Author's Notes
Each chapter in this series will be a different story based on the prompts for "Kagami Appreciation Week."
Day 1 Prompt: Dragon
Summary: When Kagami begins to experience miraculous side-effects, Adrien and Marinette grow concerned for their ... "very good friend," so the heroes of Paris have to brave uncharted waters to try to help her. But you know what they say about uncharted waters: "Here there be dragons." Kagami wants a hoard, and she's searching for precious treasures to fill it with.
It begins as a strange hesitation during one of her orange-juice dates with Marinette that are, indeed, becoming more and more like actual dates the longer Adrien vacillates over his feelings for the mysterious "other girl" that neither she nor Marinette can identify.
They are certain that it is not Lila or Chloe, however, which means that their not-dates never become a cover for a murder pact.
Still, time spent with the effervescent and adorably clumsy baker's daughter allows Kagami to realize a great deal about herself and her inclinations. Whether or not Marinette has become aware of it over the past few weeks, Kagami knows what she wants, and that isn't only Adrien.
Of course she hesitates for both their sakes, giving each of them a chance to realize their feelings or reveal their intentions. Much as she cares for him, though, if he doesn't try to advance his relationship with her or Marinette... or her and Marinette – although that would be a complicated challenge which, like any other, she would accept – she will.
She has just paid for her juice, a fine compliment to the few savoury and sweet delicacies that Marinette had brought from her parents' bakery, and the dull-eyed cashier drops a handful of change into her palm.
A glint of sunlight catches her eye, dragging her gaze down to appreciate just how... pleasant European currency is; the French national motto is indeed a touchstone for the life she wants to live now, and it is no wonder that it should draw her attention and respect: Liberté, égalité, fraternité. How she longs for freedom, fights for it; how she needs to find equals who can care for her as such; and how she aches for love and solidarity, though she knows not how to express it.
"Ma'am, you're holding up the line."
With a creased frown straining her face, she jerks up to stare at the unimpressed cashier. Stuffing the collection of coins into her pocket, she clasps her orange juice and moves to rejoin Marinette.
Weeks later, Kagami notices the ... intricacy of their money.
On the euro coin, a golden circle of nickel-brass arcs its way around the silvery cupronickel core, mimicking precious metals. The fine printing process has stamped a map of the European Union on the coin's face. She turns it over in her palm. A tree, growing, developing, and spreading out into a dozen unique branches is etched into the silver and surrounded by flared golden hash-marks, a glorious maze in which your eyes can get lost for minutes.
Minutes...
That...
Drag...
On...
"Hey, Kagami, did you get the popcorn!?"
Pocketing her change for the popcorn like a teenage boy trying to hide a Penthouse magazine under his pillow when his mother burst in the door, she throws her arm over the back of the adjacent theatre seat and tries to smile in a way that is not unnatural.
Adrien and Marinette are making their way down the line, offering little excuses and fumbled apologies while squeezing by other movie-goers attending the Akira Kurosawa marathon. They trip over tucked up legs and feet in an awkward and heated fumble.
The smiles on the pairs' faces as they settle in next to her, one on each side in the mid-row seats that she has saved for them, are an alluring mingling of awkwardness like her own and pleasure; they remind her of the coppery salt taste of victory, sweat licked up from the sides of her mouth as she pants and feels the ragged fire in her lungs after a taxing match on the piste.
They watch the movie, the warmth of their arms against hers a steady comfort, broken periodically as they they reach into the bag of popcorn on her lap. The tense seconds of absence only leave her longing, anticipating the return of their touch.
Adrien lingers for a few moments longer than is necessary. Sly devil-angel. When Marinette, enthralled by Kyūzō's introductory duel – if Kagami was ever to have anything that could remotely be classified as a "schoolgirl crush" it would be on him – reaches over to grab a handful of popcorn without looking, their fingers brush.
If there is a more appealing blush in the world than Marinette's, Kagami hopes never to see it.
She will be terribly saddened if anything in this life displaces the memory of that flush.
When the movie is finished, she takes Marinette by the hand, and fortunately the sight of those reddened cheeks is seared into her mind with the same heat as the blush that now burns on the other girl's face.
Coins jingle in her pocket as she stands, though, and even holding Marinette's hand, Kagami frowns.
Kagami is surprised to learn that she needs a change jar.
It begins as a stained plastic Tupperware container offered to her by Marinette. She tucks it away in a drawer, just to keep her loose coins. A series of subdivisions arise as more change accumulates. Then, the drawer begins to overflow with small containers, and it seems... wrong to keep the coins separate.
