Fanfic / Karma's a Bitch

Marinette Dupain-Cheng is having a rough time. It seems a manipulative liar named Lila is twisting her friends against her and using them for purposes of her own. Fortunately, a new transfer student named Zoe Lee is in Paris to save the day!

...or not.

It turns out that Zoe is just as much of a con artist and liar as Lila. Unlike Lila, though, Zoe is much subtler, and it quickly occurs to her that Lila Rossi would make a perfect fall girl when the time comes to loot Paris and skip town. All Zoe has to do is carefully maintain her friendships with both Lila as well as the rest of the class and she'll be able to get away with it all.

Assuming, of course, that Hawkmoth's machinations don't disrupt everything.

Karma's a Bitch is a Miraculous Ladybug fan fiction and an alternate version of CartoonAddict564's fanfic The Karma of Lies. It starts at the same place as the original story, but the arrival of the second con artist Zoe kicks things onto another path. It is complete at 12 chapters, the same as the original story.

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This fanfic contains examples of:

• Adaptational Heroism: Downplayed for Mayor Bourgeois, who is revealed to be a genuinely competent mayor when he's not catering to Chloé's selfish whims. Among other things, he has various programs meant to repair the city set up and ready to go for the day Hawk Moth is finally defeated and genuinely wants to see Chloé become a better person, to the point where he's willing to ship her off to correctional school once he realizes just how much of a Spoiled Brat she is. It's implied that having a daughter who actually respects him around has been a good influence on him.
• Adaptational Karma: In The Karma of Lies, Lila ends up being a Karma Houdini, skipping town and leaving Adrien to take the blame for her crimes. Here, she actually suffers consequences for what she's done. Ironically, this happens in the same way she set Adrien up in that work. In addition to being punished for what she's actually done, she's framed for additional misdeeds she wasn't solely responsible for, and all her efforts to explain who the real guilty party is are treated as her trying to pin the blame on an innocent bystander.
• Adaptational Villainy: Zoé Lee gets hit with this. In canon, she's a fairly Nice Girl whose only beef is with those who wrong her. In here, she's a lying con artist made of the same cloth as Lila, but far smarter and subtler about it.
• Adults Are Useless: After exposing the truth behind Marinette's expulsion, the school's misconduct is brought to light, causing Mme. Bustier and Principal Damocles to lose their jobs. Andre and Mayor Bourgeois subvert this trope as the former is the first to notice how the school staff Failed a Spot Check and doesn't unfairly condemn Adrien for his relation to his father while the latter is genuinely competent at his job when not catering to his spoiled daughter's whims.
• Affably Evil: While Zoe was manipulating Marinette the whole time for her own ends, the advice she gave Marinette on why she was failing to expose Lila as a manipulative liar was genuine.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: There's no denying that Zoe does good deeds as part of her scheme, including providing some important reality checks and finally bringing about Lila's downfall. However, she still robs her innocent classmates blind, including stealing Adrien's trust fund immediately after Gabriel's arrest has thrown his future into doubt, without a shred of remorse, making her more the lesser of several evils than an admirable person.
• Always Someone Better: Lila's not a bad con artist, but she's completely outclassed by Zoe. The story shows that while Zoe is just as scummy and dishonest as Lila, she's much smarter, more subtle, can lie convincingly, and is able to fool everybody with a façade of niceness.
• All Men Are Perverts: Lila tries to defend herself using this logic when she learns that Adrien is pressing charges for sexual harassment. Officer Roger is not pleased and firmly shuts that line of reasoning down, pointing out that he has plenty of witnesses who can confirm Adrien was not comfortable with her advances.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • Zoe prompts Marinette to rethink her approach to asking Lila by asking a series of these. How could their classmates not believe that Lila is lying after seeing proof? Marinette has to admit she hasn't actually shown them any. Didn't Lila provide proof — faked or not — when she got Marinette expelled? Well...yes. Is it really fair to expect everyone to take one person's word when they haven't seen anything to back up their accusations? ...no, it really isn't.
  • Adrien starts to explain how Lila got Marinette expelled but is almost immediately sidetracked when Roger begins to ask questions about various breaches of procedure and the staff's Failed a Spot Check moments regarding Lila's claims. It takes only a few of these for Adrien to realize how badly the incident was mishandled, as shown when he starts questioning what other things the teachers and principal have been dropping the ball on.
• Armor-Piercing Response: When Lila's mother asks if Lila really doesn't think she's good enough for her, Lila's response is a self-centered Motive Rant that blames her mother for her father leaving and for not working hard enough to give Lila the life of luxury she felt she deserved. This drives home to Ms. Rossi just how little her daughter cares for anyone other than herself, solidifying her decision to disown Lila.
• Artistic License – Law: At the end of the story, Lila ends up in the French foster care system. Given that she is not a French citizen and the nature and magnitude of her crimes, including taking Ladybug hostage and threatening to murder her and publicly admitting to aiding a domestic terrorist, she likely would have been declared persona non grata and deported back to Italy.
• Asshole Victim: Exploited by Zoe. She targets Lila because she knows the latter has already done so many terrible things, no one will believe she isn't responsible for Zoe's crimes as well. The ending implies that such people are her preferred victims to frame for this reason - People will believe them guilty.
• Badass Bystander: Once she gets over the shock of finding out Lila's true nature, Alya sneaks up to Lie-on Hunter and grabs his gun, then uses it to unpetrify Adrien so he can help Ladybug.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • The very premise is this; it follows the usual Salt Fic plot beats of Marinette's world falling apart due to Lila's machinations until a new student shows up (this time, Zoe Lee) who quickly joins Marinette's side and help her take Lila down; of course, the switch is that Zoe doesn't give a damn about either Marinette and or Lila, merely seeing their feud as a golden opportunity to pull a huge con on the class, and her reason behind becoming Marinette's new bestie who helps her expose Lila is to turn Lila into her fall guy while she gets away scot-free.
