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"Class, I have an announcement."
Alix perked up from their space. Mme. Bustier looked pained to be delivering whatever message she had, which meant it was important. And that probably meant—
"When I started this exercise, I had intended it to be a way for classmates to say positive things about each other. They didn't have to be grandiose, or speak to the core of someone's personality." Mme. Bustier knotted her hands in front of herself.
"I thought that if we could get into the habit of saying nice things about each other, we would have a buffer against the small irritations and issues that come up in the natural course of the day. Because of how many times this class has been targeted by Hawkmoth, I hoped that thinking kindly of each other might help prevent re-akumatization."
Alix hadn't had such high hopes for it, but they had been very amused by all the antics they could pull to one-up Kim's clumsier, more obvious attempts to influence the selection. They'd known Marinette had been stressing herself out over how the compliments had landed, but Marinette always seemed high-strung to them. Especially around Adrien.
"I was wrong. What we saw yesterday proved to me that even though I hoped that we could resolve our differences and learn to get along with each other, there are some things that can't be resolved with words."
Lila had been pretty well worked over, based on how she looked. Alix had questions about whether Marinette had caused all the bruises, but it was reasonable to believe that she had gotten a few licks in if she'd finally gotten fed up enough to tangle with Lila.
"As of today, I'm canceling the compliments exercise." Mme. Bustier said, emptying both bowls of names into the bin by her desk.
"Mme. Bustier!" Chloé protested. "How will I—we hear nice things about ourselves from our classmates?"
"Presumably, you all have friends that you can get those from," Mme. Bustier replied dryly.
"But—"
"Talk to me afterward if you have concerns," Mme. Bustier said, cutting Chloé off and turning to the board. "Where we left off yesterday, before we were interrupted…."
Glancing around, it was clear that the tension level in the room had risen significantly. Fuck, Alix thought. Alix had always prided themselves on being observant enough to understand what the situation was quickly. And on not saying a word about it unless it was absolutely necessary to do so. Mme. Bustier would have enough people protesting her decision today. It wouldn't do them any good. Mme. Bustier could be pretty stubborn when she felt she was in the right. If things were going to get better, they needed a plan. Alix knew they were not good at plans at all, but for something this important, they would have to try and figure one out anyway.
"Bourgeois. Raincomprix." Alix said, nodding to each of them as they skated alongside.
"What do you want?" Chloé snapped, polite as ever.
"Honest opinion, Chloé. Lila: Real or faked?"
"Real. One hundred percent real."
"Chloé," Sabrina said warningly.
"It's fine, Bri. They already know, or they wouldn't be asking."
Alix nodded. They'd still walloped Chloé on principle for gendering them, of course, but it hadn't been difficult to work out from how she'd reacted to it that they might have done her a favor instead of getting her to stop.
"And they've had more than enough opportunities to embarrass me in public about it, too. So, thank you for not doing that, I suppose."
"Kink-shaming isn't in my toolbox, Chloé," they responded. Which was true, but there was also another part of them that had concluded there wouldn't have been any advantage gained. Alix put themself in front of Chloé, skating backward to maintain a respectful distance.
"What are we going to do about Marinette, then?" they asked. "While it might thrill you—"
"No," Chloé said immediately. "You saw what Dupain-Cheng did."
"You do have a self-preservation instinct," Alix quipped.
Chloé gave them a look Alix was sure Chloé thought was withering and changed her path, dragging Sabrina along with her. No help from Chloé, then, but probably no harm, either. Alix let both of them go and skated on.
A short while later, they saw Adrien and Max huddled over Max's laptop and skated over. "Hey."
"Hey, Alix," Adrien said, waving, as Max closed the laptop. "What's up?"
"You mean, other than the elephant in the room?" they replied. Adrien and Max exchanged worried glances. "The way I see it, Adrien, your stalker just pulped her rival and got away with it. I also have a feeling that at least a few people in our class helped her do just that."
Max, at least, had the sense to feign confusion. "Surely a conspiracy of that nature would be improbable," he said.
"Except Chloé has been getting plastered regularly by everyone in the class, and Mme. Bustier hasn't done anything. But Marinette gives Lila the business once, and suddenly the compliments exercise gets canceled."
"Mme. Bustier is smarter than we give her credit for," Adrien suggested. "Maybe she realized that the exercise wasn't working."
"Toxically positive, use-your-words-everyone, akumatized into someone who controls others by kissing them, Mme. Bustier?" Alix said, crossing their arms and glaring at Adrien. "Bullshit, Adrien, and you know it."
Adrien always had good control over his emotions. Alix suspected the combination of being a model and living with Gabriel Agreste meant whatever was on his face wasn't whatever he was thinking. So it was an interesting slip on his part, letting concern flicker across his face.
"Mm-hmm," Alix said, trying to press the opening into something useful. "It's not going to be the first time that those two scrap. And each time they do, it's probably going to make it more likely that Zombizou comes back. You remember what that was like, right?"
