The Wavering Peahen
is a Miraculous Ladybug fanfic by quicksilversquared.
After Gabriel repaired the Peacock Miraculous using the translated grimoire he stole from the Guardian and Nathalie resumed supporting him as Mayura, her symptoms went away for a while but eventually returned. Unsure of whether Nathalie was just developing an unrelated illness or if the Peacock Miraculous was not in fact fixed, Gabriel decided to run an experiment. He gave the Peacock Miraculous to Lila Rossi and told her to act as his assistant. If the Miraculous was fixed, then Lila could help him defeat Ladybug and Chat Noir at last, and if it wasn't and she got sick or died, he lost nothing he cared about.
Unfortunately, he failed to consider the depths of Lila Rossi's ambition, or that she might want to keep her new power so badly that she would lie to him about any strange symptoms which she began experiencing. Just as unfortunately, Lila failed to consider Hawkmoth's potential ulterior motives in giving her power. And as their gambits collide against each other, they may just provide the heroes an opening to stop all of the villains for good.
- Artistic License – Law: Lila's sentence of 50 years in prison wouldn't be possible in France, which has a hard limit of 30 years for juvenile sentences.
- …But He Sounds Handsome: Lila tries to praise her villainous Secret Identity to everyone willing to listen. No one shares her opinion, in fact considering Pavona incredibly incompetent.
- Classified Information:
- After news breaks that Pavona is in police custody, the authorities are hesitant to release her identity to the public because she's a minor. Her father additionally tries to invoke this by using his connections (which, unlike Lila's, are very real) to pressure the police to keep this information under wraps. Ladybug and Chat Noir are not impressed, since Lila aided Hawk Moth willingly and doesn't deserve to be remembered as a nice girl who suddenly got sick and vanished one day. So they "accidentally" let slip to Gabriel why Lila suddenly collapsed, which infuriates him so much he publicly reveals who she was at the first opportunity.
- Played with when the police initally refuse to explain why Gabriel Agreste and Nathalie Sancoeur were arrested. Given the superheroes were involved and it all went down in a public place where lots of people could see Carapace waving a certain butterfly-shaped pin around, the public easily realizes exactly what happened. It doesn't take long for the authorities to realize there's no point in pretending to keep the truth a secret.
- Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Every time Hawkmoth is forced to enter the field to bail Pavona out, the latter complains that she really had the heroes against the ropes even though they were always close to beating her.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- This is the result any time Pavona tries to attack Ladybug and Chat Noir head-on, largely because she's an inept combatant going up against experienced, battle-tested heroes. The only thing that gives her anything approaching a chance is her Miraculous, but her Lack of Imagination prevents her from using its powers effectively, and the heroes easily destroy every Sentimonster she creates.
- This is how Gabriel is dealt with once the heroes learn his identity. Chat Noir and Ladybug quietly coordinate with the police to set up an ambush and bring Carapace and Rena Rouge in as backup to tip the scales even more in their favor. Gabriel doesn't even have time to realize what's happening before he's tied up in Ladybug's yo-yo and the heroes have snatched his Miraculous, while Nathalie is knocked down by Chat's staff and easily restrained.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Hawkmoth gave the Peacock Miraculous to Lila expecting to test whether it was actually fixed or not. He didn't consider how stubborn, ambitious or petty Lila could be.
- Lila uses the Peacock Miraculous with abandon, treating it as a way to get her petty revenge on Marinette and Ladybug, never realizing her sickness is getting worse the more she uses the Miraculous.
- She also keeps the same Cool, but Inefficient dress from her initial appearance, even as it becomes obvious it hinders her (already non-existant) fighting skills.
- Dramatic Irony:
- Marinette is not impressed with Lila's "recovered photos" of herself posing with various celebrities and tells Lila she's not going to buy her lies just because she's learned to use Photoshop, unaware that Lila actually abused the Peacock Miraculous to stage those photos with Sentimonsters. She realizes what really happened after recovering the Peacock Miraculous and learning that Lila must have been using it heavily and recently to push herself over the edge into a coma, which flips the irony around on Lila — her abuse of the Miraculous to bolster her lies was ultimately hastening her downfall.
- After learning that Gabriel is Hawk Moth and Nathalie was Mayura, Ladybug notices that, while he's clearly doing his best to stay focused, Chat Noir keeps making odd faces and seems a little off-kilter, though she chalks this up to the situation in general being a bit overwhelming. The reader will know that this is because Chat is Adrien and is internally reeling from the revelation that his father is the supervillain he's about to help send to prison.
