Chapter Text
Andrew Gregas was a normal boy with a normal life. At least, it was back when he lived in Raliegh North Carolina. His parents' business had gone international, and they were reassigned to work in Paris. As such, he had to leave all his friends behind at his old school and hope that he can learn enough French in time for whatever new one he's going to be attending.
On the bright side, there has been some... to put it bluntly, horrifying discoveries about a bully in his school who kept telling many lies about the other students in order to have everyone gravitate towards them. One that was in the same classroom Andrew was in. The bully kept saying how other students that didn't like him attacked him out of nowhere, framed them for petty theft, destruction of property and cheating. Many students turned on those he signaled out, doing the same things to the targets that said bully said they did to him, while the staff were either taken in by his lies as well or were too apathetic/scared of what his parents would do to do anything about it. The worst part was that Andrew himself ended up being taken in by the bully's lies.
While he never took up the more violent or destructive behaviors (he's not that kind of person and his parents would have freaked if they found out even if he was), he still didn't do much to stop those assaults unless they got especially out of hand and would jeer them as well every so often. To say that he was mortified and furious when he overheard a threat the bully made when one of his targets threatened to expose him was a massive understatement. Luckily, he had his phone with him and was able to record the latter half of the altercation, but it was only 3 weeks before the end of the school year, so not much could be done to him other than not punishing his victims with anymore suspensions or hours in detention. The only saving grace in Andrew's mind is that maybe him showing the bully's true colors would make him lose all his power over the other students and school staff. Didn't do much to relieve his guilt however, so he personally apologized to each victim even if he hadn't said anything bad to them. He also ran off from each of them afterwards because he felt like he was forcing them to accept his apologies and he felt like he shouldn't be forgiven.
As such, leaving to another country where that guy's influence had very little chance of reaching him in the event that the recording couldn't stop him was the one decent thing Andrew thought would be part of this whole moving away thing. As it is though, it's going to be a nightmare trying to integrate into another country on another continent that didn't know the very language he has been speaking since he first learned how to talk. Though with his newfound knowledge of not immediately trusting those who badmouth other people, it's not like things could get much worse in Paris, right?
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Another lesson he learned is that it can ALWAYS get worse without warning. The same day that his summer break (with so many French lessons that he had little time to enjoy) ended and he set foot at his new school, Collège Françoise Dupont, was the same day that a certain villain started attacking the city with random civilians that he would take control of due to them committing the crime of feeling anything other than happiness, and sometimes even positives emotions failed to keep people safe from this weird brainwashing magic. Even with the heroes who keep rescuing Hawk Moth's victims and repairing all the damage that came from these attacks, it's still become a massive annoyance to him and his parents.
He and his parents have a day off from school and work and want to go someplace nice? Barely at the museum for 5 minutes before having to run and making it out just in time to keep from turning into mummies. Trying to vote for class representative? End up spending half of the day as a black knight trying to overthrow the city's mayor. Try to watch the news? Rarely anything other than the latest battle between Ladybug and Chat Noir against whoever it is that's had their identity reworked this time. It happened at least twice a week at best and sometimes were near daily if not hours apart.
Even in his daily life he has to worry about Akumas everywhere he goes. He runs when he hears anyone shouting and tries to get people to follow suit (which depressingly turned out to be the right call more often than not), repeatedly tries to calm his parents down when work gets too stressful and revoking whatever items they had on them just in case and refusing to wear any extraneous appliances and holding on to as few things as possible so the Akuma couldn't target anything that could be used to turn him into a monster for committing the awful sin of getting angry or sad at things that happen to and around him. Half the time he wished he could just lobotomize himself just to make sure he couldn't feel enough emotions to draw in the person who's been steadily supplying him and the rest of the city with an unneeded phobia of the most docile insect in the world. The fact that he was not alone in how he felt only made it worse. Not like many people like it when others express themselves anyway, even if they're being polite.
As if that weren't enough, one of his school's classes seemed to be a magnet for Hawkmoth and kept getting themselves Akumatized, sometimes multiple times. And when he looked further into it, he found out pretty quickly why and had two cases of Deja Vu at the same time.
