Chloé's Lament: Death and Changes
is a Miraculous Ladybug fanfic by Cartoon Addict 564. It is a spinoff of the Lament Series.
Following the original story
, Chloé decides that she hates this new world and wants to regain the Miraculouses so she can make a better Wish. Unfortunately, it seems that doing so will be much harder than she thinks, thanks to the unforgiving nature of her new world.
For previous works by the same author, see The Karma of Lies, Two Letters, and Alix The Dummy.
Chloé's Lament: Death and Changes contains examples of:
- Accidental Hero: Chloé interviews Lady Wi-Fi for Alya's blog to try and further their friendship, with the secondary effect of distracting the villain from causing mayhem long enough for the heroes to show up.
- Adaptational Intelligence: Lila, especially when compared to the main Lament scenarios. In her personal Lament story, she wishes to be Gabriel Agreste's heir, ignoring every negative thing Adrien has said about the experience. Here, she instead wished to live like Gabriel's heir, having taken Adrien's comments into account. However, the trope is also deconstructed; Lila being smarter than normal doesn't mean she's capable of outsmarting divine beings like kwamis, and even though the world they build her scrupulously accords with her new Wish, she's still as miserable here as she was in the other Lament stories.
- Adaptational Karma: In canon, the worst fate Bob Roth suffers for his sleazy, lazy and underhanded business practices is having both a promising new musician turn down his offer and his best star quitting, while he himself runs free. Here, Bob and his son get arrested after Chloé exposes their history of mistreating several young girls on live television.
- Adaptational Superpower Change: In the canonical show, Sabrina has the Dog Miraculous, Marinette has the Ladybug, and Chloe has the Bee. By the end of this story, Sabrina has the Ladybug Miraculous, Marinette has the Bee, and Chloe has the Dog.
- Aesop Collateral Damage: Several people, such as Alix, Ms. Mendeleiev, and Ms. Rossi, are decisively worse off in the new reality. Plagg eventually reveals this was entirely deliberate; their lives were altered in order to make Chloé's life even harder. He and the rest of the kwami show absolutely no remorse for this; as Fu explains, this is because the kwamis are acting solely according to their natures (e.g., Tikki creating a world which will help create a way for Chloé to improve, and Plagg setting up ways to destroy Chloé if she doesn't) and are incapable of considering other aspects, such as if they're being humane, like humans could.
- All Just a Dream: The first part of the first chapter features Chloé having a nightmare about a monstrous Plagg taunting and then killing her.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear if Nightmare Plagg is real, with Plagg somehow getting into Chloé's dreams, or just Chloé having a bad nightmare.
- Animal Motifs:
- Chloé is repeatedly compared to a dog. Barkk and Plagg go further and compare her to a 'rabid dog' based on how she mindlessly and cruelly attacks others, even to her own detriment.
- After Lila takes to attending school in flashy and gaudy clubbing clothes, she's compared to an 'ostentatious bird', foreshadowing her taking up the Peacock Miraculous at the story's end.
- Arc Words: "It was easier to die than to change."
- Back from the Dead: Chloé is killed by Alix's various akumas, but Red Queen brings her back with Miraculous Cure. Eventually Alix overrides Hawkmoth's control of her akuma and gives herself the ability to bring Chloé back so she can kill her as many times as she wants.
- Be Careful What You Wish For:
- Chloé Wished to trade lives with Marinette, incorrectly assuming she'd get everything Marinette currently had: the adoration of most of their classmates, the Ladybug Earrings, and all the fame she was convinced her long-time target got to enjoy as a superheroine. By the time the story begins, Chloé already missed out on her chance to be chosen as the new Ladybug holder and realized too late that she'd basically handed Marinette all the privileges she's originally enjoyed as the Mayor's daughter in exchange for becoming a "lowly baker's daughter" who actually gets punished for her bratty bullying. Naturally, she intends to "fix" this by making another Wish.
- Over the course of the series, it's spelled out that the kwami intentionally invoke this whenever anyone makes a selfish Wish with Gimmi, twisting the wording of their request around to turn it against them and tailoring the world into the recipient's personal Epiphanic Prison.
