Megamind might be one of my favorite movies, but it isn't my anything else. This idea was inspired by a post on tumblr! Read and enjoy.
"Oh good, it's you." Those were Roxanne's first (entirely sincere and not sarcastic at all) words when she shook off the effects of the knock-out spray and realized she was in the company of her frequent kidnapper.
"What did you just say?"
Sounded like Megamind was behind her. Not that Roxanne could see him anyway because she had a bag over her head. A bag that smelled strongly of air freshener. "Spraying the bag with febreeze doesn't count as washing it," she snarked, and he whipped it off her head. "I need to talk to you. Time out?"
"Really. About what?" His giant blue head filled the left side of her vision as he leaned over her shoulder.
The supervillain didn't usually get quite so close to her. His proximity made her ear tickle, but she couldn't rub it because her wrists were tied behind her. So she did the next best thing and indulged her impish desire to bop him on the nose with her own nose. He flinched back in surprise with a blink, which she counted as a minor personal victor even though it was childish. "Stand in front of me where I can see you properly."
Megamind's laughter was teasing as he indulged her request instead of asking about what she'd just done and why. "One incredibly handsome criminal genius, for your viewing pleasure." He stepped around Roxanne's chair fluidly and adjusted the draping of his cape with a flick of his fingers at the same time.
"Hm, yes. And mastermind of all villainy, too. Can't forget that." He preened. "But! The time-out. You've heard of the Make A Wish Foundation, right?"
"That charity helps sick children, right? But why are you asking me about that?" Minion appeared carrying a nefarious-looking contraption. Roxanne had no idea what it was meant to do just from looking at it, so she didn't get any clues for the plot of the week, but Megamind just pointed at the wall to her right and made this sort of twisting shove motion with one hand. She glanced at the fish-operated gorilla suit as it moved to the wall and set up the Thing of Evil.
"A boy named Kevin wants to meet you." Wow, she almost never got to see Megamind speechless. "I had an interesting conversation last week. A Foundation representative met with me to discuss the viability of you fulfilling this boy's Wish. Since you kidnap me all the time, you see." Roxanne flexed her wrists in their ropes. "I told her it was possible, since you always treat me well when I'm kidnapped, but I would need to talk to you first to find out if you were up for it. So..." She glanced back and forth at the two evil cohorts. "Are you up for it?"
"We are here today at the Metro City Children's Hospital..."
/—/
"I can't just go visiting a hospital, Miss Ritchie. And I will not threaten children with an evil scheme, not even for pretend." Megamind was frowning at her, blue face serious and arms crossed.
"But what if I was there? You and Minion have kidnapped me from all kinds of places. I'll go and you can come get me."
He nodded slowly. "You'll need your own reason to be there. Could you do a report on site?"
\—\
"...recent joint donation from the Scott and Anderson families. As you can see, the patient rooms have been..."
/—/
"At the hospital, check. Unfortunately, a news reporter has no reason to visit Kevin specifically. Make A Wish does, but because you're a supervillain we're already trying to do this... eh... carefully." How did one explain such an oxymoron of a situation? As a clandestine public encounter? An overt covert plot? Maybe a self-guarding diversion.
"If you see me before I can capture you, you can 'run away,'" Megamind did air quotes with his fingers, "and hide in Ke-vahn's room. Wherever that is."
\—\
"Plans include a new recreational floor and, when demolition is complete, a semi-private park for patients and their families. All south-facing rooms will also have a view of..."
/—/
"There won't be much time for the meeting once my presence is reported to the police. The officers themselves might not be a problem, but they will call Metromahn, and we shouldn't have a confrontation in a hospital. The potential collateral damage..."
"I'll call him in advance to explain. Metroman will show up late, or not at all. He's done Make A Wish before, he'll understand."
Megamind and Minion both looked apprehensive, but—"Okay, Miss Ritchie."—they decided to trust her. And that was (the villains trusted her, trusted her to keep Metroman away from them) interesting in a way she didn't quite know how to react to.
\—\
"...looking forward to the future. This is Roxanne Ritchie, signing off!"
