Instead of giving him the murder cat accessory, Master Fu gives Adrien an antique Go board with invisible blood stains, out of which comes the ghost of THE ANCIENT GO MASTER Fujiwara-no-Sai
This is really inconvenient because this is Europe and Go is pretty much unknown except among the very special interest crowd. But as fate would have it, Adrien drops by the Dupain-Cheng bakery and Sai goes into overdrive when he sees the framed game records decorating the walls. Sabine is a retired Go master who moved back to France after a legendary pro career in China, and she’s of course delighted to meet this kid who is vibrating in excitement about finding someone who knows about the game. She sends him upstairs to talk to her daughter, to whom she’s taught everything she knows.
ADRIEN: hi I’ve never touched a Go stone in my life but I think I’m pretty good
MARINETTE: uh okay, let’s just play, huh
So they play a game, Sai/Adrien easily wins, Adrien needs to leave for a photoshoot or something and skips along the rest of the day while Marinette is too shocked to even be upset because a rank beginner just beat the pants off her without even making an effort
Of course, Francois Dupont High School has a Go club led by Miss Mendeleiev, meeting in the chemistry classroom after school. So obviously Adrien HAS TO START GOING TO SCHOOL RIGHT THE NOW DAD. Marinette was enrolled there because Sabine had hopes about getting her daughter to take Go seriously, but Marinette isn’t in the Go club since she’s more into the art room and there’s also the fact that she could play every member of the Go club simultaneously and beat them while blindfolded. But when she hears that Adrien is there, she obviously has to check it out because maybe she’s finally found someone who will make it worth playing again. Except, of course, Adrien in the club is playing as himself and is a complete noob, and everyone is so, so very confused about why Sabine Cheng’s daughter would seek out Adrien as her rival.
Suffice it to say the Umbrella Scene plays out very differently
Marinette challenges Adrien to a new game, and does not hold back against him. Sai/Adrien has no mercy. The entire class, Adrien included, watches in stunned silence as Marinette admits her defeat. The only ones with the faintest idea of what they just witnessed are Max and Sabrina, who are in the Go club.
So anyway Adrien lets Sai play online and it takes them exactly three minutes to catch the attention of the Top Ten-ranked “Ladybug” and thus begins the tale of how the world of net Go starts trying to suss out the identity of the mysterious “Chat Noir” is after he let it slip that he’s just a high school kid in Paris, and Adrien’s life gets weird as he has to find the time to be a celebrity teen model, a regular school kid, fencing classes, Chinese classes, piano lessons, Go club, and being a secret netgo champ. Because nevermind explaining to a bunch of nerds how he got so good, try explaining the rest of the world how the teen celebrity having lived the last five years in the limelight got so good
Kagami was a failed insei or something before her mum moved the family to France. She takes up an online rivalry against Chat Noir, after suffering a smarting loss aginst him. Like Marinette, she’s way too good to be in the Go club, so she still meets Adrien on the fencing team. Like her fencing rivalry with Adrien, she quickly forms a Go rivalry with Marinette, who she she also befriends as a fellow Go prodigy with family expectations. Marinette doesn’t tell her about the two games she’s played against Adrien, since Kagami has seen him play and will never believe her.
but SHOUJO PLOT TWIST things might be kind of awkward between Marinette and Adrien in school since he kind unintentionally humilated her before all the world and made her cry and stuff, but that does not stop Chat Noir from flirting the hell out of it with Ladybug online, which makes it complicated when oh no oh no, she’s into it and now she wants to meet up IRL but no-one can know who he is. And while Adrien isn’t tight with Marinette, Kagami keeps both her rivals close at hand so they end up spending time together and Adrien kind of thinks that Kagami and Marinette might have a thing and he doesn’t want to get between that.
I don’t know how it ends but anyway that’s the story about how the ancient game of Go conquered Europe
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