Max and Adrien both nodded.
"So, unless you like the idea of every school day meaning having to deal with either a fight or an akuma, and possibly both, we need to fix this. Max, you've always been good with numbers. Have you got a plan?"
Max spun his laptopt around to show Alix. "Marinette was asking me to keep track of the frequency and distribution of compliments during the exercise. She seemed convinced that there were anomalies that indicated repeated attempts to influence the randomness of the exercise."
Alix laughed. "Of course. It was way too much fun to mess with Kim."
"Marinette may have suspected we were all involved, to greater and lesser degrees of subtlety," Adrien said.
Alix shrugged. It made sense to them that there were others actually trying to influence the selections, instead of doing it for the lulz like they were.
"Our interference produced an occasionally effective method of directing compliments to people that needed it," Max said. "Furthermore, while I do not have data for this, Adrien hypothesized the exercise provided an additional benefit: the compliment name bowls were an immediate and visible target to exact revenge upon when someone felt like they had been wronged."
"Chloé?" Alix asked.
"Chloé." Max confirmed.
"On both sides of the equation, Max," Adrien added. "At least, if what I've heard is true."
"Noted," Max said, nodding and turning the laptop back around to type more notes.
"That might stop small stuff," Alix said, turning the idea over in their head. There was a certain satisfaction of being able to call Chloé and her perpetual insult campaign 'small stuff', they admitted. "Chloé scatters her targets," they continued, belatedly realizing how effective a technique it was for Chloé to get what she wanted while only rarely collecting enough heat that Hawkmoth got involved. "Marinette and Lila only go after each other."
"So whatever issue Marinette and Lila have with each other, it won't be fixed by compliments," Max said, frowning, and looking back at the spreadsheet. "There's that abnormally high percentage of Marinette-Lila compliments, too, Adrien."
Alix skated around to look at the laptop. Max had highlighted a particular block of compliments, but Alix couldn't immediately see any reason why that one was more important than any other.
"Do you think Mme. Bustier knew about the feud between those two?" Alix suggested. Adrien gave her an appreciative look, which was nice, because Adrien was still cute when he smiled, but also suggested Adrien knew more than Max did about where the solution was.
"I think we can assume she did," Adrien replied. "She put a lot of time and effort into trying to get them to get along. But if she didn't know how deep the anger ran, then she might have had the opposite effect of what she intended."
Alix nodded. "Hey, Adrien, talk to you for a second?" they said, gesturing back toward the school.
"Sure," Adrien said. "See you later, Max. Maybe you and Markov will hit on something in the numbers that we didn't see."
"We will analyze it again," Max said, pushing his glasses up. "But I doubt any of our conclusions will have a high probability."
Once Alix and Adrien were a safe distance away from Max, Alix started in immediately. "What do you know that the rest of us don't?" they said.
"Nothing, really," Adrien said, shrugging. "Marinette told me about the difficulties she was having with Lila earlier than she might have told others, but that's the only difference I can think of."
"That's not it, Agreste," Alix chided. "I can see the gears turning in your head. There's a conclusion you're coming to that you don't want to share."
"I think that Chloé has been hijacking the compliments exercise for her own purposes," Adrien said.
"Common knowledge," Alix pressed. "Of course she was going to fight back when it became apparent the rest of us were targeting her."
"I really don't know what you're talking about, Alix," Adrien said sincerely, and for a moment, Alix believed him.
"You're hiding something," Alix said, when the moment passed. "I hope, for all our sakes, it's something you're hiding so that there's a chance we don't end up van Goghed. I'm going to try talking to Mme. Bustier to see if we can't convince her to come back from the brink."
"Good luck," Adrien said to them. "I hope it works."
"You need to reinstate the compliments exercise," Alix said, after Caline had closed the door.
"You're the fifth person today who has told me this," Caline replied evenly. "What makes you think that you are going to be more convincing than the other four?"
Alix shrugged. "I'm the only one who's telling you to do it for everyone else's sake, rather than my own."
That would at least be novel, Caline noted. Chloé had appealed on grounds that, now that Caline understood her reasoning, amounted to "I can't get my endorphin rush without an easy way of insulting my classmates." Sabrina had separately appealed on the grounds that left to her own devices, Chloé would build pressure until she exploded, in much the same way that Marinette had exploded on Lila, and Sabrina was her first and most convenient target. Caline suggested that Chloé find healthier ways of getting her feelings out and reminded Sabrina that she was able to stand up for herself if Chloé started making unreasonable demands of her.
M. Guirard had suggested taking it back up because the class seemed noticeably less on edge when they were all plotting their attacks on the bowls or practicing their razor-edged compliments while working in the art room. M. Damocles had said to resume it because cancellation might drive back underground the problems that she had unearthed with the compliments exercise. Marinette and Lila's fight had shaken M. Damocles significantly, and made him even more hesitant to do anything that might have negative consequences on the school.
