Now it was morning and her mother left again, leaving one of her employees to prepare her breakfast on the kitchen below. School would start in a couple hours but she had, for the first time actually, a pretty good excuse to not go.

Lila sat alone on the border of what was her room, legs hanging down to the guest room below. She started laughing, softly first then louder and louder. The person in the kitchen did his best to ignore it.

''So this is how it's gonna be, huh?'' She uttered after she calmed down.

Chat Noir had attacked her on her own home, for no apparent reason. Ladybug came in just in time to prevent what she was sure was a deadly blow. Lila was used to having some enemies, she wasn't stupid, her lies weren't always perfect and some people didn't even like the persona she put up for them in the first place. Most of those people suffered under her control of the crowds and the situations, but some retaliated.

When she was ten, a girl discovered she was lying and decided to confront her in front of everyone, when that failed she hit her head with a bat. Lila remembered this fondly, as it was the first time she had an enemy made not from her own failure to become the most charming person in the room, but because the girl in question was a paranoid idiot that decided to fact check her lies for some reason.

Now Lila was more prepared, usually. She had backup excuses and reasons for possible rebuttals of anything she said in public. Normally nobody bothered to go beyond confronting her anymore. Except for Marinette Dupain-Cheng, who, for what was still a mystery to her, refused to believe anything Lila said since they met. A pity really, Lila could use a friend who was good at designing clothes and had a bakery.

But now it was not about friendships, reputation or free stuff. Her life was threatened again, and she had no idea why. The confusion was in part why she was paralyzed for hours that night, but she had to be honest for a change and admit that the experience was the scariest of her life so far. She was terrified. A monster entered her room, and without words of warning, almost made her disappear like half her house did.

The monster was Chat Noir, she was certain of that at least. They were similar in some aspects, and Ladybugs presence confirmed it. Lila got up and kicked a destroyed piece of unrecognizable furniture down the hole in her bedroom. The wood splitting as it crashed on the bottom was satisfying, but instead of calming her down she wanted to kick some more. So she did, getting more frustrated as she continued. Then she called a name.

''Hawkmoth!''

-*-

Gabriel Agreste's week long headache was getting worse. He thought it was his normal workaholic migraine, but even that one subdued when he took proper measures to relax a bit. The last couple of days, he had to make an even bigger effort to be away from people, their emotions invading him in waves when anyone was near. Now they didn't even need to be in the same room. He could not just feel the strongest of emotions that would be perfect for an akuma, now everything came in, all the distress, the joy, the anger, everything mixed in Gabriel's soul. It was like the people of Paris entered a blender, came out as a nice juice of humanity and he just drank it, not being able to stop tasting it ever since.