"Azumanga Daioh" - Kagura/Sakaki - Set Epsilon
Fandom: Azumanga Daioh
Pairing: Kagura/Sakaki
Theme set: Epsilon
Rating: From G to hard PG-13
Author's Notes: These take a fairly intimate understanding of AzuDai to understand in full. If you have any questions about one of the themes, drop a comment, and I'll answer. ^^
28: Fortune - Omikuji was the sacred lots game the AD girls, most notably Kagura and Tomo, played at the shrine before New Year's. Dai-kichi roughly translates into "great blessing" and is the best lot one can draw. For more information on omikuji, go here.
35: Sudden: The name "Andrea" is a reference to one of X to the Zoltan's fanfictions, specifically his Azumanga Daioh x Godzilla trilogy. It's hysterical and highly recommended.
1. Motion: Kagura let loose a battle cry, thrusting her right arm forward to prepare to punch; it only took a flick of Sakaki’s hand, however, to tell her that challenging the tall girl in kick-boxing would bear no victorious fruit.
2. Cool: Sakaki had been kind enough to buy ice cream for both herself and Kagura; Kagura on the other hand simply licked at the icy coldness as slow as she could and wondered if the treat she was now eating would ever be as cool as Sakaki was.
3. Young: Yukari-sensei pulled the sake bottle out from her bag, urging the girls to “drink while y’all’re still young!”; Sakaki nearly choked when she saw Kagura reach for a mouthful.
4. Last: With every battle she lost, Kagura would always clench her fist and say that that would be the last time she lost to Sakaki; what she never knew was that her perseverance made her place first in Sakaki’s mind.
5. Wrong: It was incomprehensible; whenever Sakaki revealed one of her rare smiles to her, something blossomed in Kagura’s chest that told her that everything was alright... so then why, when she saw Sakaki curl her lips upward at Chiyo-chan, did everything feel so wrong?
6. Gentle: The first time Sakaki held Kagura’s hand, she’d been surprised at how smooth and soft it had been; she wondered if her own hand, replete with rough scratches from one too many cat bites, could ever compare to Kagura’s gentle touch.
7. One: “Yeah! I’m number one!” This was Kagura’s triumphant cheer as she spread news of her beating Sakaki throughout the classroom; the defeated girl in question only smiled as Chiyo-chan squealed and Kaorin gagged, not having the heart to tell them that she had lost on purpose.
8. Thousand: She bit her lip and fisted her hair, glancing idly at her stoic companion holding up the flashcard before uttering, “…aw, who the hell cares what ‘10^3’ means?”
9. King: “Wow; Chiyo-chan’s house is like a castle!” Kagura cried as she dashed out from Nyamo’s car; her subtle glance toward the blushing Sakaki held more compassion than excitement, though, for it was a look that could be read as nothing other than be my queen?
10. Learn: “If you need help in school, I’ll tutor you.” After Kagura had taught her so much about love, Sakaki figured that returning the favor was the least she could do.
11. Blur: At the track, Kagura crossed her arms in Sakaki’s direction and grumbled, “Too fast…”; later, in a room littered with cat magazines and discarded clothing, the same girl panted, “Not fast enough…”
12. Wait: After two years of being Kagura’s friend, Sakaki had learned that there was no use in making her wait; it was better just to jog alongside her and let her know that, for her, she would kick up her heels and run run run.
13. Change: Yesterday had been a day of broken hearts and spilt tears; today, as Sakaki stalked into the room with her hair slashed to her ears, Kagura’s justification that “it” was over was all the more assured.
14. Command: Sakaki usually didn’t like to be in a position that demanded control, but she would be damned if she was bottoming to Kagura again.
15. Hold: Fingers worked their way toward each other, hooking together like puzzle pieces made to fit; Kagura looked at their joined hands, and, wrinkling her nose adorably, said, “Hmph… your hand’s bigger than mine…”
16. Need: “So… give us the dirt, Kagura,” Tomo breathed, smirking as she leaned in toward a classmate whose face was as red as her uniform, “We all just need to know how good Sakaki is…”
17. Vision: Sakaki remembered lying on her back in her room and looking up at Kagura’s face; it was no wonder that, whenever she saw her friend-but-more now, she experienced a lingering sense of vertigo.