- Eventually, it's revealed that this applies to Lila as well, who won in the first, original timeline and Wished to enjoy the same kind of lifestyle as Gabriel's heir. The kwami obliged by transforming her mother into a cutthroat, shamelessly corrupt woman who put the "Ass" in Ambassador... and kickstarted her career by betraying her own husband in order to "justify" a divorce.
- Bio-Armor: Felice Fournier's sentimonster functions as this. It's essentially a hollow body which wraps around Fournier's maimed and shattered one, and it makes the thief far stronger and tougher than before.
- Blackmail: In order to persuade Gabriel into allowing Adrien to have a birthday party, Marinette threatened to report him for breaking child labor laws.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: As embodiments of their respective concepts, the kwami cannot grasp concepts that lie outside their domain. Plagg, for instance, only knows destruction in all its forms, and so once Plagg gets the job of building a world that will either destroy Chloé's bad nature or destroy Chloé herself, Plagg does so without considering (or being able to consider) the collateral damage. Master Fu states this is specifically why kwami need human holders; ideally, said humans are able to balance out their kwami by simply being capable of comprehending more than the kwami can.
- Book Dumb: Due to Chloé having forced Sabrina to do all her schoolwork for years, Chloé is deeply ignorant of the material she's expected to know. Not only is she totally lost when forced to do assignments and quizzes in school, but even when she tries to study, she doesn't have the background and context to understand the current work. And since she's banned from using the school tutoring service (on account of trying to force the tutors to cheat for her), she can't get help there either.
- Canon Character All Along: The seemingly Original Character Felice Fournier is eventually revealed to be this universe's equivalent of Felix Fathom, whom the kwami reworked into a proper Foil for Chloé as part of his punishment for attempting genocide against humanity in the original timeline.
- Caught on Tape: Happens several times throughout the story:
- Bob Roth is undone by his own Evil Gloating thanks to his threats against Alya and bragging about what a massive Con Artist he is being secretly recorded.
- This also contributes to Cover Up's defeat, when he realizes his ability to erase the people he licks from everyone's memories won't work if his crimes are being broadcast to all of Paris.
- One of the ways Lila exploits her mother's connections is by having all of the security cameras at Collège Françoise Dupont temporarily disabled ahead of a representative from the Italian embassy paying a visit.
- Chloé banks on the reporters and press at Marinette's big fashion show coming to investigate the commotion she causes and catching footage of Marinette slapping her.
- Perhaps the most convoluted example comes during the final arc: Chloé uses the Peacock Pin to create a time-traveling sentimonster to send her, Lila and Barkk back to the day when Chiara convinced her daughter to lie about her father, purchasing a camera during that time period in order to film the incident. She then has Lila send it to an old email address from that time that she still retained, ensuring it has all the right metadata to be accepted as legitimate.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Marinette mentions a few times that she's experimenting with making outfits out of rayon, a kind of synthetic fabric which is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than silk while looking and feeling very similarly. Rayon is noted to have the significant problem of dissolving when it gets wet, making it unsuitable for outdoor wear. Near the story's climax, Marinette is akumatized and attacks people with the thread she was using to make her outfits—allowing Alix to shoot out a fire sprinkler system and soak the rayon, resulting in the threads falling apart and Marinette being unable to use them.
- Alix's world-class shooting ability is also referenced several times before Alix uses it to save Chloe and Lila in the climax.
- Darkest Hour: "Mad Catter": Red Queen is dead, Adrien turns into Mad Catter, destroys the school and parts of Paris, Chloé and the other survivors try to escape only for Fournier to capture them at gunpoint just as they reach a helicopter, and all the while Chloé is wracked by guilt for inadvertently causing the akumatization in the first place.
- Detrimental Determination:
- Despite how her Wish utterly ruined her life, Chloé swiftly decides that she's going to figure out who the new heroes are, steal their Miraculouses, and make another Wish, consequences be damned. This determination drives her to repeatedly cause akumas, even when that results in said akumas gunning for her.
- Alya also wants to learn who the heroes are, and refuses to let a paltry thing like the Mayor declaring her intent to punish anyone who tries to expose their identities harshly get in her way.
