There is something sooooo good about Irupe figuring Luka out to me.....
At first, Irupe notices Luka because he's always meditating on the beach and never reacts to anything while he's meditating, and he doesn't look like a very spiritual guy based on appearance alone, so she's intrigued and speaks to him on a whim. The two of them strike up a friendship, and she learns that he's 19 years old, from France originally, and that he came to Brazil for religious reasons (the Guardian temple masquerades as a regular Buddhist temple).
After they first meet, Irupe visits Luka on the beach every day after she’s done catching the dawn waves and Irupe barely notices that she's doing most of the talking at first. Despite his seeming stoicism, Luka opens up to her after a few weeks, specifically about how his ex girlfriend is pulling away from him because she believes he's still in love with her and he doesn't want her to cut off contact with him. It's actually Irupe that suggests she pretend to be his girlfriend (also because she finds him very pretty).
Every time Luka gives his ex a guitar lesson, Irupe butts in on Luka's calls with Marinette, the girl in question, and Irupe begins to suspect he still has feelings for her, what with all the pining love songs he writes and the way his demeanor entirely changes around her. Personally, Irupe thinks Marinette is a lot and can't really hold a conversation with her, but she guesses everyone has their own tastes, and she can tell Luka has a lot of feelings about Marinette. Irupe sees the toll it takes on Luka after he shuts the camera off, though, the way his face completely transforms. If you didn't know better, which Irupe doesn't, you'd think he still had feelings for her. So, trying to be a good friend, she encourages Luka to be honest with Marinette and finally close the door on that chapter of his life. To Irupe’s annoyance, he always says he'll think about it and he'll close his eyes and go back to meditating.
Every time he meditates he holds two pictures between his thumb and forefinger; one, a picture of a boy holding a baby in the lap of a woman. All three of them have incredibly long hair, jet black and grey, like silken curtains. The other photo is a folded over picture, the other half of the image hidden from view, and it's of a very pretty boy smiling by the side of a boat. Luka runs his thumb over the pictures as he sits silent and still, the Polaroid paper worn soft from his thumbs constantly eroding the photos. Irupe only asks who they are months into their friendship, because it feel too sacred to bring up causally, but she bites the bullet and inquires one day, and surprisingly, he’s open to sharing.
The first picture is of his family, his mother and his little sister, and Irupe asks if the pretty boy is his family too. And Luka laughs and says no, that's his friend Adrien.
Unfolding the picture, he reveals himself standing next to him, and that's the first thing that Irupe finds off in all of this. Because she never noticed until then that Luka's smile never reached his eyes. Now curious, she asks if Adrien was his best friend, and Luka laughs again like it's funny, and he tells her no, they barely know each other, but something about that feels dishonest. If Irupe didn't feel a chill up her spine, she would assume that Luka fell in love easily, and that his old friends were just a casual heartbreak and Luka, being a sentimental guy, couldn’t let it go. It would be the logical thing to do, she tells herself, especially about something so small, but after that, Irupe begins noticing things.
Luka knew the way to her house before she ever told him what neighborhood she lived in-- he just led the way and she hadn't thought anything of it. Luka didn't have a phone and borrowed his tablet from the library, and yet he always knew where people were and what events had happened that day in his circle's lives, as well as encyclopedic knowledge of anything Irupe thought to ask, plus he always showed up right when she needed him to, with no need to contact him at all. Despite not being Brazilian nor being around native Brazilians at all until he moved to Rio de Janeiro, he spoke like a local, complete with inside jokes, puns, and slang terms you'd need complete cultural immersion to understand and use as casually as he did. It was like he'd been there before. Like he'd always been here.
More than that, Irupe was realizing that she didn't know anything about Luka's life in France. She knew two of his friends and his family life, and that's it. She knew he was religious, and it obviously meant a lot to him judging by how often he said mantras and meditated, but even when she passed by the temple on her way to the convenience store sometimes, she never saw monks as still and serene as Luka. Like he'd surpassed them. Like there wasn't even any need for training anymore.
Worry set in as all the little things began piling up and Irupe began to worry about the safety of her citizens. Luka didn't seem to be actively hostile or even conspiratorial, but it was her duty to make sure. No obvious superpowers, no violent impulses or really anything to go off of– except that instinct Irupe had that something was off. Like a mosquito bite on her leg that she’d scratched until bleeding, the belief that her friend was lying to her bored into Irupe and wouldn’t leave her alone. No matter how much she told herself that there was absolutely nothing incriminating about anything Luka did, he just turned her stomach.