18. Attention: “Necoconeco,” Sakaki said, pointing the two cats out in the magazine ad. “I think that they’re… Kagura, what are you staring at?”
19. Soul: Somewhere inside of Sakaki, buried down deep in her heart, there was a portion of her that cried out to cats of all shapes and sizes; looking at Kagura’s eyes, her pupils black slits lost in near-golden irises, she became certain that it was that same part of her soul that drew her to the feline that was Kagura.
20. Picture: Kagura never took pictures because she ran so quickly so much, nothing was worth stopping for and saving; thus it was with great difficulty that, when the time came for her to leave her high school life and her high school love behind, she set down a photograph taken at Chiyo-chan’s summer home of her and Sakaki, trying hard to forget and to start her sprint again.
21. Fool: Chiyo-chan had once said that there was some intellect that couldn’t be measured in tests or information; Kagura, arguably the least intelligent of the three bonkura, was the human manifestation of that, and Sakaki loved her for it.
22. Mad: Sakaki rubbed the bruise on her ankle, jerking her hand away from the pulse she felt beneath it; Kagura was rough when she was happy, but it would be necessary to keep her from slipping into anger mode, lest she start throwing a temper tantrum and kicking at random again.
23. Child: “I’ve always been proud of my boobs,” the athlete said as she scrutinized Sakaki’s chest, “But next to yours… damn, I feel like a flat-chested kid again.”
24. Now: After watching Kagura sprint through life and treat everyday like a competition, Sakaki began to feel that maybe she should catch up and start living in now.
25. Shadow: Something that Kagura would never tell anyone was that, as a child, she’d been afraid of the dark, so much so that she could never get to sleep without a light on; Sakaki’s confused countenance, then, made sense, as, whenever she and Kagura were alone, the latter would always nervously reach up to take ahold of the darkness of her hair, pushing it behind her shoulders before allowing her a kiss.
26. Goodbye: “Let’s race back home!” Kagura had said, dashing from Magic Land at full speed; Sakaki, smiling sadly, knew that that was her way of saying goodbye.
27. Hide: “Aw, come on,” the shorter girl said to her companion, who lay with her back on the bed and her face as pale as Chiyo-chan’s had been after her first ride in Yukari-sensei’s car. “I didn’t know that leaping out from a pile of stuffed animals would scare ya so much!”
28. Fortune: “So, what’s your omikuji say?” Kagura asked Sakaki as Tomo dashed frantically about in search of a tree; Sakaki, stoic as ever, stated, “Nothing good,” pocketing the lot so that no one could read the symbols for “dai-kichi” scrawled upon it.
29. Safe: “I… I told you, Japanese citizens can’t become president,” cried Chiyo-chan as she feebly held her hands up as though to hold back Tomo; before her fellow bonkura could respond with something that was certain to be ridiculous, Kagura jumped in and said, “Yeah, well, if you did, Sakaki could protect you; you wouldn’t need no bullet proof vest!”
30. Ghost: “Damn, you’re such a wimp,” Kagura mumbled in the darkness of the theater as she pried Sakaki’s clammy, cold hand off of her own. “If you’re going to scream every time that ghost appears, I’m never taking you to a scary movie again.”
31. Book: Kagura lifted an eyebrow, bemused at the pile of nature books stacked before her; Sakaki, their supplier, told her, “Yesterday, when we were walking home, you guessed a few of the names of the flowers we saw; I found these in the library today and thought of that… would you like to figure out their names with me?”
32. Eye: Kagura liked to make something out of nothing because, with only nothing, life just wouldn’t be worth living; so, when she looked into Sakaki’s eyes and saw immaculate nothingness, pure in their dark, unmoving tones, Kagura became determined to make them express, if only once.
33. Never: “Quiet Sakaki… loud Kagura…” Osaka mused verbally, her wide eyes gliding from one girl to the next. “…nah; it could never work out.”
