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In Miraculous Ladybug, Lila Rossi is a bully, a narcissist, a Consummate Liar, a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, a Manipulative Bitch, a Jerkass at Your Discretion, a willing accomplice for the Big Bad… the list goes on and on. It's really no wonder she's a Hate Sink for the fandom.

Like many fans of the show, OminousPredictions craved some Laser-Guided Karma for Lila, and created a series of stories where her Karma Houdini Warranty finally expires. Most of the stories are titled after one of her crimes, and shows how that particular crime leads to her swift and brutal downfall.

So far, the series consists of:

    List of works in the series 

    open/close all folders 

    Tropes: General 
These tropes are found in multiple installments.
  • Adaptation Personality Change:
  • Adaptational Sexuality:
    • Max and Kim are portrayed as a couple in several of the stories. While they do have some Ho Yay moments in the show, Max hasn't shown any interest in dating, while Kim's only shown interest in girls (first Chloé and then Ondine).
    • SUN'S WRATH and CAGED both depict Adrien and Luka as a couple, whereas in canon both of them have only shown romantic interest in women.
  • Adaptational Villainy: While Lila is still the Hate Sink she is in canon, the scale of it goes up to eleven in this fic series. On top of everything else, she also repeatedly uses Anti-Asian and homophobic slurs, doesn't care what happens to anyone or anything as long as she comes out on top — to the point where she states on more than one occasion that she'd happily lay waste to Paris herself just to hurt Marinette/Ladybug — and among other things, bullies various victims to the point they attempt or even outright commit suicide, takes a disturbing amount of pleasure in how much pain she causes said victims, shamelessly endangers other students to protect herself, comes within a hair's breadth of killing a blind elderly woman for an extremely petty reason and attempts to rape Adrien.
  • Attempted Homewrecker: Lila in SUN'S WRATH and CAGED combines this trope with Incompatible Orientation; despite the fact that Adrien and Luka are in a relationship, she tries to break them up so she can be with Adrien. In SUN'S WRATH, she attempts to kill Luka by pushing him in front of a car, while in CAGED, she tries to blackmail Adrien into breaking up with Luka by threatening to ruin Andrien's social life. In both stories, she not only fails to win over Adrien, she also almost gets killed by an Akumatized Adrien (in SUN'S WRATH) or Luka (in CAGED) for trying to hurt the other.
  • Attention Whore: Lila has a pathological need for attention, to the point that in SEXUAL HARASSMENT, Adrien actually directly refers to her as such after a binge of TV Tropes.
  • Ax-Crazy: When Lila's plans go toes up, it often unhinges her to the point of outright attempted murder.
  • Barbaric Bully: Lila's cruelty is taken to the extreme, as she's shown to not only be willing to manipulate people and defame anyone who stands up to her, but she's also willing to use physical force and destroy every good thing in their lives if she sees necessary to get what she wants. In some stories, it's outright stated that she enjoys destroying people who cross her even more than the attention she gets from lying.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Shows up in nearly every story, with characters established to be nice and kind turning scarily dangerous towards Lila when her true character is revealed.
  • Calling the Old Man Out: If the fic involves Gabriel's downfall, then expect it to feature Adrien absolutely tearing into his father for all of his abuse and supervillainy.
  • Diplomatic Impunity: Lila has diplomatic immunity thanks to her diplomat mother (or always thinks she does); however, her actions always lead to it being revoked and her facing the fullest extent of the law. And even in stories where Lila's mother reveals that her diplomatic immunity doesn't extend to her family because she's a junior diplomat, she makes it clear that she wouldn't let it protect Lila from punishment.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Lila is willing to destroy lives and friendships, and even push people to suicide just to get back at them for little things like petty slights or insults, or simply not giving her everything she wants on a silver platter.
  • Don't Tell Mama: It's generally a sign that Lila has been thoroughly defeated when her mother gets involved.
  • Entitled Bitch: Lila believes she deserves to have fame, status, mindless drones to do her bidding, and Adrien the supermodel as her boyfriend, and she believes anyone who tries to take those things from her deserves to have their lives ruined.
  • Hate Sink:
    • Lila, 100%. She is a narcissistic and manipulative liar and Jerkass doing everything to ruin Marinette's reputation. She can be best summed up as utterly and monstrously selfish; being only concerned with getting her way, no matter the cost.
    • Gabriel too, if the fic is being critical of him as well. CAGED in particular sees him obliterate any likable or redeeming traits.
  • Hoist by Their Own Petard: Lila's downfall always happens because she overestimated her Karma Houdini Warranty and did something reprehensible to smear Marinette's reputation, get ahead of Marinette or her peers, or make Adrien hers. Of course, when she does it here, she inadvertently ends up angering the wrong person, revealing impure actions of her own, and/or getting caught in the act of something cruel and vicious.
  • Humiliation Conga: Lila's actions inevitably result in her being put through the wringer as recompense.
  • I Regret Nothing: Lila never once feels remorse for anything she does, nor for any of the people she hurts, justifying her actions against them as getting what they deserved for not bending to her will.
  • Karmic Shunning: Lila in many of the stories ends up having her true nature exposed to everyone, which results in her "friends" turning their backs on her, her mother disowning her, and Hawkmoth deciding that she's no longer useful.
  • Lack of Empathy: Lila doesn't care about other people. To her, you're either a pawn, a trophy boyfriend, or an enemy. And if you're the last one, she'll wreck your life and not feel a shred of remorse for your broken, lonely state.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: What always happens to Lila in the end. Her various forms of karma include but are not limited to: getting deported back to Italy; being put in prison and/or a juvenile center; fired as a Gabriel model; ostracized by her former worshippers; being disowned by her family; listed as a sex offender; and/or put on academic probation at school. In one story, she even ends up causing her own (temporary) death.
  • Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: Averted, hard. While, at first, Mrs. Rossi believes Lila's lies, once the truth is revealed to her in one way or another she apologizes to everyone hurt by her daughter's lies, disowns her (in some stories, not all of them), and either agrees with Lila being sentenced to prison or (if she isn't imprisoned) sending her to a strict reform school (or, in one story, to her grandmother's farm where her fancy clothes and makeup are sold and she's forced to do garden work every day). The only time she comes close to this trope is when she goes to Gabriel believing that Adrien tried to rape Lila. When informed that it was actually the other way around, Mrs. Rossi goes off on her daughter.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Usually, when Lila's crimes lead to her exposure, her true colors being exposed often fix things for Marinette, or even make life better for her, like her friends apologizing and reconciling with her, or getting her closer to Adrien.
  • Oh, Crap!: Lila has plenty of moments like these when she realizes someone has found a way to defeat and expose her.
  • One-Word Title: The title consists solely of the word "Consequences".
  • Revenge Before Reason: Lila would happily burn her enemies to the ground and laugh over their charred corpses in retaliation for the smallest offenses, never once caring for any of the damage that comes as a result. As long as she can make her foes pay, she's happy.
  • Self-Disposing Villain: Lila's demise is usually an invention of her own cruelty and entitlement, with her relying too heavily on her Karma Houdini Warranty and not realizing the crimes she has built up have caused it to expire.
  • Sins of Our Fathers: Inverted. Lila's mother is always totally unaware of her daughter's misdeeds until the truth comes to light, but she still has to deal with the fallout. Lila's misdeeds inevitably have a negative impact on her career and in some cases leave her open to lawsuits or criminal prosecution. Luckily, anyone in a position to sue is reasonable enough to work out a deal that ensures only Lila will face legal consequences.
  • Smug Snake: Lila constantly deludes herself into thinking she's Hawk Moth's most important ally and is immune to consequences when she really, really isn't.
  • The Sociopath: Lila is a textbook low-functioning sociopath, what with her Lack of Empathy, narcissism, pathological lying, and poor impulse control.
  • Stupid Evil: Once again, Lila. How else can you describe someone who flat-out admits they don't care how much damage they do to everything and everyone as long as they get back at someone for an extremely minor slight, and almost always ends up defeating themselves through their own ego and petty spite?
  • The Unapologetic: Lila almost never apologizes for her cruelty and deception, and even when she does, it's an Ordered Apology from those above her.
  • Villain Protagonist: Lila is typically the main viewpoint character, and is a selfish and heartless young woman who repeatedly commits horrible crimes to get her way.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Once Lila is exposed as Hawk Moth's accomplice, said villain cuts off all ties with her since she can no longer create discord to make akumas if everyone knows what she's trying to do and is giving her a wide berth.

The following has the tropes listed for each story individually.

    STALKING 
Lila tries to paint Marinette as a stalker, but it doesn't go quite the way she thinks.
  • Accidental Public Confession: Even though she said nothing out loud, Lila did show the class photos of Marinette's room, meaning she had to have gotten them somehow. And since everyone knows Marinette hates Lila and would never allow her within her breathing space, let alone her private bedroom, well…
  • Armor-Piercing Question: When Lila asks Marinette to explain the multitude of photos of Adrien she has in her room along with his schedule, Marinette fires back that those were in her bedroom which she has never let Lila into, so how could she know about them?
  • Big Sister Instinct: Lila breaches her restraining order from Marinette and tries to attack her with a knife while she's at the movies with Alya's sisters, including Nora, a champion kickboxer who's already proven to be overprotective of her younger siblings. When Lila comes close to the twins with a weapon in hand, Nora immediately snaps her wrist and slams her against a car, knocking the liar out cold.
  • Big "WHAT?!": Adrien, after Lila makes her initial accusation against Marinette. The rest of the class is similarly, though less vocally, skeptical.
  • Crazy-Prepared: Marinette has not only Adrien's schedule in her room but those of all her classmates so she can keep track of their various appointments and let them know in advance. She mentions that their parents pay her for this as they're usually too busy to remind their kids themselves.
  • Gibberish of Love: Marinette lampshades her tendency toward this after Lila reveals her crush on Adrien to the whole class, Adrien included.
    Marinette: Let me finish this whilst I can still speak elegantly in your presence, please.
  • Hypocrite: Lila accuses Marinette of being a liar and a stalker with no respect for boundaries who hides her obsession with one of her classmates behind a sweet facade. As proof, she presents pictures she took of Marinette without her knowledge, as well as photos of her room and locker. Several classmates comment on the irony of this as Lila's web of lies begins to unravel.

    BREAKING AND ENTERING 
Lila breaks into the Dupain-Cheng bakery to find some juicy blackmail material or secrets to steal. Again, doesn't go the way she thinks.
  • An Arm and a Leg: When Lila asks Sabine if she can remove the box clamped shut on her wrist, Sabine cheerfully asks if she wants her arm amputated at the wrist, elbow, or shoulder whilst holding a meat cleaver. Lila wisely shuts up.
  • Caught on Tape: Lila hits Marinette, grabs her diary, and prepares to read it while gloating about how Marinette's "dumb little friends" will never speak to her again once Lila tells them all her secrets. Cue one of said "dumb little friends" announcing her presence by revealing that she's been filming the entire time. Alya promptly turns the video over to the police as evidence against Lila.
  • Crazy-Prepared: Even more so than the beginning example in "Darkblade", when the box made its debut. In that episode, Marinette put her diary in the box to ensure it and the secrets it contained were safe from any thieves and it still got stolen. As such, she ups the ante by putting a blank decoy in the box this time around.
  • Mama Bear: Sabine rips into Lila when she catches the liar breaking into her home and trying to steal Marinette's private diary. She even threatens to "take the law into her own hands" if the police don't come, and hints that her and her husband's family in China and Italy "know people in the underworld" in case the French justice system fails.
  • Schmuck Bait: Marinette leaves her decoy diary sitting in plain view in her room, inside a box. Lila falls for it and gets her arm stuck inside the box, which turns out to be a trap.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Lila still tries to use Marinette's diary against her after Marinette releases her from the trap-box, namely by hitting her in the nose and grabbing the book… right in front of the police she's been trying to convince she's innocent.

    SEXUAL HARASSMENT 
Lila overreaches herself with Adrien and finds out why making Gabriel Agreste mad is not a good idea.
  • Beware the Quiet Ones: The normally cool and collected Gabriel loses his temper and shouts at Lila to get out after he catches her groping Adrien against his will. All of the photoshoot staff within earshot immediately flee from Gabriel's wrath. Even Lila takes the hint that sticking around is not a good idea.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: No, Natalie did NOT take pictures of Gabriel after he fell asleep on Adrien's bed after comforting him.
  • Content Warnings: Includes one at the start, due to a direct depiction of an attempted sexual assault.
  • Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: When Lila forces herself on Adrien and starts touching him, he begs her to stop, to which she simply replies that he should be enjoying himself since he's a boy. She even tries to claim that he assaulted her, although this is not believed by Gabriel, and disproven by him to her mother. Lila's successful conviction in her assault on Adrien is heralded as a landmark ruling for sexual assault and harassment against males.
  • Driven to Suicide: Another victim of Lila's sexual ambitions and manipulations. While searching about Lila online to get dirt, Gabriel comes across a foundation set up in honor of a boy in Italy who killed himself after Lila framed him for sexually assaulting her as revenge for rejecting her.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: Gabriel is portrayed as a Noble Demon who is still a loving father and has some moral scruples left in him. This is a far cry from the sociopath he becomes in later stories.
  • Engineered Public Confession: Gabriel arranges this by alerting Nadja Chamack and her news crew that an akuma was spotted heading for Collège Françoise Dupont, with them arriving just in time to catch Lila assaulting both her mother and Mr. Damocles to grab it.
  • Entitled to Have You: Lila's attitude towards Adrien. She seems to firmly believe that Adrien is hers and his permission or consent, or lack of it, does not change this matter in the slightest.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Gabriel immediately cuts ties with Lila and publicly ruins her after he catches her forcing herself on Adrien.
  • False Rape Accusation: Lila is known to have falsely accused her victims of sexual assault at least twice; once back in Italy as revenge against a boy who rejected her — leading to the boy committing suicide before the truth came out — and then again against Adrien after she's caught sexually assaulting him. Thankfully, the second time spectacularly blows up in her face when both Gabriel and Mrs. Rossi prove she's lying.
  • Get Out!: Gabriel to Lila, after he catches her trying to force herself on Adrien.
    Gabriel: I will say this only once. Leave now and never come near my son again or it will be even worse for you.
    Lila: But- but, sir…
    Gabriel: GET OUT!
  • Heel–Face Turn: At the end, it's noted Hawk Moth suddenly retired.
  • Let Me at Him!: Alya has to be physically restrained by eight students and two teachers from mauling Lila when the truth comes out.
  • A Lighter Shade of Black: Despite being an evil supervillain, Gabriel has the firm moral high ground when he comes into direct conflict with Lila. Lila is cruel simply for the sake of her own advancement or for its own sake, while Gabriel is at least driven by a genuine love for his family and spends the story acting on his better qualities.
  • My God, What Have I Done?:
    • Gabriel regrets that he ever let Lila anywhere near Adrien after she is caught sexually assaulting him.
    • Adrien has a brief moment of this when Gabriel spells out how much lies can damage people's lives.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Adrien is shocked when Gabriel openly admits fault in having Lila spy on Adrien.
  • Papa Wolf: After catching Lila forcing herself on his son, Gabriel fires her on the spot. He then sues her for her assault on Adrien and unravels all her lies to her mother, including the school being closed and Marinette "bullying" her. This even carries over into his Hawk Moth alter ego as he sends an akuma to Lila with the specific intent of her getting caught going for it and deliberately hobbles her during the battle so Ladybug and Cat Noir can beat her up unhindered.
  • Pet the Dog:
    • This entire fic is one for Gabriel, who is LIVID at the atack on his son and makes sure that, when's he's done with Lila, there won't be enough left of her to wash off the sidewalk. Sadly, he shows more love/concern for his son here than he does in canon.
    • While gearing up for his trip down the warpath against Lila, Gabriel learns about a former classmate of Lila's who killed himself after she framed him for harassing her. When he discovers a charity set up in his name, he makes a mental note to donate substantially to it.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure:
    • Mrs. Rossi shows herself to be one. When Lila spins a story to her that she was coerced into working as a model and sexually harassed by Adrien, she shows up at the mansion to protest and threaten a lawsuit. When Gabriel presents her with evidence that not only is that not true but that her daughter has been deceiving her about a lot more besides, however, she realizes that she's been misled and apologises for her abrupt actions, as well as to Adrien for what Lila did to him, before turning her fury on her daughter.
    • Gabriel acts as one in this case as well. He drops Adrien's busy schedule entirely to let the boy mentally recuperate from Lila assaulting him. He also gives Adrien the choice of whether or not to sit in on his meeting with Lila and Signora Rossi, and grants Signora Rossi's request for a reprieve to deal with all the other problems Lila has caused before he brings his own lawsuit against her.
  • Silk Hiding Steel: Adrien describes Marinette in these exact terms and then describes Kagami as taking it a step further into "steel hiding tungsten".
  • This Is Gonna Suck: By the time Gabriel dismantles the last of Lila's lies, Signora Rossi is well aware of how much trouble Lila is in. She doesn't even bother to plead for leniency, instead asking that Gabriel hold off on pressing charges so she can at least deal with everything else Lila has done first.
  • Throwing the Fight: Hawk Moth akumatizes Lila with the intention of taking a dive in the ensuing fight against Ladybug and watching as she brutalizes her on his behalf.
  • Tranquil Fury: Mrs. Rossi slips into a state of this as the full extent of Lila's lies and actions are revealed to her, with Gabriel noting that she's positively blazing with anger on the inside but displaying no outward signs of it.
  • Trauma Button: Gabriel doesn't undress Adrien when he puts him to bed because doing so might cause him to freak out, as Lila had been trying to forcefully undress him when she was caught.
  • Villain Respect: Gabriel refutes Lila's claims that Ladybug and Cat Noir are incompetent with his equivalent of glowing praise. His internal monologue notes that, even though it galls him to admit it, nothing he said is untrue, and that he has come to genuinely respect the heroes.