- Alya similarly zeroes in on Felice Fournier, deciding she's going to research the thief and uncover all her secrets so they can be exposed to the world... without considering how Fournier has already demonstrated herself to be a self-centered criminal who has absolutely no qualms about hurting anyone she deems to be in her way, including children.
- Lila keeps attempting to get closer to Adrien even after he makes clear that she's got absolutely no shot at winning his heart. This includes trying to sabotage his relationships with other girls, leaving her utterly terrified when one of her targets gets akumatized.
- Driven to Suicide:
- In Chapter 16, Chloé attempts to drown herself in the Seine post-Heel Realization. Alya prevents her from making it into the water.
- Chapter 20 reveals that Lila eventually killed herself in the universe she created, as she was unable to cope with being responsible for how dramatically her mother had changed as a result of her Wish.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Chloe goes through absolute Hell, including being murdered thousands of times by Alix and also being driven to attempting suicide, but in the end she manages to become a better person, improve the lives of those around her, gain real friends (including a girlfriend), and even receive a new Miraculous as she finally achieves redemption.
- Eldritch Abomination:
- Nightmare Plagg comes off as this, and is particularly noted as having more teeth than a cat should have.
- It's eventually revealed Barkk also has a nightmarish form. Alya compares it to a cornerhound.
- Forced Transformation: Alya gets a second Akumatized form who can turn people into dogs.
- Foreshadowing:
- When she sees Lila for the first time in the new reality, Chloé remembers her vanishing from school in the prior world and muses that she probably killed herself or something like that. It's played as a joke on Chloé being so ignorant and uncurious that she had no idea what happened to Lila (who, in the canonical show, was pretending to be abroad at the time). However, Chapter 20 reveals that this is exactly what happened: Lila hung herself in Chloe's original reality.
- Similarly, Lila knowing the right page in the Grimoire to find the picture of Volpina and Lila saying Chloé is 'worse than before' are glossed over, but both indicate that Lila has also lived through the world before.
- The kwamis mention that Felix was genocidal. Chloé has no idea what they're talking about, since she restarted the world during her stint as Miracle Queen and Felix hadn't committed any genocides by that point. This is a clue that there was a world before the one Chloé knew and remembered; Felix was genocidal in that world.
- Felice Fournier's introduction as a skilled but somewhat immature thief who has the initials FF and who targets Gabriel in particular are hints that she is the new reality's version of Felix Fathom.
- Going for the Big Scoop:
- Deconstructed; Alya's efforts to record akuma fights result in her being attacked by multiple akumas, which not only scares Marlena but even gets Chloé shot when she desperately tries to distract Alix (during her second akumatization) from noticing and shooting Alya instead. This culminates in 'Queen of Thieves' and its immediate aftermath when Alya realizes her reckless journalism, including doing a story on Felice Fournier, almost got her killed by Fournier, and then almost got Chloé killed too when Chloé came to rescue her.
- Alya also wants to learn the heroes' secret identities even after Mayor Sabine makes clear that she intends to enact laws that will punish anyone who tries to expose them harshly. In fact, she's even more determined to do so before said laws go into effect, as she doesn't realize WHY the Mayor considers this so important.
- Hoist by Her Own Petard:
- The premise of the story is that Chloé makes a Wish to get a new life, and only then finds out that her new life is much less pleasant than her old one.
- Also applies to Chloé's efforts to akumatize her classmates (so she can spy when the heroes come to fight them and thus hopefully learn clues as to their identities). She succeeds a few times, but the akumas inevitably attack her. Alix's akuma even shoots and kills Chloé, though Red Queen brings her back with the Miraculous Cure.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Like with the show, most of the chapters are named after the akuma who feature in that particular chapter.
- In-Universe Catharsis: Chloé is happy to see Houndmistress turning Kim and Alix into the dog breeds they negatively compared her to earlier.
- Innocently Insensitive: Chloé gets deeply annoyed when Alya asks her what it felt like to be shot and killed, and Alya eventually acknowledges it was insensitive to ask that question.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: After Houndmistress's leashes are destroyed, she can't directly control her dogs anymore, and so they act on their own instinct... which for Chloé, means licking Houndmistress's wounds that she received from fighting the heroes, an action she of course would never take as a human.