  • Zoe corners Lila in the bathroom and reveals that she can see right through her lies and crocodile tears. However, she doesn't want to expose or blackmail Lila; she wants to team up with her. Subverted, though, in that she does plan to expose Lila, albeit not for moral reasons, but to make Lila her fall guy.
• Berserk Button: Do not harm, threaten, or mistreat Marinette. Adrien will come after you.
• Bittersweet Ending: An increased emphasis in the "sweet" part over the original story: The millions of Euros that were in the Agreste emergency fund remain stolen and the thief got away clean, but it's not Lila, and Adrien is actually happier for having lost them.
• Blaming the Victim:
  • Defied by Tikki. When she affirms Zoe's criticisms of how Marinette has been dealing with Lila, she admits she didn't bring them up herself because she didn't want Marinette to feel like she was doing this.
  • When she's questioned by the police, Lila immediately tries to throw Zoe under the bus. They assume she's trying to do this since they've already established it as a habit of hers by interviewing her classmates and their investigation hasn't found any evidence of Zoe's involvement.
  • Played straight with Lila when she finally admits that she bullied Marinette, claiming that it was her fault for getting in Lila's way.
• Blatant Lies: Discussed. When confronting Lila, Zoe outright says that anyone who bothered to look up her stories would realize she's full of it in a hurry. Zoe capitalizes on this as part of her plan to make Lila her Unwitting Pawn.
• Book Ends: The story begins and ends with Zoe having a good time with somebody else and claiming that life is good.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • Chloé knows Zoe is a Manipulative Bitch, but Zoe's warm, helpful, and friendly outward attitude even in the face of point-blank accusations to that effect are enough to convince everyone, including her father, that Chloé is just lashing out and trying to get Zoe in trouble because she's jealous of her half-sister.
  • Marinette's status as this is specifically justified. Upon hearing that no one believes her, Zoe points out that making wild accusations without proof doesn't inspire much confidence in her claim that Lila is a liar. Tikki affirms this, noting that Marinette's classmates have some good reasons for trusting Lila even without taking into account that Marinette hasn't been making a convincing case against her.
  • By the end of the story, Lila is this. She knows full well that most of the serious crimes she's being accused of were Zoe's idea, but none of the victims have any reason to believe Zoe was involved, and she doesn't have any proof that she and Zoe were in contact since they never spent time together around others and they deleted the texts they sent to each other. All her accusations do is convince the police that Lila is trying to dodge the consequences of her actions by framing an innocent classmate.
• Character Development:
  • Marinette realizes that it was unfair to expect her friends to just take her word that Lila was a liar with nothing to back that claim up. She then works on handling Lila's manipulations with a cooler head while preparing to take her down the right way: with verified proof that she's lying.
  • Adrien learns that his passive solution to dealing with Lila's lies wasn't helping Marinette and becomes more proactive in standing up for himself and his friends.
• Conspicuous Consumption:
  • Lila eagerly plans how she's going to add some designer clothing to her wardrobe with her share of the money from her and Zoe's scam. Later, she also daydreams about buying herself the latest technology and a fancy car once she's old enough to drive.
  • Defied by Zoe. While she has no qualms about using her ill-gotten money to buy nice things for herself (and being able to indulge beyond her normal budget seems to be the main reason she's a Scam Artist to begin with), she's careful not to make too many expensive purchases at once to avoid suspicion and awkward questions.
• Consummate Liar: Lila, naturally. However, it's deconstructed, as Lila's willingness to tell all sorts of petty lies for her own personal convenience makes her very vulnerable to exposure. As Zoe points out, the only reason she hasn't been caught yet is because her classmates and teachers are too trusting to double-check her claims. And once the extent of Lila's lies becomes public knowledge, no one believes anything she says, even when she's telling the truth. This is directly contrasted with Zoe, who manages to become a Karma Houdini in large part because she was very honest outside of the lies she told as part of her scam, giving her a strong degree of Plausible Deniability when Lila inevitably tried to sell her out.
• Contrived Coincidence: Chat Noir passes by Marinette's house at just the right time to see her having a breakdown over no one attending her party.
• Convicted by Public Opinion: While Lila's public confession and Hawk Moth's own testimony aren't enough to conclusively prove she was working with Hawk Moth in the eyes of the justice system, the public has seen more than enough to convince them that she knowingly aided a terrorist.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: As part of his rant about Lila, Adrien declares that if his father doesn't fire her after hearing about what she's done, he's going to dye his hair neon green. When Nino gets an odd look after bringing this up later, he declares that to Gabriel, it would absolutely be a punishment.
• Crying Wolf: After the truth of her being a Manipulative Bitch and a liar comes out, no one believes Lila's claim that Zoe was the one who orchestrated the plan to rob the students and steal Gabriel Agreste's money. They all think that she's just trying to frame a nice girl as she did with Marinette.
• Deconstruction Fic: invoked A number of salt fic tropes get targeted here:
  • Marinette automatically having the moral high ground because she's right about Lila. The very first chapter points out that while there's nothing proving Lila's claims true, Marinette hasn't shown any tangible proof that she's lying, either. In addition, Marinette's heated accusations make her seem less than credible to the outside observer, making it easy for Lila to act like she's the one being treated unfairly and dismiss her accusations as jealousy. Marinette's friends even point out in their interviews with the police that this isn't the first time Marinette has jumped to conclusions and held grudges against people over misunderstandings, so it was easy for them to accept the idea that it was happening again with Lila.
