Adrien: Are you gonna fix everything to save her life? You know she'll talk her way out of it. Walk away scott-free. Again.
Marinette: It's...not just for her sake, Adrien. You shouldn't...throw your life away like th-
Adrien: What life?! I've got nothing! No friends, no family, no miraculous, no money of my own, no real way to get any, now or in the future, and my guardian's the same person who turned Chloé into a monster!
Marinette: You'll go to jail for this!
Adrien: It'll happen whether she's alive or dead. Everybody in Paris wants to throw me in there anyway. At least I'll be away from Amelie and a little closer to my dad. I'd call it a win. You should too.
Marinette: Why would I think this is a win?!
Adrien: Because Karma finally won out. And you don't have to pay for it. Just worthless, useless, pointless me. I can finally just go to prison and get it over with, and you can go back to your mansion and your friends and your fame and your heroism with clean hands. Your choice, Ladybug.
Marinette: It's...not just for her sake, Adrien. You shouldn't...throw your life away like th-
Adrien: What life?! I've got nothing! No friends, no family, no miraculous, no money of my own, no real way to get any, now or in the future, and my guardian's the same person who turned Chloé into a monster!
Marinette: You'll go to jail for this!
Adrien: It'll happen whether she's alive or dead. Everybody in Paris wants to throw me in there anyway. At least I'll be away from Amelie and a little closer to my dad. I'd call it a win. You should too.
Marinette: Why would I think this is a win?!
Adrien: Because Karma finally won out. And you don't have to pay for it. Just worthless, useless, pointless me. I can finally just go to prison and get it over with, and you can go back to your mansion and your friends and your fame and your heroism with clean hands. Your choice, Ladybug.
— Adrien and Marinette's conversation
Everything is going great for the Miraculous heroes in Paris. Hawkmoth and Mayura are defeated, Marinette finally has the respect and friendships she deserves, and the people who mistreated Marinette—including Adrien Agreste, the former Chat Noir, as well as most of the rest of Ms. Bustier's class—are suffering karmic backlash for their actions. The only fly in the ointment is Lila, who managed to steal a portion of the Agreste fortune before skipping town and evading justice, but other than that, things are looking bright.
Except then Lila decides to return to Paris in the hopes of building up more leverage in case Marinette pursues her. She goes to see Adrien, figuring that he has plenty of reasons of his own to want revenge on Ladybug, only for things to take a tragic turn.
Karma Overbalance
is a Miraculous Ladybug fanfiction which spins off of CartoonAddict564's previous fanfiction The Karma of Lies. It takes place shortly after the end of the prior story and provides a darker look at the conclusion of the original. Due to its sequel status, this story naturally contains Late-Arrival Spoilers for the original work.
This fanfic contains examples of:
- Adaptational Karma: Lila in the original story got to walk away scott free with a portion of the Agreste family fortune, and nothing more than a cryptic warning from Ladybug. In here, her desperate attempt to try and get help from Adrien, the same person whose life she indirectly ruined, ends with him killing her with his own hands.
- Adaptational Sympathy: The original story portrayed Adrien as a callous jerk who brought his own problems down on himself. This story paints him as a victim of Disproportionate Retribution deserving of pity.
- Ambiguous Ending: The story ends just as Ladybug finds herself in a Sadistic Choice: either she revives Lila, who'll likely learn nothing and, as Adrien puts it, will find a way to get away once again, or she leaves her dead and lets Adrien go to jail for killing her. Marinette is also very afraid of whether or not this mess is the beginning of her own fall.
- Asshole Victim:
- Subverted by Adrien. Marinette begins the tale believing that he has it coming, but once she sees the horror his life has become she changes her mind.
- Lila is discussed by Adrien to be this, but considering that only Mari and Adrien know the truth, dead or alive she is still going to screw Adrien (and maybe Marinette) over.
- Better to Kill Than Frighten: A complicated example. Marinette tried to scare Lila into ending her con artist ways and all that achieved was Lila decide she needed to find a way to threaten Marinette back ASAP. Adrien points this out as he tells Marinette why he killed her — he will suffer for it, but Lila has been definitely stopped for good.
- Beyond Redemption: Deconstructed. The fact that everyone treats Adrien as being completely irredeemable is what causes him to cross the Despair Event Horizon and murder Lila, as he reasons he has nothing left to lose at this point.
- Composite Character: The story erroneously conflates Audrey Bourgeois (Chloé's abusive mother and the new owner of Gabriel’s fashion company) and Amelie Graham de Vanily (Adrien's abusive aunt and current guardian).
