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Lila comes out on top, as she typically does.
She’s never considered herself as a chess player — though some probably will, considering her general propensity for scheming. She’s not that good at the sort of logic and intense planning that comes with being good at chess — she can think several steps ahead, and she can predict what other people can do, but she doesn’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of strategies.
She prefers to think about herself as a poker player. She takes the hand she’s dealt and uses it.
She comes out on top because she’s always been good at bluffing. It’s the kind of skill that comes easily to her; something innate she’s always kept burning inside her. It’s easy to bluff and dream big.
There are also times when she needs to fold. But folding always has a purpose, in her mind. It gives her more credibility for her later bluffs — she folds here so when she pulls off a bigger bluff, it blows their minds.
Funny how they all seem to discount her. There are probably half a dozen reasons for that, but Lila’s not willing to list all the ways society fails women like her.
Lila has always been fascinated by fire.
She doesn’t want to burn things. She’s not an arsonist; such base desires are beyond her. However, she likes fire as a concept. A lot of it is an illusion — the flames aren’t physical, just projections of heat and light.
She learns about photons and heat and the chemistry in fire later on. It only fascinates her more.
It is all false, but gives the very real destruction a physical form.
She wants to become the fire. She won’t burn anything — she’ll be doing the burning. She is the force of destruction.
The issue with being fire is that it takes a while to burn. She has to be a spark first, build herself up from there.
Candle flames are soft and demur. It’s the first goal — they can easily burn a house down if left unattended, after all.
Sparks.
She is an illusionist; she spins it further. She lets the flame grow and grow.
And if that means consuming everything around her…
Flames are all lies. But they still leave destruction in their wake. It is a quality that Lila admires. Something immaterial manages to wreck and consume and destroy.
She is very much material. Very much physical. Whether she can destroy in the same way has yet to be determined, but she will try.
A few words here, a few words there. She’s never really understood that saying about words never hurting. It’s supposed to be about the immateriality of feelings, about how words are not a weapon that hurt physically.
But Lila’s always known how much immaterial things can hurt. Fire burns, after all, and its appearance is a mere illusion. She’s a liar. She hurts people.
She’s alright with that. She’s alright with hurting some people. She hasn’t found a person she really cares about yet, after all. She has the capacity for caring about things other than herself.
When she was five, she had a pet cat. It was missing a leg, and fairly old, so most five-year-olds wouldn’t have wanted a cat like that. But something in her called for the cat, so Mother got it for her.
She took care of the cat for five years, asking Mother to help her scoop the litter and such. She loved the cat, and cried for some time when it died.
She isn’t entirely lacking empathy. She just hasn’t found a reason to care about anything since that cat.
With the move to Paris comes more reasons to care — she’s never really enjoyed teenage drama before, but she is an outsider in this landscape, and she needs to get a handle on how they all tick. What makes them what they are? Why are they all so…genuine?
Lila has built her entire life around illusions. It is who she has chosen to become — as intangible as the mist.
Perhaps she’s always been the exception in groups. The odd one out, the one that’s different.
But she hungers to be something more.
She realizes quickly who really has the power in this place — not the girl constantly flouting her arrogance. Arrogant people are rarely as important as they claim to be; that’s why she makes sure to check herself. She faces falling apart if she appears too arrogant.
Perhaps being underestimated is a boon, in this case.
They’ll never see her coming.
She’s never liked magic. Or — well, magic in the traditional sense that people mean magic. Sleight of hand tricks, sawing people in half, pulling rabbits out of hats. Illusions that look grand until deconstructed. A practiced enough magician is never fooled.
It’s always felt like a cheap method of illusion, something fake with the only effect being making people smile and laugh. She’s not an entertainer. She’s not built to make people titter with laughter as they try to puzzle together some trick. She is an illusionist in a different sense.
She burns.
She has spent a long time stoking these flames, all building up to this moment.
The only thing that could stop her is, well — someone seeing the fire for what it is. Something immaterial.
Intangible doesn’t mean unable to affect, though. As long as she remains intangible, she can keep moving, keep destroying.
Words can always hurt. She carries them like a weapon and holds them close to her chest like a deck of cards.
She is one of the few people who has a constant awareness of this fact. Other people might know it, sure, but she’s always aware of the way words can tear and destroy.
As intangible as a flame. As destructive as a fire.
Marinette thinks she’s playing chess. But what she’s really doing is gambling with Lila — and the stakes are people’s feelings.
Lila rarely ever loses a gamble. She’ll come out on top. It’s only a matter of time.