  • Marinette's classmates being depicted as irredeemable, ungrateful jerks or loyal, die-hard allies with no in-between. Here, they aren't blind idiots or irredeemable jerks, nor are they firmly on one side or the other. While they don't believe Lila is lying, they still see Marinette as a good friend and enjoy spending time with her, putting in the work to balance their friendships with the two girls and spend time with both of them despite their inability to get along. As for why they believe Lila, it's discussed that a huge part of the problem is adults they trust, like Ms. Bustier, failing to do their jobs and giving Lila special treatment she doesn't deserve. This directly reinforces the lies she's getting that special treatment for and makes it more believable when she makes similar claims later. And since they've already had to accept the reality of a supervillain using butterflies that possess people to attack teenagers for magic jewelry, Marinette's classmates have naturally developed some Willing Suspension of Disbelief regarding other far-fetched ideas.
  • The idea that Adrien is selfish enough to knowingly let Marinette suffer for his personal convenience. It's pointed out that his advice to Marinette to "take the high road" does benefit her by making it harder for Lila to target her, even if it's not a good long-term solution to the problem. He also makes the valid point that Lila got akumatized even when he privately confronted her and nicely asked her to stop lying, which left him worried that she'd do something far worse if she was actually exposed (and she later proves this fear well-founded). Emphasis is also placed on the fact that he thought Lila was just telling harmless celebrity lies when he gave that advice; once he learns about how she threatened Marinette, he immediately takes it back and gets on board with outing Lila as a liar.
  • The "Saltinette" characterization. Marinette does have some shades of it at first, being upset that her friends don't believe her and Adrien isn't doing anything, but rethinks her attitude after Zoe points out that they have some valid reasons for acting as they are and expecting them to simply take her word is unfair. It's also shown that she's not somehow better at spotting liars than the rest of her classmates, with Tikki pointing out that Marinette also believed Lila at first and only caught on because Lila made a claim Marinette knew couldn't be true. When Zoe starts manipulating the class, Marinette plays right into her hands without ever suspecting her involvement.
• Description Cut: In the first chapter, André wishes Chloé would act more like her sweet half-sister Zoe. The very next scene is of Zoe drawing up plans to turn Lila into her fall guy.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Lila takes her vendetta against the heroes out on Chat Noir, deliberately pulling him into the path of Lie-On Hunter's power. Not only was Chat fighting (albeit reluctantly) to protect her from the supervillain, he's just revealed that he's not on good terms with her. Lie-On Hunter seizes the opportunity to ask why that is, compelling Chat to inform everyone watching of her true nature.
  • Hawk Moth decides to leave his lair after Lie-On Hunter exposes Adrien as Chat Noir, revealing his identity to Adrien under the assumption that Adrien will readily defect to his side. Not only does this leave him vulnerable in the event that Adrien refuses to side with him (which he does, resulting in Gabriel's capture), the fact that he revealed his identity in public leaves no doubt as to Hawk Moth's identity, ensuring he'll spend the rest of his life in prison.
  • Lila assaults her probation officer and escapes from police custody in a last-ditch effort to salvage her situation. Not only does she miss her court date by doing this, she then proceeds to add a number of new, much more serious charges to her rap sheet by holding Marinette at knifepoint to coerce her into handing over the Miracle Box and publicly confessing her alliance with Hawkmoth.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: When Lila's life begins to fall apart, she reacts very badly, to say the least.
• Dirty Coward: Upon realizing that Lie-On Hunter is targeting her, Lila seizes the first opportunity to use Chat Noir as a human shield, throwing him to the wolves to protect herself. She later does the same after realizing she's facing some serious theft charges, selling Zoe out and trying to blame her for everything.
• Disappointed in You: Marinette admits she didn't tell Adrien about Lila threatening her because she didn't want to upset him by disagreeing with him. Adrien is quick to shut this idea down once he learns the truth, promising that a simple disagreement would never make him think less of Marinette and he would rather know when she's hurting than have her pretend to be fine for his sake.
• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • The class has lost valuable and treasured possessions to Lila and Zoe's scam but their friendships have grown stronger in the aftermath. Marinette and Adrien's secret identities have been revealed to the world, and they've had to deal with Lila coming back for revenge but Hawk Moth is finally defeated, Paris is safe, and the two are happily dating. In addition, both Lila and Chloé are finally facing the consequences of their actions, and one way or another, they won't be able to bother the heroes again.
  • A villainous example for Zoe. After putting in the work to get into her classmates' good graces, manipulate them, and engineer Lila's downfall, she's able to enjoy her stolen money knowing Lila has taken the fall for everything and she doesn't have to worry about attracting suspicion so long as she's careful with her spending.
• Easily Forgiven: Downplayed. Marinette's classmates are horrified when they realize she was telling the truth about Lila all along and wonder how they can make it up to her. Marinette, who has recently done some soul-searching regarding her own behavior, counters that she has her own apologies to make for having unfair expectations of her friends. The end result is that they more or less decide to call it even, as both sides have learned their lesson — though this doesn't stop the class from treating Marinette to all kinds of fun outings to repay her for how she's helped them as their everyday Ladybug and as the real-life Ladybug.
• Enlightened Self-Interest: From the moment she hears about Lila's outrageous lies, Zoe is plotting to engineer her downfall...and make herself a tidy profit in the bargain. Likewise, she makes sure to be friendly and generous with all of her classmates to ensure they'll never suspect her involvement when the fallout hits.
• Even Evil Has Standards: While she is still a con artist, Zoe's disgust at Lila is completely legitimate and it's part of the reason she sets Lila up as her patsy-she wants to ensure she's unable to hurt anyone else.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • Lila is genuinely shocked when she learns that her classmates take turns paying for the pastries Marinette brings in on test days. She's equally surprised by the fact that Marinette only makes free things for birthdays or other special occasions; otherwise, her classmates commission her at a fair price. To Lila, this seems absurd; why befriend someone like Marinette if not to get free stuff from her?