Caline smiled, sitting down at her desk and hoping that her bitterness at everyone's interest wasn't showing through. "You sound like you've prepared an argument, so the least I can do for you is hear you out," she said.
"This is probably going to sound like a terrible argument, given what we all saw yesterday," Alix said, perching themself on the edge of her desk, "but the exercise was working."
"I'm not sure how you could call it 'working', when most of the class took it as an excuse to deliver carefully-crafted insults at each other," Caline said.
"You're overgeneralizing," Alix said immediately. "Anyone who had to deal with Chloé was lobbing bombs, because that's what Chloé wanted. She certainly seemed happier when everyone was so mad at her they'd give her a black eye."
Caline wondered whether she was the last one to figure out Chloé's desires in the class. Alix clearly had known before her, based on that statement.
"They aren't the only ones who used what should have been compliments to engage in hostilities," Caline said, remembering the aftermath of yesterday's issues.
"Yes, but Marinette and Lila are a special case," Alix continued. "Everyone is annoyed by Chloé, but that's where it stops, because everyone fundamentally understands that Chloé is a brat that wants attention. Marinette and Lila genuinely hate each other and won't stop until one has properly destroyed the other."
"You're not making a very strong case, Mx. Kubdel," Caline said. "I don't see the value in giving a forum so that people can attack each other."
"I'm not explaining it well," Alix said, hopping off the desk and beginning to pace. "It's like…have you ever used one of those pressure cookers, Mme. Bustier?"
"No, but keep going," Caline said.
"So when you cook with one, you seal the lid and the pressure builds and builds, but when you want to open the lid, you have to let enough of the pressure out first so it doesn't blow the lid off completely."
"Mm-hmm," Caline nodded, sensing where Alix's argument was headed.
"So, like, the compliments exercise is the valve you use to let off the pressure until it's safe to open the cooker. It looks like a lot of people being mean to each other, but they're just letting the pressure off before it becomes something bigger. You let them snipe at each other when it's small, maybe occasionally Chloé ends up with a new bruise or a black eye at times, and honor is satisfied." Alix turned to Caline. "You're providing them with a valuable service, even if they don't recognize it and appreciate it for what it is."
"Some other teacher can spend their time letting students be mean to each other," Caline said. "I don't want my classroom to be a pool of negativity. We already have more visits from Hawkmoth than any other class." Caline hated the reports, because they were tedious, but she really hated seeing her students transformed into monsters. It felt like a personal accusation to her. She was trying to build their resiliency against negative emotions, but instead she'd become a catalyst for them. She'd been blaming Chloé for it, until Chloé had told her, indirectly, that she wasn't doing it because she was a terrible person, but because she was trying to fulfill her own desires. And it still hadn't stopped Marinette and Lila from fighting.
Marinette had told her she'd failed, and Caline believed her. She'd failed at trying to get her students to like each other, she'd failed at noticing Chloé crying for help, and she'd failed to stop Marinette and Lila from escalating. There wasn't anything she could do that would be effective, so Caline had decided to stop making things worse.
"It doesn't work with another teacher," Alix said earnestly. "You believed in it, and you kept trying, so we didn't want to disappoint you, and you put the bowls out for us so we could mess with—holy shit."
"Language," Caline said reflexively as Alix began to pace faster and wider.
"It's you. The factor that nobody could account for. Why the spreadsheet is messed up. Why it never worked, even when we thought we had it ironclad. Wooooooow," Alix said, turning to regard Caline with new, more appreciative eyes. "I'll bet that's what Adrien was trying to hide from me. He'd already figured it out, and he was going to make his own case to you when he felt the time was right. And here I am, barging in with what I thought was a solid conclusion to an immediate situation. I've probably wrecked it for him by doing this. Oh, sh—oot, that's going to be tough for him."
Alix grinned at Caline. "I really think you should restart the compliments exercise. It's going to be so cool to watch you mess with everybody and know that you're doing it."
Alix headed for the door. About halfway there, they stopped and turned back to Caline. "Oh, and all that other stuff I said earlier about how it's a convenient way for everyone to blow off steam before they explode? That's all still true. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone. It doesn't work if they don't believe."
"Believe what?" Caline said, still wondering what rabbit holes Alix had jumped down to come to their startlingly correct conclusion about the exercise.
"That they're putting one over on you," Alix said. They ran to the door and flung it open, cackling as they disappeared down the hallway. Caline's protest about Alix's speed died on her lips, realizing it wouldn't reach Alix before they were out of earshot.
"Find them, Miss Direction," Hawkmoth's voice echoed in her head. "They know too many of your secrets. And get me those Miraculous!"
But I haven't been akumatized, Caline thought. She hadn't seen a purple butterfly, nor heard Hawkmoth before this point. Before she could think too much more about it, she heard her own voice respond, "Of course, Hawkmoth. They'll never see it coming."
Caline caught a glimpse of herself surrounded by purple before the world went black.