The planet Metron was known throughout the Glaupunk Quadrant, and indeed through most parts of the highly advanced and civilized universe, for its dangerous environment. The fauna consisted of such creatures that could turn a person into stone just by looking at them; spiky, venom-spitting raptors, enormous sharks that roamed the skies, adorable furballs that could devour an army in five seconds, and that wasn't getting into all the horrible things that lurked during the night. The flora of Metron was even worse. For obvious reasons, flower-giving on the planet was reserved for the people you hated the most. The Metronian people, on the whole, were not a bad lot despite all the amazing adaptations they had developed as a result of living on their planet. They had long since advanced past their hostile and barbaric ancestry. Being hospitable had proven to be much more lucrative. After all, Metron was a popular tourist destination.
And it was currently being sucked into a blackhole. Everywhere, Metronian citizens were flying around in a panic while a large screen over the city warned them of their imminent doom. Only two citizens were on the ground, and against all reason, they were arguing.
"I told you to place in an order for the escape pods right after we left Megar!" shouted a beautiful, muscle-toned woman with long, jet-black hair. She threw her hands at him in exasperation. "What happened? I swear, if this was because of another misunderstanding with-"
"Misunderstanding?! I didn't misunderstand anything. He started it!" A buff, square-jawed man with shaggy, brown hair glared at the woman.
"We've explained this a hundred times already; he started that BEFORE he warned us. You know he wouldn't make up something like that. And now, look. It's happening!" The woman gestured at the large screen.
"Well, how was I supposed to know he would actually get something right for once? Even the Megari people think he's a few banzippels short of a full bunch!" He caught a punch that the woman had aimed for his face.
"How dare you speak about our friend like that, Ken-Ez! After all, we've been through together... I just can't believe you. Our planet is getting sucked into a blackhole, we're going to die, our child-" Her voice wavered, and hot tears streaked down her face.
The glare Ken-Ez had been giving her softened immediately, replaced by a little shame and regret. "He'll live," Ken-Ez told her quietly. His grip on her fist loosened. "You're... right. I should've ordered the escape pods earlier. But the baby's pod came in yesterday. I just-" He swallowed a lump in his throat. "Crabnar," he cursed, putting a hand to his forehead. "Lo-Ez, I just don't want our last moments to be you resenting me for being so stupid." He paused, then moved his hand away. "Lo-Ez?" His wife had ran off.
Suddenly, the planet jerked, and he stumbled a bit. Oh, right. The black hole was on the verge of destroying them. In a second, he was at his wife's side. Lo-Ez was tucking their ten-month old baby in the space pod. The baby flexed his tiny muscles at his mother. Showy, exaggerated expressions and movements were common in young Metronians. It helped to look confident and unafraid on a planet where every living thing had learned that there was no kill like overkill. Lo-Ez smiled at him and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. "It's going to be okay. You'll be okay."
Ken-Ez said nothing. He reached out for the baby's hand and let the baby grab onto his finger. He smiled, but he felt heart-broken. He drew back and closed the golden space pod. Activating it was not a difficult task, and it geared up to leave Metron's atmosphere. Ken-Ez looked to his wife, "Lo-Ez..."
"I heard you back there." She looked to him, a resigned look on her face. Her face was still wet with tears. "Our baby is going to be alone."
Ken-Ez tentatively pulled his wife into an embrace. She did not return the embrace but allowed herself to be held by him. The Metronian man gave a sigh. "At least, he's going to the same planet as our Megari friends."
Lo-Ez blinked and looked up, a little puzzled. "You- really?"
"Well, I didn't know where else to set the destination. When that blackhole started, they sent the star coordinates to me, and-" He might have started to say a few good words about their friends, because ultimately, his wife was right. They were friends. But Lo-Ez could see it on his face and interrupted him with a passionate kiss. The world was ending, but their love for each other was not.
…
Metronian babies were not that much smarter than human babies. He had no idea what had happened to his world or his parents. He didn't know why he was in such a tiny but comfortable place. He was amused by the stars rushing past him. He reached out as if to try and touch them, but his little hands came in contact with the window of his pod. He withdrew and marveled. And then, he noticed something different. It was not like the stars because it was bigger. But it was not like some of the asteroids drifting around either.