  • Lila's inability to comprehend good is hammered home in the epilogue, which spells out that she could have had everything she was trying to lie and scam her way into and more if she was simply a genuine friend to her classmates, and that she can't even begin to understand that this was the case.
  • After Hawk Moth is revealed to be Adrien's father, Chloé fully expects her classmates to turn against Adrien (and, in turn, leave her as his Only Friend once again). Them instead realizing he was just as much of a victim and standing by him instead because they're all his friends floors her.
• Exact Words: Zoe likes to use this to keep her deceptions as credible as possible.
  • Zoe offers to personally deliver Adrien's invitation to Marinette's party since his unpredictable schedule means he might not get it if they just leave it in his locker. Zoe already knows for a fact that Adrien won't get the invitation if it's left in his locker, since Lila is waiting to steal all the invitations as soon as Zoe and Marinette are back in the classroom.
  • At one point, before going out, Zoe leaves a note for Andre assuring him she's just going to the post office to ship some of her things back to New York. She is going to the post office to mail out packages, but they're actually the clothing and valuables she and Lila swindled their classmates out of being sent off to their buyers.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: As Adrien explains to the police why he suspects Lila is the one who emptied his trust fund, he recounts Marinette's expulsion as an example of how vindictive Lila can be. It's only as he describes it to someone else that he realizes just how absurd it was that the staff believed her claims to begin with, which leads him to question what else they might have dropped the ball on. The police are equally concerned and promptly launch an investigation.
• False Reassurance: When Zoe "realizes" she's the only one at Marinette's party, she suggests that maybe all their classmates are sick with the same stomach bug Lila claimed to have the previous day, despite being well aware that no one is sick and that Lila is responsible for the class's absence.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Lila is arrogant and believes she's far more intelligent and subtle than she is. Zoe easily manipulates her by flattering her and stroking her ego, then leveraging her desire to make it big without lifting a finger.
  • Gabriel is a Control Freak who believes he has the right to dictate everyone's lives to suit his own desires. In particular, he believes Adrien would never dare to oppose him. This is the direct cause of his downfall, as he reveals his identity in public believing Adrien will give him the ring and let him make the Wish unopposed. Adrien's refusal to do so catches him completely by surprise, allowing the heroes to flip the tables and defeat him.
• Foil: Zoe and Lila. Both are liars and manipulators who put on kind, helpful facades while secretly planning to take advantage of others to benefit themselves. However, some crucial differences set them apart:
  • Lila has a massive ego and relies on grandiose, impressive-sounding lies to gain attention, while Zoe prefers to fly under the radar and quietly build up trust among her would-be victims.
  • Zoe has a strong grasp of subtlety that Lila lacks. While Lila's lies sound impressive, they're easily disproven by anyone who bothers to do some basic research, and her default strategy when confronted is to make a show of Playing the Victim Card. Zoe goes out of her way to make sure her deceptions will hold up to scrutiny, being truthful whenever possible and making sure the lies she does tell are difficult to refute.
  • Lila only thinks about short-term gain, as exemplified when she thinks of the designer clothes she's going to buy with her share of the money. Zoe is always playing the long game, both in her setup of Lila and looking ahead to what's going to happen afterward. In the epilogue, she notes that if she's careful, she can make the money she stole from her former classmates last until she's ready to leave for college, which will be the perfect time to find a new target and pull the whole scam again.
• Foregone Conclusion: The story's first chapter makes it clear that Zoe is going to bring Lila down as part of her grand scheme. The question of how that scheme will play out is what drives the plot.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the first chapter, Zoe explains to Marinette that punishing a person based on one person's claims without any proof to back them up is essentially a witch hunt, which any reasonable person knows is unfair. When Lila is interrogated by the police, she can't produce any proof that Zoe was her co-conspirator, leading to her claims being dismissed as efforts to pin her crimes (of which the police have ample evidence) on Zoe.
  • When she realizes how much money is going to come out of their scheme, Lila muses that she might be able to double-cross Zoe and keep it all for herself. She's the one who winds up getting double-crossed when Zoe skips town earlier than expected, leaving her with no access to the account containing their stolen funds and all the evidence pointing to her as the thief.
  • Lila happens to bump into Vincent while keeping watch so Zoe can steal Adrien's trust fund. His testimony later places her outside of Gabriel's office at the time the account was breached from his computer, cementing her as the prime suspect.
• Framing the Guilty Party: Part of the reason Zoe is able to make her scam so successful is that she specifically targets people who are already guilty of other crimes, meaning that when she turns around and frames them after exposing them, no one is going to think twice about one more crime being added to the pile.
• Grew a Spine: Adrien's Character Development revolves around this; learning how much Marinette has been going through motivates him to stand up to Lila, his classmates, and even his father as he works to make up for unwittingly abandoning her to suffer.
• Guilt by Association:
  • Adrien manages to avoid this due to being revealed as Chat Noir and publicly denouncing his father upon learning he was Hawk Moth, even after being tempted with the idea of resurrecting his mother using the Wish. Though a minority still believe he might have been involved, most people take these revelations as a sure sign of his innocence, offering condolences and wishing him luck.
  • Zoe is careful to avoid leaving any traceable connection to Lila so that when everything inevitably comes crashing down, no one will have proof that she was involved if and when Lila tries to throw her under the bus.
  • After Gabriel is revealed as Hawk Moth, his employees jump ship en masse, not wanting anything to do with him or his numerous crimes. Vincent the photographer specifically worries that working for a supervillain, even unknowingly, might make it difficult for him to find another job.