The massive plastic jugs that she pours her coins into once held cashews. Adrien can be seen munching on the nuts almost every day now because they are fatty and high-calorie. Apparently, he has been getting a great deal of exercise outside of his usual regime, so his diet is inadequate. Marinette plies him with pastries, but he ... hungers for more.
Her request to be allowed to keep the jug that he had stored in his locker when he finished off his nuts during their "date," an after-fencing snack, was met with some confusion, but he smiled in that somewhat ... dopey way of his and offered it to her with a flirtatious wink and bow as if he was handing over a box of chocolates and a bouquet of roses.
He was such a miserable little flirt over whose antics she had most assuredly not blushed.
The jar, and several others he had given her, are all full, replete with thousands of tiny rounded hunks of metal, each one playing off one another in a tempting carnivalesque of chaotic gleams and colours, all jammed up and disorganized.
There is something calming-pleasant-thrilling about parsing out the coins when they get mixed up, and then crushing them back together again into a mishmashed sea of gold and silver.
She never seems to have a need to remove any of the change. It weighs heavily in her pockets or jingles unpleasantly in her school bag, like the sound of tin pots clattering or a baby crying because it had been abandoned outside when it should be resting comfortably in a loving home, cared for and nurtured and safe.
She scowls.
There is something disturbing about how they sit so high, confined, constrained to a pillar of plastic rather than being loosed and free to... spread out. It makes her itch and squirm in frustration as if she is watching some novice employing the incorrect grip or stance.
She tips out the jars onto the floor.
The sloshing nearly liquid clatter of metal on metal – a thousand tiny tinkling instruments commingling in a gloriously chaotic symphony – is almost... titillating.
Kagami grins.
"Kagami, my change purse keeps disappearing. Is this some juvenile act of rebellion?"
Kagami deflects.
"No, mother."
"Kagami, we've been talking, and we're worried that you might... have a problem."
She shifts on her bed, splaying herself out in a languid writhe into the coolness beneath her torso. It tingles rapturously against her skin.
"We know that... Ladybug gave you the Dragon Miraculous."
A great puff of breath bursts from her nose, which she promptly buries in her bed which parts for her as she snuffles into it. The tangy sweetness of something like copper is on her lips.
It still tastes like victory.
"Do you think it's possible that you're starting to ... take on some dragon tendencies?"
The blond one inches closer, inspiring her arm to coil around the thick pile of mattress that spreads out just beyond her right ear and clump it up towards her body, partly burying her shoulder.
These two meddlesome interlopers have to back off from her bed.
If she wasn't quite content to continue lazing atop it, she might actually find the motivation to remove them from her bedroom.
Their gaze is simply too... lustful.
Of course, examining them more closely through hooded eyes, glacial mind half lost to her torpor, she realizes that they both look like remarkably tasty morsels themselves.
Rounded curves of flesh seem poised to burst forth from the girl's tight white shirt, unfairly concealed under that dark black jacket that puffs up her shoulders and hides all the tempting lines of bone and arching muscle along her graceful shoulders. It swishes forward and back as the girl sways on her feet, thrilling with each revealing counter-motion.
How much more could be seen if she just tore off that jacket and shirt?
And the rangy blonde. Mm. Elfin features that seem like they should be split by a galling, playful grin, a challenge to be wiped away with a gasp.
Yes. Quite the ... snacc, is it?
"I don't think that she's listening to us, Milady."
The glorious sound of tinkling coins, like a symphony of wind-chimes and bells, caresses her ears with every shifting motion as she stirs.
"I can see that, kitty. It's worse that we thought, and – and she's naked!"
"Well, Milady, there are some upsides to miraculous side-effects."
"Horndog."
"Horncat, please."
"Ugh. Why do we love you?"
They are talking too much.
The dragon rises.
The pair blanch.
That shuts them up.
She settles back onto her bed.
Mmmmmm...
Hot, squirming flesh is a very comfortable addition to her hoard.
She licks her hoard to make it squirm more.
Copper and salt...
Tastes like victory.
Author's Notes
RIP Adrien and Marinette, condemned to a lifetime spent as part of a dragon's hoard. Don't worry, though. Dragons guard their hoards jealously.
Many of these stories are going to involve romantic relationships, though they will vary wildly in tone from fluff, to angst, but my primary goal is going to be reflection on Kagami's defining traits and character. Then there's also the slight-crack-fluff, such as we see here as the people in Kagami's life appreciate her.