The students in Miss Bustier class couldn't help but notice how… odd the new transfer student, Lila Rossi, is. Not only claiming lies about knowing celebrities that are easy to disprove but also asking Alya to post on her blog that she's Ladybug's best friend even if it means a supervillain will come after her.
The other students decide to play along and keep an eye on her. Of course, it's not long till they find out how deranged their newest classmate can be...
Oh, You Don’t Have to Do That. (Communication)
by GaleDragon is a Miraculous Ladybug Fix Fic, where the rest of the cast works together to investigate and later take down Lila.
Tropes of the following story:
- Adaptational Badass: Markov is given the Mouse Miraculous during the final fight against Hawkmoth.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: At the start of the story, Chloé is already working on improving from her Alpha Bitch personality, though it's still a work in progress.
- Adaptational Sexuality: The Distant Finale reveals that Marinette, Adrien, Luka, and Kagami have become a romantic polycule. Similarly, Rose married Luka's sister, Juleka, while Max married Kim. This didn't happen in canon.
- Adaptational Superpower Change: At the end, Max becomes the wielder of the Peacock Miraculous and Mylene the Horse Miraculous instead of the Horse and Mouse respectively.
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
- Chloé's relation with the rest of the class is much better, thanks to her willingness to change.
- After their mutual unmasking, Marinette and Adrien become closer friends, and start dating a month after the Volpina incident.
- Because they are more skeptical of Lila's stories, the class doesn't hang so much from her words.
- Berserk Button:
- Due to a undescribed event in her past, Marinette has a strong hatred towards liars, especially those that use their lies to manipulate them.
- Lila has a "hate trigger" when anyone calls her out of her lies, and become single-mindedly obsessed with ruining their lives as retribution.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Adrien, Marinette, and Plagg's reaction when they notice the suspicious coincidence that Adrien happens to find both a Grimoire and a missing Miraculous inside a safe that his father was keeping secret, mainly the possibility that his father could be Hawkmoth.Adrien: Yes... That’s bad, isn’t it?
Marinette: More along the lines of suspicious than bad.
Plagg: Nope, it’s suspiciously bad. - Chekhov's Gun: Nino and Kim casually mention in a private chat between them and Marinette that Marinette has a “sour habit” that happens when something serious happens, base on an event in second grade. Near the end, the “habit” is revealed to be a reference of Marinette using a batch of sourdough she failed to recognize since she can’t taste sour flavor. This gets used to expose Lila as a fake when she uses an akuma to disguise herself as Marinette.
- Continuity Nod: When Adrien expresses surprise about about Marinette's strong hatred towards liars, Plagg reminds him that when the two first meet, she disliked him because she thought he placed a wad of gum on her seat. That said, Plagg does suspect that whatever makes Marinette angry at liars must be a good reason.
- Crazy-Prepared:
- Ms Mendeliev has akuma-proofed her lab: locked windows, containers to catch butterflies in, and a locker with stress balls, soft blankets and a training dummy so any potential victims can vent their negative emotions before Hawkmoth gets them.
- Nino and Kim have contingency plans "in case we're replaced with look-alikes".
- Cryptic Conversation: After Lila claims that Marinette stole a family heirloom to Damocles, he asks Ms. Mendeleiev to confirm that Marinette has been with her during the alleged theft and check if someone had broken into Marinette's locker recently without telling her about Lila's claim. When she lampshades that he's being cryptic, he says he wants an unbiased eye to check things out.
- Disabled in the Adaptation: Marinette has partial ageusia and can't taste sour things. This turns out to be critical for distinguishing her from Lila in disguise.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Lila's hatred of being called out on her lies is so strong that she will ruin the lives of anyone who tries.
- Distant Finale: The story ends 25 years after the main events, with the class all grown up and having started families of their own. They've also long forgotten Lila and are only reminded when Emma, Marinette and Adrien's daughter, and Xavier, Max and Kim's son, find a class picture with the unfamiliar girl.