Roxanne glanced at the room numbers as she ran down the third floor hall away from Megamind and to (There!) 317, occupied by one Kevin O'Neil. The nine year old's bald head shot up from the comic book he was reading to look at her in surprise as she slammed the door shut behind her and yanked the curtain quickly across the window. She turned to face him as she backed away from the door with an index finger held to lips, and got to see the exact moment he recognized her and figured out what he thought was happening. His jaw fell open slowly and his brown eyes opened very wide—
She had to look away from him as she reached the wall opposite the door. His expression was so perfect, exactly what she was hoping for, that she was afraid she would break character for the want to laugh in joy.
Right on time, Minion broke open the door, "She's in here, Sir!" and he and Megamind barreled in. Megamind shut the door behind him and immediately shot it with the de-gun to seal it with some kind of quick-dying transparent glue since there was no lock installed in the handle.
"You thought you could escape me, Miss Ritchie?" She glared at him and he ignored it. The signature multi-setting firearm (Which de- setting was glue? She really wanted to know, now, she had no idea his gun did that.) spun around his hand as his low menacing laugh filled the small room. Behind him, Minion waved at Kevin, who was completely oblivious to the comic slipping from his fingers. "You—"
Megamind didn't get any further in whatever kidnapping speech he'd prepared for their visit because the child for whom they had planned this scenario shot up from his bed and lunged at Megamind. "It's you it's you it's you I can't believe it!" Kevin hugged the blue man tightly around the middle. While the kid couldn't see her, Roxanne shot the incredibly shocked hug-recipient a thumbs-up. "Oh my gosh, Megamind is in my room, this is the best day ever!" Megamind's face flickered and then he winked at her.
"'Best day ever,' do you know who I am!?"
Kevin let Megamind go to gaze up at him in wonder. "You're Megamind," he said in a reverential tone of voice Roxanne had heard several times before but only when people were talking about Metroman, "Incredibly Handsome Criminal Genius and Master of All Villainy! The best bad guy ever! You've escaped prison so many times, it's awesome! And you never give up, no matter what happens!" In a flash, he retrieved his comic book from the bed and presented it cover-first. "Will you sign this, please please PLEASE?"
It was a Metroman comic, because of course the guy couldn't be hero of an entire city without his own comic series getting published at some point. Based on the cover art, it seemed to be about Plan: Snow Day, the day Megamind stopped all activity in the city port by burying it in several feet of white powder and freezing a square mile of the lake around it overnight.
Megamind took it, mostly just because that's what you did when handed something, and flipped quickly through the pages. "If it's a villain's autograph you want, a villain's autograph you will get. Minion, Code: Pen." The fish was already holding one out. "What is your name?"
"Kevin O'Neil!" He started bouncing in place, too excited to hold still as Megamind braced the comic flat against the wall to write on it. "Could, could Minion sign it too?"
"Sure!"
Megamind scribbled over the METROMAN header and drew his own logo quickly right under it in metallic blue ink. Under that, he wrote, "For Kevin O'Neil: Always Be Bad" followed by his full self-description and name signed with a flourish. Minion signed next in blocky letters with a doodle of his head on the end, then passed the comic and pen to Roxanne. Roxanne signed at the very bottom and carefully crossed out Wayne's face where the hero was drawn flying in from the side.
Roxanne returned the comic book to Kevin while Megamind shot the window with a gun definitely not set to either dehydrate or the glue option, disintegrating it and a large portion of the wall around it at the same time. "Squad D, to me!" Brainbots flooded to the brand new escape route from above. "Lensi, come here." One floated into the room with a bowg.
"You named a brainbot Lindsey?" Roxanne noticed that this particular brainbot appeared to have a larger 'eye' than the others.
"Of course not. I named this one Lensi. The photographer. Look at Lensi, Ke-vahn!" When he turned as instructed, incidentally turning his back to Megamind, Megamind clicked open the latch of his cape and smoothly relocated it from his shoulders to the boy's.
"Hey, what—"
"Everyone look bad!" Megamind turned Kevin's head to look at the brainbot and lifted the de-gun. They froze until Lensi bowged.
"Sir, the police." Sirens were getting louder as police cars approached.
"Hurry, you have to leave before Metroman comes!" Kevin pulled at Megamind's hand to draw him forward, then stepped around him to push him closer to the ex-window and cloud of brainbots.
