Chapter Text
THE START OF MIRACULOUS
We were all villains in the beginning.
For hundreds of years, prodigies were feared by the rest of the world. We became hunted. Tormented. Feared and oppressed. We were believed to be witches and demons, freaks and abominations. We were stoned and hanged and set afire while crowds gathered to watch with cruel eyes, proud to be ridding the world of more evil.
We don't blame them, they had the right to be afraid.
Hundreds of years passed. Who would have stood for it?
Then Le Papillion changed everything. He united the most powerful prodigies he could find and together they rebelled.
He started with the infrastructure. Government buildings were torn from their foundations. Banks and stock exchanges turned to rubble. Bridges ripped from the sky. Entire freeways reduced to rocky wastelands. When the military sent jets, he plucked them from the sky like moths. When they sent tanks, he crushed them like aluminum cans.
Then he went after the people who failed him. Failed all of them.
Whole governments, gone. Law enforcement disbanded. Those fancy bureaucrats who had bought their way to power and influence...
All dead, and all in a matter of weeks.
The Akumas cared little for what would come next once the old world crumbled. They cared only for change, and they got it. Soon, a number of villain gangs began to crawl from society's ashes, each hungry for their own slice of power, and it wasn't long before Le Papillon's influence spread across the globe. Prodigies banded together for the first time in history, some full of wrath and resentment, others desperate for acceptance that never came. They demanded fair treatment and human rights and protection under the law, and in some countries, the panic-stricken governments hastened to cater to them.
But in other countries, the rebellions turned violent, and the violence dissolved into anarchy.
Chaos rose up to fill the void that civilized society left behind. Trade and manufacturing ground to a halt. Civil wars erupted on every continent. France was largely cut off from the world, and the fear and distrust that prevailed would go on to rule for many more years to come.
They called it the Age of Le Papillon.
Looking back now, people talk about the Akumas and the other gangs like they were the worst part of those years, but they weren't. Sure, everyone was terrified of them, but they mostly left you alone as long as you paid up when it was your due and didn't cause them any trouble.
But the people. Normal people. They were far worse. With no rule and no law, it became every man, woman, and child for themselves. There were no repercussions for crime and violence—no one to run to if you were beaten or robbed.
No police.
No prisons.
Not legitimate ones anyway.
Neighbors stole from neighbors. Stores were looted and supplies were hoarded, leaving children to starve in gutters.
It became the strong against the weak, and, as it turns out, the strong were usually jerks.
Humanity loses faith in times like that. With no one to look up to, no one to believe in, we all became rats scrounging in the sewers.
Maybe Le Papillon really was a villain.
Or maybe he was a visionary.
Maybe there's not much of a difference.
Either way, the gangs ruled France for many years, while crime and vice spread like sewage around a backed–up pipe. And the Age of Le Papillon might have gone on for another twenty years.
Fifty years.
An eternity.
But then, new emotions swept through the globe seemingly overnight...
Hope.
Bright and sparkling hope dressed up in capes and masks.
Beautiful and joyous hope, promising to solve all your problems, rain justice down upon your foes, and probably give a stern talking to a few jaywalkers along the way.
Warm and promising hope, encouraging the normal folks to stay inside where it was safe while they fixed everything. Don't worry about helping yourselves. You've got enough on your plate, what with all the hiding and moping you've been doing lately. You take the day off. We're superheroes. We've got this.
Hope called themselves the Miraculous...
And I despised them.