Archive of Our Own ^beta

Life was going great!

Ladybug turned out to be her best friend, Marinette. Her Ladyblog was popping off more than ever before with the new forum system. There was truly nothing else she wanted, for right now at least.

Alya Cessaire felt unstoppable right now. 

It was a dream come true, on top of being a part time superhero, she gets exclusive scoops from Ladybug herself. 

Although Marinette had confided in her, nothing was all roses and sunshine as being the top superhero from preventing a crazed villain hell set on her miraculous. 

If only she could do more to cheer her up and be a better friend.

Opening her laptop for the last time that night, Alya began browsing the forums on the Ladyblog, a sort of new ritual she did recently to unwind after doing hours of homework. The new feature had been a massive hit, thanks to Max, the resident tech genius in her class, and it was always fun scrolling through all of the funny theories on Ladybug’s day job and even fiction of what goes on between Ladybug and Chat Noir at night. Laughable and all in good fun, even if all of it was just plain out wrong, she knows for a fact that Ladybug is a full time student and there wasn’t anything happening between them after dark.  

Well, it was fun until a new forum topic popped up on her home page. 

“Why Ladybug should retire”.

Curious, she clicked to view more. Something she would deeply regret.

Paragraphs long, the forum post kept continuing in impressive, gut wrenching details of just how horrible Ladybug was at her job.

Feeling slightly nauseous, she scrolled down into the comments hoping for something other than this . Those hopes were quickly dashed as an absurd amount of commenters hopped in agreement with the post.

Marinette did not deserve this hate.

Opening up her moderation tab, with a single click, the post along with hundreds of comments disappeared into the void.

Scrolling idly through her phone in full focus mode, she barely noticed her frantic friend, Marinette, tapping her shoulder. 

“Alya!”

.”Huh? Oh it's just you girl. What’s up?”

Slightly concerned, Marinette voiced just how odd Alya had been acting the past couple of days.

“Are you okay? You’ve been acting… differently since we had our talk about my secret .”

“What! No! No, don’t you dare think that telling me that somehow made me feel miserable! I’m always here for you alright?”

“Well, that’s good to hear, but then what else is bugging you? Get it? Bugging? But really though, when are you free?”

Alya rolled her eyes at the pun.

“It really is nothing Mari. Don’t sweat it girl, let's hangout soon alright?”   

They didn’t hangout soon. In fact, they didn’t hangout for a whole week after that conversation, only providing weak excuses.

Alya was simply too busy and running on way too little sleep.

Laying in bed with her laptop open in front of her, she continued to scroll endlessly, sifting through all of the new posts appearing in her home page of the Ladyblog.

After deleting thousands of comments and forum posts, the job was seemingly never ending. Within the next minute, a new hate post will pop up in its place like a hydra.

However, if it's for Marinette, then Alya would do anything to help out her friend.

A knock on her window drew her out of her trance.

“Alya!!! Let me in!”

It was none other than Ladybug in the flesh, pounding on the window with an impatient pout.

Opening the window to let her friend in, Ladybug quickly flew past her and settled on her bed. Still maintaining her pout, she patted the bed next to her, inviting Alya to sit down.

“I called you 9 times over the past hour and you didn’t pick up! You didn’t even respond to the funny cat memes I sent you yesterday or even the day before that! What’s up with you?”

“Oh, um, sorry. My phone ran out of battery and I forgot to charge it,” Alya said as she meekly waved her dead phone.

“Still! What’s up with you over the past week? I had to come up with a whole new plan to confess to Adrien by myself! MYSELF! I don’t think I’ve failed that hard since the scarf!” 

“I’ve been busy. I just lost track of time.”

Eyeing the open laptop beside her, Ladybug quickly grabbed it and started to investigate just what Alya had been up to.

“Wait! Don’t look at those!”

“Is this your ladyblog? Are… all of these deleted by you? Oh- oh my kwami it keeps going. Is this what you’ve been doing this whole time?”

Caught red handed, there was little Alya could do but admit to it. She really didn’t want Marinette to know about the sheer amount of hate people had for Ladybug, but it looks like that was too late now.

“Nggh. Yes.”

“Alya! Why? They are just internet comments, why did you decide to be the police?”

“Well, these comments. They’re hurtful and I really didn’t want you to read them. You’re already under a lot of stress and well, I don’t want you to feel any sadder because you read them. I would ignore them, but it’d just do more harm than any good.” 

“Oh. Alya.”

Drawing her in for a hug, Ladybug squeezed her, touched by her sentiments.

“You really care for me. Listen, Alya. These comments really don’t mean much to me, all I really care about is hanging out with you, so please can you be free again and not be busy?”

“Sure girl.”

Releasing the hug, Ladybug went through the laptop one final time.

“Some of these seem to be actually constructive so don’t go and delete all of them, but… go ahead and nuke some of these too. Ugh, why are they discussing my sizes? Why don’t you ask Max to put in an auto mod system, get rid of all the vulgar ones?”

“Why didn’t I think of that! I could’ve just asked Max to put in a ban list for all hate words and phrases!”

“Right. Well, I’m going to get going Alya. I’m going on a patrol with Chat Noir so I’ll see you at school tomorrow!”

“Wait, when did today become a patrol day for you?”

“Duty calls Alya! Bug out!”