So... Class Rep AU
In a timeline where Volpina happens in May and many of the months Lila’s been in Achu are just the summer holidays - so her truancy is a little less problematic. The class finds out Lila had wanted to run for Class Rep but missed it because she was away, it’s so close to the beginning of the school year that Mlle. Bustier sees no problem in causing a revote following Chameleon, providing Marinette and Alya agree.
Alya’s on board and Marinette agree’s hesitantly thinking that Lila would find a way to turn it on her if she refuses. And it seems that was Lila’s plan anyway given the short-lived look of surprise she has on her face when Marinette does agree. Marinette’s pretty confident that Lila doesn’t want it.
However, Lila manages to fall on her feet again by somehow convincing Alya to be her Deputy. Marinette’s hurt, but ultimately she knows just how much of the work Alya did do as her Deputy in the last year, and knows that if Lila wins they’ll still fail a bit. Because while Alya did help with some of the planning aspects of their events and did show up to help with fundraisers, all of the meetings and forms and communications to hotels and businesses and venues were Marinette’s doing.
Her problem, however, is that most of the class think Lila has connections and experience. And her class might vote for Lila over Marinette because they genuinely thought that Lila was the better choice. She didn’t quite know how to campaign against that and to add salt to the wound she wouldn’t be able to run at all without a Deputy.
Fortunately, she’s not the only one who knows Lila’s a liar. And Adrien is self aware enough to know that Lila becoming Class Rep would lead to a lot of losses for the class that he doen’t want to see them go through. Plagg’s encouraging, and there’s an angle he can play when it comes to his dad (practice for running the company he doesn’t really want, having to attend these events if he helped plan them, etc) - and he ends up seriously considering asking Marinette if he could be her Deputy.
The first person he talks to about it (Plagg not included) is Nino. Nino is 100% on board for any plan that gets Adrien out of the house but Adrien’s aware enough that Marinette does get I comfortable around him, which could well make matters worse.
Nino promises to talk to Marinette about it, because he knows exactly why she gets uncomfortable but honestly believes he can get her to focus if it means helping out Adrien. While he’s thinking about it though he asks Adrien about the thing with the book.
Honestly, Adrien forgot most of the drama surrounding Ladybug calling Lila out and tells Nino as much. He’d certainly forgotten that Alya had put a video on the Ladyblog. But confirms most of the story, though admits that Marinette never told him she returned the book or that Lila stole it in the first place. To him it makes a bit more sense why his dad would let Marinette’s Hat be featured in his fashion show after that and to Nino it does explain why Marinette dislikes Lila.
He’s starting to dislike Lila somewhat.
So Nino talks to Marinette, apologises to her for overreacting but asks if she thinks she’ll be able to work with Adrien if he was her Deputy with her crush being in the way. He explains Adrien’s reasoning about wanting to be more involved in class activities and Marinette agrees.
That’s one problem solved, and goes to give Adrien a bit of a rundown about the responsibilities of being Class Deputy, admitting how much Alya did and assuring him that they could make the workload flexable around his schedule if his father or Nathalie had any problems with that. But right now they need to figure out a campaign plan because she’s at a complete loss with how to actually compete with Lila’s promises however empty they actually are.
Adrien thinks the speech should contain a reminder not just of all the things that Marinette has done for the class but the reason the class voted her in in the first place. Because making promises is one thing but sometimes compromises have to happen due to budgeting reasons. Like with how she’d gotten cushions for the chairs instead of new chairs entirely because at the end of the day it’s those compromises that actually make the school board listen. Marinette adds that they should mention Heroes Day as a time she was honest to God overwhelmed and how it was Adrien that took the initiative to get things done.
The class already know how well Marinette will do in the position, so Adrien suggests she should focus on the speech and letting the others know any plans she’d already started thinking about when it came to the smaller things they asked for. While Adrien will work on actually countering Lila since it would be harder for her to turn things against him them Marinette.
Adrien doesn’t actually start by telling people he’s running as Marinette’s Deputy until they ask if she’ll even be able to run without Alya. Instead he starts by using what the class ‘knows’ about Lila against her.
He mentions his own experience with celebrities and how they don’t actually like being asked for stuff by people who know them. And while Lila sure does seem to mean well he’s worried that all her attempts to fulfill her promises to the class will do is alienate her from those very same celebrities.