First was this girl that looked like a tanned Barbie doll. A voice as annoying as that one villain who kept forcing everyone to listen to songs from little kids shows on loop (damn Hawkmoth, or Shadow Moth now rather for stooping to Akumatizing small kids like that) and a personality just as repugnant as the rest of her. As it turned out, Chloe Bourgeois was the daughter of the mayor of Paris. As such, many times she has abused her father's authority to get away with just about everything. Getting a police officer fired, locking a girl in the bathroom over a picture with a boy who's obviously not into her that way, treating her "best friend" like a slave and outright calling her a minion, exposing an aspiring magician's crush on a boy and ruining his love confession to him, tearing up a letter that a girl wanted to give to Prince Ali, and those were just a small handful of the ones that resulted in her victims getting Akumatized. It happened so much that he wondered if she was working for Shadow Moth until he found out that this girl who's willing to pull a fire alarm and get everyone else punished for it was always like this. Didn't help that she kept getting Akumatized as well over petty crap and later seemed to start flaunting it even before the Akuma makes contact with whatever article of clothing it ends up infecting.
The few times he ran into her were infuriating as well. She constantly barked orders and spat insults at Andrew just like with the rest of the students and staff. At one point, she threatened to use her connections to ruin his parent's business if he gets in her way, saying he'll be deported back to America if that happened. That angered him so much he soon realized he was at risk of being Akumatized, so he fought back every single thought that could end with him blacking and waking up in some other part of Paris with a bunch of video evidence of him acting like some psychotic serial killer. Eventually he gave up fighting his emotions and went with the last resort of turning them against Hawk Moth instead once she finally left, which seemed to work as he only saw a glimpse of the butterfly coming to his general direction before flying elsewhere. Of course, that left him the task of informing the school that a demonic butterfly was loose within, but it's better than the alternative and no one else took his place as a villain that day, so he considered that a win.
Then there was the time where Chloe ended up becoming Queen Bee. He and his parents were going to try to visit the museum again to make up for last time ending so abruptly, only for their train to malfunction and the new "superhero" to come around to "help" them even after they saw her throwing a tantrum on live T.V. a little beforehand in the subway. Then it turned out she paralyzed the driver with her special power, "Venom". To say that his parents and him were shaken up from that was a bit of an understatement, especially with the potential of a new miraculous holder inflicting even more pain than Hawkmoth was already creating. Her becoming Akumatized and being one of the ones stung and petrified by her wasps was nothing more than added weight. He spent the rest of that day trying to calm himself and his parents down before Hawk Moth could Akumatize someone else. To say nothing about how she's likely he one behind that Akuma that brainwashed everyone, or rather the one right before New York was attacked by Hawkmoth and before he changed his name. Not that he could remember much from it other than the same stinging sensation from Queen Wasp.
However, the second one is where the Deja Vu REALLY kicked in. This girl with an orange jacket and red, sausage-like hair had the same aura that he retrospectively found with the bully at his old school. She turned out to be making claims about being friends with many different celebrities and creators all over the world, constantly complain about ailments such as broken bones and allergies and even did the same exact thing to this girl named Marinette who caught on to the constant lies.
This girl, Lila (whose name fits better than any glove could), framed her for assaults, cheating and stolen property, specifically a neckless which he found out later from another boy in class, Adrien (who he recognized due to the magazines and ads he was constantly featured in), was used to try and convince him that she was a descendent a previous user of the Fox Miraculous. All of this got the poor blue haired girl suspended, which would have been a full-on expulsion if Lila hadn't suddenly had a change of heart and make up some sort of garbage about having a lying disease that forces her to make stuff up (which proved that despite the heroes in New York and Paris, the Phantom Thieves of Hearts still don't exist). While he couldn't prove it, Andrew suspected Adrien did something in order to get Lila to lay off hurting Marinette and revoke her expulsion, which was all but confirmed when the red-haired witch started to do modeling shots and commercials with the blond boy (whose eyes looked dead inside in those pictures and ads).
The only difference between Lila and Andrew's incident back in Raliegh was that the class (sans Chloe and her slave, Sabrina) thankfully haven't given into any violent or destructive tendencies despite there being a couple of jocks and a really big and muscular boy in her class and the rest of the school didn't either. Whether it's due to people in Paris or even all of France typically being less violent than in America or if it's the only good byproduct of Shadow Moth's terrorism is something Andrew doesn't even want to mull over. If there's one thing he wished, it was that he had the ability to expose Lila even earlier than he exposed that bully back in America so she could face actual consequences before she actually succeeds in corrupting them. However, since he isn't in the same class and has a vastly different schedule than the one Ms. Bustier has, the likelihood that he'd be able to get lucky in catching her on video like last time is far smaller.