The ten-month old looked on in wide-eyed curiosity. He saw the other baby in a space pod and knew instinctively that another baby was a bad thing. Competition. He blew a raspberry at the offending baby at which point a binkie was soon stuck in his mouth. He liked that.
He wondered where his mother was. He wondered if the tiny pod was his home now. After a day or two, he became anxious, and he squirmed in the pod. Some classical Metronian music (universally known as being the fifth worst kind of music in existence) came on in the pod to soothe him. He fell asleep. The rest of the trip was uneventful if slightly bumpy.
When he next woke up, the pod had come to a smooth halt. He peered through the window, seeing a lavishly decorated room. The lid of the pod opened, and a woman came into view. The sight of a person comforted him, and he smiled and winked at her. The woman smiled at him warmly.
"Oh, look! A baby! How thoughtful!" She picked him up and cooed at him.
A masculine voice piped up, "Yes. I saw it and thought of you."
The baby glanced over at where the voice was coming from. He saw a man holding a newspaper in front of him. Well, that wasn't too interesting. He giggled a bit when the woman tickled his stomach. He shook his head and waved his finger at her.
"What a smart little man you are!" the woman said.
"A-goo, ma," he babbled.
The woman could hardly contain her excitement. She looked about ready to squeal about her new baby boy. The baby felt similar excitement, but this was mainly because there were so many new things to look at. His icy blue eyes fell upon the big star on top of the Christmas tree.
"Oooh." His arms reached out for the star. And then, without warning, he began to float up towards the ceiling. The woman holding him gave a gasp. Her husband took no notice of the happenings around him.
Off the baby went, zipping towards the star on the tree to look at it up close. He giggled, then his eyes caught sight of a priceless painting. He flew towards it, paying little attention to the stunned woman holding onto him. He decided he wanted to look at everything, so he flew over the room taking in the sight of all the decorations and objects in front of him.
"Our baby can fly!" the woman said, no small amount of awe in her voice.
"Yes, yes. Only the best for you, darling," her husband told her, still not looking up from his newspaper.
The baby, so distracted by all the sights, didn't notice that he was about to fly into a wall. This resulted in him not only flying into the wall but through it. Naturally, slamming into and through the wall was not a pleasant experience for the woman. She groaned and sat up, putting a hand to her aching head. Her hair contained fragments of plaster. The baby was on the floor, staring wide-eyed at the woman. He had never seen a hurt person before. The woman stared back at him, suddenly uncertain and a little afraid.
Unfortunately, it was at that moment, the baby hiccuped. His eyes glowed red, and a beam of light burned past the woman, missing her by inches, through the hole he had just made in the wall, and through the hanging chandelier, which promptly fell and crashed on the floor in the living area.
"Honey! Keep it down; I'm trying to read!" the man grumbled, he made a display of adjusting his newspaper before continuing his silent reading.
The woman shrieked, which pierced the baby's sensitive ears. Metronian babies were not quite capable of controlling their super hearing (luckily, the range was much more limited than that of an adult's; range and control increased rapidly with age until the Metronian reached their full hearing potential in adulthood). The baby reacted the only way he knew how. He let out a heart-wrenching wail.
The woman's heart melted at seeing the baby in front of her crying. As nervous as she was about his super powers, she couldn't help but think that he hadn't meant to cause such destruction. He was still only a baby. Someone needed to take care of him, and she had always wanted a child of her own. Intimate relations with her husband was awkward and difficult, and it had looked like a baby just wasn't an option in their near future. But now, things were different. She had a baby, and she was determined to be the best parent she could be.
She nodded firmly to herself, then got up, wobbling a bit. She picked up the crying child and held him close to her. "Shh," she murmured, rocking him gently. "It's okay. Everything's okay. I'm okay. You're okay," she hummed.
The baby's crying started to wind down. He listened to the woman's soothing voice, sobbing a little.
"There, there. I know you didn't mean it. You're just a very special little boy," the woman told him. She put him in a cradled position, so that she could see into his face. The baby looked up at her with tear-filled eyes, but he seemed to be done crying.
She smiled at him and caressed his cheek. "My special little boy," she whispered.
The baby's face lit up, and he grinned, holding his arms out towards her. "Ma," he babbled.