Then it hits her-- if Luka won't tell her everything, she should look up his friends and see what they were like. Irupe wasn't going to talk to them-- one, because Irupe knew damn well she sucked at interrogation, I mean, look at how well her investigation into Luka was going, and two, part of her was certain that she was making all of this up, being overzealous in her duties and worrying herself into a rut-- but maybe there would be something there that proved that Luka was a normal person. Just maybe a little quirky.
Since she didn't have actual names for Luka's sister or mother and didn't know Adrien's last name, she looked up Marinette. Normal Instagram pictures and cute posts, and Irupe scrolled past a lot of them-- until she realized something and rapidly scrolled up. Marinette censored her boyfriend's face in most of them and the comments of her posts were disabled, but Irupe could still make out a distinctive shirt. The same one Luka's friend Adrien was wearing. Irupe clicked around the other people Marinette tagged and looked through their profiles too, trying to make sure of something.
The girl Luka liked was dating the boy Luka carried a photo of around everywhere. A boy with a familiar last name... Agreste. Agreste. Wait. That Agreste? Gabriel Agreste, on the cover of every magazine for stopping a rogue miraculous holder and dying in the process. He left behind his only son, Adrien, and a fashion empire. And he passed away.... Two weeks after Luka came to Brazil for good, after touring Buddhist temples.
It wasn't enough to indict her friend, but it just felt wrong, didn't it? It felt like the reason Irupe couldn't come to a conclusion was because whatever the truth was, it was under lock and fucking key. And sure, the worst she could assume was that Luka was a guardian that was hiding it from her and had a crush on his ex's boyfriend, whatever. But that didn't explain how.... old Luka felt. Like walking into a ruined city with nothing but you, the ruins, and the wind whistling through the old bones of something that knew far more than you did.
The best thing she could do was move on and pretend like she didn't know anything, she knew that, but the whole "not knowing" thing didn't feel too good when you also had people to protect and had already gotten way too close to said ‘unknown’. Despite that, she and Luka continued as always– up until that day she spotted Ladybug dragging Luka away. She started, then hid behind a tree, although she was too far away to hear their conversation. What did Luka know the French miraculous leader for? He *was* a guardian– maybe he’d given her the Ladybug miraculous? But then why was he in Rio of all places? And why did his demeanor change so *completely* around her, like he could just put away that aura he had that made you feel like you were staring into an abyss? God, she wished she could hear them. Maybe she could get an answer, finally.
When Ladybug left in a hurry, Irupe was about to cheerfully come out behind a tree like nothing happened, then hopefully use the new information to look into Luka further. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the way Luka’s posture changed, the way he *shook off* all of the meekness he’d shielded himself with.
Then, for a split second, she saw something. Luka was still obscured behind the umbrella they'd pulled up for cover, but he didn't look like himself. He didn't look like a person.
Hunched posture, jagged and sharp teeth visible from the side, clawed hands bound and torso wriggling, like he was in a straightjacket trying to escape. His lower half wasn't that of a legged being, moreso a giant mouth that stopped at the waist, opening and closing as if breathing, but the serpentine body kept going and going and going, and was it her imagination or did it extend far past Luka's hiding spot? Blue green scales shimmering in the sun on the horizon, squirming and pulsating like a big beating organ.
Her legs began to shake as that ancient panic set in to her bones. Time didn’t feel like it was passing– she felt like she’d stood there for one day, two days, three, just watching Luka writhe and pulse, a length of independent intestine coiling around the beach and keeping the sun locked in the sky for ages. Irupe felt her hair grow and then go back to the length it had been before, her fingernails coil before her and then retreat back to their length, weeds coil up her ankles and then die and then simply cease to be.
And then just like that, Irupe blinked and it was gone. Her body was the same as it had been before, her food still pristine and cold, and Luka was simply rubbing his temples behind the umbrella, then stepped out from his cover.
He gave her one of those smiles that didn't reach his eyes, then called out to her and asked if she was hungry. Irupe nodded, tongue fat and useless in her mouth, but what she really wanted to say was, "Are you?"