    THREATENING A TSURUGI 
Lila is furious to discover that Adrien is dating Kagami and immediately tries to threaten the Japanese girl into backing off. When Kagami refuses, Lila proceeds to try the same tactics she used to frame Marinette, only for them all to blow up in her face. When Lila goes too far in her actions, however, she realises too late why engaging in a war with a member of the Tsurugi family is a tremendously bad idea.
  • Bullying a Dragon: Lila clearly underestimated Kagami when she declared her an enemy. After all her petty tricks fail, Lila sets up Tomoe Tsurugi, Kagami's mother, a blind, aging woman, to have an accident, spilling water in her path. Tomoe, being blind, doesn't see the puddle until she sets her foot on it. She slips, hits her head hard, and falls into a coma. After finding out Lila was responsible, Kagami pulls out all the stops to bring her down, recruiting Adrien and Marinette, tattling on Lila to her mother, and even teaming up briefly with Chloé, who owns a video of Lila setting up the accident. Bonus points for Kagami having actually used the Dragon Miraculous in the past.
  • Enemy Mine: Chloé gives Kagami a video she fortuitously took of Lila engineering Tomoe's accident, only because she hates Lila more than she dislikes Kagami. She even justifies doing so using the old "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" proverb.
  • Evil Gloating: In a serious case of Stupid Evil, Lila goes out of her way to gloat to Kagami that she was the one who caused Tomoe's fall — the latter having believed up until then that it was just a terrible accident — under the belief that even if Kagami told anyone, she'd still easily get out of it. Lila even flat-out tells her that it was her own fault for standing up to her and not giving her what she wanted.
  • Evil Is Petty: When confronting Kagami alone in the bathroom, Lila throws a glass of red wine down the front of the dress she had commissioned from Marinette, gleefully gloating about how she'll have to change and miss the rest of the ball. It's then that Kagami reveals, without missing a beat, that she and Marinette planned ahead and made the dress stain-proof through a special hydrophobic (liquid-repelling) nanotechnology-based fabric, with a secondary defense layer of Scotchgard applied beforehand. Even better, it leads to the wine dripping onto the floor and soaking into Lila's own trailing dress to ruin it.
    Kagami: (quietly) That girl may not take things like threats from you seriously, but when it comes to her commissions, she does not skimp. Now, please, do not bother me again or you will sorely regret it.
  • Foreign Cuss Word: While in the hospital, Tomoe calls Lila an ijiwaru kusogaki (a Japanese insult that roughly translates to "ill-tempered brat").
  • Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: A minor example. Kagami is fully aware of how nasty Lila can be towards people she targets but assumes that she will go after her alone and leave others out of it. She does not even dream of the idea that Lila would hurt her aging, blind mother just to get to her and is briefly left numb with shock when Lila gloats to her about it.
  • Heroic Bystander: When the class is yelling at Lila after finding out she caused Tomoe's accident, an akuma flutters into the classroom through the window, no doubt intending to take advantage of the chaos. Lila tries to grab it, but several members of the class — starting with Mylène — tackle her and hold her down to prevent her from reaching it, while Max traps the akuma in a glass jar.
  • Interchangeable Asian Cultures: After Lila's attempt to accuse Kagami of attacking her falls flat, she accuses Marinette on the grounds that she looks Japanese. An offended Marinette promptly informs her that she's Chinese and Kim lights on being told to "go back to China" even though he's Vietnamese.
  • Ironic Echo: After Tomoe Tsurugi is sent to the hospital in a coma, Lila reveals to Kagami that SHE is the one who caused her accident, stating that "there are no innocents in war" before threatening to do worse unless Kagami gives up Adrien. Of course, this only motivates Kagami to bring Lila down once and for all. When Lila finds out Kagami went and tattled to Lila's own mother, Kagami simply repeats the same words Lila said to her.
  • Logical Weakness: As Lila finds out, she can't be akumatized (even willingly) if she's physically prevented from touching the akuma itself, which is exactly what happens when her classmates jump her and hold her down the second they see her reaching for it.
  • Mama Bear: Despite lying in the hospital with a broken hip, Tomoe tries to rise and get out of bed when she hears that Lila tried to physically assault her daughter.
  • Moral Event Horizon: The in-universe author's notes directly refer to Lila attacking Kagami's blind elderly mother and putting her in a coma just to hurt Kagami as crossing the Moral Event Horizon.
  • Moral Myopia: Lila sees nothing wrong with going after Kagami's family and friends in her delusional war against her, but reacts with stunned disbelief when Kagami does the same by telling Lila's mother exactly what's been going on.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: Lila shows a very noticeable bigoted streak here. Among other things, she refers to both Kagami and Marinette as "Oriental eyesores" and the former as a "slant-eyed fish-eater" and "harlot", and when faking being attacked by Kagami — who is away with her mother on business in London — she immediately deflects the blame to Marinette, on the basis that her attacker "looked Japanese". Needless to say; nobody buys the act for a second thanks to Lila being caught in the middle of a lie, and Marinette (who is actually half-Chinese) immediately calls her out on it (as does Kim, who is Vietnamese and has unfortunately heard similar racist comments in the past).
  • Precision F-Strike: Tomoe, a very disciplined woman, calls Lila something quite profane in Japanese that both Kagami and Adrien (who speaks Japanese) are stunned to hear from her.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: While Markov doesn't yet fully understand emotions, he sees the utterly furious look on Max's face upon viewing the video of Lila causing Tomoe's accident and decides to hide in his creator's schoolbag.
  • Shout-Out: Ms. Mendeleiev tells her students that, if she finds any evidence of tampering or cheating from any of them, they'll be out on their ear before they can say "Quidditch".
  • Silk Hiding Steel: Kagami radiates this trope throughout the whole story. She brushes off all of Lila's threats and dirty tricks with grace and dignity, and when Lila hurts her mother, she goes straight for the kill.
  • So Proud of You: Tomoe confesses this to Kagami when she visits her in the hospital, affirming that she has always been proud of her but rarely told her so that the praise doesn't go to her daughter's head. Kagami's calm collectedness in dealing with Lila only increases this.
  • Stout Strength: Mylène bodyslams Lila to keep her from touching an akuma that fluttered into the classroom.
  • Taught by Experience: Lila tries the same stunt she pulled on Marinette with Kagami in the episode "Ladybug". Unfortunately for her, considering that the last accusation turned out to be false, Mr. Damocles understood that not everything is what it seems and the school staff have devised some way to avoid misunderstandings.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: Chloe's actions in this story. She happily gives Kagami the video evidence of Lila causing Mrs. Tsurugi to fall, shows the rest of the class the video with joy, and is one of the four people who get video evidence of Lila trying to get herself akumatized. Her reasons for helping Kagami were simple: she hated Lila far more than she disliked Kagami, and if Kagami's campaign was the best was to get rid of Lila, then Chloe was perfectly happy to help.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Lila tries to attack Kagami when she's exposed despite knowing that she's an expert fencer and no stranger to violence. Kagami merely sidesteps her before painfully dislocating the girl's wrist.
  • Tranquil Fury: Kagami slips into a near-permanent state of this when Lila admits she caused Tomoe's accident. She even fights off Hawk Moth's influence when her inner rage attracts an akuma and warns him not to interfere or she'll come after him next. He takes it seriously.
  • Would Harm a Senior: Out of petty spite toward Kagami, Lila directly causes Tomoe — Kagami's blind and elderly mother — to have an accident by deliberately spilling water in her path; causing her to fall and hit her head hard enough to put her in a coma, as well as break her hip.
  • Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Kagami does not give in to Hawk Moth's influence because she knows that Lila would simply play the victim if Kagami attacked her as an akumatized villain, claiming that Kagami was irrationally blaming her or taking her anger at her mother's accident out on her.

    CAT BLANC 
The events of "Cat Blanc", involving Lila. And once the timeline is corrected, Ladybug realises that Lila has to be stopped, so she enacts a plan to remove Lila as a threat to the future. Plus, Rena Rouge really doesn't like being lied to or impersonated.
  • And Your Little Dog, Too!: While attempting to choke Ladybug to death, Lila declares that after she takes her life and her Miraculous, she's going to go after her family, friends, and everyone else she holds dear, purely because she can.
  • Brutal Honesty: Alya questions the heroes' willingness to trust her with the Fox Miraculous after she fell so hard for Lila's claims. Ladybug reassures her that everybody makes mistakes and that what matters more is how they address them. Cat Noir adds that they need the Fox for their plan to work, much to Ladybug's annoyance.
  • Death of a Child: All the members of Miss Bustier's class, who are at most sixteen, are killed at the start.
  • Didn't Think This Through: It takes seeing the angst nuke his son has become the center of coming straight at him for Hawk Moth to consider the notion that he might have made a mistake.
  • Digging Yourself Deeper: Lila claims that nothing she did while interacting with Rena Rouge's illusions is usable in court since she didn't know who she was really dealing with. Lieutenant Raincomprix uses this to confirm that she believed she was talking to the real Hawk Moth and Mayura.
  • Downer Beginning: It follows the plot of "Cat Blanc" so this is a given but the story ramps it up by having the entire class killed onscreen.
  • Engineered Public Confession: Ladybug and Cat Noir arrange this with the help of Rena Rouge, who uses her illusion powers to disguise the former two as Hawk Moth and Mayura, respectively. Lila assumes they're the real deal and eagerly accepts "Hawk Moth's" offer of help… not realizing that several members of the Paris police force were listening in.
  • Everybody's Dead, Dave: The entire class and everyone in Paris save for Cat Blanc are killed by the latter's Mega-Cataclysm explosion. Whilst this presumably occurred in the canon episode, it did so offscreen.
  • Evil Gloating: Both Lila and Hawk Moth indulge in this when they believe they're on the verge of victory; when Nino declares that he's "worse than Adrien's old man", he reveals his own Secret Identity.
  • Face Death with Dignity: When it becomes apparent that they can't escape the blast zone, all of the class simply hold their friend or romantic partner close and await the end. Subverted by Lila who abandons them and tries to make a run for it, only to die in agony after making it a few steps.
  • Hope Spot: Despite their best efforts to intervene, the class is ultimately unable to prevent Cat Noir's akumatization and are wiped out.
  • Karmic Death: While everyone is killed by the enhanced Cataclysm detonating, Lila is specifically noted to have gotten just far away enough from the blast zone to ensure she felt the moment of her death, while everyone else was flash-fossilized without feeling anything.
  • Never My Fault: Lila lashes out at Hawk Moth for akumatizing Cat Noir into Cat Blanc and Ladybug for failing to stop him from doing so, ignoring the fact that Hawk Moth was only able to do so because Lila attacked Ladybug to keep her from intervening.
  • Point of Divergence: The whole class is present for Hawk Moth's confrontation with the heroes and Lila exposes her true self by running out to hinder Ladybug.
  • Precision F-Strike: Ladybug curses at Lila to "Get the FUCK OFF ME!" before kicking her in the face, busting her nose.
  • Pulling the Thread: Alix questions how Marinette is supposedly managing to bully Lila all the time when she never willingly spends any more time around her than she absolutely has to.
  • Saying Too Much: Cat Noir notes the karmic potential of Lila being brought down by the very Miraculous she lied about having… much to Ladybug's confusion as she'd never told him that particular detail. He covers for himself by claiming Adrien told him.
  • Skewed Priorities: When the group witnesses Hawk Moth revealing that he is Cat Noir's father, Nathaniel mutters that it's "kind of a cliche".
  • Sympathy for the Devil: When she discovers Lila's body, the present-day Ladybug's anger is slightly tempered by how she clearly died in utter agony.
  • Together in Death: All of the class members save for Lila die holding or trying to protect each other, even Chloé.
  • Too Dumb to Live:
    • Even if she didn't know they were illusions, Lila really should have known better than to willingly accept an akuma from Hawk Moth in broad daylight in the middle of Paris.
    • In Cat Blanc's timeline, Lila saw nothing wrong with attacking Ladybug in clear view of her whole class. Even Hawk Moth was taken aback by that move.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: When she's finally informed that Lila lied about being Ladybug's friend, Alya immediately demands to know why Ladybug didn't tell her sooner. Cat Noir responds that they'd hoped she'd figure it out on her own, preventing her from deflecting all the blame onto Ladybug.

    MARC AND NATHANIEL 
After trying to take credit for Nathaniel and Marc getting a guest spot at a comic convention, Lila goes a step further by stealing their next issue and trying to pass it off as her own work. But Nathaniel loves only two things in life, his art and his boyfriend, and to mess with either is to mean death.
  • Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Nathaniel has known Lila was lying for a while now, but has let sleeping dogs lie to see how over the top she can get. However, when Nathaniel announces that he and Marc got into honor spots at the upcoming sci-fi convention, Lila declares that she used one of her connections to get them in. Recognizing that she is trying to leech off their success to look good, Nathaniel calls her out in private. When she escalates it by stealing the comic pages and claiming them as her own work, Nathaniel retorts by calling in an aunt of his who was a very skilled and dangerous lawyer back in her day.
  • Badass Boast: When Lila tries to use her supposed diplomatic immunity to get out of trouble for her attempted plagiarism, Aunt Rosalie doesn't show any fear:
    Rosalie: Is that so? Good, I like a challenge.
  • Beware the Silly Ones: Nathaniel's Aunt Rosalie dresses like a mad fortune teller and speaks like she's gone senile, but this hides the fact that she used to be a lawyer in her prime and had a reputation as The Dreaded which still endures today.
  • Dartboard of Hate: Nathaniel draws the expressions Lila makes as she realizes how screwed she is to preserve them for posterity. Alya later buys one of the drawings to put on her dartboard.
  • Didn't Think This Through:
    • Downplayed somewhat. Lila stole the comic pages and claimed them as her own creation stolen by Marc and Nathaniel despite possessing no artistic talent whatsoever, but planned on announcing that the trauma of the ordeal made her decide to halt the comic and brought along her lawyer, thinking that Marc and Nathaniel would be too intimidated to fight back. What she didn't bank on, however, was Marc and Nathaniel challenging her to replicate the work (which she can't but they can, naturally) on the spot, thereby exposing her as a fraud. She also didn't bank on Marc and Nathaniel bringing along their own lawyer: Nathaniel's aunt, who just so happens to be known throughout Europe as one of the best in the business.
    • Goes double when she destroys the comic pages out of spite for being exposed. Turns out that the comic is an official publication that Marc and Nathaniel earn money from and this gives them the right to sue her for loss of earnings and destruction of personal property, and with Lila having done this in front of her own lawyer means she has no defence.
  • Five-Second Foreshadowing: Marc shoos Lila out of the art room by telling her to "begone, before someone drops a house on you!" Only moments later, a massive box of D. HOUSE STATIONARY SUPPLIES falls from a balcony and nearly squashes Lila. An author's note reveals that Tikki and Plagg invoked this after overhearing Marc.
  • Getting Suspended Is Awesome: Defied at the end of the story when the school punished Lila for her lies and truancy. The school initially considered suspending her but they realized that she'd just treat that as a holiday, so instead they gave her six months of detention with Ms. Mendeleiev and a boatload of make-up homework.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: After Lila's scheme to plagiarize the Ladybug comic blows up in her face, she rips up the comic pages she stole out of spite. Aunt Rosalie uses the incident to add property destruction to the list of charges her nephew and his boyfriend have against Lila since the two boys earn money from their copyrighted work. After a settlement is worked out, Lila loses her trust fund and six months of her allowance to compensate Marc and Nathaniel for the ruined pages and the time it will take to redo them.
  • Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!: One of the boys records the massive temper tantrum Lila throws upon realizing her trust fund will be emptied to settle her debt with Marc and Nathaniel. The video ends up being sent to Alix, who gleefully posts it online.
  • Let Me Get This Straight...: After Lila's mother finds out what Lila attempted to do, she furiously responds with this:
    Mrs. Rossi: So let me get this straight, Lila. You stole published works from one of your classmates and passed it off as your own simply because he called you out for trying to steal credit for his own accomplishment, roped the family lawyer into your silly little plot and then destroyed said works once you were exposed simply out of petty spite?
    Lila: I-
    Mrs. Rossi: Cannot be trusted to speak the truth, evidently.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Lila's destruction of the comic pages not only results in her losing her trust fund and six months of allowance, it also leads to Marc and Nathaniel developing a new plotline that becomes incredibly popular with the fans.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Nathaniel's aunt is dismissed at first because of her age and eccentric appearance. She herself does nothing to dissuade this assumption and sits quietly in the corner during the first part of the discussion. Then, once it's clearly proven that Lila stole the comic pages, Nathaniel brings up her name. The reaction this gets from Lila's lawyer says it all.
  • Oh, Crap!: Lila's lawyer has this reaction when he finds out that Nathaniel's seemingly loopy aunt is in fact a very famous and cutthroat retired lawyer more than willing to step back into the courtroom on her nephew's behalf.
  • Pass the Popcorn: When Nathaniel and Lila are challenged to replicate the work to prove which one is lying, Nathaniel really wishes he had popcorn to eat while watching Lila draw her pathetic excuse for a drawing.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: When Nathaniel is telling off Lila for claiming that she got him and Marc guest spots in the upcoming sci-fi convention, she mocks the two of them by calling them "fairy boys". Nathaniel barely restrains himself from lashing out at that. Then after Lila's mother, Marc, Nathaniel, and the two lawyers work out a settlement where Lila gives Marc and Nathaniel the 3,000 Euros in Lila's trust fund and her allowance for the next six months to pay off the damages, Lila calls Nathaniel a faggot, much to everybody else's anger.
  • Pulling the Thread: When Lila claims she was the one who got Nathaniel and Marc their place by talking to the convention organizer, Nathaniel replies that the organizer never mentioned her. Lila replies that she asked him not to mention her involvement because she didn't want Nathaniel to know - so Nathaniel points out that, if she did not want him to know, why did she just announce it to the entire class?
  • Reasonable Authority Figure:
    • Lisette Lefour, the editor of the Ladybug comic, isn't pleased with Marc or Nathaniel after Lila claims that the Ladybug comic is actually hers. However, she's willing to give Marc and Nathaniel a chance to prove that they are the true creators and after Lila's lies are exposed Lisette is pissed off at Lila for lying to her.
    • After Lila's lawyer realizes that he got dragged into a poorly-thought-out scheme of Lila's that could result in her getting sued, he's furious with her and truthfully tells Mrs. Rossi what happened so they can work out a settlement.
  • Related in the Adaptation: Marc is said to be Marinette's cousin; in canon, there is no evidence of them being related.
  • Slasher Smile: Nathaniel's smile as he comes up with the plan to destroy Lila both scares and arouses Marc.
  • Terrible Artist: Unlike Nathaniel, Lila is horrible at drawing, which exposes her lies after she's asked to replicate the comic in front of the publisher.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: Lila's lawyer and mother react this way when Lila's lies are exposed, anticipating a brutal lawsuit. Subverted, however, as Nathaniel and Marc bear them no ill will for getting dragged into the whole mess and settle things in a way that ensures only Lila gets punished.