• Head-in-the-Sand Management: Miss Bustier and Principal Damocles are guilty of this. Not only did they enable Lila by never bothering to fact-check her disability claims or the forged excuse notes she gave them, despite that being their job, Marinette's expulsion happened entirely because they never stopped to think critically about some of the extremely flimsy accusations and evidence Lila set up — nor did they think to check the school's security footage to see what really happened. Adrien also points out that none of the students' lockers have working locks, which Lila and Chloé have both taken advantage of, yet there's no sign that the staff intends to get them fixed. And that's not even getting into how they let Chloé leverage her father's name to get away with her bullying...
• Heroic Bystander: Despite being unable to go toe-to-toe with Lie-On Hunter due to not having a Miraculous, Alya still manages to catch him off-guard, steal his weapon, and use it to reverse the truth-telling compulsion on Chat Noir, putting him back into the fight.
• Hollywood Hacking: How Zoe manages to access Adrien's trust fund. Played with in that she does need to make the hack from a computer with some level of access, namely the one in Gabriel's office at the company building.
• I Have No Son!:
  • After Adrien puts his foot down and stands up to his father, Gabriel says this almost word-for-word. Adrien is all too happy to disown Gabriel in return.
  • Lila's mother is horrified by the extent of Lila's petty, vindictive efforts to ruin Marinette's life. When she visits Lila in jail and Lila tries to blame her for not giving Lila everything she wanted, showing just how self-centered and ungrateful she is for how hard her mother has worked to support them both, Ms. Rossi decides their relationship is irreparable and disowns Lila, leaving her to her fate.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • The story still begins with a picnic in the park near the bakery. However, who's included and who wasn't invited are different this time around, and for different reasons.
  • Marinette's classmates still lose valuables and the nice clothes Marinette made for them to Lila's scams. However, their reasons for parting with them are very different.
  • Adrien still gets robbed of a large sum of money. In this case, however, it wasn't due to negligence on his part, and he gets compensated for the theft, with Lila's own trust fund and college savings accounts being drained to repay him.
  • One person still ends up taking the fall for someone else's crimes, suffering theft, mistrust, and ostracization while the real culprit is a Karma Houdini. In this case, it's Lila taking the fall, while Zoe keeps Lila's share of their ill-gotten gains and hightails it back to New York without even being suspected of wrongdoing.
• Internal Reveal:
  • In Chapter 4, Adrien, as Chat Noir, learns about how Lila threatened Marinette after Lila and Zoe trick the rest of the class into ditching Marinette's party.
  • In Chapter 5, Adrien comes clean to Nino about how Lila has been lying and manipulating the class.
  • In Chapter 6, Chat Noir, Ladybug, and Hawk Moth all have their identities publicly revealed, and Adrien and Marinette out Lila as a liar to the class.
  • In Chapter 11, Lila publicly boasts about how she helped Hawk Moth, which gets her charged for that previously unknown crime as well.
• Irony:
  • Chloé knows her half-sister is a Manipulative Bitch, but thanks to her own history of selfishness, bullying, and petty overreactions to minor slights, nobody believes her.
  • Lila is a Consummate Liar who constantly uses her lies to take advantage of others, but she never considers the possibility that the Manipulative Bitch she's teamed up with might take advantage of her in the same way.
• Karma Houdini: Zoe is one. Unlike Lila in the original story, none of the heroes or authority figures even suspect Zoe of being a thief. She gets away clean and can enjoy her stolen fortune without anyone having a clue what she did to get it.
• Karma Houdini Warranty:
  • Zoe's scheme revolves around revoking Lila's by using her as an Unwitting Pawn in her own con and then leaving her to take the fall. It works.
  • Chloé's runs out when her father finally puts his foot down about her Spoiled Brat antics and sends her to a correctional boarding school that specializes in dealing with rich kids like her.
• Karmic Misfire: Downplayed. While the guilty parties get their Laser-Guided Karma, the classmates and Adrien suffer some unfortunate consequences in the fallout, despite having no involvement in the actual crimes.
  • Marinette's classmates are the unambiguous victims of Zoe and Lila's scheme; they lose treasured bespoke outfits that Marinette made for them and some of their most valuable possessions simply because they trusted the wrong people. While they are financially compensated for their loss, that doesn't bring back Marinette's hard work or the items they were swindled out of, many of which had both monetary and sentimental value.
  • Adrien is saved from Guilt by Association but he still suffers the emotional hardship of losing both his parents, financial ruin thanks to his father's stocks tanking, and he can't even go back to his own house because the police are scouring it for evidence. In addition, his closest relatives are in London, so he'd have to move away from all his friends to live with them. Then, to top it all off, his trust fund is stolen, leaving him without even that financial safety net. Fortunately, by the end, much of this is turned around. His friends band together to offer comfort and support; he's repaid out of Lila's own trust fund and college accounts; and his aunt is able to arrange for him to stay in Paris under the care of his bodyguard, setting him up with an apartment in the same building where Nino lives. He can't recover his father's massive fortune but by then he's decided he can live with that.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Once she realizes all the evidence is against her, Lila gives up on feigning innocence and decides to tell the truth for once. Unfortunately for her, doing this makes her veer directly into Hoist by His Own Petard. The truth includes Zoe's involvement, but when she's told there's no evidence of that, Lila buckles down and insists the whole thing was Zoe's idea, making it look like she's still up to her old tricks.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Lila eagerly seizes on the chance to crush Marinette once and for all, dupe their classmates into giving her their most valuable possessions, and sell them off for a massive profit. As a result, she's used as an Unwitting Pawn in Zoe's schemes, her lies and affiliation with Hawk Moth are publicly exposed, her college money and trust funds are confiscated to repay the victims of the scam, and her mother disowns her, leaving her stuck in a foster home with other juvenile delinquents until she turns 18.
