To Be a Hero | MLB

14: The New Plan

Ladybug shouts at me to stop, but I just keep diving until I'm only about twenty feet off the ground.

"Pinion... what are you doing?" Chat Noir asks, and I respond by dropping him.

Just as I was hoping for, he uses his hands to catch his fall, and his Cataclysm sends cracks through Preserver's ground monster, threatening to destroy it. Chat Noir launches himself back onto the Eiffel Tower right as the monster implodes and a huge crater begins burrowing down into the earth.

I hear Ladybug launch her yo-yo, and I know I only have a few more moments to finish my plan before she comes to stop me. So, I angle my wings up and soar straight at Preserver. Once I'm close enough, he starts lifting his ring toward me, but I'm faster. Using my heightened reflexes, I grab my racket from the back of my suit and swing at Preserver with all my strength.

Caught off guard, he topples off his floating car and free-falls into the abyss Chat Noir created. I'm about to begin celebrating, but Ladybug shoots her yo-yo into the distance, then swings down to grab Preserver and deliver him to safety. Before he can fight back, she tries to pull his ring off his finger, but it gets stuck on his knuckle. Chat Noir joins her and holds the villain down while Ladybug takes out her bar of soap and uses it to soak Preserver's finger, then slides the ring off his finger. I glide over to them as Ladybug drops the ring to the ground and steps on it, freeing a glowing purple butterfly.

An akuma, I remind myself, letting my wings fold in.

"No more evildoing for you, little akuma," Ladybug says before grabbing her yo-yo and swinging it around. "Time to de-evilize!" Then she captures the akuma, shouting, "Gotcha!" When she opens the yo-yo again, the butterfly is colored a pristine white. "Bye-bye, little butterfly." She throws her bar of soap into the air, yelling, "Miraculous Ladybug!"

The soap transforms into a swarm of ladybugs, which then separates and spreads all over Paris, fixing all the destruction Preserver caused. Preserver, meanwhile, transforms back into his civilian form: a middle-aged man with a long, unkempt beard and cracked glasses.

"What happened?" he wonders, and Ladybug and Chat Noir fist bump.

"Pound it," they say, then turn to me.

"Pinion, what you did was extremely reckless—you could have hurt Mr. Granger. If I hadn't been in the right place at the right time, we might not have been able to rescue him." She seems like she wants to say more, but at that moment, all three of our Miraculous began beeping frantically, warning us it was almost time to detransform.

"I just thought we had to defeat the villain, not... capture his akuma," I say defensively, and Ladybug motions for me to follow her.

"Come on, we don't have time to talk." She says goodbye to Chat Noir, and the two of us take off together. We slide into an alleyway and step to different sides of a large trash bin, facing away from each other.

"Tikki, spots off," she sighs.

"Lorri, time to rest." My kwami flies out of my earring and hovers in the air in front of me. Ladybug throws a macaron into the air, and Lorri catches it in her mouth.

"Ooh, this is so good! I don't think I've had a macaron this good in... forever! Like, seriously," she gushes around the treat in her mouth.

"Tori, I need you to give me your Miraculous back now. Just leave it on the ground by your feet, and I'll get it in a minute."

I reach up toward my ear, then pause, a question coming to mind. "Why couldn't I just hit Preserver into the crater? Then he wouldn't be able to hurt anyone else."

"Because he's a Parisian, and it's still our job to protect him."

"But he was a villain."

Ladybug lets out a frustrated sigh. "We don't kill anyone. That's not what true heroes do."

"But—"

"And as a team, we're supposed to work together. Meaning, we stick to the plan."

Oh, so we're going back to this? "Your plan, you mean. I never agreed to it." The unfamiliar emotion is rising up again inside me, and a strange part of me wants nothing more than to lash out at Ladybug. "All I wanted to was help, and you wouldn't even let me do that. You may say we're a team, but it's clear to me that you value some team members more than others."

"I told you, you did help—"

"Yeah, for two seconds. Then I just had to sit back and wait for you and your Kitty to fix everything, like I wasn't a part of your 'team,' too. Speaking of Chat Noir, have you ever thought maybe he wants to do more than just be your sidekick? Maybe he wants a chance to lead as well?"

Ladybug is silent, and judging by the look on my kwami's face, I've overstepped. Gravely.