- Ditzy Genius: Principal Damocles is capable of writing and running computer codes and algorithms, but frequently forgets the password to the security system.
- Even Evil Has Standards: When Lila grabs one of his akuma and demands Hawkmoth transform her so she can frame a "goody-goody", Hawkmoth is initially against it as he’s disturbed by the girl’s single-minded obsession with getting revenge. Then subverted when he finds out that Marinette is her target, who he's been trying to akumatize all day.
- Exact Words: During a team project, Mylene sheepishly admits she was working on a small part of Lila's section of the project since Lila was out of school and claims she was busy helping her mom. Alix, Nathaniel, and Juleka revealed they were also asked the same thing, and they found out that collectively they've been working on Lila's entire section of the project, and feel embarrassed that they fell for her trick and only found out when Chloé asked them. Chloé points out that, for once, Lila wasn't completely lying, as she did ask each of them for help on a section of her part while making them think she was working on the rest.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: After Roger and Fred reveal to Mrs Rossi that her daughter was a Consummate Liar, she reveals she never caught on because she never thought Lila would lie about anything major and always does so in a reasonable tone. It's then she remembers that it was Lila who told her her husband Antonio Rossi was having an affair. When Fred asks if her husband mentioned anything about her behavior before her lies, she is heartbroken at the realization that her daughter deliberately set up her parents' divorce.
- Failed a Spot Check: After an akumatized Lila is knocked-out by the sour-taste test and her Marinette disguise is taken out, she wakes up unaware that she was deakumatized, revealing her true nature while still thinking she looks like Marinette.
- A Fool for a Client: Lila initially did have a lawyer to represent her after she gets arrested, but Lila's delusional belief that she can get charged not guilty by claiming the overwhelming evidence is fake causes them to quit and let Lila dig her grave.
- Hidden Depths: Kagami, of all people, likes Pokémon.
- Hypocrisy Nod:
- When discussing Lila, Kim desperately asks Marinette not to do something she'll regret. Alix points out that he isn't one to talk about acting without thinking, though Kim reminds her that with Marinette's hatred for liars (especially the manipulative type), it's a much bigger deal than any of his foolish acts.
- Alya notes that it is kinda hypocritical of her to complain about Lila lying when she just got done lying to her about putting up her interview on the Ladyblog.
- I Have Brothers: Male version. After the class finds out how Lila has been invading Adrien's personal space and giving him unwanted physical contact, Kim tells him he shouldn't let people unfamiliar or don't like get so close, especially if it makes him uncomfortable, and adds that he can speak up if at any moment his friends make him uncomfortable so they avoid doing that. When the class looks at Kim in surprise, Kim says that he has three older sisters who made sure he knows what physical contact is and isn't appropriate with friends and pick up signs if it happens before him.
- Impostor-Exposing Test: Towards the end, Lila gets akumatized into an identical copy of Marinette and goes around being a Jerkass in hopes Marinette would get blamed for it. While nobody falls for that part, she does cause some legitimate confusion after getting in the same room as the real Marinette and making everyone lose track of which one is which. Nino and Kim solve the problem based on the fact that the real Marinette has partial ageusea and can't taste sour things, so they give both of them a glass of concentrated sour flavoring that Ms Mendeleiev had been developing — the real Marinette is unaffected, but Lila is knocked flat.
- I'm Standing Right Here:
- When Ladybug attempts to calmly tell Lila not to lie about any friendship with her, Lila yells that Ladybug is ruining her chance to have Adrien to herself. Adrien, disgusted at being talked about like he’s some sort of prize, yells at her twice that he’s right next to her.
- On a lighter note, when Nino and Kim talk in a chat group about how something worse must have happened between Marinette and Lila's confrontation besides Marinette unwittingly triggering Lila's hate trigger of being called out on her lies, Marinette tells them that they're using their shared chat and she can see their entire conversation. Kim claims that this was deliberately done to get her to explain what actually happened as part of his plan. Marinette and Nino doubt he actually had a plan.