  • Miss Bustier and Principal Damocles completely mishandled Marinette's expulsion and gave Lila special treatment for the disabilities she claimed to have without verifying those claims. When Adrien unwittingly reveals this in his statement to the police, they launch an investigation into the school. By the end of it, both are fired and will likely never be able to work teaching jobs again.
  • The investigation into the school also leads to Mayor Bourgois being investigated for corruption and abuse of power. While his name is cleared, he's well aware that his career was almost ruined by Chloé's habit of throwing his name around to get her way. As a result, he's finally forced to put his foot down and do something about her behavior.
  • Chloé's Alpha Bitch mentality finally comes back to bite her when her father puts his foot down and ships her off to a boarding school that specializes in reforming Spoiled Brats.
• Lighter and Softer: The story is notably more positive to some of the characters (especially Adrien) than the original, all of them apologetic to Marinette for not believing her and working to make things better after Lila is exposed.
• Like Father, Like Son: When Adrien confronts his classmates over not showing up for Marinette's party, it's noted that Adrien's relation to his much sterner father is very obvious when he's angry.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: Overall, Adrien has very little in common with his father. One of the most crucial differences between them is hammered home when Gabriel reveals his identity and tries to convince Adrien to make a Face–Heel Turn so they can bring back Emilie. Adrien responds with a blistering "The Reason You Suck" Speech, spelling out that Gabriel doesn't care how his selfish Wish would affect anyone else. He then points out how many people would suffer if Gabriel had his way, affirming his intent to stand with Ladybug and protect the people he cares about, even if it means never getting his mom back.
• Little Miss Con Artist: Lila and Zoe both try to be this, Zoe more effectively.
• Love Epiphany: Played with. Adrien was already in love with Ladybug, but when he learns that she's also Marinette, he immediately realizes that he loves both of her identities and only treasures them more now that he knows they're the same person.
• Manipulative Bitch: Lila certainly thinks she's this, considering how easily she convinces her classmates to cater to her whims with her lies. But the real master of manipulation is Zoe, who plays everyone around her, including Marinette, like a fiddle in pursuit of her own goals.
  • From the very beginning, Zoe begins priming Marinette to bring about Lila's downfall by giving her advice on how to actually convince her classmates she's telling the truth. She then piles on the pressure by engineering a situation where Marinette's classmates appear to ditch her in favor of Lila, giving her even more motivation to out Lila as soon as possible.
  • At the same time she's setting herself up as a friend and ally to Marinette, Zoe is leveraging that status to create the illusion that a rift is opening up between Marinette and the rest of the class.
  • Zoe offers to team up with Lila and leverage Marinette's trust in her to not only achieve Lila's goal of turning Marinette's friends against her but also scam their classmates and make some money in the bargain. Lila agrees readily, unaware that Zoe has already planted the seeds for her downfall and is just using her to do the dirty work so she can take the fall for everything.
• Motive Rant: When her mother visits her in jail, Lila angrily blames her for her actions, declaring that she deserves a life of fame, fortune, and glamour that a mere diplomat's secretary could never provide. If her mother had bothered to work harder and make something worthwhile of herself rather than settling for an office job, Lila's father wouldn't have left them...or so Lila claims.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Adrien is horrified when he realizes that Lila has been threatening Marinette and actively trying to isolate her from her friends, and that she felt she couldn't confide in him for fear of disappointing him after hearing his "high road" advice. He immediately reverses his stance on taking the high road and ignoring Lila, agreeing that she needs to be dealt with as soon as possible.
  • Adrien, again, when he realizes that losing his cool and unloading the truth about Lila has only given her ammunition to use against him as well — and that's before he learns that his actions upset Nino enough to get him akumatized.
  • The class has a collective one when Adrien (while being forced to tell the truth by Lie-On Hunter) reveals Lila's true nature and explains how she targeted Marinette, as well as admitting that he didn't speak up sooner because he believed they'd just ignore him the way they had Marinette. Then they have an even bigger one when Lie-On Hunter manages to take Ladybug's earrings, revealing that she's Marinette and cementing the truthfulness of Adrien's claims.
  • Discussed by Adrien during his "The Reason You Suck" Speech: he refutes his father's claim that Wishing to bring his mother back would fix their family by pointing out that Emilie would always blame herself for the fact that the Wish put someone else into a coma in her place.
  • A downplayed version after investigators review the footage from the school's security cameras; once Adrien learns that Lila took advantage of the school's unsecured lockers to steal everyone's invitations to Marinette's party, he apologizes for thinking the worst of his classmates and blowing his lid at them over it.
• Never My Fault: While sitting in a jail cell and waiting to find out exactly what she'll be charged with, Lila bitterly curses Hawk Moth for not being able to akumatize her so she can fix her situation, ignoring the fact that her current troubles are entirely the result of her own actions. She also blames her mother for not working harder to give her the life of luxury she so clearly deserves.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Invoked. While Adrien is chewing his classmates out for blowing off Marinette's party, Zoe "accidentally" knocks over Lila's donation box filled with the nice clothes Marinette made, revealing to Adrien that the class gave them away. Adrien, unaware that Lila had to browbeat them into handing over the clothes, promptly gets on their collective case for that, as well.
  • When Nino tries to confront Adrien about his previous outburst, Adrien launches into a rant detailing Lila's misdeeds and his own unwitting role in enabling her. Nino is left shocked, conflicted, and unsure of who's telling the truth, giving Hawk Moth the perfect opportunity to akumatize him. The ensuing battle reveals both Ladybug and Chat Noir's identities to the entire class, and the news quickly spreads from there.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Lila deliberately pulls Chat Noir into a hit from Lie-On Hunter, which compels him to reveal any truth the akuma wants. After forcing Chat to reveal that he's Adrien, Lie-On Hunter seizes the opportunity to ask whether he was telling the truth about Lila. Adrien confirms—in front of the entire class—that Lila is a Consummate Liar and Manipulative Bitch.
