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A Different Chloe

Chapter 12: Politics and Games

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I stood beside Dad in front of our hotel as the paparazzi took hundreds of thousands of pictures for articles of Dad’s landslide victory against Armand D’Argencourt for the position of the Mayor of Paris. It was only ten minutes after the results of the election were announced and there were already hordes of people.

I’m pretty sure that I did a lot to get Dad’s approval rating so high. After all, I wasn’t tanking it by acting like a spoiled brat and making him do whatever he could to run damage control. There was also the fact that there were a lot of adults who were thankful for the Sabrina Act being put into effect and making them feel like their children were safer at schools thanks to Dad.

Not to mention the Akuma Alert App that I thought up and Dad funded, which did a lot.

Really, I don’t know what M D’Argencourt was thinking to try while Dad’s approval rating never took a sizable dip for his entire term. In fact, his approval rating was actually raising most of the time.

I do remember there was some episode about this election but I just couldn’t remember what it was.

As soon as the majority of the pictures were done, I was gently helped by Dad’s people and the hotel staff to get me to the limo without anyone trying to get an interview and I managed to get to school with minimal fanfare. 

“Chloe! I saw the news!”

“Congratulations to your dad!”

“He won again!”

“Thank you for your good wishes. I’ll pass them on to Dad when I see him later after school.” I said with my public smile as I seamlessly navigated the crowded hallways to get to class.

Usually, the crowds would part like the red sea when I walk through but I guess because of the election, they felt the need to talk to me or else they would offend me or something. Honestly, I don't care if they congratulate me or not since, one, it was my dad winning the election and not me. Two, I would rather get to class unimpeded, and, three, it was obvious who would win so there was really no need for flowery words.

The second I made it to class, my classmates all gave their congratulations as well. Classes went on as usual until Mme Bustier called Sabrina and me to stand in front of the class right before lunch break.

“Chole is running for the class representative position and Sabrina will be her deputy. Do we have any other candidates?” Mme Bustier asked.

No one spoke up, not even hesitantly. Honestly, running without any opponents, while it makes things easy and simple, gets very boring after the third consecutive unanimous win but I’ve been taking it as a badge of honor at this point. Suddenly Marinette barged into the room, being late again, interrupting the class however that was about it.

Mme Bustier added, “Alright, I’ll give all of you until the end of lunch to decide if you’d like to be a candidate.”

We were then dismissed. When we were all in the courtyard, I looked around and walked up to Kim.

“Why didn’t you try for candidacy?” I asked, “I heard you talk about wanting to change some things so why not?”

“I… eh… don’t have time between class work and swimming.” Kim said lamely, scratching the back of his neck nervously.

“I see. How about you, Rose?”

“You already do a super amazing job, Chloe! You can get all the teachers to listen and actually do things so I’m perfectly happy with you in charge! Especially since you got the Art Club all those new art supplies! Thank you!” Rose said honestly as she bounced about.

“That’s kind of you to say.” I said before my eyes landed on Marinette, “Marinette, I know you started coming out of your shell, how about you try for class representative? It might even help boost your growing confidence.”

“No!” Marinette exclaimed before freezing, she quickly started rambling nervously, “I mean, no thank you. I am already so busy between school work, helping at my parents’ bakery, designing, and… other things… and besides, you and Sabrina are an amazing team and everything! I couldn’t even compare and I’m happy with things as is so really there’s no need for me to even try!”

“Well, if that’s what you think then that’s that, I guess. Let’s go, Sabrina.”

After all that talking, I took Sabrina to our favorite cafe to eat before making our way back to class. We sat down in our seats five minutes early as usual and waited until Mme Bustier started class again.

“So are there any new candidates who would like to run against Chloe and Sabrina?” Mme Bustier asked expectantly.

I looked around at everyone and no one spoke up. No one even looked as if they wanted to give it a try.

Boring. But not unexpected.

“Given that Chloe and Sabrina are the only candidates, there’s no point in voting so Chloe and Sabrina are now that Class Representative and Class Deputy. Since you already know what to do, I won’t go over your duties. Please bring the paperwork to M Damocles by the end of tomorrow.”

“Of course, Mme.”

Classes went on as usual and Sabrina went with me to my room so we could work on the new paperwork we had to finish. We’ve been doing the same files for years but, even with our familiarity with them, it always takes at least two hours to fill them out due to how tedious it is.

Unfortunately, once again the Akuma Alert App decided to go off. This time it was someone calling themselves Darkblade, which means this was akumatized M D’Argencourt who wanted to take over Paris. 

I knew something bad was going to happen today, I can’t believe I forgot something like this.

Sabrina and I entered the Akuma Bunker to wait it out but suddenly, we were hit by a wall of black something and I blacked out. I was floating in what seemed to be space since it was so black and I couldn’t feel anything, not even gravity. I kept floating for what felt like forever until I saw the swarm of ladybugs.

When I opened my eyes, I saw that I was standing in front of the Elysee Palace. I guess I was turned into a knight. 

I ran towards the building and flung open the door, finding Dad standing in the middle of the room. I quickly gave him a hug before promising to get home safely. While in the limo, I sent a quick text to Sabrina and the class group chat to make sure everyone was safe. Which has become something of a standard procedure for me to do after city-wide Akuma Attacks like this one.

I pulled out my laptop and started drafting a proposal for Dad. If the press didn’t push M D’Argencourt so far, I doubt he would have akumatized so we need to do something to make the press less invasive. I debated for a moment before sending Marinette a text to get her to send me the phone number Nadja, I need to talk to someone from the press side of things to get the whole picture.