- Implausible Deniability: Lila resorts to this once her plans derail completely. Her planned defense in a court of law against the mountain of evidence piled against her? Claim it's all fake. It goes as well as you'd expect.
- In Spite of a Nail:
- Even though they know Lila is a liar, Bustier's class still does favors for her, thinking she might actually have the issues she's complaining about.
- Played With. Despite the heroes finding both the Miraculous Grimoire and the Peacock Miraculous in his office, Gabriel still avoids being outed as Hawkmoth by getting himself akumatized as the Collector. That said, Master Fu tells Adrien that his father is still the most likely suspect, which comes to play after the Lila incident when Adrien investigates his father and finds the secret elevator to his lair.
- After the class realizes that Miss Bustier figured out Lila's plot to frame Marinette when she stole the answers of an already graded test, Adrien is frightened of how close Lila could have succeeded if she stole the answers beforehand. Ms Mendeleiev tells him and the others that even if Lila did steal the test answers before the tests were graded, the teachers would have checked the security cameras to find out the true guilty party, especially after the students told them about Lila's sociopathic behavior beforehand.
- In-Universe Factoid Failure: Many of Lila's lies are easily figured out by her classmates because of multiple fact checks. Rose finds out when Lila claims she helped Prince Ali with environmental campaigns even though he works with children's charities, Mylene and Ivan find out when Lila says she went to school with the youngest of Steven Spielberg's kids because his youngest son is actually an adult, and Chloé, Sabrina, and Alix figure out Lila's lie about helping Jagged Stone since she says she saved his pet kitten despite him having a pet crocodile.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After all the lies and manipulations Lila created, as well as her attempt to frame Marinette while akumatized as a clone of her, Lila finally gets exposed when she is forced to undergo an Impostor-Exposing Test involving drinking a glass of sour candy flavoring. Afterward, she is arrested, tried, and arrested for her long list of crimes that included fraud and malicious intent, with her own lawyer abandoning her after the extent of her delusions become clear. The class, having initially wanted to be friends with Lila out of good will, all disowned her as their classmate and have vowed to keep her as just that — a bad memory.
- Morton's Fork: After Volpina, Marinette tells Adrien that while they and their classmates know Lila is a liar, telling them that she's actually a Manipulative Bitch will be much harder whether she's Marinette or Ladybug. If she tells them as Marinette without solid proof, they'll she's jumping to conclusions due to her long hatred toward liars. If she tells them as Ladybug about Lila getting akumatized after she called her out to become Vulpina, they'll think it was another case of Hawkmoth corrupting a teen based on her negative feelings. They eventually come up with a solution — making both Marinette and the disguised Lila drink a glass of concentrated sour candy flavoring in front of the whole class, knowing that unlike Lila, Marinette literally can't taste sour foods and thus is able to prove her innocence.
- Noodle Incident: Whatever event that Marinette to have a strong hatred towards liars. The rest of the class explains to Adrien, Alya, and Markov that the events are important and give Marinette a very good reason for her anger, but say they’ll only explain some time after dealing with the Lila situation.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: After figuring out that Lila has been lying about her celebrity connections, the class, thinking she's just trying to fit in with her classmates in an unhealthy manner, decides to pretend to not know she is lying and let her into their activities, in hopes of showing her that she doesn't have to deceive them to become their friend. However, as they figure out that she's a Manipulative Bitch and especially find out that she has a hate trigger for being called out, their act of believing her becomes a cover while investigating and collecting evidence to take her down.
- Oh, Crap!:
- During Lila's arrival, Nino and Kim have this when Marinette finds out that Lila's been lying to her classmates, especially since Marinette has a huge Berserk Button when it comes to manipulative liars.
- Max is horrified when they see Lila willingly grab an Akuma and demand Hawkmoth to transform her, and more so when they realize that Hawkmoth was aiming to get Marinette akumatized.
