soc_puppet | Enchanted Forest Chronicles/Miraculous Ladybug Fusion AU Not!Fic (Reply)

Enchanted Forest Chronicles fusion AU:

Prince Adrien of the kingdom of Agreste (or whatever other BS kingdom name I can come up with) has been kidnapped by dragons! Particularly Clever Baker’s Daughter and Apprentice Seamstress Marinette Dupain-Cheng will not stand for it. She met the prince once, and he was really super nice to her when he didn’t have to be, so she’s going to track him down in the dragon’s lair and rescue him! (And then maybe they’ll get married and have three kids and a hamster, but that’s for later.)

Marinette manages to get into the Enchanted Forest (Miraculous Forest?) fairly easily, and through a combination of quick wits, whatever she has in her bag, good manners, and plain ol’ luck, finds her way through it to the Mountains of Morning, where the dragons live. Along the way, she helps and is helped out by an off-beat witch named Alya and a magician named Nino who’s studying experimental magic. ...And she may have gotten a little help from this guy dressed like a black cat, but he spent most of the trip trying to convince her to go back home and give up on saving Adrien, so she’s mostly not counting that.

Once at the Mountains of Morning, Marinette befriends a large red dragon with black spots who is named Tikki, who shows her the way to the caves of Plagg, the dragon who took Adrien. There Marinette finds the man in black! He tries to convince her again to go back home, only for the dragon Plagg to overhear and interrupt, revealing in the process that the man in black is none other than Adrien himself!

With an air of defeat, Adrien explains that he was truly miserable at the castle, and the Princesses Lila and Chloe had been fighting mercilessly over his hand, when all he wanted to do was study fencing and go on adventures and maybe tell some bad jokes to this cute baker/seamstress girl he met this one time. When Plagg was ransacking the castle, he found Adrien hiding from Lila and Chloe and offered to take Adrien with him to escape the horrors of his home life. Adrien readily agreed, and has been loving his new life as the dragon Plagg’s prince excessively. (Plagg is pretty easy-going for a dragon, and most of Adrien’s chores involve getting exotic cheeses and helping people who are lost in the Enchanted Forest to find their way.)

Marinette feels bad, because she definitely doesn’t want to drag Adrien back to a life he was so miserable in and wanted so badly to escape! Adrien also feels bad, because Marinette went to all this trouble to save him when he didn’t want to be saved in the first place. It’s Tikki who proposes the solution.

Shortly thereafter, the dragon Tikki gets a “princess” of her own (it’s just a training position and an informal name right now, but Tikki has her suspicions that it’ll become a more official title at a point in the not-too-distant future) and Enchanted Forest guide Chat Noir gets a partner to help him out. Happily Ever After, The End.

—–

Some years later, Marinette and Adrien get a letter from Marinette’s parents. (Of course she kept in contact with them.) Turns out that King Gabriel is running the kingdom into the ground! There’s magic monsters everywhere! Do they know anyone who could help?

Marinette and Adrien look at each other and instantly agree that they have to save the kingdom. Together with Tikki and Plagg, they recruit Alya and Nino and go back to the kingdom of Agreste, stop the monster attacks, de-throne Gabriel, and throw him in the dungeon. Now that his dad isn’t able to make his life miserable anymore, being king doesn’t seem quite so bad to Adrien. If only he had some way to get Lila and Chloe off his back… He looks meaningfully at Marinette, who blushes.

Lila and Chloe immediately and loudly object. Marinette isn’t a princess! She’s not even nobility! How can she possibly marry Adrien?

Alya raises an eyebrow. “You want to tell Tikki that Marinette’s not a princess?”

Tikki smiles very toothily. Lila and Chloe back down very quickly. The wedding ceremony is lovely ❤

—–

Fairy godmothers are well known; Hugo, Emma, and Louis are the first (human) children anyone has ever heard of to have dragon godparents.

flightfoot:

Ooh I LOVED this series! If you can get the audiobooks, DO. They’re voiced by a FULL CAST and it makes it feel less like an audiobook and more like a radioplay, honestly. I can’t read the actual books because I just hear phantoms of their voices AND I NEED TO LISTEN TO THE AUDIOBOOK INSTEAD.

Ah yes, good manners helps a LOT in the Forest. Chloe would get stuck immediately.

..Ok is there a REASON why Adrien dresses up as a black cat in this AU or did he just find a black cat costume that Plagg had for who KNOWS what reason and decided ‘Cool, this is mine now, I’m gonna wear it so I don’t get recognized. And also because it’s cool and I’m a dork.’

Now I’m curious. Have Marinette’s parents gone to visit her since she became Tikki’s princess?

Is there a reason for all the akumas here, or is it just an excuse to overthrow Gabriel?

soc_puppet:

Also check for The Book of Enchantments; it’s a collection of short stories by the author that includes two set in the Enchanted Forest, both of which are a real hoot! No audio version that I’m aware of, but I haven’t exactly checked recently. (TBH, I didn’t care much for the voice actor(s?) chosen for Killer or the young dragon in book four, but that in no way keeps me from listening to the books. They are an absolute delight.)