- Darker and Edgier: The original story got dark in places, but it was still ultimately hopeful. This story, however, opens with Adrien strangling Lila over her previous actions and gets grimmer from there.
- Deconstruction Fic:
- Deconstructs The Karma of Lies by having Adrien truly learn his lesson... but his life was ruined so totally and irreversibly that it didn't matter; he couldn't make new friends, no one would give him a job, and he has absolutely no support system to help him deal with any of his problems. So instead of becoming a better person, he crossed the Despair Event Horizon and murdered Lila because he saw going to prison as the best option.
- The fic also deconstructs Marinette's own actions regarding Lila through Karma Of Lies. How she eventually just stopped being active in trying to deal with her (aside from the Paranoia Gambit) and just sat down and hoped Karma would do it for her, and also how she just went and dismissed Adrien as an Asshole Victim. The result is that their blood (literally, for Lila) is now on her hands.
- Desires Prison Life: Played for tragedy. With absolutely zero possibilities of ever having anything resembling a normal (let alone good) life ever again and and the whole world thinking he is Hawk Moth Jr., Adrien is eagerly looking forward to spending the rest of his existence in jail.
- Despair Event Horizon: Adrien has completely lost any hope of recovering from how thoroughly his life has been ruined, so when he has the chance to murder the one who he considers the architect of said ruin, he does not hesitate.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Lila's plan apparently did not go beyond "get to Paris, hope to find something to blackmail Ladybug with". She also seriously underestimated how much Adrien hates her for what she has done to him and would prefer to destroy her instead of becoming her minion for her anti-Ladybug scheme.
- Marinette ends up becoming horrified at how much her attempt at scaring Lila straight backfired, having underestimated how much Lila hates not being the one in control.
- Disproportionate Retribution: It's implied that the punishment delivered to Adrien in the original story may have been too much, and Marinette ends the story fearing that she will in turn suffer some karma of her own for letting things get that bad.
- Dramatic Irony: Marinette begins the story confident (read: smug, just like her enemies) that Karma has gotten to them "in the end". She ends the story afraid that she has given Karma a huge reason (also not that different from her enemies') to destroy her as well.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Marinette, for all that she does not likes Adrien or Lila, is still horrified after finding the murder scene and even more horrified at seeing how broken Adrien has become.
- Amelie Graham de Vanily may give even less of a crap about Adrien than Marinette, but the moment she discovers the murder scene her first instinct is to call Marinette and go all "get here right the hell now!" in an alarmed tone of voice that actually surprises Marinette.
- Fix Fic: For those who felt The Karma of Lies went overboard with the Salt Fic elements, this fic was seen as very gratifying.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: Whatever Marinette was trying to do with her final speech to Lila in The Karma of Lies, it's made clear that it was not supposed to lead to Lila being murdered. Or Adrien being her killer.
- Heroic BSoD: Marinette encounters Adrien suffering one of these after everything he has suffered led to him reaching a Rage Breaking Point when Lila entered his life again trying to recruit him as a minion and he kills her. He makes clear that, with his life having hit rock bottom as hard as it did, going to prison for life would be a blessing.
- Horrible Housing: One of the first things Marinette notices about the Disproportionate Retribution Adrien is suffering is how absurdly spartan the room in the house he moved to (Marinette's old home) after being kicked out of Agreste Manor is, courtesy of his nasty new guardian. Followed by the fresh cadaver of Lila in a corner of the room.
- Hourglass Plot: Lampshaded by Adrien pointing out to Marinette that she now has a fortune and a manor (the Agreste manor, and a speech being delivered in Marinette's old room, no less) and is Loved by All while he is now such a wretch that going to prison for life on a murder charge would be a blessing. It only further highlights Marinette's final musing that maybe Karma has a lot to take from her now, for her involvement in this mess.
- Innocently Insensitive:
- Or rather "too far gone past the Despair Event Horizon to be sensitive", nevertheless Adrien points out how absurdly perfect Marinette's life has become and she only got it because he suffered Disproportionate Retribution and leads Marinette to ponder if Karma is setting her up for an eventual fall.
- For her part, Marinette sets Adrien off by trying to tell him that he shouldn’t “throw his life away” by killing Lila. This remark just makes it crystal clear that she has no idea just how little Adrien has left to “throw away” after the Karmic Misfire she permitted.
- Karma Houdini Warranty:
- Lila's runs out, with Adrien reaching his Rage Breaking Point when she tries to swindle him into becoming an ally in her latest anti-Marinette scheme after what she's done to him and strangles her to death.
