Lilanette at school! And Lila finally making progress with Marinette.
Day 3: School
It had started innocently enough, with Lila bringing to school the book she had been reading in the gym the previous Saturday and another one from the same author, this time about the dirty tricks, and giving them to Marinette as a gift, overruling her protests by saying she owed her a few birthday and Christmas presents. Then Lila asked if Marinette preferred velcro or laces for the bag gloves she was going to procure her, and Chloe had to butt in.
"Good thing she's learning something else other than designing, she'll need it." the blonde bully stated.
"Bold words, for a plagiarist." Lila replied, a calm and sweet tone in her voice and the best smile she could summon making her words even more surprising, shocking the arriving Ms. Bustier into not intervening and distracting everyone from Lila's hands.
"What. Did you. Say." Chloe demanded with barely restrained fury.
"Well, from what I've heard, some time ago there had been a fashion contest sponsored by Gabriel, nothing big just something for youths and with visibility as the prize, and you were caught red-handed trying to steal Marinette's winning design."
"You-you..."
"That was disappointing, you know? I thought you were the daughter of the Queen of Style herself, but if you were you'd never lower yourself to that."
At that Chloe tried to slap Lila, who casually dodged with a tilt of her head before stepping back to avoid the follow-up backhand before stepping right into her space, making her jump back from the surprise right into Marinette and Alya's desk. All the while, Lila hadn't lost her smile once.
"YOU THINK YOU'RE SO SMART, UH?!" Chloe roared as she stood up. "I am the mayor's daughter, and he can ruin you! And your family! And Marin-"
Chloe interrupted herself as Lila finally lost her smile and leveled her with a stare with her eyes wide open and the mouth turned into a thin horizontal line, something made scarier by Lila's eyes having smaller-than-normal pupils (Lila would later admit she had worked over her death glare to make it as scary as possible, though she couldn't do it at her best when she was actually angry). Then she gave Chloe the same smirk Volpina had given to Ladybug when she had first cornered her and lowered her head, still looking at Chloe... And distracting her by what she was doing with her smartphone up until she returned to smile and, in her previous tone, announced: "Congratulations, you're fucked."
"What?!"
"For starters, I'm the daughter of a diplomat, I have diplomatic immunity." Lila said as she continued using her phone. "I could punch you out right here and now in front of these witnesses and I'd get away with it, I doubt anything your father can do would even inconvenience me. But my mother's job is only part of why you're fucked-the other part is that I was filming our exchange the whole time, and now my Cloud has a recording of you assaulting and threatening me. I don't even need witnesses, if my mom decided to sue, with both your parents, and I still can't believe your mother is the Queen of Style, becoming collaterals."
"No..."
"But I doubt she'd do it, she's a diplomat and this is dirt over the mayor of Paris. She'd keep it until Italy needs something potentially embarrassing over France, and then she'd threaten to make it public. And no matter how it would go, the government wouldn't take kindly to your father getting them in such trouble."
"You can't!"
"Now, I could start something about "can" and "would", but I won't. I'll just bar you from any bullying, or else I'll give my mother the film. And in case you think you may hack my account and delete it, don't bother, I've been sending it to my other servers and will make more than a few copies. And don't you dare getting Akumatized over this, even if you end up magically deleting them Ladybug will restore them as soon as she win and then I'll go through with it. Now go back to your seat before you embarrass yourself any further." Then, as Chloe picked herself up and sullenly walked to her place, she went to Marinette and said: "She won't pick on you anymore, if she knows what's good for her."
Marinette had trouble answering, looking at Lila with wise eyes and a blush as she stammered a "thank you".
"That was uncalled for." the teacher said, having finally come out of the shock from Lila's display. "We don't deal with such actions that way."
"I know, you try and use example and that compliment exercise." Lila said, still smiling. "More than many teachers I had in the past, but based on the fallacious premise that bullies would still be bullies if they could be swayed by that. In my experience they only understand power, and with Chloe and this being a private school relying in no small part on Bourgeois money that means either thrashing her physically, and I like to believe I'm better than that, what I've just done, or Adrien threatening to ditch her as a friend, something he's far too kind to do."
Suddenly Chloe screamed and threw a pair of sunglasses with black frames at the chalkboard, sunglasses that turned white as soon as the Akuma came out of it.
"And you have to admit, my method works." Lila stated as she suppressed a fit of maniacal laughter and went to pick the Akuma with her bare hand. "'Nette, could you come with me as I call Ladybug for the purification? Just in case the thing tries anything funny, I'm sure you could help me."
"Ah... Er... Yes! Yes, I'm coming." Marinette said, wondering why she had just started stammering at Lila and thinking about what she had just said about Adrien.
___________
Later that day, Marinette was putting a picture of Lila along Adrien's in her room when realization hit her.
"Tikki... I'M CRUSHING ON LILA!" she shouted.
"I don't see the problem, she's a nice girl." her mother called out from below.
Marinette picked a cushion and started screaming in it.
Notes
Now, there is one thing to know about Audrey: her last name is most likely not Bourgeois, for the simple reason in France, ever since the Revolution, it's forbidden to change the name you get at birth aside for some very specific exceptions that don't include marriage but include said name being objectively embarrassing for some reason (it's the same thing in Italy and many other European countries overran by the French in the following quarter century of wars). Hence why Chloe being the daughter of one of the biggest names in fashion not being obvious, not unless either said it (and who'd believe Chloe?).
As for the thing about bullying... I'm sorry to say it, but Caline Bustier is sadly ineffective against that. She tries, she really tries, but