  • After the above-mentioned incident, Hawk Moth personally joins the battle, believing he finally has victory in his grasp. He's caught completely flat-footed when Adrien refuses to surrender the ring, giving Marinette an opening to take back the earrings and take him down for good.
• Not What It Looks Like: Zoe takes full and repeated advantage of this.
  • Zoe cozies up to Marinette, even declaring them 'besties,' to create the illusion that Marinette is pulling away from the rest of the class. Marinette still considers her classmates (sans Lila and Chloé) good friends, but Alya certainly doesn't see it that way...
  • Zoe and Lila conspire to deal a massive blow to Marinette by convincing her to throw a party for the class and then ensuring no one receives their invitation. Lila then invites everyone to a movie at the exact same time as the party. From Marinette and Adrien's perspective, it looks like the rest of the class ditched Marinette in favor of Lila.
  • Lila organizes a Fake Charity and, with great effort, persuades her classmates to donate bespoke clothing Marinette made for them. The classmates are extremely reluctant to part with treasured gifts from a dear friend, but Adrien, who's already upset with them over a previous instance of this trope, doesn't see it that way when Zoe "accidentally" spills the contents of the donation box.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Lila has her first of many such moments when Adrien learns about her Fake Charity, internally noting that he wasn't supposed to find out and trying to run damage control.
  • Adrien, when he realizes that his rant about Lila upset Nino enough that he was akumatized.
  • Ladybug has a massive one when Lie-On Hunter forces Chat Noir to detransform in front of their entire class.
  • The class has one when Ladybug and Chat Noir are exposed as Marinette and Adrien, then again when Hawk Moth shows up and reveals that he's Gabriel Agreste. Meanwhile, Lila has yet another panicked moment over her lies being exposed, which cues Zoe to begin the final stage of her plan.
  • Lila has another when Adrien raids her home as Chat Noir in search of everything that was stolen, right after she bemoaned the realization that Zoe just played her.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Adrien rarely gets upset, so when he loses his cool and reams his classmates out for seemingly treating Marinette's hard work as worthless, they're seriously taken aback.
• Point of Divergence: Zoe's influence plus Marinette's classmates not derailed into Hate Sinks causes many things to play out differently from the fic that inspired this one.
  • Thanks to Zoe's interference and a chance meeting as Chat Noir, Adrien sees firsthand how much Marinette is struggling to cope with Lila's manipulations. This prompts him to abandon his earlier "high road" stance and begin to openly speak out against Lila.
  • In The Karma Of Lies, Lila never expected Marinette's classmates to give away the clothes she made for them and was only holding the fake charity drive in the hope of scoring some new clothes for herself. Here, she specifically wants the pieces Marinette made, because Zoe knows how much money one-of-a-kind, handmade outfits of that quality are worth to the right people. Actually getting the clothes also proves a lot more difficult, as Marinette's classmates value her work and don't take her for granted in this version. When Lila suggests that they give the bespoke clothes Marinette gave them to her "charity drive," they're extremely reluctant to give them up, to the point of saying she can have Anything but That! It takes a lot of persuasion and guilt-tripping from Lila to convince them to part with the clothing.
  • Adrien's response to his father revealing himself as Hawkmoth is completely different. Rather than Blaming the Victim and showing sympathy for the perpetrator, he stands his ground and delivers a massive "The Reason You Suck" Speech, denouncing how badly they've hurt everyone around them. His reputation is salvaged as a result, with only a small minority being willing to even entertain the idea that he was in league with his father.
• Playing the Victim Card: As per usual, this is Lila's favorite strategy when someone tries to call her out or confront her. As later chapters reveal, it's also more or less her only strategy, so when it stops working, she's got no way to recover.
• Plot Hole: Adrien and Marinette definitively out Lila as a liar during Lie-On Hunter's attack. The next day, the class acts as though that never happened. While it's possible Lila's misdeeds weren't at the forefront of their minds, given the other new information they've been dealing with, it's still odd that that they aren't more wary of her, or that no one brings it up even when confronted by the idea that Lila has stolen from them.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • Zoe recognizes that the best way to escape punishment for her schemes is to be completely above suspicion; thus, she goes out of her way to be genuinely caring and helpful to her classmates, particularly Marinette and Adrien, while scheming with Lila behind the scenes. And once she's gotten away scot-free with her stolen money, she's careful not to spend too much at once, both so her father won't get suspicious and so the money will last until she's 18 when she can move away for college to escape the fallout of her next heist.
  • Lie-On Hunter is primarily after Lila but when he manages to hit Chat Noir with his truth-extracting power, he decides to take full advantage of it, starting by forcing Chat to reveal his identity and then making him explain why he dislikes Lila so much.
• Reconstruction: Downplayed with Adrien's "high road" approach. While it's made clear that it's not a good long-term solution for dealing with Lila, once Marinette adopts it she's able to deny Lila the easy opportunities she formerly had to discredit Marinette and dismiss her accusations as the product of jealousy. This eases some of the tension between Marinette and her classmates over her accusations toward Lila and gives Marinette time to brainstorm a more effective way to take down the liar.
• Recursive Fanfiction: To The Karma of Lies. The beginning and end of both stories are closely parallelized; both stories start with Marinette suffering through a bad picnic which Lila is using to hurt her, and both end with:
  • The person who was smashed by karma (Adrien in the original, Lila here) sitting in a spartan bedroom and despairing at the collapse of their fortunes.
  • Marinette running across the rooftops with her loving superhero boyfriend (Luka in the original, Adrien here) and delighting in how great her life is.
  • The con artist who got away with it (Lila in the original, Zoe here) celebrating her ill-gotten gains.