    BULLYING 
In many salt fics, Lila incites her classmates to bully Marinette for supposedly doing the same to her. But that's not what they're like at all. They're good, kind, and smart people who would not take it upon themselves to hurt anyone. So here's what I think they would do.
  • Backstabbing the Alpha Bitch: The whole class to Lila. When they figure out that Lila is indeed a liar, instead of confronting her straight away, they form a plan to expose her to everyone. They pretend to be on her side and antagonize Marinette, even faking injuries and cruel behavior toward her. Then they lure her to an assembly and trick her into confessing her true colors and intentions with her mother and the school staff hiding nearby and listening in.
  • Barbaric Bully: The class as a whole pretends to be this, at the prompting of Lila. When the ruse is revealed, they point out that what Lila wanted them to do to Marinette (and which she likely would have done herself if they hadn't faked it) would have crippled or even killed her, not that Lila cares.
  • The Chessmaster: What seemed like the class siding with Lila and bullying Marinette was all a hoax to gather evidence against Lila. After figuring out Lila's lying ways, the class does not confront her right away but rather pretends to still trust her. They notice how Lila always accuses Marinette of bullying her and expresses a desire for her to "know how it feels". So they pretend to bully Marinette, like applying fake injuries on her with makeup to look like they hurt her and ripping up a decoy sketchbook which they passed off as her main one. When Lila is at her most confident, Alya lures Lila to an assembly where she claims the class set up "a little something", implying they plan to publicly humiliate Marinette. Once the assembly begins, however, they turn the tables and announce LILA as the bully. Lila is so confident that she will get away with it because she never actually did anything to Marinette, the class did it for her, that she gloats about her plan, only for the class to reveal their parlor tricks to her, and reveal that the whole assembly was an Engineered Public Confession with her mother and the school staff hiding, having heard the whole thing.
  • Deconstruction Fic: Many salt fanfictions have the class siding with Lila over Marinette and bullying her on Lila's false accusations without question. They do things like hurt her physically, ostracize her, and rip her beloved sketchbook to shreds. And they do this without guilt or remorse. In this story, this seems to be happening, even the beatings and the destroyed sketchbook…until it's revealed that it was all a hoax by the class to lure Lila into false confidence and get her to publicly confess her crimes and intentions. Juleka faked Marinette's bruises using her makeup skills and the sketchbook they ruined was actually a decoy.
  • Does Not Know Her Own Strength: When Alix pretends to bully Marinette by slamming her against a wall, she accidentally does it too hard and leaves the other girl with real bruises. She feels guilty about it for quite a while afterwards.
  • Driven to Suicide: Frederick, a boy Lila met while in Germany. Like Marinette, he had seen through Lila and she responded by manipulating all his friends to turn against him and bully him. After months of torment, he tried to slit his wrists and was only saved by the fortunate timing of his cousin. Believe it or not, Lila got a thrill from hearing that she hurt him to that extent.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Frederick Valga is mentioned for the first time in this story. He gets his turn to expose Lila in the next installment.
  • Engineered Public Confession: The class lures Lila to an assembly with the implication that they will publicly humiliate Marinette, where she is goaded into smugly revealing that she sought to make all her peers bully Marinette, hopefully even driving her to suicide. Then, after she's confessed her malicious intentions, the class shows her her mother and the school staff hiding nearby, who have been listening to her all along.
  • Evil Feels Good: Lila gets a rush out of the pain and misery she leaves in her wake, to the point of being thrilled when an old classmate of hers tried to kill himself.
  • Glass-Shattering Sound: Mrs. Rossi's screams at Lila cause several overhead lights to break.
  • A God Am I: After Lila's old classmate Frederick, tried to kill himself, Lila took that as proof that she was some sort of invincible goddess.
  • Gone Horribly Right: As part of the class's ploy against Lila, they faked multiple incidents of physical bullying; however, on one occasion, Alix misjudged her momentum and actually slammed Marinette into a wall, which hurt quite a bit. Alix was horrified and, even long after Marinette's bruises have healed, is very apologetic.
  • Good All Along: Miss Bustier's class appears to have bullied Marinette for three months, slamming her into a wall, tearing her beloved sketchbook to bits and worse…and then they set up an assembly to reveal that they were pretending to bully Marinette (with her cooperation) as a trap to catch Lila and trick her into confessing all of her crimes in front of the entire school.
  • Lesser of Two Evils: When Lila questions the class why they went through with the hoax of pretending to bully Marinette to lure Lila into confessing her lies, they point out that if they didn't do it, Lila would have and it would not have been fake.
  • Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: When Lila has no idea what being called a "Florent" means, the entire class sniffs disdainfully in disgust.
  • Shout-Out: Max compares Lila to House Florent from Game of Thrones, a family with a fox motif who constantly holds petty grudges, thinks they're a lot more powerful and clever than they really are, and always end up having their schemes blow up in their faces due to poor planning. Lila doesn't get the reference.

    SINS OF THE PAST 
Frederick Valga moves to Paris for a new start… except his new school has Lila Rossi in attendance, the girl who ruined his life after he called her out on her lies. The sins of the past rear their ugly head with my first original akumatisation.
  • Befriending the Bullied: Frederick moves from Germany to France for a fresh start after Lila's actions caused him to attempt suicide. When the truth comes out via akuma, everyone is very supportive of Frederick, with the kids at Dupont (including Jean, who becomes his boyfriend) all readily befriending him and letting him know they'll do everything they can to help him feel safe in his new school.
  • Body Horror: Frederick's cutting scars become massive, glowing welts that symbolically trail all the way up his arms when he turns into Inquisitor, horrifying everyone when he reveals them to show what Lila drove him to, and why he's so intent on exposing everything she's done before carrying out his revenge.
  • Broken Pedestal: As usual, the class is quite shaken to realize what a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing Lila truly is. But Nathaniel puts a beautiful Lampshade Hanging.
    "Guys, I have a distinct feeling Lila might not be what we thought she was," Nino remarked.
    "Oh, really?" Nathaniel asked in a tone of acidic sarcasm. "What gave it away? Her trying to sacrifice me like a prize cow? Because that's when I got more than an inkling!"
  • Dirty Coward: Lila, once again. When Inquisitor makes himself known and approaches to seize her with the intent to make her pay for her crimes, she immediately responds by shoving Nathaniel into his path to be grabbed instead before fleeing. Fortunately, it doesn't work.
  • Disappointed by the Motive: Frederick is disgusted and let-down that Lila ruined his life and those of countless other innocent people just so she could be popular at school and get free stuff.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Every time Lila tries to lie or defend herself, Inquisitor drops enormous stone slabs on her one by one, crushing her underneath. Although considering that he got akumatized because of wanting justice for how she turned all his friends against him, manipulated them into bullying, and pushed him to the point where he tried to commit suicide, this could be more of Pay Evil unto Evil.
  • Driven to Suicide: Frederick, just like in the last installment. After Lila poisoned all his friends against him and manipulated them into bullying him mercilessly, Frederick tried to slit his wrists and was only saved by his favorite cousin Hugo finding him in the nick of time. The scars stay on his Inquisitor form, which he shows Ladybug and Cat Noir as proof of what Lila has done when they try to stop him.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: After Lila is exposed, disowned by her mother, and sent back to Italy to carry out her life sentence, Frederick gains new friends who are loyal to him and becomes romantically involved with Jean Duparc, a far cry from what his life was like after Lila had finished with him.
  • Engineered Public Confession: Inquisitor kidnaps Lila and takes her to the Arc de Triomphe, where he forces her to confess her misdeeds on live TV, forcing her under a wooden board and piling heavy stone slabs on her — ala a 15th Century execution method used for accused witches — when she lies.
  • Epic Flail: Inquisitor makes use of a meteor hammer when fighting Ladybug and Cat Noir and manages to take the fight early on, with it being noted that Cat Noir's fencing skills and weapon are finding it difficult to counter such a tricky weapon. That said, he does manage to get Inquisitor to fall victim to the weapon's drawbacks, namely the risk of getting tangled up in the chain if not careful, forcing him to switch it out for a sword.
  • Everyone Has Standards:
    • The Inquisitor is after Lila, Ladybug and Chat Noir (but mostly Lila). He's perfectly fine with leaving the rest of Paris alone; the only reason he kidnapped Nadja and her cameraman was so his "interrogation" of Lila could be televised. When Nathaniel was shoved to the akuma by Lila, the Inquisitor let him go, politely apologized, and then proceeded to chase down Lila.
    • While Ladybug and Cat Noir are, just like everyone else present, disgusted by Lila's actions — including bullying him to the point of him attempting suicide, outing herself as a willing ally of Hawk Moth, and showing absolutely no remorse for it while simultaneously fake-crying and portraying herself as the victim to try and get out of it — they do ultimately stop Inquisitor from torturing her to death and defeat him, restoring him back to Frederick. It's on the basis that though they understand why he wants revenge, him violently killing her is not the way to do it.
      Ladybug: (reasoning) Frederick, this isn't you!
      Inquisitor: I'm not Frederick anymore. I am The Inquisitor, and I've got a few questions for you once I’m done with her!
      Ladybug: Lila may have hurt you but this is not the right way to go about things. This is revenge and torture, not justice.
      Inquisitor: Revenge? Torture? You have no idea what she did to me! (pulls back his sleeve to reveal his mutated cutting scars traveling all the way up his arm, horrifying everyone present)
      Nadja: My god…!
      Inquisitor: She filled my friends' heads with lies and falsehoods. And when I tried to stop her, tried to point out the truth, she turned them against me. Beatings, insults, sabotaged schoolwork, threatening text messages and emails, destroyed property, public humiliation, all of it! Days and weeks and months of it, until finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I nearly died… BECAUSE OF HER! And now, I have a chance to get my own back, to make sure she never does this to anyone else. Hawk Moth has given me the power to do that. Who am I to refuse?
      Ladybug: As much as I agree with Lila being an awful person, I can't let you do this. This isn't right.
      Inquisitor: Then, you leave me no choice. (restrains her and Cat Noir with magically-enhanced chains)
    • When Lila confesses the whole extent of her villainy, all the vicious lies she spread, all the lives she ruined without a shred of remorse, Frederick is Disappointed by the Motive—that she did it for popularity and free lunches. It disgusts him that she is willing to destroy lives for such trivial things.
    • Heck, even Hawk Moth, a supervillain with a long list of crimes, finds her actions repulsive.
  • Heroic BSoD: The mere sight of Lila is enough to send Frederick into a full-on panic attack, shaking like a leaf, white as a sheet, and running like hell away. Considering the sheer hell she put him through, it is not surprising.
  • I Have No Son!: Mrs. Rossi's announcement of Lila's punishment reveals she has disowned her for all the crimes she has committed — including being a willing ally of Hawk Moth, which she admitted on live television to stop the Inquisitor from punishing her — and for being truly irredeemable as a person.
  • I Lied: Frederick gives Lila A Taste of Their Own Medicine by promising to let her go as soon as she confesses. When she does, he drops this line and another slab.
  • Knight Templar: Frederick's akumatized form. Though his actions go too far, his motive is pure—he wants to expose Lila for the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing she is and prevent her from hurting him or anyone else as she did in the past.
  • Locked Out of the Loop: Frederick is deliberately kept oblivious to what he did as an akuma — namely, crushing Lila under heavy stone slabs with full intent to slowly kill her on live television — because he would feel horrible about it despite his hatred for Lila over what she did to him.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: Frederick uses his powers as an akuma to get back at Lila for ruining his life, turning all his friends against him, and pushing him to the brink of suicide.
  • Shout-Out: By the author's own admission, Inquisitor is based on ChaoticNeutral's Witch Hunter.
  • Shut Up, Kirk!: Frederick to Ladybug when she tries to tell him that his revenge isn't the answer.
  • To the Pain: As he's torturing her, Inquisitor reveals to Lila the true nature of what he intends to do to her — namely, slowly crushing her to death over the course of days after forcing her to confess everything she did to him — in a completely casual fashion. He's only narrowly stopped when Ladybug and Cat Noir free themselves, proclaiming him to have gone too far despite them also being thoroughly disgusted with her.
    Inquisitor: Pathetic. Truly pathetic. You hurt me and all those people, told all those lies, ruined all those lives… for things like free lunches and popularity in school? You utterly disgust me.
    Lila: (sneering) Like I care. I played your little game, confessed, so let me go.
    Inquisitor: Let you go? I'm afraid that's not possible.
    Lila: (reduced to cowardly whimpering) But… you said you’d let me go if I confessed!
    Inquisitor: Guess what, Lila? I Lied. (drops a fourth slab) You know, this wasn't just a method of interrogation. It was used as a method of execution as well. They would place increasingly heavy stones on top of the victim until they confessed… or died. They did it to Giles Corey during the Salem Witch Trials, you know. Each time they asked him to confess, he would reply "More weight!". It took him three days to die, you know. I wonder how long you'll take? (drops a fifth slab) It won't be a quick or painless death. As the pressure on your torso increases, your vital organs will begin to shut down. Your ribs will begin to crack and then collapse in on themselves. You'll suffer internal bleeding, slowly and painfully. Perhaps, if you're lucky, your brain will shut down from the lack of oxygen flow it's getting, and you'll be unconscious at the end of it. Or, maybe not.
  • Trauma Button: Lila herself is one for Frederick as seeing her in his new classroom drives him into a breakdown that culminates in him being akumatized into Inquisitor.
  • Villain Has a Point: When trying to talk Inquisitor down from slowly torturing Lila to death on live television, Ladybug acknowledges that she is a despicable person who needs to face justice for what she's done, but how he intends to go about it is not the right way to do so. Later on, when the full extent of Lila's crimes come to light from her blurting out that she's a willing ally of Hawk Moth before admitting everything while sobbing and begging forgiveness in a cowardly attempt to save herself, she quietly begins considering whether or not to simply let Inquisitor go through with it. That said, she and Cat Noir still stop him to save Frederick from his akumatization and make sure Lila faces justice properly.
  • Witch Hunt: Inquisitor is based both visually and character-wise on a 15th Century witch hunter, and tortures Lila with a method infamously used on Giles Corey in 1692; namely, pinning her beneath a wooden board and slowly crushing her with heavy stone slabs that spontaneously appear every time she lies.
  • You Will Not Evade Me: When Inquisitor initially approaches Lila and attempts to grab her, she responds with her usual act of faking tears and pretending she's done nothing to wrong him, then shoving Nathaniel into his path before running and abandoning the class to their fate. It ultimately amounts to nothing when Inquisitor lets him go and politely apologizes, before stopping Lila from fleeing by smashing through the wall with his meteor hammer and going through the hole to cut off her route to the front doors.

