Chloegami!

She's tried everything. Her old mainstays first. Food on the chair—gravy, this time. She'd had to do that herself, since Sabrina hasn't been... talking to her, for a while. A few months. Kagami's face hadn't even twitched—she'd simply nodded, disappeared, and reappeared fifteen minutes later in those infuriatingly skintight fencing pants instead of her usual skirt-and-tights.

The box full of fake bugs had needed some tweaking, since Kagami isn't in love with anyone (that Chloé knows of) and even if she were, that's not something she can trick Kim into a fourth time. So she'd tried to fill Kagami's locker, but the girl had booby-trapped it somehow and Chloé had ended up buried in fencing equipment (and fake bugs) once she managed to jimmy the lock.

Tripping her is a non-starter—the girl is entirely too athletic. She moves around Chloé's legs as if she doesn't even notice her, and the one time Chloé had actually managed to connect her calves were... the most solid thing Chloé's ever felt. It had, in fact, been Chloé who went ass-over-teakettle and bruised her tailbone.

Stealing (and breaking) her things had been... successful, actually. She'd managed to snatch some of Kagami's charcoals while the girl was using the other ones and had snapped them in half, and Kagami had responded by meeting her eyes, raising an eyebrow, and pulling an entirely new set out of her bag.

All of it should've worked. Kagami's a new classmate, a new target: she hasn't seen any of it. It's all a surprise to her. Or at least... it should be.

Chloé's used to a certain level of reaction from her targets. Marinette's frantic flailing and shrieks, Rose's tears, Myléne's terrified whimpers, Max's twitching and counting, Nino's dissociation, Alix's... fists. But Kagami—no matter what Chloé does to her, she never seems to break. She's... unflappable. No matter what Chloé tries, she can't even seem to get her to blink.

It's infuriating. If Chloé weren't so protective of her hair, she'd be tearing it out.

*

Why Kagami? Of all people, why the ice queen?

It started in the new school year. Or rather, new school.

Graduating Collège François DuPont had been a breath of fresh air. The old school had gotten... stifling. The class had gotten too chummy, too uppity. The teachers even enabled all their little rebellions, did nothing while Adrien and Dupain-Cheng got closer and closer, even started punishing her for trying to assert her status. Ridiculous!

Lycée Anaïs Nin... now that was a whole new world to conquer. Multiple Collèges fed into the Lycée, meaning there were all-new classmates, all-new peons, all-new toys. People who hadn't been corrupted by Marinette and her oh-so-chummy attitude that led the whole class to start getting more and more insular, more and more exclusionary, more and more out-of-control.

Chloé knew, as soon as everyone else got to meet them, the new arrivals would be put off by her class's unnatural attitudes. How they pushed out anyone who didn't fit in their perfect little social club. Her old class would get pushed off to the side to do their own little thing, and Chloé would be back on top where she belonged.

Except that wasn't what happened.

No, what happened was that Kagami swanned into the group, easy as you please, as if she'd always been there. As if she'd never been Marinette's enemy, as if she weren't Adrien's ex. And the rest of her class, the class from Collège Simone de Beauvoir, followed suit. And Chloé was left on the outside. Again. And all the attention that should have been hers... just went to Marinette again.

Why Kagami? Of all people, why the ice queen?

She wasn't even one of them. Why did she get to be loved?

*

And so the pranks. The stealing. The tripping. The... everything. Because Kagami is taking what does not belong to her.

Chloé can't let that go.

Chloé needs to teach her a lesson.

*

Kagami Tsurugi is having a great first year of Lycée. Her old school was... difficult, for her. Osaka had been one thing—while she'd never felt comfortable around her peers, her behavior had fit in enough with expectations that the other children at her first school had treated her with at least some wary respect. But at Collège, she hadn't just been "that overly-formal girl"—she'd been "that overly-formal foreign girl." Her difficulties with the language, with the social rules, with relaxing, led her classmates to label her an "ice queen" and avoid her like she was covered in dung.

She'd tried to tell herself it hadn't hurt. She'd even succeeded, for a while.

Then... That contest with Marinette. Her failed attempt to date Adrien, and their amicable breakup. The two of them had come into her life in a whirlwind, and then they'd carried the rest of their friends in with them, friends who'd never judged her for being uncomfortable or unsociable or stiff. Friends who forgave her whenever she missed a social cue or spoke too bluntly, friends who...