34. Sing: Kagura flipped through the TV channels, bored that there was nothing on and that she wasn’t up and running; she only stopped pressing the “next channel” button to watch a commercial for cat food, doing this only to hear Sakaki hum along to the jingle.
35. Sudden: “Wah!” Ramen flew out from Kagura mouth as she choked, and she gaped at Sakaki and the hitherto untold secret she’d just unleashed. “Your… your first name is Andrea?!”
36. Stop: “Those cats have never done anything to you,” she reprimanded, making sure her athletic friend didn’t roar at another passing kitty on the walk home.
37. Time: The wrinkles pulled at Kagura’s face as though a child had taken hold of her cheeks and stretched them until they rumpled; however, as a forty-year-old Sakaki planted a kiss on her rough, creased face, she knew that twenty years hadn’t changed either of them one bit.
38. Wash: Something about washing her bloody bed sheets the day after Sakaki had spent the night made Kagura suddenly like doing the laundry.
39. Torn: “I love you!” Kaorin shrieked as she leapt into Sakaki’s voluptuous chest; her arms instinctively closed about the diminutive girl, though her eyes couldn’t help but travel to meet Kagura’s uncertain ones just down the hall.
40. History: “This one’s from when I visited the zoo in fifth grade and tried to pet a tiger,” Sakaki said, gesturing to an especially deep gash on the back of her hand; Kagura nodded sagely, murmuring an, “Ah, I see,” before Sakaki continued to relive her personal history of cat bites.
41. Power: “Damn, the power’s out,” Kagura yelled as she threw down her once-functional video game controller; Sakaki, on the couch beside her, did not hesitate to reach for her hand-not out of fear, but confidence, for as tentative as she was by day, she reveled in the dark.
42. Bother: “Sakaki… I can explain… Tomo put me up…” But any claim Kagura might have made was cut off by Sakaki’s “Don’t bother,” and seconds later, her retreating hair, for how could she ever forgive a girl who would shred her favorite stuffed cat for attention?
43. God: Kagura had never been deeply religious, but Sakaki, with her height and dark beauty, she often likened to a goddess.
44. Wall: It wasn’t so much that Sakaki hated socializing than that she was afraid to do so, as she was constantly concerned about saying something wrong; it was as though she had built a wall around herself, constructed a bubble that kept her safe from the talkative outside… one that Kagura, witty, chatty, lovely Kagura shattered to bits with only a sentence.
45. Naked: Kagura had to admit that, as much as she loved and admired Sakaki, she would never want to see her naked; after all, anyone who wore kitty-print underwear on a daily basis must have had a reason for dressing in such flashy underclothes.
46. Drive: White against the black upholstery she was presently digging her nails into, Sakaki had to wonder whether Kagura had taken driving lessons from the same maniac as Yukari-sensei.
47. Harm: She had heard once that the greatest wounds were the ones that were delivered to the heart; and yet, as she cradled her girlfriend in her arms, pretending she hadn’t seen her with another the evening before, she felt strangely protected, as though there were a barrier shielding her ability to care from any harm.
48. Precious: Sometimes, the most precious things are the ones kept secret from everyone, only indulged in when all eyes are turned and attentions are elsewhere; the tender, fragile relationship of Kagura and Sakaki was one of these, expressed in furtive glances and competitions, blushing faces and accidental touches; and to them, no kiss or sweaty romance scene could possibly compare to a love so delicate, it was placed out of reach from all, only taken down for use when quiet settled over the classroom like a blanket of snow.
49. Hunger: Kagura didn’t have exquisite taste in food, never ate at fancy restaurants or tasted caviar and wine; but one day at the supermarket during her second year of college, she bumped into a tall body, one she had explored every week years ago… it was only then, when she treated herself to a stolen kiss-much to the surprise of the more hesitant half of the couple-did she recognize that she’d been starving without the delicacy of Sakaki.
50. Believe: “I don’t believe in love,” Kagura said, crossing her arms defiantly, much to Sakaki’s surprise and disappointment; “but,” she continued, holding up a finger, “I believe in you.”
