Lost and Found

Friends and Enemies

(Okay, forgive me for this, but we're gonna time skip 3 years into the future, Hawkmoth is still active, and Marinette, Adrien, Nino, and Alya have become a really close knit group, but now they're 14 and in middle school.)

First day of school. Again, but now she was in middle school. They switch classes now, and they'd have lockers. She clutched her bracelet in her hand. Her bracelet that she used as a stand in for her brother when she was having a bad day.

She was Paris's hero, Ladybug. She was an assassin. She was (according to her mother's old bedtime stories at least) the daughter of the fearsome Gotham Bat. She had no reason to be afraid of her first day of middle school. And yet she was.

She kept trying to remind herself that nothing would change, but she couldn't manage to convince herself. That was why she was more relieved than she ever should've been for an akuma attack.

The school had moved past needlessly canceling school after an attack, and instead began just postponing class until the attack ended. Marinette liked this much better.

But at that moment her focus needed to shift, so she quickly ran to an alley and transformed, then attempted to get closer to survey the threat at hand. Marinette had never allowed her training to stop, or her skills to dull. So she usually had the upper hand in battle, or at least a slight advantage over the untrained and usually not very intelligent akumas.

This time didn't seem to be much different, just Mr Pigeon again. What was this? The 73rd time? She sighed. She wouldn't even need Chat for this.

The battle was over in minutes, and soon she was running back to school, the adrenaline high doing wonders for her nerves. So she managed to get to her new class and sit right next to Alya, and just like normal, Adrien and Nino sat in the next row in front of them.

Their school was pretty small, so Marinette recognized everyone who came in, except one girl who came in. She had long brown hair in a weird style (it looked like sausages), a pretty stylish outfit, and green eyes.

The new girl didn't sit down, she just waited for the teacher to show up, and when the teacher did show up, Marinette was in for quite the surprise.

Mrs. Bustier entered the room right as the bell rang. Marinette had been in her class a few years ago and had loved it. Had she switched grades?

Marinette waited for an explanation while Mrs. Bustier talked with the new girl, she was saying something about tinnitus, and was asking to be in the second row for some reason. And then Mrs. Bustier looked up at Marinette. Great, she was going to be moved.

"Marinette, do you think you would mind moving to one of the seats in the back? We have a new student with a disability and she needs to be in the second row," Mrs. Bustier explained apologetically.

Even though Marinette knew that the new girl sat in the front row instead it would be better, she decided to just bite the bullet. It would be best not to rock the boat or make the poor girl feel unwelcome.

"Okay," Marinette replied and smiled at the girl as she got up to move. The girl smiled back, but Marinette could almost feel some kind of sinister intention from her. She knew from her upbringing how to tell when someone wasn't being completely honest. She'd have to make sure her friends knew not to trust this girl if she started spinning lies.

Like Marinette had expected the moment she made eye contact with the new girl (who was named Lila, Marinette came to learn), she had begun to tell any number of tall tales, and she enraptured the entire class like a siren to a pirate ship. Just wonderful. And when she tried to dispute her lies at lunch that day, her friends had called her mean, and told her to stop.

It was times like these, when Marinette was dejectedly sulking in the back of the classroom while her friends and her entire class fawned over Lila, that she really missed having Dami around. He would never believe this girl, and he most certainly wouldn't leave her alone like that. Not one of her friends had decided to side with her, the best she had gotten was a sympathetic look from Adrien.

Did they not trust her? Why are they believing her over me? Haven't we all been friends for years? No, she needed to stop spiraling. Once they had seen proof they would rethink what she had said. They weren't stupid. And of course they trusted Marinette, they just wanted to give Lila the benefit of the doubt.

So she decided to look into one of the lies that Lila had told, that she had saved Jagged Stone's cat, and that he had written a song for her. That would be easy to debunk, she knew him personally, so during one of their breaks between class, she texted him to ask.

Her question had specifically been, Have you ever met a girl named Lila Rossi?

He had replied with a no, sorry, then he had gone on to ask when she was free, because apparently he wanted to commission her again. Cool.

So Marinette decided to approach her friends with this information after school ended. She was about to call out to them when she was roughly pulled aside and into the girls bathroom. She turned to look at her assailant, and she saw Lila Rossi.

"What do you want, Liar?" Marinette sneered.

"Just to talk," Lila replied, a sickly sweet smile plastered on her face, "you know, your life will be a whole lot easier if you just go along with my stories."

"And why would I do that?" Marinette asked coldly.

"Cause if you don't, then you can say goodbye to all those friends of yours," Lila smirked and left before Marinette could respond.

The Liar would regret threatening her.