Either way, if there's one thing that he can say about those two girls and Shadow Moth, it would be that they're soulless, just like that bully.
Or maybe they do have souls that would be better off erased due to how impure they are...
'NO! I can't think like that! I'll be no better than them and it'll open me up to Shadow Moth!' Andrew thought to himself. He's one of the few people in the entire school to have yet to be Akumatized and he'd like it to remain that way for as long as possible. He already failed in helping his parents keep their respective streaks going and he did not want to fail a third time. Besides, it keeps him as a suspect for being Chat Noir, who might be in this very school along with Ladybug considering how quickly they tend to show up to Akumas that attack Dupont compared to every other location in the city, even before the pattern of Chloe's spite turned it into Shadow Moth's all-you-can-possess buffet. Not that he truly wants to find out said identities considering the risk that what put them in if his "never Akumatized" streak ended, as well as to himself even if he gets "de-evilized" before he has a chance to blurt them out.
'The last thing I need is for the Barbie and the fibber to break me after all this time' Andrew thought again.
Unfortunately, that's a promise he'll soon end up breaking despite how much he doesn't want to.
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It started a few days after Chloe reportedly tried to ruin soccer (or football now that he's in Europe) for the whole city by being Akumatized into becoming Penalty/Penalteam when he noticed that her and Lila were getting kind of close. Not close as in friends, not close as in dating but close as in conspirators. At lunch, he'd see them with disturbing grins on their faces that screamed to him that they were planning to do something awful. Worse yet, they both hate Marinette and Ladybug, meaning they'll likely do something to get the former Akumatized (ending her streak) and they could sabotage Ladybug, Chat Noir and the rest of the Parisian Superheroes if they're not kept in check. The thought of them torturing a kind and generous girl and helping out that insectoid freak who shows his face about as much as Adrien's horrible father, Gabriel, caused lots of frustration that he quickly had to shut off to prevent the obvious. Even worse, today it looked like Lila was looking right at him followed by Chloe.
'Great... Now they might see me as a threat...' Andrew thought as he tried to sink into his chair. The last thing he needed was for those 2 to start doing to him what they did to Marinette. There is no way that he can battle an emotional manipulator and an executive power abuser at the same time even if they don't deliberately call out for Shadow Moth's power (which he wouldn't put past either of them to do and is 90% sure he's seen Chloe do at least once). Even if he's able to resist Shadow Moth after they're through with him, who knows how badly the two of them can mess up his life, or in Chloe's case, the lives of his parents as well. To him, these two are going to be like those video game enemies that can't be killed instantly kill you if you touch them or get hit by any attack they use. Doesn't help that Chloe has the quintessential slasher smile that he swears is the last thing her victims see before she unhinges her jaw and swallows them whole. He decided that he needs to take initiative in order to keep himself safe from them, or at least minimize the chance that they'll do something to him.
"Guys, could you start escorting me through the halls from here on?" Andrew asked his classmates.
"How come?" A girl with cyan hair dye asked him.
"I think Chloe might be planning something," Andrew answered, "and I think I'm her next target."
"I get Chloe's awful, but why would she have any interest in tearing you down?" A blond-haired boy asked in concern.
"I haven't hidden it well that I've caught on to the true nature of her new partner in crime." Andrew responded pointing to Lila sitting next to Chloe. "I never told you guys this because I know you guys likely won't believe me, but Lila reminds me way too much of a bully back in my hometown that I fell for the lies of. He got me and several other students and staff members to bully and punish anyone who didn't fall in line with him. I trained my perception after I moved in between French classes because I didn't want to be swindled like that again."
"But she's so nice!" A brunette girl with a long pigtail said. The way she said reminded Andrew of the two girls that Lila would always sell her sob stories to in order to get them on her side and have group think do the rest of the work. "She's done so much work for charity and has met so many people! The poor girl is always doing her best even with injuries."