Pairing: Kagura/Sakaki
Theme set: Epsilon
Rating: From G to hard PG-13
Author's Notes: These take a fairly intimate understanding of AzuDai to understand in full. If you have any questions about one of the themes, drop a comment, and I'll answer. ^^
28: Fortune - Omikuji was the sacred lots game the AD girls, most notably Kagura and Tomo, played at the shrine before New Year's. Dai-kichi roughly translates into "great blessing" and is the best lot one can draw. For more information on omikuji, go here.
35: Sudden: The name "Andrea" is a reference to one of X to the Zoltan's fanfictions, specifically his Azumanga Daioh x Godzilla trilogy. It's hysterical and highly recommended.
1. Motion: Kagura let loose a battle cry, thrusting her right arm forward to prepare to punch; it only took a flick of Sakaki’s hand, however, to tell her that challenging the tall girl in kick-boxing would bear no victorious fruit.
2. Cool: Sakaki had been kind enough to buy ice cream for both herself and Kagura; Kagura on the other hand simply licked at the icy coldness as slow as she could and wondered if the treat she was now eating would ever be as cool as Sakaki was.
3. Young: Yukari-sensei pulled the sake bottle out from her bag, urging the girls to “drink while y’all’re still young!”; Sakaki nearly choked when she saw Kagura reach for a mouthful.
4. Last: With every battle she lost, Kagura would always clench her fist and say that that would be the last time she lost to Sakaki; what she never knew was that her perseverance made her place first in Sakaki’s mind.
5. Wrong: It was incomprehensible; whenever Sakaki revealed one of her rare smiles to her, something blossomed in Kagura’s chest that told her that everything was alright... so then why, when she saw Sakaki curl her lips upward at Chiyo-chan, did everything feel so wrong?
6. Gentle: The first time Sakaki held Kagura’s hand, she’d been surprised at how smooth and soft it had been; she wondered if her own hand, replete with rough scratches from one too many cat bites, could ever compare to Kagura’s gentle touch.
7. One: “Yeah! I’m number one!” This was Kagura’s triumphant cheer as she spread news of her beating Sakaki throughout the classroom; the defeated girl in question only smiled as Chiyo-chan squealed and Kaorin gagged, not having the heart to tell them that she had lost on purpose.
8. Thousand: She bit her lip and fisted her hair, glancing idly at her stoic companion holding up the flashcard before uttering, “…aw, who the hell cares what ‘10^3’ means?”
9. King: “Wow; Chiyo-chan’s house is like a castle!” Kagura cried as she dashed out from Nyamo’s car; her subtle glance toward the blushing Sakaki held more compassion than excitement, though, for it was a look that could be read as nothing other than be my queen?
10. Learn: “If you need help in school, I’ll tutor you.” After Kagura had taught her so much about love, Sakaki figured that returning the favor was the least she could do.
11. Blur: At the track, Kagura crossed her arms in Sakaki’s direction and grumbled, “Too fast…”; later, in a room littered with cat magazines and discarded clothing, the same girl panted, “Not fast enough…”
12. Wait: After two years of being Kagura’s friend, Sakaki had learned that there was no use in making her wait; it was better just to jog alongside her and let her know that, for her, she would kick up her heels and run run run.
13. Change: Yesterday had been a day of broken hearts and spilt tears; today, as Sakaki stalked into the room with her hair slashed to her ears, Kagura’s justification that “it” was over was all the more assured.
14. Command: Sakaki usually didn’t like to be in a position that demanded control, but she would be damned if she was bottoming to Kagura again.
15. Hold: Fingers worked their way toward each other, hooking together like puzzle pieces made to fit; Kagura looked at their joined hands, and, wrinkling her nose adorably, said, “Hmph… your hand’s bigger than mine…”
16. Need: “So… give us the dirt, Kagura,” Tomo breathed, smirking as she leaned in toward a classmate whose face was as red as her uniform, “We all just need to know how good Sakaki is…”
17. Vision: Sakaki remembered lying on her back in her room and looking up at Kagura’s face; it was no wonder that, whenever she saw her friend-but-more now, she experienced a lingering sense of vertigo.