    MAMA BEAR 
Annoyed and wanting to hurt something, Lila rips a Ladybug doll belonging to Manon Chamack. Really should have learned not to upset the cubs when the mother's around.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: After Lila's crimes are revealed to the class, each takes their turn repeating which one they are most upset by, with Kim's last comment being a little out of place.
    Nino: You're working with Hawk Moth?!
    Alya: You were going to set up Marinette?!
    Mylène: You were going to let us all get akumatized?!
    Kim: You stole my lucky gold plastic ring?!
  • Bilingual Bonus: When the interviews of Lila's past victims from across Europe are shown, many of them insult her in their native language. Many of the insults are... vulgar.
  • Dumbass Has a Point: Lila is generally a Smug Snake who is too vain and petty to back up her planet-sized ego but she's not wrong in defending the failure of her plan to get Marinette akumatized as the result of an unlucky break. As far as she has any reason to know, the only reason it fell apart was that Marinette unexpectedly had another engagement with her parents the day the plan was supposed to go down, a wrinkle even a competent Lila couldn't foresee.
  • Everyone Has Standards: When Cat Noir accidentally reveals to Nadja that he sometimes visits Marinette at the bakery to have somebody to talk to, the reporter promises to not tell anybody that piece of information to protect Marinette's privacy.
    Nadja: (After Ladybug and Cat Noir look surprised at that) What? I do have some integrity!
  • Evil Is Petty: Petty enough to tear apart the doll of a girl she's never met before simply because Marinette made it for her.
  • Gratuitous Russian: Some of Nadja's inner narration is woven with Russian curses, particularly at Hawk Moth and Lila.
  • Improvised Weapon: Nadja winds up using her microphone to defend herself when Lila attacks in a fit of blind rage.
  • Inciting Incident: Lila bullies a random little girl in the park and rips up her Ladybug doll out of pettiness. Thing is, that random girl is Manon, who goes crying to her Intrepid Reporter mother Nadja. When Nadja goes to Marinette to get the doll fixed, she describes the girl Manon accused of ruining the doll and Marinette confirms it was Lila Rossi. Nadja goes to Lila's address to confront her, only to catch her plotting with Hawk Moth. She records it and goes digging through Lila, getting testimonies from Marinette, Ladybug, and Chat Noir, plus Lila's past victims, of which there is no shortage. In the end, she releases all this on TV, exposes Lila, and gets her arrested and put in solitude for at least forty years. Leaving her trial, Lila officially meets Nadja, who reveals that it was HER daughter Lila bullied in the park that fateful afternoon. Lila is taken away from Paris, reflecting on how that single badly-thought-out act of cruelty had set in motion her demise.
  • Intrepid Reporter: After Nadja comes across evidence that Lila is a willing accomplice of Hawk Moth, she starts searching and gathering more evidence in order to bring her down and make sure Lila can't ever hurt anybody ever again.
  • Kangaroo Court: Defied; during Lila's criminal trial, the International Court of Justice sends representatives to Paris in order to run it because the French Judicial system can't run her trial unbiased due to several of their judges and lawyers being akumatized in the past.
  • Malicious Slander: Lila engaged in this with a number of previous victims in other countries, most notably Lars from Sweden whom she framed as a pedophile by using a photograph of him and his younger cousin out of context, which resulted in Lars almost being sent to jail before the truth came out.
  • Mama Bear: After Lila rips up Manon's doll, Nadja is completely furious with her for it. It's also what leads her to release her story exposing Lila as a willing collaborator of Hawk Moth and as a chronic bullier.
  • Oh, Crap!: Lila has a minor one when she sees Nadja yelling at her in the park and realizes she must be Manon's mother. She has a larger moment later once she learns just what that set in motion.
  • Precision F-Strike: Gabriella and Lars, two of Lila's past victims, use very profane phrases in their native languages to describe her.
  • Resigned in Disgrace: Mrs. Rossi decides to resign from the Italian embassy in Paris and apply for a transfer back to Italy so Lila can be punished for her crimes.
  • Skewed Priorities: Among all the crimes Lila has been proven to commit, working with the Big Bad, trying to frame Marinette, deliberately targeting her classmates to get akumatized… Kim seems most offended by the fact that she stole his lucky ring above all else, cueing this Lampshade via Alix:
    Alix: Good to see you've got your priorities in order, Meathead.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: After her exposure, Hawk Moth sends several akumas after Lila in hopes of tying off that loose end. The first akuma gives her a short "The Reason You Suck" Speech explaining why:
    Akuma: Because in the words of Hawk Moth, you've outlived your usefulness, exposed yourself as a willing agent and generally been a self-important, egotistical pain in the ass.

    RUNNING AMOK 
It is time for Gabriel and Nathalie to learn that consequences apply to them, especially when you give a spiteful and idiotic girl a Miraculous.
  • Ascended Fridge Horror: It's noted that when Mayura attacked Paris without Ladybug and Cat Noir to protect it during the New York special, people actually died since there was no Miraculous Ladybug to revive everyone. The entire civilized world wants Hawk Moth's head on a pike for it.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Hawk Moth is defeated but Emilie dies and Adrien has to deal with the pain of knowing his father is a supervillain.
  • Calling the Old Man Out: Adrien tears his father a new one after learning he's Hawk Moth.
  • Clones Are People, Too: Ladybug and Cat Noir both treat Senti-Bird as her own person and whenever the destruction of Senti-Bug is mentioned, it's explicitly called a murder.
  • Cool, but Inefficient: Pavona's costume is flashy and visually stunning, reflecting Lila's own ego, but also highly impractical: the huge feathered hat hampers her vision and the floor-length dress and stiletto heels greatly reduce her mobility.
  • "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Adrien points out to his father that, if he had asked for help to heal Emilie, he could have averted most of his problems - as well as the karmic backlash for his misuse of the Butterfly Miraculous.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Pavona gets her ass well and truly handed to her by Ladybug and Cat Noir. Aside from her ridiculously impractical outfit, her fighting skills are subpar compared to theirs, and her obsessive need to take down Ladybug herself leads her to make several blunders that all result in her swift and humiliating defeat.
  • Defiant Captive: Duusu might be compelled to obey an evil and horrible master like Nooroo but unlike Nooroo, he doesn't take it meekly. Despite Lila silencing him and making him stay close, Duusu points out that she can't actually stop him from acting defiant in other ways such as pinching and biting her - or threatening to "accidentally" out her if she keeps hurting him.
  • Denied Food as Punishment: Downplayed, but Lila only lets Duusu eat a quarter of a grape before she uses him to transform into Pavona, which also counts as Stupid Evil since he needs to eat in order to fully recharge.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Played for Laughs. Once they acquired the Peacock Miraculous, Cat Noir offers to take it so Ladybug won't be at risk of falling ill if it was still damaged. He then transforms using it… and remembers his allergy to feathers when he brings the feather-covered fan towards him.
  • Disc-One Final Boss: Lila is taken out halfway through the story and the rest focuses on Hawk Moth.
  • Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: A decidedly negative example for Senti-Bird, though somewhat downplayed. Due to how she resembles Lila, Miss Bustier's class finds her presence upsetting; they don't hate or blame her but emotions are complicated.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Subverted. Gabriel insists that his love for Emilie and desire to bring her back trumps everything else but Adrien, angry and betrayed, rejects his explanations, telling him that his love for Emilie has become twisted and selfish out of his refusal to accept her death and move on with his life, instead choosing to hurt innocent people and risk sacrificing her only child or someone else to bring her back, something she would have never wanted and would hate Gabriel for doing.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Gabriel is shocked when Lila slaps Duusu - he admits to not being kind to Nooroo but he has never used physical violence on him.
  • Godzilla Threshold: Hawk Moth gives the Peacock Miraculous to Lila because she's the only person willing to work with him (apart from a sick Nathalie) and because law enforcement is closing in on his identity.
  • Good Counterpart: A sentimonster is created resembling Lila as Pavona, only she is on the heroes' side and tricks Hawk Moth into getting them close to him and bringing him down. After his defeat, she teams up with Prince Ali and uses her powers to help his charitable causes by creating pets to give to sick children or to sell for charity funds.
  • Hope Spot: Duusu tells the heroes that Emilie's Miraculous-induced coma can be healed by either a Guardian or the Ladybug Miraculous. However, by the time they break into Hawk Moth's lair, she is already dead.
  • Impractically Fancy Outfit: What Lila's costume as Pavona winds up being, consisting of a form-hugging dress with a floor-length train, a hat with huge feathery plumes, and stiletto heel shoes. Whilst it looks very nice, it proves to be more of a hindrance than anything when she fights Ladybug and Cat Noir head-on; the plumes keep getting in her eyes, the stiletto heels make keeping her balance impossible, she can't use any leg-based attacks and the long train of her dress makes it easy to trip over or for the heroes to use to grab hold of her.
  • Irony: One of Lila's biggest lies was that she travelled with Prince Ali and helped in his charitable causes. At the end of the story, Senti-Bird, the sentimonster created to resemble Lila as Pavona, actually goes to live with Ali in Achu and helps him with his charities.
  • Let's Get Dangerous!: When Pavona almost gets a lucky blow on Ladybug that still draws blood, the heroine replies that if she wants to play rough then that's how it'll go. She and Cat Noir stop holding back and beat her down.
  • Loophole Abuse: Duusu cannot say the names of his previous wielders but he can still provide enough information for Ladybug and Cat Noir to realize Gabriel Agreste is Hawk Moth.
  • Morally Superior Copy: Senti-Bird is a Lila-shaped sentimonster who is exactly as sweet, kind, and caring as Lila pretends she is.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Times three:
    • Hawk Moth fixing the Peacock Miraculous also fixes the mental damage done to Duusu, clearing his head and allowing him to realize he's being used for evil. While he can't directly disobey Lila, he does everything he can to make things inconvenient for her and later gives enough information to Ladybug and Cat Noir that they're able to figure out who Hawk Moth is.
    • Lila ignoring all the rules Hawk Moth laid for her (such as staying away from the fights and limiting herself to creating Sentimonsters) ends in her defeat and the heroes claiming the Peacock Miraculous that Hawk Moth had just repaired. This in turn, thanks to Duusu's information, leads to the heroes finding out about Hawk Moth being Gabriel Agreste and thus his definitive defeat and arrest.
    • Hawk Moth, against Nathalie's advice, insists on giving one of his two Miraculous to an obviously unreliable girl that's in way over her head, just to make sure it was indeed repaired. Then again, he knew that the authorities were starting to develop means to discover his identity and he was quite desperate.
  • Posthumous Sibling: In the "magically created beings" sense; Senti-Bird is the second fully sentient sentimonster to be created, and refers to the murdered Senti-Bug as her sister.
  • Pun-Based Title: Since the magical feathers that create sentimonsters are called amoks.
  • Spit Take: Lieutenant Roger lets one out after the heroes tell him they know Hawk Moth's identity.
  • Squishy Wizard: The Peacock Miraculous' powers are highly formidable and versatile, able to create fully sentient beings if the user wishes but as such, it is not very strong in direct combat. Hawk Moth explicitly warns Lila when he gives her the Miraculous that she is to stay off the front lines and not engage Ladybug and Cat Noir directly as they are more skilled and able fighters, ordering her to restrict herself only to creating sentimonsters and commanding them from afar but she disobeys and finds herself severely outclassed against the more combat-experienced duo.
  • The Starscream: Upon learning from Duusu that Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous can grant a wish when used together, Lila decides to betray Hawk Moth and keep the Miraculous herself.
  • Support Party Member: The Peacock and Butterfly Miraculous are this, conjuring allies for the other users. As such, they are poorly suited to frontline combat. Lila ignores this and decides to attack Ladybug and Cat Noir directly, with predictable results.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Lila blatantly ignores all of the rules Gabriel gave her to possess the Peacock brooch, from proudly showing it off to her classmates for attention and risking her identity to trying to directly fight the heroes instead of working from the shadows to protect herself.
  • The Unmasking: By the end of the story, all of Paris' heroes and villains have been unmasked. Hawk Moth is defeated and arrested, Cat Noir reveals himself to confront him, and Ladybug reveals herself to support him.
  • What Does She See in Him?: Duusu's opinion on Nathalie being so in love with Gabriel to the point of helping him with his villainous schemes.
    Duusu: And honestly, her motivation is ridiculous! He's still technically a married man, for starters. And he's not even attractive in terms of either physical appearance or personality! She could do so much better.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Hawk Moth attempts to sway Senti-Bird to his side by telling her that Ladybug and Cat Noir will poof her out of existence after she's served her purpose. She retorts that she has no reason to believe him since he did exactly that to her sister, Senti-Bug.

    EXPOSED 
Ladybug's secret identity is exposed, courtesy of Lila Rossi! Fortunately, Cat Noir is more crafty than he lets on.
  • Armed with Pepper Spray: At the insistence of his parents, Marc carries pepper spray to protect himself from bigots as he is openly gay. He winds up using it against Lila when she attacks Marinette.
  • Asian Fox Spirit: While using the Fox Miraculous, Adrien calls himself Kitsune after the Japanese trickster fox spirit. Plagg groans about his partner being an anime fanatic.
  • Batman Gambit: Marinette suspects that Lila will attempt to steal the Ladybug Miraculous off of her, so she wears regular black stud earrings while entrusting Adrien with the real earrings when she goes into the locker room. Sure enough, that is exactly what happens.
  • Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: According to Trixx and Plagg, the Pied Piper and Robin Hood were actually former Fox Miraculous users.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Lila's already on the verge of insanity due to her Humiliation Conga. When Adrien kisses Marinette, it's the final straw and Lila tries to attack Marinette with a broken bottle.
    • The button gets set off again years later when she sees an interview of Ladybug saying Lila did her a favor by trying to out her, which led to Cat Noir having to throw the public off her scent and removed any lingering suspicion of her being Marinette. The idea that she actually helped her greatest enemy leads to a breakdown and another failed escape attempt.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Adrien's stabbing in the face does leave a permanent scar, which takes a massive negative toll on his modeling career. However, Adrien and Marinette now know of each other's secret identities (as well as Marinette's family being in the loop), they start dating each other and many years later Hawk Moth is unmasked and defeated, restoring peace to Paris.
  • Crying Wolf: When Lila shows her true colors by trying to expose Ladybug's secret identity, everyone realizes that she's a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and stops trusting her. When she insists that Marinette is Ladybug and tries to transform with the earrings she stole, no one believes her. It doesn't help that the transformation doesn't work due to both the decoy earrings and Marinette not telling her the real phrase.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Somehow, it never occurred to Lila that exposing the secrets of Paris's beloved heroine and putting her in danger via Hawk Moth, and by extension everyone else, would make her hated by everyone in the city, and get her in trouble with the law and her mom. On the other hand, Lila admits that she doesn't care what happens to anyone as long as she can have her revenge on Ladybug.
  • Digging Yourself Deeper: Even after Lila has fallen from grace and has been fired, grounded, sued, humiliated, and outcasted in school, she just won't quit. She attacks Marinette, steals her earrings, and tries to win back everyone's respect by transforming into Ladybug. However, the fake earrings and catchphrase make her efforts null and void, and she just ends up looking like an utter fool.
  • Eye Scream: When Lila goes at Marinette with a broken bottle, Marc blasts her in the face with pepper spray, sending her to the floor in agony.
  • Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: In the locker room scene, Marinette tells Lila the difference between easily forgiving somebody for something bad and this trope:
    Lila: You really don't know me all that well, do you? I never forget or forgive a slight, not ever.
    Marinette: Then you're stupider than I thought. The foolish neither forgive nor forget, as you'll find out.
    Lila: Oh, and what? Like your forgive and forget is any better?
    Marinette: Actually, no. I forgive, yes, but I don't forget. Especially not your selfish attempt to expose Ladybug.
  • Grievous Bottley Harm: After Lila snaps, she tries to shank Marinette with a broken glass bottle but slices Adrien's face open instead when he pushes her out of the way.
  • Humiliation Conga: After she releases footage of Marinette de-transforming, Lila's whole life falls apart. Cat Noir uses the Fox Miraculous to save his lady's secret, rendering Lila's efforts meaningless. After that, she faces lawsuits for defamation and slander, is grounded by her mother, and loses her modeling job. When she comes back to school, she discovers that she's destroyed her own reputation and is now about as popular as a fungus. Even then, she just keeps digging herself deeper. She steals Marinette's earrings, thinking them to be the Miraculous, and tries to transform with a fake catchphrase. Of course, since that and the earrings are fakes, it doesn't work, and she's further embarrassed. Finally, seeing Adrien kiss Marinette sets off her Berserk Button and she tries to attack Marinette with a broken bottle, only to miss and hurt Adrien instead, and get pepper-sprayed by Marc. After that episode, she is decided to be mentally unstable and locked away, possibly forever. The cherry on top? Years later, an interview post-Hawk Moth's defeat has Ladybug saying Lila actually helped protect her secret identity by trying to expose her, leading Cat Noir to have to throw people off the trail and absolving any future suspicion. Seeing this, Lila has a nervous breakdown and tries to escape for revenge, only to fail miserably again.
  • Incompatible Orientation: Played for Laughs; When paramedics arrive to help Adrien get to the hospital after his stabbing, one of the female paramedics recognizes him, leading to this exchange:
    Paramedic: Wait a second, aren't you that teen model everyone's always gushing about?
    Adrien: If I say yes, are you going to want an autographed selfie?
    Paramedic: I'm a lesbian and you're way too young, so no.
  • Mythology Gag: Tom's reaction to seeing Tikki for the first time is similar to Marinette's own.
    • One to the author's previous story Crumbling Down; after Marinette and Adrien tell the rest of the class about Lila's treachery, Alix once again grabs an axe (in this case, a battleaxe instead of that story's fire axe).
  • Noodle Incident: Tikki says Tom's reaction the first time he saw a kwami "wasn't as bad as what happened to Trixx that time in Japan" as "There was a lot of screaming and fire and chaos involved, he doesn't like to talk about it".
  • Oh, Crap!: Marinette begins to panic when she's unable to find the Miracle Box after the reveal of her identity. Fortunately, Adrien was the one who stole it, as he knew it was a matter of time before Hawk Moth tried to do it.
  • Oh, No... Not Again!: When Adrien gets his hands on the Fox Miraculous, Trixx asks if they're stuck with another Pied Piper situation.
  • Only Sane Woman: Nadja Chamack sabotages the broadcast when she realizes it's about to air the video of Ladybug de-transforming, defending herself by stating that not only would it be exceptionally foolish to expose her identity but the video's authenticity hasn't been verified so the studio could open itself up to a case of fraudulent newscasting.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
    • Sweet, shy, quiet Marc loudly swears when he finds out Lila attacked Marinette, expresses pleasure at the thought of her being humiliated, and pepper-sprays her in the end. The last one is justified because his parents want him to have physical protection, with him being a boy who wears makeup and rainbow clothes.
    • Adrien is not always the most assertive when it comes to his father but when Gabriel tries to pin the blame for his accident on Marinette, Adrien calls him out for his Skewed Priorities in trying to blame her instead of Lila for getting him scarred.
  • Properly Paranoid: Because Marc is openly gay and wears make-up and rainbow clothes, his parents make him carry around pepper spray in case he gets attacked by bigots. While that doesn't happen, the pepper spray does help subdue Lila when she attempts to stab Marinette and does stab Adrien.
  • Revenge Before Reason: Lila reflects that she doesn't care what happens to the city, so long as she can take down Ladybug once and for all.
  • Silent Treatment: The class's revenge back at Lila for (in their eyes but Marinette and Adrien) trying to frame Marinette as Ladybug and put her in danger from Hawk Moth. As brought up by Marinette during their planning, Lila is an Attention Whore who thrives on people fawning over her lies. Being ignored by everyone drives Lila insane.
  • Skewed Priorities: When Gabriel catches wind of Adrien being injured and scarred in the face, he at first thinks it's Marinette's fault since Adrien shoved her out of the way before she was the one who got stabbed. Adrien is quick to set him straight, telling him he should be blaming Lila, the one who actually stabbed him.