- The last lines of the story consist of Marinette fearing that she’s due for her own, as she’s forced to confront just how much her “happy ending” has cost her former partner.
- Karmic Misfire: Marinette begins the story thinking that what happened to Adrien was regular "pride before the fall" karma, but after seeing how broken he has become, she is forced to accept that what happened to him is excessive no matter what.
- Karmic Overkill: Invoked Trope and Lampshaded, both in the title and the story exploring how Adrien, for all of his character flaws, did not deserve to lose as much as he did.
- Missing Steps Plan: In light of the fic's circumstances, two examples Played for Drama:
- Marinette's attempt at making Lila turn a leaf did not go beyond an extremely ambiguous Paranoia Gambit with no further check-ups or steps to deal with a woman with a Berserk Button of not being in control.
- Lila's plan to regain control did not go beyond "go back to Paris, break into Marinette's house, try to find some kind of blackmail material." Trying to convince Adrien (and subsequent tragedy) was her trying to roll with the punch of Marinette moving away.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The final lines of the story make perfectly clear that Marinette is horrified about how bad the situation became and how she's to blame for it all.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg:"Marinette had not been keen on returning to her old house for a number of reasons. Well, two reasons. Two people. One of whom had hurt her in so many ways...but at least he'd gotten his punishment. Karma was always fair, in the end. She hadn't heard from or about Adrien in months now, not since her last meeting with Lila, which was fine by her.
Oh, and also Chloé's mother." - No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The original story ended with Marinette tracking down Lila and warning her against conning anyone else. Rather than take that advice to heart, Lila is so rattled by Marinette (who knows of Lila's many crimes) being able to find her that she travels to Paris in order to get some leverage against her.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Marinette notes that it was Amelie's scared tone that piqued her interest.
- Personal Hate Before Common Goals: When Lila encountered Adrien again, she tried to convince him to work with her to destroy Ladybug. She seriously underestimated how much Adrien saw her as the greater cause of his misery and paid for it with her life.
- Plague of Good Fortune: The last lines of the story are Marinette, who now has Lila's blood on her hands, wondering how much of the good things she got in the previous story (and Adrien points out to her) have just turned into this.
- Prefer Jail to the Protagonist: Or rather, "prefer jail to the hell his life has become". Still, Adrien becomes a played with example of this trope when he tells Marinette (the protagonist in question) to please not save him from going to jail and leaves her to choose.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Adrien makes clear in his speech that Marinette would — or should — consider the situation a victory for her: after all, Lila Rossi will never bother anybody ever again and Adrien (who was one of her biggest annoyances as Cat Noir) will no longer bother her either. Marinette is instead horrified that said "victory" was brought by a murder and she is one of the people to blame for it.
- Recursive Fanfiction: It is derived from The Karma of Lies.
- It itself has one in the form of Karmic Backlash.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The character arcs of both Adrien and Lila are rendered irrelevant, Lila because she dies before she can spend any of her stolen money, and Adrien because he's going to be arrested for her murder and thus won't have any opportunities to redeem himself.
- Sympathetic Murderer: Adrien's murder of Lila is depicted as the desperate lashing out of a teenager with nothing left to live for. Notably, Marinette (who has very bad personal history with him) shows far more concern for how this is going to affect him than concern for the girl he killed.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: After everything he's been through culminates in him killing Lila, Adrien decides there's no more point denying that he's the monster Paris thinks he is.
- Threat Backfire:
- A very tragic example. In their final encounter in The Karma of Lies, Marinette tells Lila about seeing a Bad Future for her that she will have if she remains a con artist and it's quite ambiguous about whether or not Mari actually saw one with her powers or if it's just a Paranoia Gambit. Regardless, when put against the wall like that, Lila's decision is instead to go back to Paris and try to find something to use to blackmail Marinette into backing off. Just her luck she ran into Adrien…
- Marinette warns Adrien that he'll end up in prison for murder. Adrien simply doesn't care anymore, seeing as his life has been ruined already.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Marinette threatening Lila at the end of The Karma of Lies causes her to return to Paris to get blackmail material, leading to her death at Adrien's hands.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Marinette was well aware that heading to see Adrien would not be fun, but she did take a moment to consider that the Fallen Hero might have begun learning his lessons through his reduced circumstances. As it turns out, the story was actually set on deconstructing what it would mean to leave a misguided teenager with no resources, no support, absolutely no hope for the future, and an entire city convinced that they should've been charged with terrorism. Suffice to say, Adrien's situation did not make for self-improvement.
- "At what point does 'Karma' become overkill?"