- Odd Name Out: Chapters 7, 13, 20, and 26, which are the chapters that focus the most on Lila, are called 'Lying Children', 'Wicked Children', 'Damned Children,' and 'Living Children' respectively. They seem to refer to both Chloé and Lila in their civilian forms, as those chapters respectively call them both out for their lies, wickedness, how they put themselves in Hells of their own making, and how they achieved a measure of redemption and got a second chance at life.
- Point of Divergence: The events of Chloé’s Lament were able to happen because Lila committing suicide as a response to her poorly made wish prevented the events of Ladybug from occurring, thus leaving Marinette and Adrien unprepared to fight Hawk Moth and Mayura directly.
- Rage Breaking Point: After several days of trying to change her ways, Chloé seeing the heroes give the Bee Miraculous to Marinette is enough for her to decide she's going ahead with stealing the Miraculous during the upcoming talent show.
- Recursive Fanfiction: The story is a spinoff of the original Chloé's Lament fanfic.
- Resolved Noodle Incident: After several chapters of Chloé wondering what she did to Alix to give the latter such a vitriolic hatred of her, it’s revealed the Inciting Incident was when they were children and Chloé played a practical joke on Alix that led her to be hospitalized from extreme cold and also made her think for a while that it was her fault her mother had vanished (in the original universe, Alix was never aware of who pulled the trick, since nothing could be proven).
- Retcon: The final chapter had one major tweak made to it shortly after it was originally posted: two of the heroes were given different names.
- Jubjub was originally named Pavona, which was noted to be a feminine version of the Italian word for Peacock. In the final version, this observation was altered to Barkk pointing out to Chloé that Jubjub had an Italian accent.
- Bandersnatch originally settled upon the name Tricks instead, which was noted to be similiar to that of her kwami and set up Chloé deeming herself New Tricks.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: When Chloé briefly suspects Alix is Hawkmoth, she rules it out because Alix was akumatized once and "also suffered horrible frostbite from Cowardly Lion" and Chloé doesn't believe Hawkmoth would let an akuma attack him or her. In the previous reality, Gabriel akumatized people who attacked him (including Simon Grimault and Markov) and also akumatized himself multiple times.
- Seven Deadly Sins: All of them (plus Despair) are represented in Chloé's antagonists as well as Chloé herself.
- Alix Kubdel has a vitriolic hatred toward Chloé, being the loudest voice telling everyone else that Chloé is evil and does not deserve friendship or forgiveness. This soon escalates to assaulting Chloé, both as an akuma and a civilian. As such, she's shown to be full of Wrath. When she finally admits why she hates Chloé, she admits that she doesn't only hate her for the bad things Chloé did to her but also because—despite all those bad things—Chloé still has a loving father and friends, while Alix herself feels her family couldn't care less about her. As such, Alix reveals that she's also full of Envy toward Chloé for having a good family.
- Dr. Olga Mendeleiev shows a mixture of Pride in how she clearly thinks she is better than Chloé and other delinquents, to the point of saying that bad people cannot change and will always be worthless, and Sloth in how she refuses to do anything to help Chloé despite being her teacher and having a duty of care toward her.
- Felice Fournier, the bratty cat burglar, is shown as full of Greed to the point where she takes time out from escaping Paris during Mad Catter's rampage just to mug Chloé for a couple of earrings that she, Fournier, decided she wants. Her mansion, which features half-eaten expensive dishes scattered around, also shows she has Gluttony as she gorged herself on pricey dishes even though she didn't need all the food.
- Lila Rossi's Lust for Adrien causes Chloé several problems, particularly since Lila tries to extort Chloé into helping her win Adrien's heart. By the end of the 'Damned Children' chapter it's also apparent she's drowning in Despair, to the point of considering suicide for a second time, over what she did to her parents as a result of her ill-conceived Wish.
- And of course, Chloé demonstrated all these sins in her first world. She threw wrathful tantrums, demanded to have things that others had, thought herself better than anyone, did no work and instead made Sabrina or her father do things for her, wanted to own everything, consumed expensive food not because she needed it but just because she wanted to consume it, demanded Adrien's attention and love, and gave into despair when she gave up on ever earning the friendship she wanted and instead chose to destroy the world with a Wish.