    MAX-IMUM EFFECT 
Lila is put in a sticky situation when Ms. Bustier informs her that, due to all her months of missed school, she is in serious danger of failing or having to repeat the year. Given a huge amount of make-up work that will allow her to at least scrape a pass, Lila decides to threaten someone into doing it for her and picks Max, who she sees as very smart and easy to bend to her will. However, she soon learns that crossing a boy who can engineer a robot sentient enough to be akumatised is not a good idea.
  • Accidental Public Confession: Unfortunately for Lila, Max's robot buddy Markov was recording him making adjustments to him (to capture and fix any errors if necessary) when she came to force his creator to do her work and didn't stop, meaning her threats to Max and her entire evil Motive Rant — where she states that she sees her classmates only as subordinates and tools, takes pride in being a monstrous bully and confirms herself engineering Marinette's expulsion out of petty spite — were all recorded into his memory drive. Of course, this is used by Max and Markov later to expose her.
  • Already Done for You: As mentioned in the epilogue, Lila tries to come back for revenge against Max in her Volpina form before she's due to be sent to a strict reform school in Italy. Max anticipates her trying something, however, and builds a special robot with a heavy non-lethal arsenal — equipped with net launchers, tasers, pepper spray dispensers, and a full database's worth of martial arts experience among other things — with which to protect him. By the time Ladybug and Cat Noir track Volpina down, she's found already defeated and in a badly beaten, barely-conscious heap on the floor.
  • Androids Are People, Too: After Lila's true nature is exposed and she attempts to attack Max in front of the entire class for doing so, Markov knocks her unconscious with a powerful taser-like electric shock to protect him; in turn, draining his battery to a dangerously low level. Everyone present feels a great deal of sympathy for the robot, paying no attention to the sparking, smoking, and twitching form of Lila on the ground.
  • Batman Gambit: Max pretends to submit to Lila's demands while setting her up by using a fake report written in a font that he made. As such, because only his computer has it, it would raise questions of why Lila's homework would have it, and when Miss Bustier asks Lila why, the liar claims she borrowed Max's computer. When asked for confirmation, Max strikes and lets everyone know what really happened, complete with video evidence recorded by Markov projected to a nearby display, as Max asked Markov to record in video the protocols for his next batch of upgrades in case things went wrong so they could fix them easier.
  • Bullying a Dragon: Lila learns the hard way that it's not a good idea to threaten someone who's smart enough to build a sentient A.I. and hack just about any form of computer network in existence.
  • Call-Back: Max mentions the events of "Chameleon" when threatened by Lila.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: This side of Lila is in full bloom here, as shown by her Motive Rant when threatening Max. She makes it clear that she has absolutely no interest in making friends or even trying to redeem herself for her previous actions; only for having unquestioningly-loyal flunkeys that she can bend to her will.
    Max: But why? Why? Marinette is the nicest person in the world!
    Lila: Ugh, I know. And that sickens me! Everyone's always going on about how sweet she is, how kind, how helpful, how utterly selfless! Please. She tried to tell me that we could be friends if I didn't lie, that all I had to do was be honest. As if! Why be honest and have friends, when I could lie and have loyal servants? All of you bent over backwards to help me when I merely hinted that I knew celebrities, or that I was too weak because of my charity work! Why would I give that up? But Marinette wouldn't stay out of my way, so she had to go. Now you have the same choice; fall in line and do what I say, or stand in my way and see your life crumble. What's it going to be?
  • Crazy-Prepared: Markov installed a taser into himself without Max's knowledge, which he uses to incapacitate Lila when she tries to assault his creator.
  • The Dog Bites Back: Max gets to inflict this twice on Lila. First by exposing her as a cheat and a vicious bully in front of the entire class — punctuated by Markov zapping Lila with a miniature taser when she tries to assault him during her Villainous Breakdown — and before she's sent back to Italy in disgrace after receiving a blistering hour-long rant from her mother, anticipates her coming back for revenge (in her Volpina form) and builds a bigger robot armed with a non-lethal but still painful arsenal of weapons, which leaves her badly beaten and semi-conscious by the time Ladybug and Cat Noir find her.
  • Everyone Has Standards: Max doesn't mind helping people with their schoolwork but he draws the line at actually doing it for them, and he does NOT take kindly to being strong-armed into it.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Lila makes it clear that she sees no point in being good and honest when she could use lies to be waited on like a queen by her classmates. She sees her classmates not as potential friends but as Gullible Lemmings that she can trick into being her minions, saying she would much rather have servants to dote on her than actual friends.
  • Fingore: To bully Max into doing her make-up assignments for her, Lila slams his laptop lid down on his fingers.
  • Homework Slave: Subverted—Lila tries to bully Max into doing the make-up assignments she needs to finish in order to not fail the year, complete with slamming his laptop lid on his fingers. He pretends to agree, but when she hands in the worksheets he gives her, Miss Bustier asks her why they're written in the unique font that only Max himself uses for his personal computer, exposing her as a cheat.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: On multiple counts. When Max tricks Lila into outing herself as a cheat and a bully in front of the whole class (complete with meticulously recorded evidence from Markov), she earns a taser-like electric shock from Markov himself when she throws a violent tantrum afterward, receives a blistering hour-long rant from her mother when she regains consciousness (all with a splitting headache from being physically dragged to the nurse's office and bumped into walls repeatedly by Kim) and before being shipped off in disgrace to a strict reform school in Italy and forgotten about, ends up completely thrashed and humiliated by Max's self-defense robot after akumatizing herself and trying to get revenge.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After reading Lila's worksheets and discovering that they are written in a font only Max's computer has — thus confirming that she forced him to do them — Miss Bustier actually snaps at her in a steely voice as opposed to talking in her usual warm, motherly tone.
  • Shock and Awe: After Lila goes into a full Villainous Breakdown and attempts to attack Max for outing her as a liar and a bully — complete with evidence recorded and played on the projector screen by Markov — the robot protects him by clamping down on Lila's nose with his manipulator arm and giving her a powerful, battery-draining electric shock that knocks her unconscious and leaves her twitching and smoking.
  • Spotting the Thread: When presenting the decoy school reports made by Max to Miss Bustier under the pretence that she made them herself, Lila ends up being blindsided by the reveal from Miss Bustier that they're written in the font that Max himself created, exists only on his computer, and that only he uses, which immediately exposes her as having cheated. It only gets worse for Lila from there.
  • Take a Third Option: When given a Sadistic Choice by Lila to either do her schoolwork for her or have her ruin his life as she did with Marinette's, Max instead chooses neither and sets up a convincing decoy report to expose her various crimes and true nature.
  • Take That!: In-universe, when Max grows up, he creates a successful video game that includes, as one of its features, an avatar resembling Lila that can be tortured in over a hundred different ways.

    TEACHERS 
The teachers of Francois Dupont get a pretty raw deal. Yes, they aren't the most competent or perhaps likeable characters nor the best representation of school authority figures, but it's clear to me that at heart they are good people who want and try to provide the best for their students. Mr. Damocles, Ms. Bustier, and Ms. Mendeleiev all get their chance to shine by taking down Lila in unique ways complementary to their personalities on the show.

Tropes found in multiple stories:

  • Adults Are Useless:
    • This part of the series is about subverting this; despite their canonical mistakes, each of the teachers is shown to actually care about their students and work to set things right.
    • Played with in that Marinette and others are used to the usual status quo, reacting in surprise at how they're being helped. Adrien even comments during Miss Bustier's chapter that he's used to adults ignoring him.
  • The Atoner: Once Mr. Damocles and Miss Bustier realize Lila is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who fooled them, and that Adrien and Marinette have been suffering because of their lackluster attempts, they are remorseful and seek to punish Lila and make amends to the students they have wronged.
  • Boring, but Practical: All of the adults' plans:
    • Mr. Damocles' plan to expose Lila is simply to lure her in front of a camera and dupe her into doing her bullying thing. Marinette comments that she usually relies on Zany Schemes, but his straightforward approach is rather refreshing.
    • Miss Bustier's plan is to give Lila a stern talking-to about her treatment of Adrien, using the latter's complaints about her as evidence.
    • Ms. Mendeleiev simply does not fall for Lila's nonsense, asking for proof of her various ailments and travels, and contacting her mother when Lila tries to forge her signature.
  • Fix Fic: Mr. Damocles and Miss Bustier are not the moronic and/or abusive authority figures who are unapologetic for their misdeeds that they are in many salt fics. In this story, they realize their mistakes and try to make up for them, giving Lila the punishment she deserves for playing truant, harassing Marinette and Adrien, and grabbing akumas to dodge rightful justice. It's also explained how Lila was able to fool them for so long, like passing off her email as her mother's to avoid Mr. Damocles contacting her.
  • My God, What Have I Done?:
    • Mr. Damocles gets two in his chapter; first, when he sees the CCTV footage of Lila calmly walking down the stairs, then sitting down and squalling about how Marinette 'pushed her', Mr. Damocles is severely shaken by the realization that he'd completely fallen for it. He gets this a second time after watching her become Chameleon, realizing that he's dealing with a terrorist sympathizer… and had just sent Marinette to lure her out and invoke her wrath.
    • In her chapter, Miss Bustier berates herself for not recognizing what was happening with Lila sooner, and that it took Adrien informing her before she took action.
  • Ron the Death Eater: invoked This part of the series is all about subverting this. In many salt fics of the fandom, Mr. Damocles is a spineless moron who is thoroughly incompetent and unfit for his job, while Miss Bustier is an abusive teacher who lets Lila and Chloé get away with murder and blames Marinette for standing up to them, foisting all the responsibility for the rest of the class on her shoulders and expecting her to Turn the Other Cheek to the bullying she endures. The author says in the description that they believe the teachers get a raw deal in the series, and they believe them all to be good-hearted people who genuinely want the best for their charges and try their hardest to provide them with a safe environment.

EYES OF THE OWL

  • The Bait: Mr. Damocles reluctantly asks Marinette to act as this, luring Lila close enough to one of the CCTV cameras in order to catch her in the act.
  • Cool Teacher: After dressing Jean down for implying he's a homophobe, Mr. Damocles mentions things Jean and Frederick might hypothetically do that would not be considered PDA, as well as a place where the two students can have a "private discussion" if they so fancy the need.
  • From New York to Nowhere: Used as punishment; after Lila's duplicity is exposed, she's sent to her grandmother's farm and put to work. It's specifically noted that her grandmother is used to working with troubled youths, even having an arrangement with the local police as a side program/alternative to prison.
  • Her Own Worst Enemy: When Lila gets sent to her grandmother's farm, the narration notes that most of the other teens sent there actually come to enjoy the labor, as it feels like they're actually accomplishing something. Lila, who wanted a world where everything was handed to her, refuses to let herself feel the same way.
  • I Need a Freaking Drink: Mr. Damocles does a non-alcoholic version after learning the extent of Lila's deceptions, fixing Marinette a cup of tea and offering it to her:
    Mr. Damocles: I find a nice cup of tea always calms me down, Ms. Dupain-Cheng. I think, after that recollection, you need a good strong one.
  • Irony: In spite of Lila using her grandmother's name for one of her attempts to frame Marinette, she actually isn't too fond of the woman in real life.
  • Jaw Drop: Mr. Damocles does this while listening to Marinette's exhaustive account of all the horrors Lila has inflicted upon her and her friends. He then does it again while checking the footage on the day of the Chameleon incident and seeing Lila lunge for the butterfly with a wicked smile.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Lila's fate here (while considerably lighter than her fate in several other stories in this series) is poetic justice. She told her lies so she could be queen of the school and have everything she wanted in life handed to her on a silver platter. After she's revealed, she's sent to her grandmother Sophia's farm (as her grandmother regularly takes in troubled youths and teaches them the value of hard work). She sells or trades all of Lila's unnecessary material possessions (including her phone and the necklace she tried to use to frame Marinette) and has her spend all day every day in the sun doing farm chores. To top it all off, Spophia is a no-nonsense woman who would never believe the kind of lies that Lila tells, meaning that she has no power in that part of Oz.
  • Let Me at Him!: After Lila reveals just how unrepentant she really is, Alya, Adrien, and Alix had to be physically restrained from attacking her, the former two by Nino and the latter by Nathaniel (both with great difficulty, as Nathaniel is physically weak and Nino has to restrain two people, and all three would-be attackers are in full Unstoppable Rage mode).
  • Mistaken for Racist: Or in this case, homophobic. When Mr. Damocles requests Jean and Frederick to avoid PDA at school, Jean implies Mr. Damocles is only doing it because they are both boys. Mr. Damocles replies by pointing out that two of his children are homosexual (one of them married and with children, the other will marry soon) and his youngest grandson is transitioning from male to female - all with his full blessing.
  • Ordered Apology: Lila is forced to apologize to Marinette in front of the whole school by her mother and Mr. Damocles. She subverts this by saying she's sorry not for hurting Marinette but for failing to ruin her life as she threatened.
  • Shout-Out: After Lila is exposed, Alix calls her a "back-stabbing, mob-flipping cockroach".
  • Spiteful Spit: Lila does this right in Marinette's face, enraging Adrien, Alix, and Alya into trying to attack her for it. Marinette, for her part, just calmly wipes it off and dismisses Lila completely.
  • This Is Reality: Lila taunts Marinette this way, insisting that she'll never be caught lying: "That's a nice little pipe dream you've got there, but this is the real world. In the real world, I win."
  • The Unapologetic: Lila tells Marinette she's sorry… that she didn't succeed in destroying her life and stealing her friends and Adrien, and that Marinette is not dead. Then, Lila spits in her face. Marinette shrugs it off, knowing that it's the best she'll get from Lila.

MALICIOUS COMPLIANCE

Ms. Bustier notices how tired and unhappy Adrien is, yet how he also tries to hide it. In trying to help him, however, she finds out what Lila is really like and she does NOT like it.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Lila hopes that an akuma will be sent her way for one last chance at revenge. She gets three… in the form of three outraged akumatized classmates out for her blood after learning what she did to their friends.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Miss Bustier is sweet bordering on naive, but when she witnesses Lila forcibly kiss Adrien and then slap him, she goes ballistic on her.
  • Content Warnings: Contains one at the start due to a direct depiction of sexual assault.
  • False Rape Accusation: When Miss Bustier catches her assaulting Adrien, Lila tries to claim that she was defending herself against his advances. Fortunately, Miss Bustier is having none of it.
  • Forceful Kiss: Lila doing this to Adrien is enough to make Miss Bustier snap.
  • Gag Haircut: Not a haircut per se, but when Evillustrator attacked Lila along with Princess Fragrance and Lady Wifi in revenge for everything she did, he erased half of her hair, which was not restored when Ladybug cast the Cure.
  • Group Hug: The ending, with the whole class joining in hugging Miss Bustier along with Adrien.
    Rose: One big, happy family!
  • Moving the Goalposts: Lila attempts to alter the terms of her deal with Adrien back in "Ladybug", declaring that she'll have Marinette expelled again unless Adrien agrees to become her boyfriend.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Two times for Miss Bustier, who is known for being sweet and motherly towards her students. But this just means that when one of said students is in danger, she becomes a Mama Bear.
    • She gets gruff with Gabriel on the phone when he dismisses the dismay of his son's emotional health and personal happiness, telling him firmly that Adrien developing friendships is less of a "frivolity" and more of a necessity if he wants to grow as a person. It actually works and Gabriel takes her word for it and allows Adrien more freedom to be with his friends.
    • She goes into full Mama Bear mode when she witnesses Lila threaten and force herself on Adrien, then slap him for continuing to resist. She screams at Lila, glares at her murderously, and drags her by the arm rather roughly to the principal's office to face punishment.
  • Parental Substitute: Miss Bustier cares about all her students like they're her own children but the story focuses on her filling this role to Adrien, who seriously needs it.
  • Shame If Something Happened: Miss Bustier overhears Lila implying that "something bad will happen to Marinette again" unless Adrien agrees to become her boyfriend.
  • Shipper with an Agenda: A relatively benign agenda, granted, but Miss Bustier uses her talk with Adrien to try and urge him to talk to Marinette more. Although she's completely aware of their feelings for each other, she also notes that Adrien having someone his age to talk about his problems with would help him.
  • To the Pain: Upon hearing that Lila forced a kiss onto Adrien, Chloé furiously details what she wants to do to Lila.
    Chloé: I'll have you chopped up into pieces, have the pieces ground into fish food and fed to fish and then have the fish fed to piranhas and the piranhas then fed to other piranhas and then feed them to a shark and have the shark made into soup! And that's just for starters!
  • What the Hell, Hero?: In her chapter, Miss Bustier calls out both Nathalie and Gabriel for being completely dismissive of Adrien, shutting down Gabriel's attempt to dismissively pass the buck onto her and forcing him to take his concerns seriously.
  • With All Due Respect: Miss Bustier uses this line on Gabriel when he blows off the notion of his son going on "frivolous outings" with his friends.
  • You Are Better Than You Think You Are: When Miss Bustier laments how she failed to realize what was happening in her classroom sooner, Adrien reassures her that she didn't fail him and has still done more for him than any other adults he's dealt with.

SCIENTIFIC APPROACH

And finally, Ms. Mendeleiev. The grouchiest, sharpest, meanest teacher in the school does care, deep down, but she would never show it. She's also not a fool, as Lila quickly finds out.
  • Crazy-Prepared: Ms. Mendeleiev collects samples of all her students' handwriting in case one of them tries to forge something given to her. That was how she was able to spot Lila's forgery of her mother's signature.
  • Excellent Judge of Character: None of Lila's nonsense works on Ms. Mendeleiev.
  • Good Is Not Soft: Ms. Mendeleiev is a curt hard-ass but she's also a dedicated and protective teacher. She goes as far as to use physical force against Lila when she tries to grab an akuma after being caught.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: As the author points out, Ms. Mendeleiev has to be strict because a lot of what the students are doing is dangerous if something goes wrong.
  • Shout-Out: Ms. Mendeleiev's statement about science being complex and dangerous work is not far off from a statement made by Professor McGonagall.