Adrien doesn’t want anyone to recognize him and drag him home. Part of the reason he got started “guiding” people through the Enchanted Forest was to try and dissuade any potential rescuers. Marinette is just too stubborn and good at what she does. (And if she happens to remind him of this one cute baker/seamstress girl he met once, well, that has nothing to do with anything!) Marinette eventually gets a costume of her own, possibly to match Adrien. I’m thinking there’s also some protective spells and/or armor-like qualities to their costumes that help protect them on the job.

BTW, one of the things that Marinette brought with her on her initial quest was a Bag of Holding that she inherited from her mother. It’s been in Sabine’s family for absolute ages, and Sabine has no idea what all is in it, but it might still be useful to Marinette on her quest! (Yes, this is absolutely to mimic Lucky Charm.)

I hadn’t thought about whether Marinette’s parents ever visited her, but I could totally see it happening! I know they write to each other frequently as well. Her parents are happy that she’s safe and are even happier when they meet Tikki and Adrien (and even somewhat Plagg) and can be even more confident that she’s safe and happy.

Yeah, I mostly wanted an excuse for Our Heroes to save the kingdom of Agreste. Thinking about it, I’d guess that Gabriel had been researching magic as a hobby even before his wife died(?) and Adrien was “kidnapped”, and really went overboard in researching after Emilie was no more. I’m thinking he decided to start building to active experimentation after Adrien was “kidnapped”, especially after rescue efforts failed so horribly, to start building an army to wage war with the dragons. Nino comments that pretty much everyone is aware of how wizards can be dangerous, but this is a good example of how magicians can go bad as well.

Meme request by

alexseanchai:

scenes from the Miraculous Ladybug Enchanted Forest fusion? 😸?

soc_puppet: Oh jeez, I don’t really have any clearly defined scenes right now? Here are some more outlining bullet points for you instead:

Instead of the Gum Incident, Marinette runs into Prince Adrien on the street. Literally. She’s in a hurry somewhere (late for something) and doesn’t recognize him right away, partly because she usually only sees him from a distance, partly because she hasn’t really paid close attention to his portraits beyond “Okay, yeah, he looks more-or-less like the (late) Queen and her royal consort, sure.” Only after he’s helped her back to her feet and she’s apologized for tripping over him does she see the enormous bodyguard in the palace uniform looming behind him. Marinette is certain that she’s going to be thrown in the deepest dungeons for supposedly assaulting the prince, but Prince Adrien not only assures her that she’s fine and nothing bad is going to happen to her, he and his bodyguard accompany her to her destination to help make sure no one there is angry at her for being late, either. From that point on, Marinette is smitten.

Sabine gives Marinette the bag of holding that’s been in her family for years before Marinette leaves on her quest to find and rescue Adrien. Everyone in her family has put things in it, and many of them have forgotten what they added, so Sabine can’t tell Marinette exactly what’s in it, but she’s sure something in there will be helpful! If nothing else, Marinette can store her own possessions in the bag, and it will be lighter and easier to carry than other options. (The bag is bright red, for luck.)

Sabine does add that she thinks her grandmother’s magic compass might be in the bag, though it was malfunctioning badly the last time anyone was able to get it out; it could point in the direction of things that were a long ways off, but got a little screwy sometimes, especially within ten meters of the target object. She doesn’t know how the Enchanted Forest will affect it, but if Marinette can find it, it might still be of some use in her quest!

The compass is one of the first things Marinette finds, in fact. She’s able to ask it to point her to Adrien, and it looks like it’s working pretty well, even in the Enchanted Forest—right up until this weird guy in a cat costume shows up, and the needle starts spinning aimlessly around the dial.

Nino is the first person she runs into in the Enchanted Forest (aside from Mr. Black Cat, of course, and his suggestion that she give up on finding Prince Adrien and go back home was very unwelcome indeed). She stumbles across him experimenting with some magic, and is able to stop him right before he activates a circle that would cause an explosion. Her mother taught her a lot of Eastern magic growing up, and while a number of the principles are the same between various schools, some elements are drastically different. Nino appears to be trying to mix elements from different schools in this spell, and one of the Eastern elements is badly misplaced and/or chosen. Once Marinette explains what’s going on, she’s able to help him find a work-around to make the spell work with something from her lucky bag. Nino is able to give her some decent directions to the Mountains of Morning when she leaves, since she isn’t sure how much she trusts the compass right now.

She meets Alya next. Alya lives in a cottage near the border between the Enchanted Forest and the Mountains of Morning, and has a very distinct sign on her roof: “None of This Nonsense, Please”, in black lettering edged in gold. Unlike most witches, Alya seems to have picked foxes for familiars. Marinette is able to pull something out of her bag to help Alya with a problem, but I don’t know the nature of it yet.

I think her third encounter is going to be with Tikki? Probably they save each others’ lives, but details on this are even fuzzier. One way or another, Tikki decides that Marinette is a very interesting young lady, and her quest is a noble one, so she’s going to help Marinette out.

One thing leads to another, and Marinette eventually meets Plagg, then Adrien, learns that Adrien doesn’t want to go back to the palace, and becomes Tikki’s “princess”.

Ta-dah! I hope this is satisfactory 👍

alexseanchai: spinny compass? spinny compass!

soc_puppet: “Error: Target object too close.” In case you hadn’t guessed yet 😉