They weren't in her school. Collège was still difficult, lonely, but she knew she only had one year to wait. And then... First day of Lycée, she'd joined them at the lunch table and slotted into their friend group like she'd always been meant to be there, and she felt like she'd come home.

And then Marinette and Alya had started aggressively befriending all of the people who'd shunned Kagami and suddenly all the people who would've never given her the time of day were suddenly talking to her, gossiping with her, sharing notes and food, and her friend group exploded.

It's a bit too much, at times. Like right now, with so many people sitting at the same long lunch table in the cafeteria, it's so loud that Kagami feels like she's going to explode.

"Was she like this at your old school?" Thérèse says, passing an apple to Juleka, who quietly passes her her own extra muffin.

Max pushes his glasses up, glancing down at the tablet with Markov's statistical readouts. "Her behavior is about 90% consistent with her old patterns," he says. "The only thing different is her primary target."

"Nerd," Gérard mutters, only to be immediately dope-slapped by Alix.

"I'm just saying," Thérèse continues, before taking a bite of her apple. " This is, like, Disney-channel villainy." Her voice is garbled through the mouthful of fruit, but Kagami can pick up on most of it.

Alya snorts. "Chloé's a Disney channel villainy kind of girl," she says. She leans forward, lacing her fingers together and propping her elbows on the wooden tabletop. "There's a reason she's caused, like, 60% of the Akumas." A wry twist appears on her mouth. "Honestly, I wonder if she's getting worse."

"She hasn't tried to get anyone expelled yet," Marinette mutters, stabbing at her mashed potatoes with a fork.

Adrien rubs the back of her hand with one of those shy smiles that Kagami knows makes Marinette weak at the knees.

The girl sighs. "I know," she mumbles, leaning onto her boyfriend's shoulder.

"She is escalating, though," Max says. He does something that Kagami can't quite see on his screen, then looks up. "By my estimates, there will likely be only 2 weeks until she does attempt to have Kagami expelled."

"So it's settled," Alya says, leaning back. "We need to do something about her before she gets that far."

"Why?"

For a moment, Kagami isn't certain why everyone is looking at her—before she realizes that she is the one who spoke. Her mouth suddenly feels somewhat dry as she realizes how many eyes are on her. Her hands feel a little shaky, which is silly. These are her friends.

"It is... not a trouble," she manages. "I doubt she will be able to."

"Oh, yeah," Alix says, spinning her pocketwatch around her finger (which Kagami is pretty sure is her Miraculous? That can't be safe). "Isn't your mom, like, way richer than both of her parents combined?"

"That doesn't mean we should just... let her get away with it!" Marinette says. "Chloé is being awful to you. We need to find a way to make her stop!"

"Why?" Kagami says. "She's just flirting."

Everyone falls silent.

"She's what?" Rose says.

"Bullshit," Alix snaps, slamming her hands on the table. "Chloé is not—"

"What in God's name makes you think—" Alya interrupts.

"She's a bully!" Adrien adds, squeezing Marinette's hand.

"Wow, tough crowd," Gérard says, glacing around at the rest of the people at the table. He shrugs. "Is it so hard to believe that maybe this is just how she flirts?"

Everyone at the table—or at least, everyone who attended François DuPont—looks over at Marinette, who sighs. "No, Chloé is just... like this," she says. "She tormented me for years in a lot of the same ways."

"Because she was in love with you?" Kagami interjects.

Marinette boggles.

Alya laughs. "Girl, Marinette told me you loved Manga, but this is a bit much." She presses her palm against her face. "Enemies-to-lovers does not happen in real life."

"Were Marinette and I not enemies at first?" Kagami retorts. "And yet I had feelings for her."

Alya snorts. "Marinette's an exception." She waves a hand noncomittally. "Everyone's in love with her."

Marinette practically swallows her tongue as Thérèse reddens and stares down at her own feet.

"Chloé is part of everybody," Kagami snaps.

Alya raises a finger to retort, but then stops. "She... huh." She rubs her chin. "Marinette... you did just say you were her favorite target, even before Adrien was in the picture."

Marinette's eyes widen. "Alya, you can't honestly be considering this."

"What if she's right, though?" Alya says. "What if Chloé was in love with you?"

Alix snorts. "If she is, she's really shit at showing it."

"That's not a surprise," Adrien says. "She's never been... emotionally open."

Marinette pulls away from him with a horrified expression on her face. "Adrien!"

He meets her eyes and shrugs. "What, I'm just saying!"