    ELLIE-MENT OF SURPRISE 
Nathaniel's twin sister Ellie, an up-and-coming pop star, comes to Paris to visit her brother and gain inspiration for her next song. Lila quickly makes her a target, only to find she's bitten off way more than she can chew when it leads to Ellie getting akumatised into a very dangerous yet fabulous villainess whom even Ladybug and Cat Noir can't take down... at least, not without a little help.
  • Absurdly Sharp Claws: Vam-Power uses these to slice clean through Cat Noir's suit and nick the skin underneath during their first fight.
  • Accidental Public Confession: Lila admits to working with Hawk Moth to Vam-Power, unaware that the heroes were watching this interaction and were recording her confession.
  • Adaptational Superpower Change: Nathaniel is given the Rooster Miraculous instead of the Goat Miraculous. The Rooster Miraculous also has Power of the Sun rather than temporarily creating new powers. Justified as the story was conceived before the episode "Penalteam."
  • Apologetic Attacker: As Cocorico, Nathaniel feels guilty every time he has to hit, throw, or trip his mind-controlled classmates.
  • All for Nothing: Lila's attempt to get revenge on Ellie for seeing past her is to destroy the new song Ellie just wrote. This causes her to be outed for breaking and entering to do so, all her lies and manipulations revealed to the class and reveals her willing collusion with Hawk Moth. And in the end, Ellie still manages to salvage the song just fine.
  • Big Brother Instinct: Both Nathaniel and Ellie show this towards each other even though they are twins; Ellie promises to make certain that Lila's body is never found if she even looks at Nathaniel with ill intent whilst Nathaniel's first instinct on being told by Ellie that Lila threatened her is to go and tear the girl limb from limb.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Anyone that Vam-Power drains becomes her zombified slave.
  • Cool Big Sis: Doesn't get much cooler than having a pop star for an older twin sister.
  • Digging Yourself Deeper: While she was certainly guilty of other crimes, it's noted that Lila's word alone isn't conclusive proof that she was working for Hawk Moth, so she might have had that charge dropped… if she hadn't grabbed an akuma and shoved it into her bracelet in the middle of a courthouse with dozens of witnesses.
  • Exact Words: Ellie and Kim have an arm-wrestling contest at the start of the story with Ellie winning and Kim having to do a request, which ends up with Kim having to be Alix's servant for a week. Alix is excited to have her rival be her slave until Ellie corrects her that Kim is her servant, along with handing Alix a wad of euros to pay Kim for his work.
    Ellie: Pay him ten for each day. I have standards and slavery is not something I will tolerate, even for a joke.
  • Greyscale of Evil: Vam-Power starts out like this and inflicts it on her victims when she absorbs their energy.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: After learning from Nathaniel about Lila's frequent lying, Ellie decides to use one of Lila's lies against her. Namely her lie that she has a lying disease. Ellie brings it up whenever Lila spews her tall tales and gets the class to think that her disease is flaring up, giving Lila unwanted sympathy while they don't believe her words.
  • I Never Said It Was Poison: Lila outs herself as the one who wrecked Ellie's lyrics when she mentions them before Nathaniel said what the incident in his house was.
  • Monumental Damage: Largely subverted. Cat Noir is forced to Cataclysm a hole in the ceiling of the Louvre to escape Vam-Power and later suggests doing the same to the entire museum in order to expose her to the sunlight, but Ladybug firmly vetoes this.
  • Original Character: Eloise "Ellie" Kurtzberg, Nathaniel's twin sister.
  • Secret-Keeper: Ellie figures out that the Rooster hero Cocorico is Nathaniel, though she only hints that she knows about it to him.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Vam-Power's appearance and personality are based on Lady Dimitrescu and her abilities are based on Countess Rajine. Adding on to the former, when Rose, Juleka, and Alix are brought under her control, they start acting like Dimitrescu's daughters.
    • Nathaniel recalls a time when his grandfather was accused of dodging taxes. Said grandfather's defense was similar to Professor Farnsworth's reaction when accused of faking his death to dodge taxes.
  • Title Drop: When Nathaniel introduces Ellie to Marinette, he says Ellie loves "the "Ellie-ment" of surprise".

    CUTTING THE STRINGS 
Lila Rossi doesn't view other people as people. Rather, she views them all like puppets to be strung along and made to dance to whatever tune she fancies. But what happens when the puppets realise the presence is of the strings and cut them? Max and Kim prompt such an event, and Lila reacts in her usual way by getting herself akumatised for revenge. And with Marinette and Adrien neutralised by her, someone else will need to take up the mantles of Ladybug and Cat Noir...
  • Atrocious Alias: Max and Kim's respective aliases of Bug-a-Boy and Jaguaro elicit snickers from Puppet-Mistress and even a few members of her captive audience.
  • Brutal Honesty: Plagg cuts through Max and Kim's insecurities about being unable to match up as holders of the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculouses with a blunt statement of fact that it's only a one-time thing and will end whether they succeed or fail.
  • Contrived Coincidence: Lila lies about having delivered vital supplies to orphans whilst suffering a torn ankle muscle, only for Kim to disprove her story as he had recently suffered the exact same injury.
  • Cue the Flying Pigs: Needless to say, everyone is shocked when Kim intelligently points out the flaws in Lila's story.
    Alix: I thought that the Underworld would freeze over before I agreed with that meathead, but Kim is right.
  • Gold Coloured Superiority: Kim's costume as Jaguaro comes with a liberal amount of gold, highlighting his focus on winning and being a sports champion.
  • Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball: Bug-a-Boy's Lucky Charm results in this, which was used in canon to defeat the Evillustrator. With Puppet-Mistress having sealed herself in a web of string that they can't penetrate, Bug-a-Boy has Jaguaro hit the ball in a manner that has it rebound off the strings and beams of the Eiffel Tower and gain enough momentum to knock the akuma out when it finally hits her.
  • Inadequate Inheritor: Max and Kim are originally reluctant to accept the use of the Miraculous due to feeling this way, but Plagg simply tells them that they only need to beat Lila this once so they can free the original holders rather than become the new Ladybug and Cat Noir full-time.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Adrien is horrified when he learns the true extent of Lila's lies and just how much his "high road" advice must have hurt Marinette.
  • Noodle Incident: When Tikki reminds Plagg of the consequences of using their abilities without a holder, Plagg remarks that he still thinks Saturn looks better with those rings.
  • Opposites Attract: Kim and Max are as different as chalk and cheese, yet make a very close and loving couple.
  • People Puppets: As Puppet-Mistress, Lila is able to control people with strings and make them do and say whatever she wants.
  • Properly Paranoid: After the incident with Reflekta, Ladybug and Cat Noir made a contingency in case they get captured by an akuma before they can transform, namely by having their respective kwamis take their Miraculous and seek out new holders. This proves fortuitous when they are both captured by Puppet-Mistress under those exact circumstances.
  • Second Super-Identity: Marinette and Adrien are captured by Puppet-Mistress, so Max and Kim temporarily use the Ladybug and Cat Miraculouses, becoming Bug-a-Boy and Jaguaro, respectively.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Shut Up, Hannibal!: When Puppet-Mistress demands to know why Marinette won't break even after all her loved ones have been forced to insult and beat her, Marinette responds with a brief "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how pathetic Lila is.

    WORLD BEYOND 
Despite losing all but their own Miraculouses to Hawk Moth, Ladybug and Cat Noir refuse to surrender and keep fighting. With a prompt from Nathalie, Gabriel decides to take his campaign of terror beyond Paris, using his newly acquired powers to strike key cities and landmarks across the globe in an attempt to force the heroes to surrender or witness more innocent lives be destroyed. Backing the heroes into a corner, however, winds up backfiring horribly.
  • Analogy Backfire: When Adrien talks in favor of killing Hawk Moth to end his terrorist spree, he initially compares the situation to Aang being forced to kill Ozai to prevent the genocide of the Earth Kingdom, only for the others in the room to point out that Aang took a third, non-lethal option. Adrien gets better results by comparing Hawk Moth to Count Dooku.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Gabriel spends the story committing heinous acts in order to reunite with his wife. At the end, he dryly notes that he will be reuniting with her, just not the way he intended.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Lila's efforts to convince the class that all of the deaths and damage caused by Hawk Moth are Ladybug's fault, since she refuses to simply hand over her Miraculous, pushes Adrien's Berserk Button. He chews her out in front of the entire class with a blistering speech worthy of his father and even goes so far as to swear at her, much to the class's shock.
  • Big "SHUT UP!": When Lila advocates surrendering to Hawk Moth and blames Ladybug for his actions, Adrien completely blows his stack and yells at her to shut up before launching on a tirade in Ladybug's defense.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Hawk Moth is stopped and all the missing Miraculouses are returned to the box, but the heroes (especially Adrien/Cat Noir) are left emotionally and psychologically damaged due to having had to kill him with Cataclysm in order to stop him, as well as discovering both his true nature as a sentimonster and his mother's comatose form being beyond saving. Furthermore, although Ladybug was able to use the recovered Miraculouses to repair the landmarks Gabriel destroyed, the many hundreds of people who died as a result stay dead with no way to bring them back.
  • Blaming the Victim: Hawk Moth publicly appears after every one of his acts of global destruction and makes a statement blaming Ladybug and Cat Noir — by many measures his most long-suffering victims — for the chaos he has caused. Lila seizes on this rhetoric, claiming that the situation is Ladybug and Cat Noir's fault since they refuse to hand over their Miraculouses to stop Hawk Moth. Unfortunately for her, this pushes Adrien's Berserk Button, and he responds by reaming her out for it in front of the entire class.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Gabriel attempts to use this as his defense in court, claiming the Butterfly Miraculous was corrupting him, but this argument is defeated once Ladybug brings in Nooroo to testify against him.
  • Calling Parents by Their Name: Adrien refers to his father exclusively as "Gabriel" once he is exposed and arrested.
  • Clones Are People, Too: Gabriel sees Adrien as less than human because he's a sentimonster and actually expects Adrien's friends to think the same. Adrien angrily states that he considers himself to be more human than Gabriel ever was.
  • "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Played with. Adrien tells his father that he could have just asked Ladybug and Cat Noir for their help in saving his wife but notes immediately after that given his pride Gabriel would never bring himself to ask for help from anyone.
  • Country Matters: Adrien makes clear how fed up he's with the situation by calling Hawk Moth the C-word in the middle of his rant at Lila.
  • Defiant Captive: While in Gabriel's possession, Pollen gives him a Death Glare.
  • Didn't See That Coming: During his trial, Gabriel plans to paint Nooroo as The Man Behind the Man, claiming the Butterfly 'corrupted' him. He's caught completely flatfooted by Ladybug bringing Nooroo in to testify.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Gabriel cannot fathom why Ladybug and Cat Noir won't just give in to his demands after he starts his terrorist campaign, unable to understand why they insist on still fighting when he has such an advantage over them. This plays into his defeat at the end as he walks right into a trap thinking he's managed to scare the world into giving him what he wants and never considers that the countries he's been attacking would be more inclined to work with Ladybug so they can get their pound of flesh out of him rather than bend the knee to a terrorist like him.
  • Expendable Alternate Universe: Taken to the extreme in that Gabriel and Nathalie assume that their victory is inevitable and that making The Wish will rewrite reality so that they won't face any consequences for their actions, making the entire world disposable.
  • Fatal Flaw: Gabriel's is a mix of arrogance and entitlement. He thinks he's better than everyone else and feels that everyone should do as he wishes them to just because he says so and if anyone disagrees then he'll force them to do what he wants. His downfall at the end comes about because he walks right into a trap thinking he's successfully gotten his way with his campaign of terror, only for the heroes to turn the tables on him.
  • Formula-Breaking Episode: This chapter takes a break from the Lila bashing to focus on Gabriel. Lila, for her part, only gets yelled at by Adrien once and is dealt with offscreen.
  • Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: The heroes all point out that no matter how much Gabriel has been hurt by the loss of his wife, it doesn't excuse the wanton destruction he's caused as Hawk Moth nor the galling disregard he constantly shows for everyone else around him.
  • Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: As news of Hawk Moth's global campaign of terror breaks in Paris, Marinette falls into an anxiety spiral and begins blaming herself for the irreparable damage the villain is causing. Alya resorts to slapping her best friend across the face to make her pause long enough for Alya to deliver a Rousing Speech that helps her get back into a more constructive mindset. Marinette later admits she needed that, though she cautions Alya not to make a habit of it.
  • Godzilla Threshold:
    • Gabriel plans to invoke this by destroying more and more national landmarks and monuments across the globe and blaming Ladybug and Cat Noir for the resulting destruction and loss of life. This leads to the affected nations pressuring the French government to put a stop to him by any means necessary — even if it means turning on their beloved heroes and giving Hawk Moth exactly what he wants.
    • With Hawk Moth using the captured Miraculous to wreak havoc all across the globe, thousands of people dead, and over a dozen national and historical monuments destroyed without the hope of being brought back by Ladybug's Miraculous Ladybug, Ladybug and Cat Noir reluctantly make the decision to capture Hawk Moth in the only way that's sure to put a stop to him: killing him with Cataclysm, then retrieving the stolen Miraculouses from his remains. Though Ladybug uses the Miraculous Ladybug to erase the damage from this, the fact that her plan requires Cat Noir to knowingly and willingly kill someone weighs heavily on them both.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Attacking various countries outside of Paris in an effort to force Ladybug and Cat Noir to surrender instead forces them to cross the Godzilla Threshold, ensuring that Hawk Moth is finally brought down once and for all.
  • Hollywood Law: The author's notes at the end acknowledge that the real-life International Criminal Court does not have the authority to hand down the death penalty, and the story Hand Waves it by stating that they are making an exception due to the severity of Gabriel's crimes.note 
  • It's All My Fault: Marinette lapses into self-blame over Hawk Moth's campaign of terror and victim-blaming rhetoric until Alya snaps her out of it.
  • Laser-Guided Karma:
    • After spending months, if not years, heaping physical and mental anguish upon the citizens of Paris and a week destroying historic monuments and taking thousands of lives as collateral damage across the rest of the world, Hawk Moth meets his (temporary) demise via an excruciatingly painful Cataclysm. Once Ladybug fixes that with her Miraculous Ladybug, he is promptly locked up in a maximum-security prison. The only person he sees in the months before his trial is Adrien, who spells out in detail how Gabriel has lost everything: his home, business, fortune, wife, allies and associates, reputation, and Adrien himself, who has disowned him and is only visiting him to get closure before cutting Gabriel out of his life forever. And at the end, he loses his life as well, receiving a death sentence for the many, many crimes he committed as Hawk Moth.
    • Nathalie is the one who suggests to her boss that he should target places outside of Paris that Ladybug won't be able to reach and restore with her powers. Gabriel's downfall ensures that she's taken down as well, with the authorities recovering ample evidence of her crimes as Mayura.
  • Loser Son of Loser Dad: Once Gabriel is revealed as Hawk Moth, Adrien's reputation takes a severe hit as well. During his final conversation with his father, he informs him that he's renouncing the Agreste name.
  • Monumental Damage: Gabriel elects to attack famous landmarks across the globe to demoralize the heroes and force them to surrender. Among the landmarks destroyed are the Washington Monument, Edinburgh Castle, the Parthenon, Burj Khalifa, and the Sydney Opera House.
  • Never My Fault: Gabriel blames the heroes for refusing to cooperate and "forcing his hand" to the bitter end.
  • Never Say "Die": Averted; it's clearly stated that by the end of Hawk Moth's week-long campaign of terror, the death toll is in the thousands. Later, Hawk Moth's own (temporary) death is described from his point of view, and later still, his trial ends with him receiving the death penalty, though the execution is not actually depicted.
  • Offscreen Karma: It's briefly mentioned that Su-Han beat up Félix and took the Peacock Miraculous back from him. He, Lila, and Chloé are mentioned to have been sent to juvenile detention while Nathalie gets life in prison.
  • Oh, Crap!: Gabriel pales when Adrien informs him that he doesn't have to worry about the French courts being 'biased', as he's being tried by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.
  • Out-Gambitted: Hawk Moth thinks he's managed to win when the French government seems to bow to his demands and offer up the Miraculous he's been after. It was actually a Wounded Gazelle Gambit to lure him into a trap that goes off flawlessly.
  • Patricide: An unwitting, temporary example. Adrien, as Cat Noir, kills his own father as Hawk Moth with Cataclysm.
  • Precision F-Strike: Adrien has a reputation for never swearing, so everyone is shocked when he calls Hawk Moth a cunt during his tirade against Lila.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Adrien spells out in painful detail exactly how much Gabriel has lost as a result of his villainous actions and rips him apart for them as well as dismissing his reasons for committing them, bluntly stating that there was no excuse for murdering innocent people and treating everyone else like tools.
  • Serial Escalation: Hawk Moth's threat to ravage Paris until he gets Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculouses doesn't work because the citizens still support them and Ladybug's Miraculous Ladybug fixes all the damage. So he begins teleporting to other major cities and destroying major monuments, leading to thousands of people being Killed Off for Real because Ladybug has no way of reaching them without the Horse Miraculous. It gets to the point where much of the international community is pressuring the heroes to surrender just so the attacks will stop.
  • Shoot the Dog: Ladybug and Cat Noir lure Hawk Moth into a trap so that Cat Noir can Cataclysm him in cold blood.
  • Shout-Out: Cat Noir references Avatar: The Last Airbender and Dark Disciple when discussing heroes being forced to kill.
  • Shut Up, Hannibal!: Gabriel attempts to justify himself but Adrien hears none of it, calling him out for only seeing others as tools to manipulate for his own ends.
  • Targeted to Hurt the Hero: Exaggerated. Hawk Moth decides to escalate his psychological warfare by going on a worldwide merciless killing spree that he makes clear will not stop until he has the Miraculous. It gets way too close to destroying Marinette.
  • Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Less than a week after Hawk Moth begins his global campaign of terror, a news broadcast airs announcing that the French government has given in to international pressure and arrested Ladybug and Cat Noir. Hawk Moth rushes to the scene and finds the heroes tied up and helpless under heavy military guard. When he moves in to claim their Miraculouses, however, he realizes too late that it was all a trap and the heroes quickly subdue him via a lethal use of Cat Noir's Cataclysm. The assembled police and military personnel then reveal that they're not there to keep the heroes prisoner but to keep Hawk Moth from escaping after Ladybug has retrieved his Miraculouses.