• The Scapegoat: Zoe succeeds in making it look like Lila was the sole one responsible for robbing her parents and Gabriel Agreste.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Both Zoe and Lila try to pull this once they've got what they want, with varying degrees of success.
  • Zoe goes to her stepdad and feigns homesickness, "reluctantly" asking him to send her home to be with her biological father. It works like a charm, and within a day she's on a plane back to New York.
  • Lila tells her mother about how she "accidentally" worked for Hawk Moth and convinces her to transfer back to Italy. Her getaway isn't so clean, however, as by the time she's ready to leave, the police have identified her as the prime suspect in the theft of Adrien's trust fund. They take her in for questioning before she can leave the city, and from there, it's all downhill for her.
• Shipper on Deck: Implied. Zoe has no problem with helping Marinette and Adrien get closer together, but whether she genuinely thinks they'd make a good couple or she just wants them to team up and bring Lila down faster is left ambiguous.
• Shout-Out: Adrien had apparently threatened to dye his hair neon green if Gabriel didn't fire Lila.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • It's implied that Zoe offers to hand-deliver Adrien's invitation because she genuinely wants him to show up for Marinette's party while the rest of the class appears to ditch her for Lila. However, Adrien doesn't get the invitation and has no idea about the party until he happens to pass by as Chat Noir. Zoe speculates that Nathalie, whom she left the invitation with, never gave it to him, and Chat Noir internally concedes that this sounds like something Nathalie would do.
  • Zoe certainly never counted on Marinette and Adrien turning out to be Ladybug and Chat Noir, but is able to adjust her plans accordingly. Lila isn't so fortunate, and this turn of events proves to be the death knell for her.
• Swiss Bank Account: Zoe stashes the profits from her scam in an offshore account the French police can't trace or access. They offer Lila leniency in exchange for giving them the account information so they can recover the money, but she doesn't know any of it, so her own trust fund and college savings accounts are emptied to compensate her victims.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Adrien points out that even if Lila is telling the truth and Zoe was the true mastermind of the con who ran away with the spoils and left Lila behind to take the fall, he finds it a fitting punishment for her, given how Lila framed Marinette for actions she didn't do as part of Lila's bullying campaign against her.
• Take That!: Lila is surprised that Marinette actually charges money for the clothes she makes for her classmates (unless it's a special moment like a birthday), which they find normal since not only making clothes take a lot of skilled work, but just the materials alone can cost quite a penny. The author confirmed that this is a shot at the common fandom-specific plot in Salt Fics where Marinette does this for free to both sanctify her and portray the classmates as a bunch of Ungrateful Bastards.
• Tempting Fate: The day before she leaves Paris, Lila happily fantasizes about how she's going to spend her newfound wealth, mentally declaring that her life is going to be good. The next day, it all comes crashing down when the police identify her as the prime suspect and take her in for questioning, signaling the expiration of her Karma Houdini Warranty.
• Truth Serum: Frustrated and confused about who to believe, Nino gets akumatized into Lie-on Hunter, with the power to freeze and force his targets to tell the truth.
• Unwitting Pawn: Lila thinks she and Zoe are equal partners. In reality, Zoe is using Lila to do most of the heavy lifting in her schemes and is planning to cut her loose and let her take the fall for both of them. Likewise, Zoe sets herself up as a friend and ally to Marinette and Adrien so she can use them to expose Lila when the time is right.
• Villain Protagonist: Zoe is the main character, and while she's got more moral footing to stand on than the other villainous characters, she's still a Manipulative Bitch who uses everyone around her to achieve her own ends and displays a Lack of Empathy to rival Lila's.
• Villain Respect: Even after Chloé has correctly accused her of being a Manipulative Bitch and tried her best to undermine her, Zoe still finds a few kind words to say about her half-sister. This isn't entirely motivated by altruism, however; by showing concern for the resident Alpha Bitch, Zoe further cements her reputation as a caring person who wouldn't lie to and scam her classmates.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Zoe is a Little Miss Con Artist, and it's implied that she has scammed multiple people before. Still, no one suspects anything about her since she puts on a front of a nice and sweet girl, and makes sure to only reveal her true self to people who nobody would trust their word.
• Wham Line:
  • From Chat Noir: "Plagg, claws in," after Lie-On Hunter compels him to reveal his secrets in front of their entire class.
  • "I'm right here!" Said by Hawk Moth, announcing that he's come out to personally take part in the battle with Lie-On Hunter.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Zoe gives a gentle one to Marinette when she points out how unfair it is for her to expect her classmates to believe Lila is lying without offering any proof.
  • Subverted when Chat Noir leaves Marinette's failed party. The minute Adrien detransforms, Plagg is on his case — until Adrien explains that he's only going to be gone long enough that he could have reasonably snuck out of his own house and hurried to Marinette's. He even starts running in place to work up a convincing sweat. Plagg's disappointment immediately turns to approval.
  • Adrien loses his temper and lets his classmates have it for ditching Marinette's party and giving away the nice clothes she made for them, unaware that it's Not What It Looks Like.
  • In her police interview, Marinette admits to following Adrien and Lila to the park. The interviewer reacts with concern, prompting Marinette to admit that it definitely wasn't one of her better moments.
• Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: This is Officer Roger's reaction upon hearing how the teachers at Francois-Dupont handled Marinette's expulsion, particularly Lila's supposed fall down the stairs.
  Roger: How stupid are your teachers?
  Adrien: (scowling) You tell me.
• You Wouldn't Believe Me If I Told You: As far as Adrien was aware, his classmates during "Ladybug" choose to believe a random girl over Marinette for no reason (unaware that they thought that Marinette was being too impulsive over a girl she was jealous for getting near her crush). If they didn't believe a kindhearted girl they knew for years, why would they believe a guy they only knew for one year?

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