Andrew already knew what was coming. He knew because he was on the other side of the situation. Whether he's the one who started the wall of defense around that jerk or got swept up into the mob, he ended up doing the same thing his classmate, soon to be plural, is currently doing. Part of him wonders if this is his punishment for falling for his lies in the first place. If he trained his perception earlier, he could have stopped it before anything happened. He could have stopped the wrongful detentions and suspensions, stopped the beatings and jeers, stop the bully from turning him and the rest of the school against innocent students that dared to challenge his authority. He could have given him the punishment that he deserved and protected his class and the student body from his manipulations.
Now he's being punished for failing to stop Rayden.
And to make things worse, at least one other person is going to be punished alongside Andrew...
"Yeah! How are we supposed to know you aren't the one trying to do that to her?" Said a boy with green eyes and red dye at the bottom of his otherwise black hair.
"Are you sure you aren't just jealous of her for meeting all those people?" A taller boy in a pink shirt asked. "Besides, what if she's trying to help Chloe change her ways?"
Andrew knew that he couldn't say anything that would get them to change their minds. First impressions of the girl, group think, sunk cost and possibly fear of either her, other students/faculty or Shadow Moth will force them to keep giving her the benefit of the doubt until the bitter end and he knows it. Worse yet, he still hasn't obtained any evidence against Lila. No threats, nothing that connects her to tampering, no way to show them her true nature, and they likely wouldn't accept it if they had a chance not to. And just when things couldn't get any worse...
"Hi there everyone. I just wanted to check in on everyone and see what all the commotion is about."
Lila realized what he was trying to do and is here to reinstate her hold outside of her class. A plan to get rid of him was already put into motion, but she could improvise.
"I'm sorry Lila. Andrew was accusing you of being a manipulative bully and we were trying to reason with him." The pigtailed Brunette told her.
"What!?" Lila yelled before she turned up the water "W-Why Andrew. I thought you wanted to be my friend... Why are you spreading these rumors about me!?"
Andrew could do nothing other than brace himself for the inevitable explosion of accusations that will happen once Lila was done with this song and dance of faux sadness. This is what it felt like to be one of Rayden's victims. He'd be willing to endure this as karmic justice if he didn't already know the two reasons why he needs to find some way to fight back. First is that Lila has already targeted Marinette and Adrien and that she'll ruin both of them if he lets her succeed. The second is that if he doesn't, there's no telling how long it'll be before he no longer has control over his emotions, along with the obvious consequence that'll come with it. But what can he do to fight back? If he backs down, his classmates will never let him stand up again. If he continues to press on, she'll quickly use the dark side of human psychology to turn his class against him. He can't escape or fight back. He's damned no matter what option he picks.
"I was just trying to see if it were possible for Chloe to change! That's why I was over there with her! I told her to flash you a smile in order to let bygones be bygones!" Lila continued.
"See? I told you she was trying to help Chloe turn over a new leaf." The pink shirted boy said.
"Guys, please listen to me!" Andrew begged. There was nothing to do but fight at this point. It's the only option that had a success rate higher than 0%. "Lila reminds me too much of Rayden to ignore. I know we live in a world full of superheroes, but how could Lila meet all these people? How can Lila eat so many different things yet have several types of allergies at once? Why does she never have braces whenever she hurts one of her joints? And final-"
"Why!? Why do you keep accusing me of being like that bully!? Did Marinette put you up to this Andrew? You know she hates me!"
And there it was. Now for the next act...
"I can't believe you Andrew. You can't just call people out like that without evidence!" The cyan haired girl said.
And with that, the group think set in once more.
Andrew was bombarded with the typical accusations of jealousy, conspiring with Marinette to hurt Lila and being the liar in this situation, only egged on further by Lila when she claimed that he was lying about the Rayden incident and used the fact that he hadn't shared it to anyone until this moment as "proof" (which he started cursing himself for not doing so earlier). There were two of them who looked a little uncertain, but one of them looked to stunned and the other was looking at him and Lila like she was trying to choose something between the two of them.
By the end of it, his classmates went off to other tables to cool off, some of them going with Lila to console her. It was only then that Andrew realized that Chloe wasn't at the table anymo-
"Oh, look at that Sabrina! 'Greengas' is all alone at the table! Oh, boo hoo!"
They both planned on this from the moment they both stared at him. And now he has to deal with the slave driver Barbie doll all alone...