    SUN'S WRATH 
Adrien Agreste is happy. So happy he feels like he could walk on air, lasso the moon, and hogtie a charging hippo. Why is he so happy? Because he’s in love with Luka Couffaine, and Luka Couffaine is in love with him. Both boys are in love and happy, so that should be the end of it, yes? Unfortunately, Lila Rossi is determined to have Adrien for herself, and deems Luka an obstacle to be removed.
  • Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: Adrien and Luka are a couple in this story.
  • Adaptational Sexuality: Adrien and Luka are both gay in this story.
  • Affectionate Nickname: Luka refers to Adrien as his Helios.
  • Batman Gambit: In order to expose Lila's true nature, Hell-ios kidnaps a little boy and threatens to drop him to his death if she doesn't turn herself over to him. He fully expects her to refuse, ensuring that none of the other people inside the restaurant will try to save her from him... or give her a chance to escape once the heroes show up.
  • Beware the Nice Ones:
    • As suggested in the title, Lila learns the result of crossing the class's resident Sunshine Boy. The best example is how, after being deakumatized, he tries to straight-up strangle Lila in public, only sparing her at Ladybug's request.
    • After Lila tries to keep Adrien from visiting a hospitalized Luka (which is her fault), he proceeds to viciously threaten her. Immediately after, Alya, Mylène, Nathaniel, and Rose all admit that they'd mutilate Lila horribly if they were in Adrien's shoes.
    • And after she attempts to use Nino as a Human Shield, even Ivan wants to subject Lila to an even worse fate than Hell-ios would.
    • Ladybug even decks Lila in the face towards the end of the story.
  • Big Brother Instinct: Age and gender-inverted with Juleka. Juleka isn't happy when she sees Lila trying to flirt with her older brother Luka and her firm tone makes it clear that he's off limits. Later, Juleka tries to kill Lila after the latter accuses Luka of cheating on Adrien, with Kim and Ivan barely able to hold her back.
  • Big "NO!": Hell-ios unleashed one when Lila grabs Nino and pulls him into the line of fire in a desperate attempt to save herself from being burned alive.
  • Brutal Honesty: After detransforming, Nino tells Plagg to let his usual holder know that he's a better Cat Hero. Plagg remarks that he was going to do that anyway, causing Nino's face to fall, though he clarifies that he can tell Nino makes a far better Turtle than Cat.
  • Caught on Tape: This screws Lila over twice. First when the motorist's dashboard camera catches her shoving Luka out in front of his car, and again when one of the waitresses films her refusing to surrender herself to secure Daniel's safety.
  • Death Glare: Lila gets to be on the receiving end of a lot of these, especially after accidentally revealing her true nature to an entire restaurant full of civilians.
  • Dirty Coward: Lila refuses to face Hell-ios even if it means a little boy will be murdered.
  • Engineered Public Confession: Hell-ios teams up with a little boy to trick Lila into showing how selfish and cowardly she is by displaying no concern for whether or not the boy is killed by the akuma.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Repeatedly zigzagged. Many are Gabriel's vices, but homophobia is not one of them. However, when Luka is hospitalized, he spares no sympathy for Adrien and orders him to a photoshoot. Then Adrien becomes vulnerable to akumatization, and it's noted that Gabriel did swear not to harm him but that the temptation is ultimately too great.
  • Everyone Has Standards:
    • When the class is talking about how they'd mutilate Lila if she tried to keep them away from their hospitalized loved ones, Alix is noticeably disturbed by the violent threats they're throwing around - the same Alix who the author typically writes as a Blood Knight and the most willing to resort to violence where Lila is concerned.
    • Adrien resists ordering his bodyguard to step on the gas because he knows he'd listen; despite wanting to reach Luka's side ASAP, he doesn't want to risk his bodyguard getting arrested for speeding.
  • Gender-Blender Name: Calico. As Alya points out, calico cats are almost exclusively female.
  • Guest-Star Party Member: With Adrien akumatized, Marinette selects Nino as the temporary Black Cat hero, Calico.
  • Honor Before Reason: In Lila's backstory, a Finnish boy named Oskari gathered enough evidence to put Lila in the slammer for charity fraud, but chose to confront her and give her a chance to turn herself in and make amends. Lila responded by shoving him in front of a bus, rendering him unable to walk for the rest of his life.
  • Human Shield: Lila tries to hide behind Nino against Hell-ios's flames.
  • Implausible Deniability: When Hell-ios interrupts class to confront her, Lila naturally tries to deflect blame onto Marinette. She keeps this up even after Hell-ios reveals that she was Caught on Tape, insisting that Marinette must have disguised herself as her in order to frame her.
  • Kill It with Fire: Hell-ios possesses pyrokinetic powers and intends to use them on Lila.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: Lila attempts to exploit how people who aren't willingly akumatized tend to lose all their memories of what they did while transformed to try and snuggle up to Adrien while he's dazed and confused. Unfortunately for her, he remembers exactly what she did to Luka.
  • Laser-Guided Karma:
    • By refusing to help Daniel, Lila ensures that all of the civilians hiding inside the Eiffel Tower restaurant with her are utterly disgusted by her selfishness and more than happy to ensure she doesn't get a chance to slip away while the heroes are dealing with Hell-ios.
    • Lila also finds that one of her former victims, Oskari, happens to be the beloved nephew of someone high up in the Finnish government, who's been chomping at the bit to see her tracked down and punished for what she did to him. This leads to her winding up in a Finnish maximum security prison for the rest of her life, with the prison authorities making a point to ensure she's kept up to date on the latest happenings in Paris.
  • Let Me at Him!: Juleka has to be physically restrained from attacking Lila after the latter insinuates Luka has been fooling around with Marinette behind Adrien's back.
  • Let No Crisis Go to Waste: Gabriel is more than happy to exploit his son's anguish over his boyfriend being hospitalized in order to akumatize him. He even personally pushes Adrien past his Rage Breaking Point by forcing him to leave Luka's side for a photoshoot.
  • Light Is Not Good: Hell-ios, Adrien's akumatized form. Gold-colored skin, golden armor... and an absolute hatred of whoever hit Luka.
  • Loophole Abuse: A nurse refuses to let Adrien see his hospitalized boyfriend, insisting that only immediate family are allowed inside... until Jagged Stone shows up and immediately declares that he's with him.
  • Mama Bear: Anarka expresses a desire to hunt down the one who ran Luka over and keelhaul him, flog him, draw and quarter him, maroon him on a desert island, shoot him out of a cannon, and make him walk the plank into a pool of sharks.
  • Misplaced Retribution: Narrowly subverted. Hell-ios goes to burn the guy who drove the car that struck Luka to a crisp. However, the guy is able to talk him down with dashcam footage of Luka being shoved by Lila, turning Hell-ios' ire towards the proper target.
  • Murder the Hypotenuse: Lila tries to invoke this by pushing Luka in front of a car, though Luka fortunately survives the attempt.
  • No Sense of Personal Space: Lila clings to Adrien for all she's worth while feigning horror at Luka's accident.
  • Noble Male, Roguish Male: Adrien (polite, well-mannered golden boy) and Luka (laid-back goth dude). Their contrast works well for them in Adrien's modelling career.
  • Noodle Incident:
  • No Sympathy: Gabriel, being Gabriel, shows no concern for Adrien's horror at Luka's injuries and orders him to attend a photo shoot. This gets Adrien akumatized.
  • Papa Wolf: Jagged wants to find the guy who ran down his son and sue his rectum off.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: Hell-ios wants to burn Lila to death after she pushed Luka in front of a car.
  • Platonic Life-Partners: After Luka and Adrien got together, Adrien and Marinette became good non-romantic friends of the opposite gender.
  • Playing with Fire: Hell-ios, again.
  • Politically Correct Villain: While Gabriel is a terrorist and an abusive parent, he does not have any issues with Adrien dating another boy. He does call Adrien away from a hospitalized Luka to attend a photoshoot, but that's more Gabriel being a Jerkass in general (and deciding to akumatize Adrien).
  • Precision F-Strike: When Lila latches onto his arm and insists that she should accompany him to the hospital, Adrien finally bellows "FOR FUCK'S SAKE, IF YOU DON'T TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF ME NOW I WILL RIP YOUR FUCKING ARM OFF AND BEAT YOU TO DEATH WITH IT!!!!!!!"
  • Rage Breaking Point:
    • Marinette snaps at Lila for trying to play the victim and whine to the others about Adrien blowing up at her when she tried to force him to take her along to the hospital.
    • Between Luka ending up in a coma and his father demanding him to leave his side for a photoshoot, Adrien is consumed by so much grief and anger that an akuma reaches toward him. Plagg begs him not to give in to Hawk Moth, but Adrien somberly replies that he reached his limit, using his last moment to give the Black Cat Miraculous for Plagg to take to Ladybug before falling under Hawk Moth's spell.
    • Lila has a Downplayed yet critical one in response to Hell-ios' Sadistic Choice. As the other civilians try to convince her to trade herself for Daniel, she tries to play the frightened victim before finally losing her patience and snapping "You think I care about some stupid brat?! Drop him for all I care, I'm not going out there!"
    • After everything Lila put her and her friends through, Ladybug hits hers when Lila sneeringly asks if she's meant to be grateful she saved her from being strangled by Adrien. This last taunt prompts Ladybug to calmly lay her out with one punch.
  • Rule of Three: Adrien and Luka have been dating for three months before Lila learned about it.
  • Sadistic Choice: At the Eiffel Tower, Hell-ios snatches up a young boy and orders Lila to trade herself for his safety. Fully aware that she's facing a gruesome demise if she does, she refuses to comply. Just like he expected.
  • Second Super-Identity: Nino uses the Black Cat Miraculous to become Calico, as Adrien is unable to help.
  • Social Media Before Reason: One of the people hiding inside the Eiffel Tower's first-floor restaurant attempts to stealthily film Hell-ios, only to get yanked back down by one of the other civilians, who scolds them for risking discovery.
  • Tabloid Melodrama: Lila tries to break Adrien and Luka up by taking pictures of Luka walking Marinette home and submitting them anonymously to a tabloid. This only succeeds in attracting the wrath of Jagged Stone and the Agreste lawyers to the rag.
  • To the Pain: Hell-ios gives Jeramie a chance to prove that Luka was pushed in front of his car, but warns him that "If you're lying to get me to spare you, I will burn off each one of your fingers and toes before starting on the rest."
  • Ungrateful Bastard: After Ladybug convinces Adrien not to strangle her to death, Lila immediately snipes "Am I supposed to be grateful, Ladybug?" This proves to be the final straw for the heroine, however, who lays Lila flat with one punch.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Hell-ios threatens to drop a young boy to his death unless Lila surrenders. He's bluffing; he asked the boy to play along to bait Lila into exposing her monstrous nature (and she ends up being recorded by a waitress telling Hell-ios that she doesn't care about Daniel's life).
  • Yandere: Lila goes violently insane when she realizes Adrien is taken, even to the point of trying to murder Luka.

    WORLD BEYOND: PART II 
Felix Graham de Vanily is back in London, flush from his victory in acquiring the Peacock Miraculous. The fact that he betrayed Ladybug, Cat Noir and endangered not only Paris but the entire world to get it is just collateral damage, as far as he's concerned. But as he's soon to find out, you don't betray the heroes of Paris without cost.
  • All for Nothing:
    • Not only did Gabriel kill hundreds of people around the world with his final scheme, it's pointed out during his trial that if he had successfully launched a nuclear missile during his stay in America, it likely would have triggered a nuclear conflict that would have destroyed the whole world, including himself and all the Miraculous.
    • It's also noted that Nathalie wouldn't have actually gained anything if her employer had succeeded in making his wish, meaning that she effectively destroyed her health for nothing.
  • Aristocrats Are Evil: Félix and Amelie are British nobility, the former is a willing conspirator of a mass-murdering terrorist and the latter tries to protect her son from the consequences of his actions, and which leads them to have their status stripped by the queen after they are found guilty on their trials.
  • Badass Boast: Félix warns Su-Han that he doesn't want to hurt him when the Guardian challenges him. Su-Han's response?
    Su-Han: Don't worry. You won't.
  • Badass Normal: Su-Han gets to put his skills as a Celestial Guardian to work, beating the stuffing out of Félix despite the fact that Félix has a Miraculous and he doesn't.
  • Cruel Mercy: Rather than being executed for her crimes, Nathalie is sentenced to lifetime imprisonment instead, having to live out the rest of her days dealing with the damage the Peacock Miraculous did to her body and the other consequences of her actions.
  • Death Glare: Prince William delivers one to Félix when they show up to the trial.
  • Didn't See That Coming:
    • When Ladybug and Cat Noir confront him, Félix snidely remarks that they're too morally upright to hurt anyone, only to be cut off by a yo-yo to the nose.
    • He expects to take them completely off guard by transforming using the Peacock Miraculous, only for both to start grinning as they note that him being a supervillain means they won't have to worry about holding back.
    • Félix truly thought he'd avoid imprisonment for his crimes, but not only is he sentenced for fifty years, the queen strips the Graham de Vanily family of its noble status which it had since the days of William the Conqueror.
  • Didn't Think This Through:
    • By involving his mother, having her lie to the police and falsely claim that she had no idea where he was while secretly keeping him hidden at home, Félix made his mother a co-conspirator and got her into serious trouble.
    • Félix also failed to consider that he was working with a known terrorist, or how that might impact his ability to call upon his family's myriad connections. Especially with proof that he was the one that provided Shadow Moth with all the Miraculouses he was using to terrorize the world (save the Butterfly).
  • Formula-Breaking Episode: This one's even more formula-breaking than the original "WORLD BEYOND", as Lila doesn't even appear at all and is only briefly mentioned. The focus is primarily on Félix, with a brief interlude depicting Gabriel's arrest.
  • Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse:
    • Ladybug bluntly states that while Félix being a sentimonster gives him motivation, that doesn't excuse his actions.
      Ladybug: You wanted the Peacock Miraculous so nobody would ever be able to control you again. And whilst I understand and sympathize with that motivation, it does not in any way excuse your betrayal of us.
    • During Gabriel's trial, Duusu reveals that Emilie was responsible for her own condition, as she'd knowingly used the damaged Peacock Miraculous, while Gabriel had done nothing to stop her.
  • Humiliation Conga: Félix is arrested, convicted, and sentenced to fifty years for his multitude of crimes. And the Queen of England sees fit to personally attend his trial to strip his family of their noble status.
  • Hypocrite: Félix sneers at Shadow Moth's attempts to blame the heroes for the death and destruction he's wrecking upon the world. Yet he's quick to pin the blame for all the sentimonsters Shadow Moth created and killed upon the heroes for failing to save them.
  • It's All About Me:
    • Gabriel doesn't care that over a thousand people died in his rampage and would be fine with a million people dying as long as he gets what he wants.
    • Amelie and Félix also have this to a degree. Due to their status as nobles, they think themselves above the consequences of their actions.
  • Karma Houdini Warranty: Félix initially gets away with his betrayal of Ladybug and Cat Noir while the heroes focus on stopping Gabriel's rampage, but eventually they catch him by surprise and capture him with help from Su-Han.
  • Know When to Fold 'Em: Félix eventually cooperates with Ladybug and Cat Noir once it finally sinks in just how bad his situation is, hoping that giving the heroes information might lessen his sentence. It doesn't.
  • Master Race: Félix seems to believe that his Anglo-Saxon noble blood is superior and looks down on Emilie for marrying a Frenchman.
  • Monumental Damage: Balmoral Castle, a royal residence in Scotland, is destroyed by Monarch as part of his campaign of worldwide terror.
  • Never Trust a Title: The title suggests this is a sequel to "WORLD BEYOND", but it's actually an alternate retelling. In the first one, Félix was said to be captured by Su-Han while the heroes focus on Gabriel, but here the heroes capture him, and he ultimately gives information leading to Gabriel being arrested differently.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: Félix and his mother look down upon those they consider to be 'beneath' them.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The Queen gives a blistering one to Félix and Amelie for their actions.
    I have lived a long life, with its fair share of disgraces and derelictions, yet never in all my years have I ever seen such disgraceful behavior from such a noble and storied British family. To conspire with those who would use fear, intimidation, death and destruction to get what they want, to harm innocent lives in pursuit of their own selfish desires, represents a level of depravity and honorlessness to which no true noble soul would ever stoop. As such I do declare, here today in the presence of you all, that the Graham de Vanily family is hereby attainted and stripped of all claim to nobility.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: The Graham de Vanilys have plenty of old money and connections, which Félix expects to protect him.
  • Smug Snake: Félix arrogantly assumes that he's fully capable of staying well ahead of those who seek to make him accountable for his actions.
  • Upper-Class Twit: Félix and Amelie are written like this, being very arrogant due to their noble birth, looking down on non-nobles and foreigners, even showing disdain for non-Englishmen from the other countries from Great Britain, believing themselves above the law and taking the fact they lost their titles worse than their convictions.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Amelie has one upon hearing the Queen herself revoke their titles, ranting about how they can't do such a thing.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Zigzagged. While Su-Han certainly has no compunctions about killing Félix, a sentimonster, Ladybug and Cat Noir point out that for all effective intents and purposes, he is still a sentient being.

