I was the target of bullying as a kid, but I figured it out. It took a multi-prong strategy.

Sometimes, I just had to punch the bully in the face.

More often, laughing at the jokes a bully made at my expense confused and deflated them. This worked strangely well.

Finally, making friends with the bullies - or in some cases, allies - took care of the ones that didn't respond to the above two. Yes, this means in some cases, I ended up running in bully circles... but I like to think I mitigated some of their behavior. I'm too far removed from that time period to say for sure, though.