"Please... Not now..." Andrew mumbled under his breath.
Then his face was pushed into his lunch tray.
"I will tell you this only once. I own this school." Chloe whispered into Andrew's ear, her left hand keeping his face smooshed into the remains of his lunch. If she wasn't trying to use said lunch to asphyxiate him, Andrew would have seen the contorted look of fury that Chloe had on her "And because I own this school, you're going to do whatever I want you to do. Because if you don't, my daddy will have you expelled. That is if Lila doesn't beat me to the punch. And of course, your parents won't be working in Paris anymore. I might even be able to convince my daddy to get your company booted from France entirely!"
Andrew could barely breath due to his face still being pressed against the ruined food. He's now suffering isolation and physical violence against two soulless girls. One who knows how to corrupt and mold the mind and the other with the city's executive branch in her pocket. The latter is once again threatening his family's line of work as well. At this rate, she might try to force him into becoming her out-of-class version of Sabrina...
'Ladybug... Save me...' Andrew thought to himself, trying not to tear up even if Chloe wouldn't be able to see them anyway. Even Sabrina was having second thoughts about this.
"Um... Chloe... I think he's had enough now." Sabrina worked up the courage to say to the slave driver that claims to be a friend. "He isn't in our class anyway. Mayb-"
"Shut it, Sabrina!" Chloe snapped in a low and demanding voice as she turned her head back to her self-proclaimed minion. " I don't care if he's in our class or not!"
Andrew's thoughts then turned to the other reason he despised Chloe and Lila so much. They don't just hurt him, they hurt other people too. They just keep doing it and always get away with it due to circumstance. That filled him with rage to go along with the sadness from the prior bullying. The thoughts of Rayden only fueled that anger until it threatened to reheat the food currently stuck on his face. For once... Just once...
'Can't these soulless bullies be given a proper punishment!?'
And of course, in a secret room near the top of the Agreste Manor, someone heard his call. Someone who it would have been better if he hadn't answered.
"When the world is against you and your chance at redemption never gets to come forth, what can you do to stand against corruption? As for those who wrong others, it'd be better if those types of people were devoured!"
Shadow Moth, while saying this, energized one of the butterflies in the room, turning it into one of his many Akumas. It then flew towards the open part of the window in search of the one who Shadow Moth will turn into his next puppet.
"Fly away my little Akuma, and evilize his vengeful heart!"
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Chloe had finally pulled her hand away from Andrew's head in order to focus on punishing Sabrina for the crime of showing basic human kindness. Andrew meanwhile was trying his best to reign in his emotions to no avail. Not even trying to turn his emotions against Shadow Moth was working. It was too in the moment. The only reason it worked before was because Chloe left quickly enough for him to focus on Shadow Moth and not be reminded of the real reason he was angry. To add insult to injury, he caught a glimpse of Lila's condescending and triumphant smirk, arm around the pigtailed girl she used as the primary weapon against him minutes before. Said girl was slumped with a gloomy expression that felt off to Andrew. However, he didn't have any time to think on it. Before he could react, the Akuma was already making a beeline straight to him, threatening to thrust him into the same hell that half of Paris had to go through which he so masterfully avoided thus far. All he could do is brace himself and hope he has enough will power to resist like some of the stories he heard.
The Akuma went into a plastic knife he was using. While usually not a very threatening object, when an Akuma changes it, who knows what it can do. Andrew wasn't even given the chance to resist. He immediately succumbed like most people who get Akumatized. His rage and sadness increased to levels which, if it wasn't for the magic of the Akuma, could potentially cause the typical health problems that extreme negative emotions can create. All the while, Andrew listened to the tempting voice of Shadow Moth as he started the process of the deal.
"Soul Eater, I am Shadow Moth. The cruelty of your oppressors threatens to drown you in darkness, along with everyone you care about and the innocent around you. With the power I give to you, you can make them as literally soulless as they act. Anyone you consume the soul of will leave their bodies under your control while their souls power you up. You'll even be able to torture those you have claimed or show them the truth about those who want to do you and your loved ones harm. All I ask for in return... Are Ladybug and Chat Noir's Miraculous. Do we have an agreement?"
"I will consume all the evil in this school... No! The city!" Andrew spoke. His last words before a dark purple ether swallowed up his true identity.