Chapter 6 (Marinette)

288 27 4
                                    

Ladybug dodged Mr Pigeon's attack again. The guy was persistently getting closer and closer to her and her patience was wearing thin.

"Second chance," Viperion called again. How many times had it been?

"Count check," Ladybug shouted out, only for her counterpart to swoop down and move her out the way.

"Twenty six," Viperion exclaimed, taking both of them to a rooftop not too far from where they were in battle.

Ladybug growled as he placed her down and for the first time began to lose her patience.

"Can we just try what Chat Noir said?"

"Chat Noir," Viperion said, "so now he has a name does he? How convenient?"

"Luka stop!" Ladybug dashed towards her boyfriend and placed her hands on his chest. "What's wrong?"

"You know full well what's wrong! It's the same thing as before. A new hero comes along, you put too much trust in them and it backfires. When are you going to learn Marinette?"

"I think we can trust him, Luka!"

"That's what you said about Volpina!"

The two stood and stared at each other, neither daring to move first. Pride was on the line here and Marinette refused to back down. The cat guy was trying to help them.  "Why do you still bring that up?" She asked.

"I can't bear to see anything happen to you again. I told you after seeing her hurt you I would never, ever let something like that happen again."

Wrapping her arms tightly around his waist, she placed her cheek against his chest in a girlfriend type way, but something felt different. She didn't feel like she fit as well as she did before. Still she didn't dare move, didn't dare let him know something was wrong.

"You trust too easily, Marinette and it gets you into a lot of trouble." Finally admitting defeat, he wrapped his arms around her body and placed his own cheek on the top of her head. "You know how intuitive I can be, so please believe me when I say that he can't be trusted."

Marinette didn't want to say anything to Luka but she didn't side with him on this at all. Something in the back of her mind told her to listen to Chat Noir. To trust in her own abilities.

However she knew that if she kept fighting with him she wasn't going to do them any favours. If anything it would only push them further apart and currently they were three hours into battle (according to Luka) and still no way of seeing an end.

She let go of Luka and stepped away. Maybe he was right? She knew how much the Volpina battle hurt him, he brought it up daily on their patrols, and when he finally found out who she was under the mask, well, his protection only increased ten fold. They'd always been great friends, on either side of the mask, and their friendship strengthened when they knew each other's secret identities.

But something about this cat plagued her mind. She thought about her conversations with Tikki earlier that morning. Plagg? The black cat Miraculous? Yin and yang? Nothing made sense. Was he meant to be her partner, not Luka?

She'd been with Luka from the get go. It had always been the bug and snake team, so where did the cat fit in. His kwami meant a lot to Tikki, so did he mean a lot to her too?

"Lucky charm," she wanted this battle over with, she wanted to detransform and speak with Tikki about who and what this person was. She wanted to know if she could trust him? And most of all she wanted to speak to Master Fu. What hadn't he been telling her?

A coin fell down into her hands and she looked around for possible solutions. To the right she had a pond, a park and a bench ... nope, no good! To the left was a vending machine and a cage, and low and behold in the vending machine there were many packs of popcorn. It would work. What Chat Noir had told her would work!

Ladybug didn't bother filling Viperion in on the plan and instead made her way over to the machine, inserted the coin and selected a pack of popcorn.

"What are you doing? I thought we agreed he was untrustworthy?" Viperion made his way over to Ladybug and pulled the popcorn out of her hands.

"Give it back, Viperion." She commanded, reaching on her tiptoes to try and grab it out of her partner's hands. The two squabbling superheroes pulled attention from others within the area, including 'The Ladyblogger'. They tended to swoop in and save the day, not converse with each other in such a volatile way.

Ladybug noticed Alya had started to film their interaction over the bag of popcorn, and decided she needed to act fast before Paris saw a fracture in their current saviours.

Jumping up, Ladybug hit the popcorn bag out of Viperion's hand, sending it flying into the air only to be met with a hard thwack from her yo-yo. The bag split in half and popcorn burst into the sky, scattering around the area and causing each of the birds to dive towards the littered treats.

Mr Pigeon came falling from the air, as his pigeon plane was dismembered, plummeting him towards the earth. With a second attack of her yo-yo she knocked the bird call from Mr Pigeon's neck, leaping to catch it midair. A quick moment later, she threw it to the floor and smashed it to release the akuma. All that was left to do was purify the butterfly and fix the damage..

"Miraculous Ladybug."

A swirl of red bugs circulated around Paris turning pigeons back into humans and fixing buildings destroyed by the bird bombs.

"Ladybug, that was amazing, you individually defeated that akuma, it was like you didn't need Viperion at all! The idea of the popcorn was pure genius. We've never seen you come up with such a creative plan like that before, is this something we're going to see more often in the future?" Alya was rambling in pure excitement and Ladybug couldn't help but feel pride at her work. She'd never created a plan like that before. It was as though she had some sort of Ladybug vision allowing her to see what to do. It felt amazing.

"Excuse us," Viperion made his way to Ladybug, and she wasn't sure if his face was reflecting anger or pride. He hooked an arm around her waist and began to move her away from the newly forming crowd, and away from any questions.

Just as the two were about to launch into the sky, a sneeze pulled Ladybug's attention to an open space in the crowd. Her eyes locked with sparkling green eyes, green eyes wearing the most intense pride she'd ever seen.

A Snap in TimeWhere stories live. Discover now