Kagami had plans when she came to France. She wanted to learn all she could from the birthplace of fencing, make her mother proud and compete with peers at and above her skill level. And in some corner of her mind she entertained a fantasy about making friends along the way with a worthy rival who crossed blades with her.
None of those plans included one Adrien Agreste. He just sort of came crashing into her life, like a canonball.
It begins like this - Kagami joins Armand D'Argerncourt's fencing school because it is supposedly the best in France, and she only belongs among the best. She challenges the blond boy for the same reason. An empress only schemes against those who are a challenge to her power, and a Tsurugi only crosses blades with those who are a challenge to their skills.
At first she is disappointed. He shows some skill, but he is not her equal. She presses her attack, and hisses disappointedly, "Is that the best you can do?" as she pins him to the railing. And then he pushes her off, and everything is different. For the first time she is being pressed back. Adrien wields his blade like he is putting everything on the line. Kagami has faced more skilled opponents before, but for the first time in her life, they are less two fencers in a match as much as they are two warriors locked in a ferocious duel.
They burst into the library in a flurry of motion, carts careening wildly out the door. At her limit, Kagami yells, "Let's finish this off!"
She lunges at him watching as inch by inch her foil penetrates the distance between them. And then, they are both touching each other with their foils. She whirls to the blue haired girl who had been watching the match and shouted, "Who got the first hit? Who?!"
The blue haired girl shrinks back against Kagami's tone but answers clearly, if hesitantly, "It was … Adrien"
Of course she would say that. Because Kagami was an outsider and this was the blonde boy's classmate she would take his side over Kagami . She feels acutely alone, and a little homesick. Being back in Japan wasn't perfect, but she was atleast judged on her merits, and not for being an outsider.
She shakes the boy's hand and begins walking to her car in defeat. The best match she had in years, the possibility of training alongside a worthy rival, maybe even a real friend, ruined. She flings her saber to the ground and goes to face her mother's inevitable disappointment.
The boy comes to meet her outside. "Let's do a decisive match,'' he offers.
She pushes her saber away, "What's the point? You won. There's no such thing as a second chance in my family. Goodbye."
She thinks of the way her mother turned her back on her father, the way she cut him out of her life, even cropping him out of the wedding photos, the way Kagami has not even been allowed to hear from him in years. It is an old wound and a deep one.
She hurries to get in the car, and calls her mother but she's not there, which honestly is a relief. She doesn't know if she can take her mother's disappointment and wrath right now.
"Mother, you thought I was good enough, but... I lost. I won't be joining the D'Argencourt Academy."
And then everything goes blank. The next thing she knows, Ladybug, the fricking superhero of Paris is patting her head and telling her, "Everything's ok"
Kagami can't help the look on her awe on her face. She thinks she might have even fallen a little bit in love at that moment.
"You go on" Ladybug says to her kindly, "I have to go find someone."
"Thank you" Kagami says stiffly, even though it feels like such an inadequate sentiment.
She calls her ride outside of the Louvre, only to run into the blonde boy.
"Excuse me" he says.
"Listen I" she jumps, and then sighs.
There's an awkward pause because if thanking Ladybug was awkward, imagine speaking to the person who was the primary target of your fury. Even if she spent a lifetime saying sorry, it wasn't enough.
"I'm sorry" she chokes out, and to her surprise, at the same time, the blond boy is apologizing to her.
"Perhaps you'll agree to take this back" he says offering her saber back. She reaches for it longingly. Fencing has been her life for so long, and this saber was a big part of that. But she hesitates, because she's lost any right to touch it, and pulls her hand away.
"No, I lost. You keep it," she says, clutching her hands to her chest.
"I personally think the point was yours," Adrien argues
"That's not what your friend saw," there's a faint hint of bitterness creeping into her voice at the thought she might've lost to favoritism, but she disciplines herself. Her mother would say it is not befitting for a Tsurugi to blame others for their own inadequacies. If Kagami had been better, there wouldn't be any doubt.
Adrien must've sensed her bitterness because he offers,"Marinette can get flustered easily. She's kind and means well. She'd never cheat. Today was her first-ever experience with fencing."
It's not the words themselves that release the icy grip of disappointment on her chest, but the way his face practically lights up when he talks about her. Kagami can't help but think he's beautiful, and she wants him to defend her like that. She schools herself to ignore that thought. She didn't come here to look at pretty boys.
Despite herself, she smiles, "You like her a lot, huh?"
"Marinette? Yeah, of course! She's a very good friend, and you'll really like her too, once you get to know her," he says excitedly, and Kagami lets herself imagine it, staying at this academy, becoming friends with this boy, and maybe even his circle of friends. She likes that thought a lot, and she resolves to make it happen.
Adrien offers her saber back to her and this time she takes it.
"I'll be happy to get to know your friend Marinette!" she says, and bows to him. He bows back and they make eye contact for a second before Adrien holds out his hand.
"My name's Adrien. What's yours?"
"Kagami" she says as she shakes his hand. Before she gets into her car and leaves she looks back at Adrien and says, "Get ready for that decisive match!"
"I can't wait, Kagami"
Little does she know that will be the beginning of everything.
A/N: Thank you all for reading. I just wanted some Adrien and Kagami friendship fluff. This first chapter will follow the beats of Riposte pretty closely, but the rest of the chapters is me filling in the gaps between Riposte and Frozer, where it's clear Kagami has an interest in Adrien, and that things have been developing. This is gonna try to focus on their friendship, but since I'll be following canon some romance will be in there too.