- Point of Divergence:
- The initial nail is that Alya is concerned about Lila claiming to be Ladybug’s best friend and wanting it published on the Ladyblog despite the risk to her safety. After discussing with Nino, they decided to share this with the rest of the class on their private chat. By comparing the stories, they figured out that Lila was lying about celebrity connections base on what they were talking about earlier.
- When he and Adrien break into Gabriel’s private safe, Plagg finds the peacock pin inside with the Grimoire familiar and tells Adrien to take it with him. Even with Lila stealing the Grimoire from him then throwing it away, followed by Marinette retrieving it, having the pin means Adrien heads over to Fu’s massage parlor, causing him to crash into Marinette as she arrives with the Grimoire. This leads both of them to discover each other identities and the Peacock Miraculous returning to the Miraculous Box.
- Polyamory: In the Distant Finale, it's shown that Marinette and Adrien have expanded their relationship to include Kagami and Luka.
- Running Gag: Someone making an accurate comment that contains foul language only for someone else to react negatively to the comment and clarify they only reacted to the foul language.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: Played With. Marinette knows someone saw her speaking with Tikki in the bathroom, but they run out before she can identify themnote . In the final act, it’s revealed that Max was the one who saw her, though he already suspected from context clues such as Marinette and Adrien getting together at the same time as Ladybug and Chat Noir.
- Shipping Torpedo: Besides trying to break up Marinette and Adrien so she can have Adrien all to herself, it's heavily implied that Lila sabotaged her own parents' marriage before her father could warn her mother about Lila's behavior.
- Smarter Than You Look: While Kim looks (and for the most part acts) like a stereotypical Dumb Jock, he's much more observant than people give him credit for. He manages to identify that Lila was trying to fish for any details about Marinette and Adrien's relationship that can help her sabotage it even without knowing what fishing means in the context, and along with Nino he realizes that Marinette had left some details out regarding her conversation with Lila in the bathroom.
- Smug Snake: This Lila could only dream of being as competent and duplicitous as her canon counterpart. She underestimates everyone else's intelligence to the point she thinks everyone else is a simpering moron, and she's completely convinced she has everyone sold on her lies. In actuality, everyone, students and teachers alike, have figured out her habitual lying from day one (mainly by spotting the obvious inconsistencies) and are only humoring her out of pity (and the fact that she throws huge tantrums when she gets found out). She's also completely unaware of the many, many security cameras all over the school despite this feature being mentioned in the school documentation (which she didn't read), resulting in many of her later acts being recorded. Even when there's a mountain of evidence to damn her, she's convinced she can get out of everything, somehow.
- Spotting the Thread:
- The class figures out from the start that Lila's lying because of various In Universe Factoid Failures in her tall tales.
- During her return to school, Lila asks her classmates details about how Marinette and Adrien got together. Between the rather specific questions and her shock that Adrien was the one to ask Marinette out, the class figures out she was fishing for any information to break the couple apart. Lila wasn't helping herself with her constant comments about "obvious" signs of strain that, coincidentally, only she sees.
- When looking at the photos Lila keeps sending to her class on her "vacation", Ivan notices that the picture of the Sydney Harbour Opera House is devoid of any pedestrians despite it being a famous landmark. The rest of class also figures out that she's been lying about her vacation when they find video evidence of her stalking Marinette while allegedly in Italy.
- After investigating Marinette's locker, Ms Mendeleiev confirms to Damocles that Lila's alleged family heirloom is actually at most a year old, since she found the Gabriel Brand label on the fox necklace.
- Stalker without a Crush: Lila uses her time playing hookey to spy on Marinette and her private life in the hope of finding something to ruin her reputation. Marinette, along with her classmates and parents, are disturbed at the extent that Lila is willing to go just because Marinette tried to get her to stop lying.
- Wham Line: In the final act when Max goes to warn Marinette about Lila grabbing an akuma to turn into a clone of her.Max: Uh, so if you’re trying to convince me to leave to warn our friends so you can find a place to transform… It’s not going to work, and it would be difficult to explain how Ladybug arrived long before the Akuma Alert is sent out.
