𝗰𝗵𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗮𝗯𝗼𝗼 ;; oneshots

COMPLAIN

Marinette was tired.

She was tired of missing class and events to fight akumas, and tired of making excuses to cover her absences and then having to make up the work on her own later. She was tired of comforting people after Chloe bullied them and seeing absolutely no consequences for the school's biggest bully, again and again and again. And she was really, really tired of Lila. Of hearing her lies, of seeing her classmates sucked in to the increasingly ridiculous tales, of getting blown off by Alya whenever she tried pointing out contradicting things in Lila's stories and of having to decide whether or not hanging out with her friends outside of school was really worth tolerating Lila's company for even longer than usual.

There was nothing she could really do about the akumas besides just fight them, at least not at the moment. Marinette was planning on using her spring break to buckle down and do some serious brainstorming about how she and Chat Noir could track Hawkmoth down and end the battles for good, but the break was another couple weeks out yet. That just left her Chloe and Lila problems. Two bullies, but both carrying out their bullying in very different ways and making her life very, very difficult.

Weren't adults supposed to be the ones to deal like stuff like this? Why did she have to be the one to do all of the fighting against evil? That just wasn't- it wasn't fair. Marinette was supposed to be able to be a kid right now, and dealing with supervillains and bullies was taking that away from her. More than anything, Marinette wanted to be able to fully enjoy her days together with her friends without having to be on guard and alert all the time.

Sure, maybe she could just do her best to ignore some things. But allowing evil to fester wasn't the answer, either. Not when Lila had threatened Marinette and was clearly doing her best to trip up Ladybug, and both she and Chloe were causing (or being) regular akumas.

Trying to call Lila out straight wasn't going to work, Adrien had been right about that much. It was irritating to admit, but she had her claws in too deep and was too good at turning on the fake tears when anyone challenged anything she said. Marinette had to be crafty if she wanted to outfox Volpina. And as for Chloe...

Well, she was supposed to just be able to go to an adult and report the bullying and have it dealt with by people in charge, but the adults seemed to be unwilling to actually do anything, because of the Mayor. Which meant that the root of the problem was there, somewhere, but how was she meant to deal with it? She couldn't just go up and judo-kick the Mayor as Ladybug to solve the problem. Marinette wished that it was that easy.

Marinette mulled over the problem as she sat in class, waiting for their teacher to come in and start the day's lesson. There had to be other ways to call out a liar other than sitting in class and pointing out every contradiction and inaccuracy and straight-up lie that came out of Lila's mouth. She could text Penny and have Jagged Stone make some comment during his next interview, but that would just be a small bunch of lies disproved and Lila would no doubt make up some new story about why Jagged Stone was refuting her claims. Lila had done that when Adrien pointed out that Ladybug had already called her out, and it was just going to happen again with every other lie Marinette pointed out.

(In fact, it had happened with every last one of the lies that Marinette pointed out. Lila came up with a new story, every one less believable than the last, and yet...)

She could try to get Lila cornered in a lie that someone else in class- say, Alya- would know was a lie, like something about Rena Rouge, but if Lila picked up on the fact that Marinette was trying to get her to say something specific...

Well, she would wonder why Marinette suddenly cared about her opinion, for one thing. She would wonder why that topic. And it could be dangerous, too. Lila would wonder why both Marinette and Alya (and Nino, too) would know that whatever she said about Rena Rouge would be a lie. So that was out for sure. And if she went the route of trying to convince one or two people at a time, the chance that one of them would go to Lila and ask her about something and therefore give away Marinette's plan was too high. Lila would retaliate then for sure, and Marinette really didn't need yet another thing to deal with right now.