Roxanne's eyes burned as she strained to not only keep them open, but to see through the nighttime fog that was so common for the Metro City Suburbs and focus on the road. It was unusually thick tonight, though she suspected it might be normal for around two o'clock in the morning, and that it was accustomed to being left undisturbed. She didn't bother to take in the residential scene around her, letting her mind float instead of focusing on the boarded up houses and graffiti-ed fences. Her right hand drifted to her mouth instinctively to cover up a yawn, and just as lazily wandered down to the Starbucks coffee cup in the cup holder by her side. She knew that a call from Minion at two in the morning telling her to get to the scene of the battle and now meant trouble, but that didn't mean she wasn't exhausted.
"In a quarter of a mile, your destination will be on the left," said her GPS app nonchalantly.
"Yeah, I kind of figured that," she muttered, not unaware of the sirens that were close enough to find their way through her closed windows. Soon after, the flashing red, white, and blue lights clustered around a driveway accompanied their matching sounds, and Roxanne pulled her red Volkswagen bug as close as she could and threw it into park.
Roxanne took another bracing gulp of coffee, and stepped out into the hectic world around her. The paramedics rushing people on stretchers into ambulances and policemen fighting the stray criminal into handcuffs woke her up more suddenly than she would've liked. She put a hand to the roof of her car and closed her eyes to steady herself for a moment, forcing herself into her reporter's mindset. As long as she was there, nothing could overwhelm her. Just find Megamind, she told herself. Why else could Minion have called her there?
She shut the car door vigorously, determined to put her best foot forward. She strode past the police tape line with no need for qualifications beyond her status as the city's star reporter, and of course, its hero's girlfriend. She found that the only crowd of people that wouldn't let her through were her fellow reporters. They were filling the air with buzzing questions, all of them so loud she couldn't make out what any one of them was talking about. She'd just started to elbow her way past Stephanie from channel 12 when she felt a hand grip her arm. Normally, she'd be startled by this, but the hand that happened to have taken hold of her was large and metal and not at all using a harsh grip.
She turned to face Minion, any hint of a smile that the early morning had not already stolen from her gone at the sight of his face. He was treading water anxiously, eyes and sometimes his whole body moving this way and that in his fish tank.
"What's wrong?" She said without thinking, feeling anxious herself. "Is he hurt?"
"Not at all, no!" Minion hurried, still not focusing in one spot. "Well, he's mostly not hurt. Well, he's not badly hurt," he continued, releasing her arm to motion around with his hands. Then he stopped, glanced around quickly, and pulled her farther away from the hubbub of the reporters.
"The press is… pushy, at this hour of the morning, it would seem," Minion all but whispered, leaning in close to Roxanne. "A cameraman got past the police tape at one point during the fight and threw Sir off bad enough that he took a dangerously hard blow to the head. I was really worried about him; that's when I called you," the words raced out of his mouth like he'd been holding them in for hours.
Roxanne could feel herself getting mad. There was a standard to keep up as a news crew, what on earth were they thinking? "It wasn't one of my camera men, was it?" she said through gritted teeth, glaring over at the crowd to see who was on-duty.
"I don't remember, I just-"
"WHAT is WRONG with all of you?!" Megamind's voice shouted above the others, throwing the crowd of reporters and camera men into relative silence and causing Minion's and Roxanne's heads to jerk in his direction.
"That doesn't bode well," Roxanne muttered, craning her neck to try and see her boyfriend.
"The very LEAST you could do is show some respect for what's happening around you! Jeopardizing your lives, my life, the lives of this whole CITY to get a better - a better camera angle is just plain pathetic!" Gasps and small shouts sounded from the crowd as it began to part, and soon Roxanne and Minion could see that Megamind had ripped through a part of the police tape and was stalking past all of them. Camera men were quick to fill the space the crowd had made behind Megamind a moment before, and as if sensing it, he spun around to face them one more time.
In a loud, but seething tone he all but growled, "I can see why Metro Man got so SICK of all of you."