18. Attention: “Necoconeco,” Sakaki said, pointing the two cats out in the magazine ad. “I think that they’re… Kagura, what are you staring at?”
19. Soul: Somewhere inside of Sakaki, buried down deep in her heart, there was a portion of her that cried out to cats of all shapes and sizes; looking at Kagura’s eyes, her pupils black slits lost in near-golden irises, she became certain that it was that same part of her soul that drew her to the feline that was Kagura.
20. Picture: Kagura never took pictures because she ran so quickly so much, nothing was worth stopping for and saving; thus it was with great difficulty that, when the time came for her to leave her high school life and her high school love behind, she set down a photograph taken at Chiyo-chan’s summer home of her and Sakaki, trying hard to forget and to start her sprint again.
21. Fool: Chiyo-chan had once said that there was some intellect that couldn’t be measured in tests or information; Kagura, arguably the least intelligent of the three bonkura, was the human manifestation of that, and Sakaki loved her for it.
22. Mad: Sakaki rubbed the bruise on her ankle, jerking her hand away from the pulse she felt beneath it; Kagura was rough when she was happy, but it would be necessary to keep her from slipping into anger mode, lest she start throwing a temper tantrum and kicking at random again.
23. Child: “I’ve always been proud of my boobs,” the athlete said as she scrutinized Sakaki’s chest, “But next to yours… damn, I feel like a flat-chested kid again.”
24. Now: After watching Kagura sprint through life and treat everyday like a competition, Sakaki began to feel that maybe she should catch up and start living in now.
25. Shadow: Something that Kagura would never tell anyone was that, as a child, she’d been afraid of the dark, so much so that she could never get to sleep without a light on; Sakaki’s confused countenance, then, made sense, as, whenever she and Kagura were alone, the latter would always nervously reach up to take ahold of the darkness of her hair, pushing it behind her shoulders before allowing her a kiss.
26. Goodbye: “Let’s race back home!” Kagura had said, dashing from Magic Land at full speed; Sakaki, smiling sadly, knew that that was her way of saying goodbye.
27. Hide: “Aw, come on,” the shorter girl said to her companion, who lay with her back on the bed and her face as pale as Chiyo-chan’s had been after her first ride in Yukari-sensei’s car. “I didn’t know that leaping out from a pile of stuffed animals would scare ya so much!”
28. Fortune: “So, what’s your omikuji say?” Kagura asked Sakaki as Tomo dashed frantically about in search of a tree; Sakaki, stoic as ever, stated, “Nothing good,” pocketing the lot so that no one could read the symbols for “dai-kichi” scrawled upon it.
29. Safe: “I… I told you, Japanese citizens can’t become president,” cried Chiyo-chan as she feebly held her hands up as though to hold back Tomo; before her fellow bonkura could respond with something that was certain to be ridiculous, Kagura jumped in and said, “Yeah, well, if you did, Sakaki could protect you; you wouldn’t need no bullet proof vest!”
30. Ghost: “Damn, you’re such a wimp,” Kagura mumbled in the darkness of the theater as she pried Sakaki’s clammy, cold hand off of her own. “If you’re going to scream every time that ghost appears, I’m never taking you to a scary movie again.”
31. Book: Kagura lifted an eyebrow, bemused at the pile of nature books stacked before her; Sakaki, their supplier, told her, “Yesterday, when we were walking home, you guessed a few of the names of the flowers we saw; I found these in the library today and thought of that… would you like to figure out their names with me?”
32. Eye: Kagura liked to make something out of nothing because, with only nothing, life just wouldn’t be worth living; so, when she looked into Sakaki’s eyes and saw immaculate nothingness, pure in their dark, unmoving tones, Kagura became determined to make them express, if only once.
33. Never: “Quiet Sakaki… loud Kagura…” Osaka mused verbally, her wide eyes gliding from one girl to the next. “…nah; it could never work out.”