The conversation devolves into poking fun at Adrien for having the same "taste in women" as Chloé, at least until the lunch bell rings.

*

"So," Alya says, after class, "you think Chloé is flirting with you?"

The two of them are the only ones in the locker room at the time—each of their friends are either still in class, at extracurriculars (or in Adrien and Marinette's case occupying a janitor's closet somewhere), and fencing doesn't start for another half hour.

"She is," Kagami says. She opens her locker, pulling out fencing gear and rifling though piles of fake bugs.

"Do you want her to stop?"

Kagami freezes, her hand full of rubber cockroach. "I..." she begins, before trailing off. Does she?

What Chloé is doing is... well, judging by the reactions of her friends, it's meant to be hurtful. And yet Kagami isn't hurt by it. Should she be?

"Let's put it this way," Alya says, closing her locker and leaning against it, crossing her arms. "If she stopped tomorrow, would you be disappointed?"

Chloé—stopping? Not paying attention to her. Not messing with her. Not...

Kagami's stomach flops. "I... yes," she murmurs. "I would."

Alya raises an eyebrow, then steps forward and claps her on the back. "Then flirt back, girl!"

Immediately, Kagami's nerves catch fire. Unable to meet Alya's eyes, she looks away twists her fingers. "I don't know how." Flirt? She's—she knows enough by now to know she's terrible at that. Adrien always found her flirting uncomfortable, Marinette had thought she was mad at her, and she hasn't really attempted to do anything since. 

Alya steps forward and slings her arm around Kagami's shoulders. "As long as you don't set anything on fire, you can't be as bad as Marinette," she says.

Kagami blinks. "Did she actually do that?"

Alya nods sagely. "Four. Separate. Times."

*

Back to basics. Chewed gum on the seat is a classic, simple, easy, doesn't require a lot of setup. She's just placing it on Kagami's seat when—

"What are you doing, Bourgeois?"

Chloé's heart seizes in her chest at the sound of Kagami's voice. She turns, crossing her arms, her face starting to burn. "What's it to you?" she sneers.

Kagami's expression doesn't budge from unreadable. She's standing straight, mirroring Chloé's arms-crossed pose. "That is my seat," she says. "Were you putting food on it again?"

Chloé's feels the burn spread from her face to the rest of her body. "You—you—maybe I am!" she snaps. "So what? Do you even care?"

Kagami only raises an eyebrow.

Chloé steps forward, grabbing Kagami by the lapel. "Blink, damn you!" she shrieks. "Why won't you just react—!"

She's cut off by a palm pressed against her cheek.

"Like this?" Kagami murmurs.

Chloé is suddenly deadly aware of how close Kagami's lips are to hers. The warmth of her hand on her face. The heat of her breath. "What are you...?"

"You are hesitating," Kagami says. "What do you want, Chloé?"

What does she want?

She wants... she wants... she wants her power back. She wants people to treat her with the respect she deserves. She wants... she wants...

Lips. Why can't she stop thinking about Kagami's lips?

*

When the Akuma alert sounds, Adrien and Marinette are ready. Gone are the days of stammered excuses and half-baked lies: thanks to help from Alya and Nino, the two of them have coordinated a believable, repeatable reason to leave class whenever Monarch attacks. PTSD is highly common among Parisians these days, and with Marinette's already-existing anxiety disorder on school record, it's not hard for her to get special accommodations. Including her boyfriend helping her find a place to hide.

"What do you think it is this time?" Adrien says, yanking her down the hallway toward the nearest utility closet.

She tries to match pace, but he's gotten so much taller than her in the last year, and while that can be nice sometimes, his longer legs mean that she has trouble keeping up even in costume. (It's undignified. And she's lost too many patrol races at this point.) "You know... I hate to... speculate, Minou," she gasps, stumbling along behind him.

He flashes her a cheeky grin. "Hope it's a kissing one," he says as they round a corner. "I know how much you love those."

Marinette's stomach swan-dives as her face catches fire. "A-Adrien!" she yelps, slapping his hand.

They come to a stop in front of the utility closet, and Adrien reaches out to grab the knob. "Bet you ten Euros it's... Chloé's..." He yanks open the door, only to trail off in apparent shock.

Marinette, confused, steps forward, and then immediately understands why he stopped speaking. And fails to understand just about anything else.

Kagami and Chloé both look up at them from their position on the floor, tangled up in each other. Their clothes are rumpled, their hair is mussed, and both of them are panting and thoroughly, thoroughly red in the face.