- Shout-Out:
- After Houndmistress turns Ivan into a Great Pyrenees dog, Chloe notes she's familiar with that dog breed because of some anime Sabrina had watched.
- Juleka being turned into a vampire-themed akuma named Carmilla is not only a reference to the famous vampire novel Carmilla but also, along with Chloe turning into a wolf after being attacked by another akuma, alludes to There's More Magic Out There (which Cartoon Addict 564 had previously written an AU for.)
- The author's note indicates that Alix's relaxed shooting stance is based on memes of Yusuf Dikec, an Olympic athlete who went viral for looking exceptionally casual during a shooting competition.
- Skewed Priorities: Even as Mad Catter turns the city into a wasteland, Fournier is still more worked up over Chloé taking 'her' earrings (the ones she tried to steal which Gabriel later gave to Chloé as a reward for finding a clue that could help capture Fournier). She even pauses her own efforts to flee in order to coerce Chloé into surrendering the earrings.
- Sleeping Their Way to the Top: During "Wicked Children", Lila declares she heard rumors that Emilie abandoned her family in order to focus on sleeping with any producers willing to give her bigger and better roles. It's heavily Implied this Malicious Slander was inspired by her shame over her own mother's willingness to sleep around to further her own career.
- Spanner in the Works:
- Marinette keeps preventing akumas by virtue of being thoughtful, caring, and just looking out for people. This causes Chloé—who wants akumatizations so the heroes will have to fight and Chloé can hope to spy on them and learn clues to their real identities—no end of frustration.
- Fournier interrupts Chloé's efforts to expose Hawkmoth by abducting Alya, forcing Chloé to put things on hold in order to rescue her. And Fournier doesn't even do it to get Miraculouses or otherwise gain from it; she's just mad about Alya writing a blog article criticizing her.
- Fournier's thefts are repeatedly interrupted by akumas, which, unlike mundane security systems, she has little idea of how to handle.
- The Stations of the Canon: Invoked, but ultimately Averted in some cases. Chloé believes her new world will have these and begins her quest by making a list of all the akumas she remembers and assumes will happen again. However, not all of the akumas happen the same way (or are even the same akumas) as the previous world.
- Stealing the Credit: Following Hawkmoth's defeat, Mrs. Rossi tries to convince the world she was in on the plan that led to his unmasking and arrest.
- Title Drop: Just before Chloe puts the screws to Marinette, the story mentions that 'all she could do was lament' her terrible errors and her disastrous choices.
- Too Clever by Half: Chloé tries to use her knowledge of the previous world to help her in the new one, specifically by predicting akumatizations and using them to her advantage (such as by going to the scenes of upcoming akuma fights and hiding to spy on the heroes). Unfortunately for her, this repeatedly backfires.
- She recalls that Nino became Bubbler at Adrien's birthday party in the past world, and even though Gabriel allows the party without a fight this time, Chloé is still able to get Nino akumatized. However, because Adrien is less tolerant of Chloé this time around, Bubbler doesn't let her into the party and just traps her in a bubble so she can't annoy Adrien during the party.
- She also remembers that Alix was akumatized into a roller-blading akuma during a race with Kim, so when she tries to force Alix's akumatization, she arms herself with marbles that she thinks she can use to trip up Alix's skates and stop the akuma from hurting her. But because this time Alix is akumatized from Chloé annoying her after the race and not from anything that happened in the race itself—and because Chloé had earlier insulted Alix's shooting abilities—Alix's new akuma Superior Athlete doesn't have skates but does have a gun. Superior Athlete thus just shoots Chloé.
- Her efforts to akumatize Mylène also go awry when Mylène becomes not Horrificator, but Cowardly Lion, a much more dangerous akuma.
- Violently Protective Girlfriend: As the story progresses and Chloe develops a crush on Alya, she also becomes violently protective of the other girl, even being willing to beat up XY for groping her and set fire to Felice Fournier's hideout for abducting her.
- Wham Episode: Chapter 20 reveals that in addition to being based on Chloé's Lament, it also covers Lila's Lament.