34. Sing: Kagura flipped through the TV channels, bored that there was nothing on and that she wasn’t up and running; she only stopped pressing the “next channel” button to watch a commercial for cat food, doing this only to hear Sakaki hum along to the jingle.
35. Sudden: “Wah!” Ramen flew out from Kagura mouth as she choked, and she gaped at Sakaki and the hitherto untold secret she’d just unleashed. “Your… your first name is Andrea?!”
36. Stop: “Those cats have never done anything to you,” she reprimanded, making sure her athletic friend didn’t roar at another passing kitty on the walk home.
37. Time: The wrinkles pulled at Kagura’s face as though a child had taken hold of her cheeks and stretched them until they rumpled; however, as a forty-year-old Sakaki planted a kiss on her rough, creased face, she knew that twenty years hadn’t changed either of them one bit.
38. Wash: Something about washing her bloody bed sheets the day after Sakaki had spent the night made Kagura suddenly like doing the laundry.
39. Torn: “I love you!” Kaorin shrieked as she leapt into Sakaki’s voluptuous chest; her arms instinctively closed about the diminutive girl, though her eyes couldn’t help but travel to meet Kagura’s uncertain ones just down the hall.
40. History: “This one’s from when I visited the zoo in fifth grade and tried to pet a tiger,” Sakaki said, gesturing to an especially deep gash on the back of her hand; Kagura nodded sagely, murmuring an, “Ah, I see,” before Sakaki continued to relive her personal history of cat bites.
41. Power: “Damn, the power’s out,” Kagura yelled as she threw down her once-functional video game controller; Sakaki, on the couch beside her, did not hesitate to reach for her hand-not out of fear, but confidence, for as tentative as she was by day, she reveled in the dark.
42. Bother: “Sakaki… I can explain… Tomo put me up…” But any claim Kagura might have made was cut off by Sakaki’s “Don’t bother,” and seconds later, her retreating hair, for how could she ever forgive a girl who would shred her favorite stuffed cat for attention?
43. God: Kagura had never been deeply religious, but Sakaki, with her height and dark beauty, she often likened to a goddess.
44. Wall: It wasn’t so much that Sakaki hated socializing than that she was afraid to do so, as she was constantly concerned about saying something wrong; it was as though she had built a wall around herself, constructed a bubble that kept her safe from the talkative outside… one that Kagura, witty, chatty, lovely Kagura shattered to bits with only a sentence.
45. Naked: Kagura had to admit that, as much as she loved and admired Sakaki, she would never want to see her naked; after all, anyone who wore kitty-print underwear on a daily basis must have had a reason for dressing in such flashy underclothes.
46. Drive: White against the black upholstery she was presently digging her nails into, Sakaki had to wonder whether Kagura had taken driving lessons from the same maniac as Yukari-sensei.
47. Harm: She had heard once that the greatest wounds were the ones that were delivered to the heart; and yet, as she cradled her girlfriend in her arms, pretending she hadn’t seen her with another the evening before, she felt strangely protected, as though there were a barrier shielding her ability to care from any harm.
48. Precious: Sometimes, the most precious things are the ones kept secret from everyone, only indulged in when all eyes are turned and attentions are elsewhere; the tender, fragile relationship of Kagura and Sakaki was one of these, expressed in furtive glances and competitions, blushing faces and accidental touches; and to them, no kiss or sweaty romance scene could possibly compare to a love so delicate, it was placed out of reach from all, only taken down for use when quiet settled over the classroom like a blanket of snow.
49. Hunger: Kagura didn’t have exquisite taste in food, never ate at fancy restaurants or tasted caviar and wine; but one day at the supermarket during her second year of college, she bumped into a tall body, one she had explored every week years ago… it was only then, when she treated herself to a stolen kiss-much to the surprise of the more hesitant half of the couple-did she recognize that she’d been starving without the delicacy of Sakaki.
50. Believe: “I don’t believe in love,” Kagura said, crossing her arms defiantly, much to Sakaki’s surprise and disappointment; “but,” she continued, holding up a finger, “I believe in you.”