    UN-FOUR-TUNATE 
Marinette is approached by 4*Town, the most popular boy band in the world, to make them special Eiffel Tower sunglasses like Jagged Stone for their Paris concert. Naturally Lila tries to piggyback on their presence by claiming to be the inspiration behind their music, only for the band members (learning of this from an infuriated Marinette) to disprove this and reveal her as a liar. Lila gets herself akumatised and goes after the quintet to try and force them to admit that her lies are true.
  • Adaptational Nationality: Aaron T. is Ambiguously Brown in Turning Red proper, but is said to be of Colombian descent in this story.
  • Adaptational Sexuality: The Aarons have heavy Ship Tease between them, which leads to them undergoing a Relationship Upgrade during their escape from Volpina. While the two have some minor Ho Yay in the film, it's nowhere near that level.
  • Age Lift: Tae Young is said to be sixteen, while the tie-in manga for Turning Red has him at eighteen during the film.
  • Bait-and-Switch: When Sabine expresses concern about Marinette doing a commission for 4*Town, Marinette and Tom think it's because she's worried about Marinette being alone with them as guys. Sabine explains it's because their band name has four in it.
  • Brutal Honesty: Jesse doesn't mince words when exposing Lila. Given what she planned to do to him, one can hardly blame him.
    Jesse: (after listening to Alya talk about Lila's claims) Yeah, well, she lied... Did I stutter? Let me spell it out for you. She lied. L-I-E-D, lied.
    Tae Young: You're being a bit mean, man.
  • Crossover: With Turning Red. Not only do the members of 4*Town appear, but they directly allude to the events of the film.
  • The Cutie: Tae Young is this, weaponising it at one point to get Marinette to cave with Puppy-Dog Eyes. Aaron T. also suggests exploiting it as part of his suggestion for having Lila killed, saying that nobody would convict Tae Young due to how sweet and cute he is.
  • False Rape Accusation: Lila briefly floats the possibility of throwing such an accusation at Jesse when her ability to milk her latest lie runs dry. Notably, this is the first time in CONSEQUENCES where Lila intends to throw a fully premeditated accusation - in both SEXUAL HARASSMENT and MALICIOUS COMPLIANCE, her accusations of Adrien seemed to be a sort of nuclear option when she was caught out. Fortunately, she never gets the chance to actually go through with it.
  • Foreign-Language Tirade: Tae Young has picked up Abby's tendency to rant in Korean when annoyed. Aaron T. also cusses Lila out in Spanish after she captures them.
  • Four Is Death: The reason why Sabine is reluctant to let Marinette hang around 4*Town.
  • Guest-Star Party Member: 4*Town end up wielding Miraculouses for the final fight with Volpina: Robaire becomes Shellfire, Jesse becomes Fleece, Tae Young becomes Pinklet, Aaron T. becomes Monkey Madness and Aaron Z. becomes Abraxan.
  • Moment Killer: Jesse delays The Big Damn Kiss between the Aarons by pointing out that the rest of the band is still tied up. He does it again at the elevator (albeit this time during said kiss rather than delaying it).
  • Noodle Incident: 4*Town's antics have resulted in several:
    • The Buckinghamshire Hotel Debacle, which involved Aaron T. trying to deflate Jesse's ego with a prank and ended in all of them being banned from the hotel and Jesse being unable to even look at rice pudding without screaming.
    • The boys once hatched a scheme that involved Tae Young trying to smuggle a penguin out of a zoo.
    • Going by Aaron Z's comment afterward, Lila isn't the only person Aaron T. has suggested they have killed. Fortunately, there's no indication he's ever gone through with any of his threats.
  • Skewed Priorities: While 4*Town are trying to escape from Volpina at the Eiffel Tower, Tae Young is more focused on paying back Jesse for delaying the Aarons' Big Damn Kiss.
  • Trauma Button: Played for Laughs example with Jesse who, thanks to the aforementioned Buckinghamshire Hotel Debacle, screams every time he sees rice pudding.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: The members of 4*Town - they may be quite vicious when roasting each other, but when the chips are down, they stick tight.

    CAGED 
Adrien Agreste is used to hiding secrets (he’s a freaking superhero, after all!), but it’s not something he likes doing. In an ideal world, he’d be able to love whoever he wished with no consequences at all but his is not an ideal world. As such, his relationship with Luka Couffaine is confined to clandestine rendezvous, faked study sessions, and outings with friends who support them. Unfortunately Lila is snooping around and rats them out to Gabriel, who demands that Adrien end this “unacceptable dalliance” and takes extreme measures to do so when Adrien defies him. But as all shall learn, there are terrible, terrible consequences to meddling with affairs of the heart……
  • Abusive Parents: Gabriel takes his abuse of Adrien to horrifying heights. His response to discovering Adrien's relationship with Luka is to permanently pull Adrien out of school, forbid him from ever seeing his friends again, and to never leave their home unless it's for modeling purposes. And then, when Adrien contacts his friends anyway using the Gorilla's phone, Gabriel straight up imprisons Adrien in his room, making his worst nightmare come true.
    Adrien: You've already taken away everything that makes me happy, Father. What more can you possibly do to punish me?
    Gabriel: I will figure something out, believe me.
  • Armor-Piercing Response: Ahkari uses this to snap her brother out of his akuma mindset when he argues that he's doing it to protect Adrien, causing Cage-Master to recoil in horror at what he's become to protect his boyfriend from his abusers.
    Cage-Master: I AM NOTHING LIKE THEMnote ! All I have done is to protect Adrien!
    Ahkari: By doing exactly what they did, locking him away in a literal Gilded Cage thinking it was the best thing for him!
  • Arranged Marriage: Gabriel and Tomoe arrange for Adrien and Kagami to get married at age 15 without any concern for whether or not they want to be married.
  • Been There, Shaped History:
    • Plagg is apparently responsible for both eruptions of Mount St. Helens and Krakatoa.
    • Apparently, Sass is personally responsible for stopping Jack the Ripper by biting the killer, (metaphorically) turning his brain to soup.
  • Big Brother Instinct: Gender inverted with Juleka, as she is Luka's twin, who stops a Loony Fan from punching her brother by catching her fist, before squeezing it and telling her to back off.
  • Calling the Old Man Out:
  • Didn't See That Coming:
    • Gabriel expects Adrien to obediently comply with his demands (as is usual when he manipulates Adrien's amok) and is completely flabbergasted when Adrien manages to stand his ground and refuse.
    • Gabriel soon after akumatizes Luka because he senses a powerful emotion: "the desire to protect merged with righteous fury and punishment of those who harmed the one he loves", all while being completely unaware that he's the one that Luka seeks to punish. Needless to say, this backfires horribly.
    • While Cage-Master expected Gabriel to spill all of his secrets while caged, he definitely didn't expect him being Hawk Moth to be one of them, let alone his boyfriend being a sentimonster.
  • Disappointed by the Motive: Cage-Master isn't very impressed that Nathalie willingly served as Gabriel's accomplice simply because she's in love with him.
    Cage-Master: Personally, I think you could do a lot better.
  • Dude, Not Funny!: Downplayed. When Cage-Master calls Damocles a rare caged owl, Kim laughs a bit when he gets the pun, only to stop when everyone stares at him because it isn't the time for that.
  • Engineered Public Confession: Cage-Master kidnaps Gabriel and Lila, takes them to the TVi studio, and forces them to reveal all their lies and secrets in front of everyone.
  • Entitled to Have You: Lila's attitude toward Adrien. She firmly believes he belongs to her and publicly releases the images of him and Luka together because she knows it'll lead to Adrien's happiness going away.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Downplayed—Nathalie doesn't approve of Gabriel trying to control his son's friends since they make him happy, not does she like it when he cuts Adrien off from his boyfriend Luka. However, she doesn't really do anything about either of those.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Lila is firmly convinced that the only reason people hang out with Adrien is because he's rich, handsome, famous and give them free stuff. Even when Adrien tells her that his friends care about him as a person and not as a status symbol, Lila brushes him off.
  • Evil Is Petty: When all is said and done, Lila attempts to claim she was coerced into helping Hawk Moth, but Gabriel shoots her down, letting everyone know that she aided him willingly and gleefully. Gabriel claims it's just so he can take Lila down with him, but since Lila already admitted to everything she did while in the cage, Ladybug internally notes this was just sheer pettiness on Gabriel's part.
  • Exact Words: When Adrien confronts his father in prison, he tells him that Ladybug and Cat Noir are currently watching the events. A while later, he cheekily reveals that he's Cat Noir.
  • Foreshadowing: When Damocles asks Alix how she knew how to pick locks, she responds with no comment while Juleka gives her a quick wink. Later as Ahkari, Juleka would use her own skill in lockpicking to help break her and Ladybug free of one of Cage-Master's cages.
  • Hates Everyone Equally: While Lila takes advantage of people's prejudices to turn them against people who oppose her, the narrator points out that "she held everyone who wasn't herself in equal disdain".
  • Heteronormative Crusader: Gabriel Agreste might not be openly homophobic (because that would alienate too much of his company's staff), but he is firmly against what he sees as "alternative lifestyles" and doesn't hide his disdain for gay relationships when in private.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Gabriel winds up being exposed as Hawk Moth by the very akuma he created.
  • Hypocrite: Gabriel criticizes Adrien for dating someone of a lower class than him, only for Adrien to fire right back that Gabriel was once a lower-class man himself who married an aristocrat.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Invoked by Alix when she notices Nathaniel getting second-hand embarrassment from Adrien and Luka, and teases him about love making people dumb as payback for her having to endure his and Marc's sugar-sweet love. Nathaniel also tries to pay her back by bringing up her antics when she was crushing on his sister Ellie, though Alix tells him to be quiet or else.
  • If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: While negotiating with Félix to get back the ring he stole, Ladybug makes it perfectly clear that if he ever tries to take advantage of Adrien again she will personally castrate him with a rusty spoon.
  • Insult to Rocks: When Anarka mentions wanting to make chum out of Lila, Juleka snarks that she'd go to jail for poisoning the sharks.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Cage-Master makes Gabriel's mouth disappear when he kidnaps him, which Nooroo silently smirks at since Gabriel did that to him in the past.
  • Logical Weakness: The locks of Cage-Master's cages cannot be opened by any magical means. However, since they have no defense against ordinary methods of lockpicking, Alix is able to open the class's cage with a screwdriver and a nail file, and Ahkari is able to open hers with a hairpin.
  • Love Makes You Evil: Discussed between Cat Noir and Viperion at the end of the story. While Viperion discusses how love can act as a strong motivation for great acts both good and evil, as seen with Gabriel, Cat argues that whatever love his father held for his mother had been twisted into a dark obsession that refuses to let him give up on her, no matter the consequences. Viperion also brings up an inversion, of how his own love for Adrien was twisted by the akumazation, locking his boyfriend in a Gilded Cage despite Adrien being locked away being the main source of his rage. It shows that love can be corrupted by evil just as it acts as a motivation.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Cage-Master keeps Adrien in a literal Gilded Cage to make sure he's in perfect comfort while he interrogates Gabriel and Lila. When Ahkari points out this makes him exactly like Gabriel, he's horrified and frees Adrien immediately while apologizing profusely.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Narrowly averted. Ladybug and Ahkari nearly ruin Cage-Master's chances of exposing Gabriel as Hawk Moth, but he traps them in a cage right before they break his akumatized object.
  • Noodle Incident: Alix refuses to go back to the zoo ever since an akuma incident there led to her being eaten by an elephant…somehow.
  • Power Nullifier: A side effect of Cage-Master's cages. He traps Ladybug and Ahkari in a cage so they can't interrupt his interrogation of Gabriel, and Gabriel realizes all too late that he can't transform and recall the Akuma. However, the cages can still be broken out of by simply picking the lock.
  • Second Super-Identity: Since Adrien is unable to transform while in Cage-Master's cage, Plagg takes his Miraculous over to Juleka who temporarily uses it to become Ahkari.
  • Shout-Out: When Juleka takes on the power of the Black Cat Miraculous, she names her new form after Ahkari from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
  • Sickeningly Sweethearts: Apparently a lot of the couples in this fanfic are guilty of ridiculous acts of affection around each other, but Adrien and Luka are easily the worst offenders. Luka waxes poetic about how brave and kind his boyfriend is, Adrien "giggles like a gormless idiot" every time Luka uses his Affectionate Nickname and apparently their nightly phone calls need to end with a session of "No, you hang up" that Plagg is forced to break up. All their friends are as exasperated as they are supportive.
  • Taking You with Me: Invoked by Gabriel once he and Lila are exposed by Cage-Master.
  • You Make Me Sick: Adrien outright tells Gabriel that he disgusts him for being willing to sacrifice an innocent person in order to get Emilie back.

    ZOMBIZOU 
It's Ms. Bustier's birthday and her class have all chimed in for gifts for their favorite teacher. When Lila ruins Marinette's painstakingly crafted gift out of spite, however, it leads to Ms. Bustier getting akumatized and plunging Paris into a nightmare of twisted love. Rewrite of the episode "Zombizou" featuring Lila.
  • Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Ms. Bustier is a lot more distraught after being deakumatized than in the original episode.
  • Adapted Out: Chloé isn't present in the fic despite her prominent role in the original episode (it's mentioned that she moved to New York with Audrey), with the author admitting they frankly don't like her.
  • Borrowed Biometric Bypass: All of the lockers at the school are fitted with thumbprint scanners courtesy of Max, so Lila uses some make-up powder and a pore strip to lift Marinette's thumbprint from a soda can so she can break into her locker.
  • Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The only reason Ladybug and the others are still keeping Lila with them is that she's a useful bait to lure out Zombizou.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Lila keeps shoving her fellow classmates at the kissing zombies to save herself.
  • Crazy-Prepared: When Zombizou attacks, Max directs the other students into hiding inside their lockers and reveals he developed a way to open them from inside during emergencies like that and whenever a bully stuffs victims into lockers.
  • Dwindling Party: Just like in the canon episode, Ms. Bustier's class gets whittled down one by one as they try to escape the zombies. Only Lila and Ladybug are left by the end, largely thanks to the former deliberately sacrificing the others so she can escape.
  • Girls Have Cooties: Jean Duparc freaks out and starts screaming about cooties when Zombizou unleashes a swarm of zombifying kisses into Ms. Mendeleiev's class.
  • Hidden Depths: Kim is enough of a ditz to assume Zombizou is just somebody wearing a voodoo doll costume and yet, to Max's surprise, he somehow knows what a voodoo doll looks like.
  • It's All My Fault: Marinette blames herself for the Zombizou incident since the Akuma that infected Ms. Bustier was originally meant for her and the whole thing could've been avoided if she kept a better grip on her anger, but Alya snaps her out of her depression by pointing out she was perfectly justified to be angry at what Lila did.
  • Let Us Never Speak of This Again: This is the general consensus among the Parisians after the kiss-fest Zombizou forced upon everyone.
    Alix: So, are none of us going to talk about yesterday?
    Mylène: Well, it all was a bit awkward. I figured that unless we all explicitly do want to talk about it, we'd just pretend it didn't happen.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: After being de-akumatized, Ms. Bustier is horrified that she essentially forced dozens of people (many of whom were teenagers) into a non-consensual kiss-fest. She even considers taking a leave of absence from teaching, but ultimately chooses not to once the class assures her they don't blame her at all for what happened.
  • No-Sell: Zombizou's powers don't work on Lila at all, since as a sociopath, she's incapable of love.
  • Oh, Crap!: Lila's initially a Smug Snake when Zombizou's powers have no effect on her, but that smugness quickly turns to absolute terror once Zombizou makes it perfectly clear that as Lila is incapable of love, she must be killed as soon as possible for she has no place in Zombizou's world.
  • Rage Breaking Point: Already furious at Lila due to causing the events towards their teacher's Akumatization and causing many of their classmates to become zombies, Ladybug finally snaps when Lila foolishly taunts her about failing to protect anyone when it's just the two of them. Ladybug grabs Lila in a Neck Lift and slams her against a nearby wall, very nearly throttling her to death before releasing her.
  • Rescue Romance: When Max is trapped underneath a car and surrounded by kissing zombies, Kim charges out of the bus and stampedes through the zombies to rescue his best friend. The two get together after the akuma is defeated and they are cured of becoming zombies.
  • Saying Too Much: Lila falls under everyone's suspicion of sabotaging Marinette's gift when she suggests that Marinette did that herself, something the class knows that's impossible as the designer would rather cut off her own arm rather than self-sabotage out of spite.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Shipper on Deck: Everyone at Francois Dupont ships Nathaniel/Marc, even the teachers.
  • Skewed Priorities: When Nathaniel and Kim both get kissed by the zombified Marc and Max, respectively, they internally reflect on how they really should be freaking out at being infected…but are too caught up in being kissed by boys they like.
  • Stuffed into a Locker: As a countermeasure to this kind of bullying and the chance students might need to use lockers as hiding spots during akuma attacks, Max developed a way to open lockers from inside them.
  • Villainous BSoD: Zombizou briefly suffers one when her kisses fail to affect Lila and she is forced to realize that some people are incapable of love.
  • Violently Protective Girlfriend: Defied. After finding out that Nino became a zombie thanks to Lila stealing his turn in the eviction to leave him and Ladybug to get infected, Alya manages to restrain herself from beating the living hell out of Lila in revenge, choosing to trust in Ladybug's plan to use Lila as bait against Zombizou.
  • Zombie Infectee: Max gets kissed on the ankle by an infected little boy just before Kim rescues him and subsequently infects both Kim and Alix when he turns on the bus.

Alternative Title(s): Miraculous Ladybug Consequences

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