After I talk with Nadja, I’ll send what I have to Sabrina or get her to come over so we could go over it. When we finish that, we can hand the proposal over to Dad and have him handle things from there.

Let’s hope that this will help others from getting pushed by the press to the point of akumatization.

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I took a sip from my water bottle as I watched the gaming competition go down. There wasn’t any water in it though, instead, there was my strawberry latte. My hot strawberry latte was just what I needed to stay awake.

Was I breaking the rules? Yes. Definitely. Did I care? Normally, yes but, right now? No. Not at all. I needed the caffeine. Why a strawberry latte? The answer to that is quite simple, my tastebuds can’t handle actual coffee and I’m too sleepy to be trusted with boiling water to make my own tea and no one would ever let Mary (she's my servant for the week) touch tea.

I’m talking to myself. That’s the first sign of insanity.

This was all M Damocles's fault for pushing me this far so really, neither he nor the other teachers couldn’t punish me if they tried. He sprung the video game competition last minute on me, forcing me to pull a few all-nighters to work on it.

By last minute I mean five days ago with the physical half of the paperwork needed to be sent in by mail two days ago while the digital half needed to be sent by the end of the day. In four days, I pulled two all-nighters to arrange the paperwork to let College Francois Dupont participate in the video game competition between schools.

Normally, it would be the principal or a senior member of the staff who would have been the person to do this but Mme Leroy, who was chosen to do this, had something come so it was pushed on to me, the Student Council President. Not only that, there wasn’t anything for me to work with either!

I had to do everything from scratch!

After I finished everything, I looked for the person who was supposed to do this with the fury of ten thousand suns to give them the retribution they deserve.

Mme Leroy’s file wasn’t that different from the other teachers, nothing big enough to warrant deeper investigations but not completely clean either. However, thanks to this, I think an investigation was in order. If I was determined enough, which I am, I’ll have her sacked by the end of this month.

I am very thankful for Sabrina who helped me through all this. I made sure she never needed to pull any all-nighters but I knew she was tired, she was sleeping on the chair with her face against the desk possibly dead to the world. I didn’t know how she was sleeping over all the noise our classmates were making.

We were all in the library to watch a gaming tournament to find out who would play with Max at the competition. Right now, Adrien was playing against Max and, if everyone was to be believed, it was a fascinating and tight game.

Then in came Marinette.

I watched as Marinette took the controller from Adrien and started playing against Max. I sighed, Marinette doesn’t care about participating in the video game, she only wanted to play with Adrien. Then I froze before I groaned. I remember this episode now, it was the Gamer episode.

This was the episode where Max gets Akumatized because Marinette crushed his dreams because she wanted to be with her crush.

I downed the rest of my strawberry latte, woke Sabrina up to tell her I was going home, and made my way to the hotel. The second I reached my room, the Akuma Alert App rang out but I turned it off.

I set an alarm to go off in three hours, plugged my phone into its charger, got changed, and fell onto my bed. If I wanted to be even a bit supportive at the competition later tonight I needed to take a nap.

Who gives a damn about Akumas anyways? It’s not like I’d stay dead and I know in the episode of Gamer the hotel would be completely fine.

Fuck you, Hawkmoth.

With that in mind, I was out like a light.

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Unfortunately, I couldn’t sleep until the next morning so I got up when my alarm rang and got changed. I got into my limo, picked up Sabrina, and we quickly made our way to the building where the competition was being held. If I was being honest, I think a callosum was a bit much for a video game competition but who was I to say anything? I only touched consoles when Adrien begged me to play.

Now that he had other friends, friends who would willingly play video games with him, I was no longer obligated to play video games with him. I was forever thankful that Nino was such a willing sacrifice.

I was still out of it when I got to where the entire class was standing. However, I snapped back into reality when I saw Marinette and Max arguing about who would be representing our school in the tournament.

“Oh for the love of it all!” I exclaimed, shocking everyone as I marched over to them with fury in my eyes, dragging Adrien by the arm in a tight grip with me, “I worked on the paperwork to get our school into this competition for four days and pulled two all-nighters because of an incompetent teacher who is going to be replaced by the end of this month. I refuse to let my hard work be wasted because you three were unable to reach a conclusion to your argument and get the school disqualified for not showing up!

“Since Marinette and Max are arguing about who should go because Marinette wants to give Max the opportunity to do what he dreamed of and because Max wants the school to win, we will make Adrien decide. He is the one who would be your partner after all. However, I knew Adrien since we were toddlers so I know he’s going to give up his spot so the two of you can play together so let’s cut this entire thing short and get to the end of the story. Adrien, give them your controller.”

“What?! You can’t just decide that for Adrien!”

I glared at whoever just spoke up and hissed angrily, “Adrien was already looking at the two of them and his controller, it doesn’t take a genius to know what he was planning to do. I am tired, I am sleepy, and I am extremely angry at Mme Leroy for making me do everything myself without so much of a by-your-leave. Let’s get this over with before our school gets disqualified and my sleep-deprived self decided that this class is responsible for all this and take out all my anger on all of you.”

Adrien quickly handed over the controller and we watched as Marinette and Max walked into the ring. I took out my flask of Earl Grey tea that Jean prepared for me and downed it, ignoring the burns as it went down. Or the way everyone was giving me a wide berth.

I couldn’t wait until this stupid competition was over.

I looked down at my phone and saw that Dad sent a text telling me that some parts of my proposal were being looked at. At least something good happened in this nightmare of a week.