"He is correct. Brainbots! Take us to the roof!" Half the group went to Minion and four each from those remaining lifted Megamind and Roxanne. "Time to finish this kidnapping. Goodbye, Ke-vahn O'Neel!"
"Wait, your cape!"
Megamind was already out of the room when he shouted back, "Keep it!" That quickly, they were gone.
"That was really nice of you to give him your cape." Megamind scoffed, but he was grinning. Roxanne, still bound but no longer blindfolded after they left the hospital to finish Plan: Make A Wish, clicked her heels against the telephone pole she was tied to. She was essentially being held hostage until Metroman came to 'save' her. "You really made his day."
"You mistake my motives, Miss Ritchie. This was merely an excuse to kidnap you again."
"Sure it was."
"I have a question." Megamind stepped closer until he stood right in front of her, only about a foot away.
"I have an answer."
"Why did you do this?"
"Do wha—" He leaned forward quickly and touched his nose to hers, almost like a pecking bird, then looked at her expectantly. "Oh. That. No reason, really. Just because."
"Just because." That would have been a question if it had any inflection to it. Without inflection, it was more of a puzzled repetition to confirm that those were the words she said.
"Yeah."
"Is this a thing people do? Just because?"
"To people they like," Roxanne said before her mental filter could engage and remind her she was talking to Megamind. Minion gasped and her face steadily turned red in embarrassment. "I mean..." She tried to think of a way to backtrack and failed.
"Does this mean you like me, Miss Ritchie? That you have some affection for the supervillain?" Megamind was practically purring, like a cat who found a treasure trove of cream. "What," he bopped her nose again gently, "would your boyfriend in tights say?"
"He would say, 'We're not really a couple,' and, 'Just kiss her already, I know you want to.'" Wayne Scott, a.k.a. Metroman, was floating mere inches above the ground a few feet away from Minion. Minion screamed and leapt away from the hero, Roxanne screamed his first name with appalled disapproval for the sheer bluntness of his words, and Megamind made a peculiar strangled squeak. "Also, while touching noses isn't necessarily affectionate, Roxanne here does do random things to people she likes enough to do random things to, and touching noses counts as that." The topic of conversation twisted beneath her ropes in irritation. "I watched you with that kid, by the way. You didn't see him after you left the room, but let me tell you, he looked like Christmas and his birthday both came early and he won the lottery all at the same time. He's gonna remember this day for the rest of his life."
Considering he had just received confirmation that the woman he always kidnapped and was enamored with actually liked him back at least a little, that her not-boyfriend told him outright to kiss her, and that the hero approved of the villain's actions earlier in the day, Megamind could be forgiven for not saying anything any more articulate than, "Uh huh."
In a blink, Metroman's eye lasers cut the ropes around Roxanne and they fell in a loose heap around her feet. "How would you like to complete today's rescue, Roxanne? Would you like to be taken back to the news station, the police station, or the hospital?" He asked her politely but had a shit-eating grin on his face.
"I really want to punch you right now, Wayne." Roxanne turned to Megamind. "Well, I need to go back to work now. Show people I've been saved from your evil clutches." She nudged him with an elbow and laughed lightly, pretending the hero of Metro City hadn't just embarrassed her on purpose. "See you soon?"
"Of course! You haven't heard the last of Megamind!"
"Great!" She poked him on the nose (with her finger this time). "Bye, Megamind. Bye Minion." She waved to the fish as she walked past him to Wayne. "To the police station, please. I want to get the kidnapping report out of the way."
"So you sent a framed copy of the picture to Kevin?"
"Yes. A brainbot delivered it."
"And you sent a business card to the local Make A Wish office." The same representative had appeared again while Roxanne was in the office ("No, we won't publicize it. Why do you think we did it the way we did?") and showed her the little black paper embossed with Megamind's logo in blue. Nothing else was on the card, but nothing else really needed to be.
"Broke in and left it on the front desk."
A beat of silence. "It's a bit soon for a kidnapping." Plan: Make A Wish had been only three days ago, in fact.
"I came to deliver your own copy." The package wrapped in glossy black paper was a little heavy, about what she could expect for a framed photograph. Before she could unwrap it, he poked her nose—"Ciao!"—and ran back out her balcony doors to fly away via hoverbike.
Please leave a review!