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- Hawkmoth giving the Peacock Miraculous to Lila to test if it's fixed leads to his downfall.
- Played for Laughs when Lila comments on how "nice" Pavona's outfit is compared to Ladybug's, expecting Alya will write a piece panning the latter's costume and praising the villains' fashion sense. Instead, Alya writes on how the villains' "form over function" style, compared to the heroes' "function over form", proves the latter are smarter.
- Lila decides to make her lies "real" by creating Sentimonsters of the famous people she's claimed to have met and making photos of them all, just so she can show off to her classmates at a picnic. The overuse of the Miraculous causes her to fall in a coma during the picnic - which allows Marinette to find the Miraculous.
- Implausible Deniability: When Gabriel is arrested by the heroes, he attempts to claim that the Butterfly Miraculous is just a family relic, even though he knows the heroes can recognize it.
- Information Wants to Be Free: Inverted and downplayed. The police are leery about the idea of revealing Pavona's identity to the public because she's a minor, and Lila's father uses his influence to try and keep her involvement with Hawk Moth under wraps. Ladybug and Chat Noir decide this isn't fair because Lila actively chose to be a supervillain and most people still think of her as a nice girl, which she clearly doesn't deserve. They engineer a leak by talking about what Lila was using the Peacock for within earshot of Gabriel, who furiously takes it upon himself to publicly reveal Pavona's secret identity.
- In-Universe Catharsis: Once Pavona makes her debut and proves to be extremely incompetent, Paris gets a lot of amusement from watching Ladybug and Chat Noir beat the supervillain up every time she makes an ill-thought-out attempt to attack them.
- Lack of Imagination: Lila proves to be a terrible wielder of the Peacock Miraculous because she can't come up with any good sentimonsters. She usually ends up just akumatizing random trash or rubble from the akuma fight, and the monsters are never able to meaningfully contribute.
- Lazy Bum: Lila is completely unwilling to make the effort to learn how to fight even after she (very reluctantly) admits she doesn't have the skills.
- Moral Dilemma: The heroes run into one when they're trying to figure out how to deal with the magical damage inflicted by the broken Peacock Miraculous, which can only be healed by wearing said Miraculous for an extended period of time. They don't want Lila or Nathalie to have to live with that lingering damage if they can help it, but they can't ignore the risk that one or both would use the Miraculous to escape custody given the chance.* The heroes eventually take a middle ground of healing Lila as much as they can within safe limits by pulling her out of her coma, but then removing the Miraculous and halting the healing process once she's capable of trying to use it because she's soundly proven how untrustworthy she is.
- Never My Fault: Even after Lila is convicted and sentenced to decades in jail for willingly supporting Hawkmoth's terrorism, she blames Hawkmoth (for giving her the broken Miraculous) and Ladybug (for opposing her), but never considers blaming herself.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Duusu does this when being used by Lila, constantly needling her with inane questions and prattling.
- Properly Paranoid: Master Fu was this when he wrote down the translation on how to fix a broken Miraculous - he intentionally changed one step so that the repair would only be temporary, in case something happened and it fell in bad hands.
- Smug Snake: Lila thinks herself superior to Mayura, only to be slammed once and again with the fact that she's so incompetent the heroes actually prefer having her around since she's so easy to beat down. Not that she learns.
- Spanner in the Works: Ladybug and Chat Noir are very careful to ensure the police and media don't release any information that might tip Gabriel and Nathalie off to Lila's collapse at the picnic and by extension, their trap. They overlooked that the school would send out an email to the parents of students, since some relevant events took place during a school activity. Subverted when, fortunately, the recipient brushes the email off as unimportant and leaves it unread.
- Surprise Witness: Lila manages to introduce some doubt at her trial by successfully arguing that Hawkmoth's incriminating tapes of her could have been made with a Lila sentimonster. Unfortunately, Ladybug just brings in Duusu to testify directly, and the kwami's testimony of Lila's direct complicity sinks her chances in court.
- Tested on Humans: Gabriel's method for seeing if the Peacock Miraculous is truly safe? Having Lila using it and seeing if she gets sick, falls into a coma, or dies.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: While staging her "celebrity photos," Lila feels no qualms about destroying her own celebrity-lookalike creations as soon as she's done with them. This continues even as they improve to the point where they clearly recognize she's about to get rid of them and beg her not to, which Lila regards as nothing more than a mild annoyance.
