When Megamind first turns fifteen, he becomes obsessed with the idea of establishing contact with other intelligent life in space. Crop circles, UFO sightings, abduction claims...he throws himself into the project: charts, maps, theories, researching with a fierce single-mindedness that Minion honestly finds more than a little worrying.
Sir is always focused on his projects, of course, but this is...different. He doesn't sleep or eat, and his eyes are a little too bright, not quite-all there.
(getting off this planet, getting out of here, please get me out of here, help me, at least tell me I'm not alone and-)
Megamind sets up communications systems on every channel he can find, monitors the frequencies for days at a time, sends out message after message help me can you hear me is anybody listening is anybody out there please please help please, and in response, he gets back-
Nothing.
Silence.
No response.
And-
-the...project...culminates when teenage Megamind winds up in a field just outside the city after midnight, having hot-wired a tractor and plowed his M-and-two-lightning-bolts symbol into the corn. The farmer calls the police, and when the cops get there, Megamind is gesturing wildly with a half-empty bottle of stolen whiskey, crying, and screaming fuck you at the stars.
It's one of his earliest arrests.
The newspapers owned by the Scotts find out about it, and report it. The next week at school, one of the other students makes a snide remark about crop circles in Megamind's hearing; Megamind punches him in the face and gets suspended as a result.
The Warden and Megamind get into a screaming fight when he comes back to the prison after the suspension. This is the first time that the Warden tells Megamind that he failed as a parent.
Megamind spits back, "You never were a parent."
After the Warden leaves, Minion tries to talk to Megamind, but Megamind shrugs him off. He's got that over-bright look in his eyes again, the one that says he's not quite all there.
He burns all of his research on crop circles.
And he runs away from home for the first time. (This-does not go well.)
Even afterwards, though, Megamind can't quite bring himself to destroy the communication system he set up, or the beacon beaming out his message. He sets them up to continue indefinitely, and only checks them once a year. He's very careful to keep it to once a year.
Any more frequently, and he knows he'll risk spiraling into the obsessive search once more, and he can't afford to do that again.
This is his home now. Metrocity. His city. His.
Megamind thinks, most of the time, that there's probably no one up there listening.
(On really bad days, though, he sometimes wonders if there is someone listening, and they just don't care.)
(fuck them. he doesn't need their help.)
[you are destined for-]
(he doesn't need anyone's help.)
[help me can you hear me is anybody listening is anybody out there please please help please-]
notes: title is from Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