He mentions her charity work and the speeches she helps write for her mother and the way she has to go abroad without much forewarning sometimes. This is great for Lila, not so much for a class that might be left with incomplete plans or having to contact people they don’t know, having contacts and plans fall through because Lila isn’t there. Sure Alya could do it, but the Ladyblog also takes up a lot of Alya’s time and a parge chunk of Paris depends on it running well.
He brings up Lila’s many disabilities that need to be accounted for but how much of the work will cause irritation to her arthritis. Or how much work she’ll have to put into plans she cannot actually participate in. He certainly doesn’t want her to become overwhelmed or even more injured for the sake of the class.
He’s got Nathalie to make sure he’s not overworking himself, and Marinette will be able to relax more with him helping her. Why? Because he’s spent enough time around Nathalie to know how to plan things, how to talk to people on the phone, and how to manage his time. Those are all the same skills Lila has and on top of things it will help Marinette learn to do them too further down the line.
Adrien does things this way because, while Marinette creates connections and builds trust as the class’ Everyday Ladybug, Adrien is Chat Noir. And Chat Noir has the power of destruction, so it only makes sense that he’d go about doing things this way. Plagg’s certainly proud and it’s not like it would’ve been possible if Lila had just been honest.
Lila and Alya are the last to know that Marinette and Adrien are running together - which should’ve been impossible considering the girls all jumped onto Adrienette the second they realised just what was happening. And like in Chameleon, Lila takes Adrien’s decision to work with Marinette as a personal attack on her by Marinette. (Rememer Marinette didn’t actually do anything to Lila between Lila’s threat and Lila declaring ‘war’ - and doesn’t that show just how much agency Lila considers Adrien to actually have?)
There’s a time for questions and while many of the questions aimed towards Lila and Alya have to do with what safeguards they’ll have for if Lila has to go abroad again with her mother so things still get done, or what compromises would she have for if her celebrity contacts can’t do something or end up falling though. Do they have any plans for fundraising, since Marinette’s parents had been providing pasteries for free and Chloé had been funding trips before that, and how unfair it would be to ask either of those to continue.
Neither Lila nor Alya had put that much thought into things like that. Though Lila does her best to assure the class her mother isn’t scheduled to leave Paris again and will be scheduled with pleanty of advance for safeguards to put in place closer to the time based on what’s necessary for that specific situation, reminding the class that she’d still managed to keep in touch while in Achu - though some recall she wasn’t able to keep up the work load. And a similar answer is given regarding celebrities dropping out saying that back-up plans will of course be made when things are presented to the school board so they don’t have to worry. While Alya reminds the class that not all of the fundraisers done for school trips ect were bake sales and that it might mean doing more of those to start in order to negotiate a reduced price with the Dupain-Cheng’s for others.
The class ask Adrien and Marinette about their plans for school trips and work experience placements. Marinette admits that she doesn’t have anything lined up in terms of work experience yet, and mostly because she recognises that the class have very different wants in terms of their future careers. While having somewhere like Le Grande Paris on a resemé is definitely a plus everyone in class is old enough by now to be able to do something more specific without having Mlle. Bustier supervising, and to perhaps do so for longer periods of time. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but the plan is to get to the School Board with enough time that the class not only has months to be able to secure a placement but do so with back-up options that are still promising for those who have last minute cancellations. Assuring everyone that tutors and other teachers usually help with securing a placement, and that she and Adrien will help also.
While Adrien steps forward about a possible tour of his dad’s company so everyone gets an inside look on how a business is run. Because many of the class have interests in the arts, it might not sound all that useful but actually, whether someone gets picked for the lead role in a play may depend on how their social media page is set up. Or how to properly market whether it be a game or art or band, those things aren’t particularly easy to do, and they’re things his dad had struggled with when building Gabriel in the first five to ten years of his career.
Lila asks about whether his dad would actually be willing to do that and if he’ll even let Adrien continue being Marinette’s Deputy since Adrien has a packed schedule. Which sounds rather harsh to some people (read: Nino, Chloé, Max, Alix) but Adrien just waves it away. Stating his father would actually be delighted to hear Adrien’s taking an interest in a position that might help him prepare for a more administrative role in the company one day. And that, actually, the HQ isn’t even managed by his father at the moment: it’s run by someone else who has allowed classes to do group tours for years now, though he admits those schools are usually design schools or those focused on the arts, there’s no reason they’d turn down their class so long as everything’s planned properly.
In the end Marinette and Adrien win: and if the new Deputy started filling out forms to request a teaching aide to help Lila in class - given she can’t write her own notes - then that’s Lila’s problem.
