Finally, the exciting conclusion! What did I come up with this time? Well, for once I regret I couldn't figure out how to have Lila and Marinette make out on Adrien's desk… Just imagine the following day Lila talked Marinette into it and Adrien's scream was heard all the way to the bakery, ok?

Day 7: Free for All!

In the months since she had overcome her paranoia about lynching mobs and stopped hiding in her room to start seeing if Paris would finally have a place for her, even if shallow, Lila had learned to know Marinette. She knew her designer was incredibly fit, and the absurd amount of cookies she carried served to feed that. She knew of Marinette's stalkerish tendencies (to be fair it was technically of public domain, thanks to the awful timing of Alya and Alix pranking her by filling her room with a ton of pictures of Adrien Agreste of varying quality too late for her to clear them all before Jagged Stone barged in her room with a camera crew), so she was actually flattered she had started putting her pictures around. She knew her Canale' had been friends with her crazy Japanese friend the Tiger for longer than they had known each other, so she could explain the pictures in her school uniform from the time in Tokyo (how she had got them when the Tiger hadn't returned there until after Lila had moved out, on the other hand…). She knew that, as much as what had got her interested into Marinette in the first place had been that she had somehow managed to keep her kindness through what had been done to her by Chloe and inefficient anti-bullying policies, she had actually underestimated her about that.

What she hadn't known was that she was also Ladybug. In hindsight it made sense, and in fact Lila had actually suspected it before debunking her own reasoning for it, but she had been still caught by surprise when she had decided to make Marinette a surprise visit and had put her head in the trapdoor just in time to see her beloved transform to go out and deal with a "boredom Akuma"-the ones ridiculous as Mr. Pigeon that everyone was convinced Papillon created out of boredom, given how ridiculous and weak they were (Mr. Pigeon having been the only one posing an actual threat)-and the first Akumatized villain since Volpina's brief return. And so, not knowing if Marinette's parents knew about their daughter's heroism, she had gone and covered up her absence with strategically placed noises and even playing the recording of Marinette's shout when Lila had made her some pointed questions about Ladybug's supposed attempt at getting her with Chat Noir when Nathaniel had been Akumatized, all the while thinking what this new discovery meant and realizing she didn't really care aside for the practical aspects.

Now, however, Ladybug had come back and changed back into Marinette before noticing Lila, and by her panicking she had clearly mistaken her "Che cazzo?!" being about her being Lila's former worst enemy and not discovering that a Miraculous drew its power by a djinn-not the Westernized genie, but an actual, honest-to-Scheherazade djinn, and thus immensely dangerous until proven otherwise. And having to calm her down, and knowing that not only manipulation wouldn't work on Marinette but would make things worse and not having time to think about anything else, Lila went for a twin-handed kabedon (not unlike the one she had Marinette under back in the moment a potential enmity changed in something better) and something she was normally loathe to do: saying the first thing that came to her mind.

"My dear, I figured out you were Ladybug five minutes in our first talk." Well, at least Marinette had stopped panicking. Now, better saying everything and salvage the situation: "I mean, I already started realizing how, well, awesome you are, and with all her encounters with our class Ladybug was bound to realize it too, so why didn't she recruit you as Rena Rouge? And the only answer I could come up with was that you were Ladybug. Then the sixth minute I realized you'd initially refuse, and Ladybug was always on a timetable when she recruited temporary Miraculous Holders, and I convinced myself you weren't." Good, Marinette had calmed down, and was laughing. Time for the other admission: "I'm just a little bit worried about, well-"

"I'm not a djinn, I'm a kwami." the not-djinn interrupted her from her biscuit plate. "By the way I'm Tikki, pleased to meet you."

"Uh… The pleasure is all mine." especially as she wasn't around something that made a nuclear weapon seem tame. "Well, with that cleared, Canale', all this new discovery means to me is that you are even more forgiving and awesome than I thought, and that I can't let you continue refusing Anansi's self-defense lessons. I suppose I could help a bit with the footwork, I mean if there's one thing I'm better than her is that, bMPHF!"

That hadn't been the first kiss between them-Lila had been able to steal one at Chloe's ball and then again after their date, but this was the first time Marinette took the initiative. Another difference was that both times Lila had limited herself to a quick peck on Marinette's lips, always fearing to scare her away, but Marinette had just grabbed Lila's face, brought her down faster than she could notice, and pretty much devoured her lips.

As she started kissing her beloved back, Lila realized that she had finally found her place. And not a shallow one.

What Does Lila Say about Genies and Djinns

In Islamic folklore the djinn isn't a wish-granting being living in a lamp or a bottle blessed with phenomenal cosmic powers originating in Europeized and out-of-context retellings of Islamic folk tales (including Aladdin), but rather a creature closer to a fay-possessing an alien sense of morality and superhuman abilities so great to appear supernatural, that a human extremely well-versed in the arcane arts can seal in a bottle or bind to an object that, when rubbed, will summon the djinn from wherever it is and force him to do the bidding of the object's master, and that, if sealed, should never be freed unless one wants to experience the wrath of a being whose natural abilities are beyond human understanding and has been cooped into a bottle for centuries. Hence Lila's initial reaction to finding out her beloved owns earrings that appear to have a djinn bound to them.