The next couple of weeks Lady Sally Scott did what just about most new parents do. She bought tons of books about parenting and baby names and baby scrapbooks, as well as a few hard-to-find books with titles such as: "So, Your Kid has Superpowers," "Superpowers and You: What You Need to Know," "The Complete Dummy's Guide to Superpowered People," and "Resources and Support for Family of the Super-Inclined." As she had feared, there wasn't a lot of information to work with. Most of what she read usually involved teenagers getting into some kind of freak accident, which usually gave them powers of some kind or another. She couldn't find anything at all about super-powered people with the amazing number of powers her baby had.
One particular day, she was reading about support groups for family of super-powered people. She went through the kitchen drawer, looking for her day planner.
"Here comes the choo-choo train. Choo, choo!" the nanny said, trying to get the baby, only recently given the name Wayne, to eat a spoonful of baby food. The baby's mouth remained tightly shut. He glared at the nanny.
Sally murmured to herself something about a Wednesday dentist appointment as she flipped through her planner. The elderly nanny tried to keep her cool. She smiled at Wayne and tried to make the spoon look like a plane, complete with over the top plane noises. "It's coming in for a landing! Aaaaaaaah!" She opened her mouth wide, wobbling the spoon to and fro.
Wayne remained unimpressed and tight-lipped. His eyes glowed a little bit before his laser vision shot out and melted half of the spoon in the nanny's hands. The laser vision also stuck a part of her hair, starting a tiny fire. "AAAAAAAAAH!" the nanny screamed, getting up and taking measures to put her hair out. Wayne grinned.
Sally, startled, put the planner down and rushed over to the nanny. "Oh my God, Mrs. McPherson, I'm so sorry!" She helped the woman put out the little fire. "He's just a baby; he didn't-"
"LADY Scott!" the nanny said, raising her voice. "I've had quite enough of this! I'm a nanny; I feed babies; I change babies; I rock babies. I didn't sign up to have actual Cadillacs thrown at my head and lasers shot at me and Lord knows what else! I'm done. I'm too old for this!" The woman started marching out of the kitchen.
Sally rushed after her. "Please, Mrs. McPherson, I beg you to reconsider. I'll... I'll pay you double!"
"There isn't enough money in the world that would make me risk a melted head, Lady Scott!" The nanny reached for the door, opened it, and slammed it shut.
Sally stared at the door. Another nanny gone. She had been through more than twenty already. They were running out of nannies. Sally sighed and her shoulders slumped. She headed toward the kitchen and picked up the phone. Wayne was giggling to himself. He had apparently used his laser vision to make the jar of baby food explode. It was everywhere. Sally was glad that the maids of Scott Manor weren't quitting, at least; though, they insisted on keeping a distance from the highly destructive, super-powered baby.
The phone operator of Metro City General Hospital picked up and responded to Sally's request. Sally, then, proceeded to explain why she wouldn't be coming in to perform surgery that day. She didn't like taking days off if it could be helped. Patients needed her. The hospital needed her. But somebody had to take care of her baby. Since she had some vacation days left, she decided to take a few extra days off, just until she could find another nanny.
Hanging up the phone, she grabbed another jar of baby food and a spoon and sat down in front of the high chair.
"Wayne, sweetie, you know it isn't very nice to set the nanny's head on fire," she muttered.
Wayne gave her a stupid look, common to babies who were completely unaware of the consequences of their actions. Sally sighed and shook her head. "Well, my Thursday's open now, so I think I'll look for another nanny, then. And Friday, we'll see what that Super Support Group is like. Won't that be fun?"
Wayne continued giving her a blank, uncomprehending stare. Then, he grinned and babbled at her.
Sally smiled. She opened the jar of baby food and spooned some out. "Now, be a dear and open wide for mommy." She moved the spoon towards his mouth. Obediently, he opened his mouth and ate the food, a little dribbling down his chin. "That's my good boy."
(Author's Note: Just a quick reminder and disclaimer saying I do not own Megamind or any of its associated characters. Hope you all enjoyed this chapter because there IS more to come! Let's just have fun with delving into some Metro Man history, shall we? I believe these first couple of chapters will mostly be set from Sally's point of view... with an occasional baby-view input from Wayne before I ultimately make the transition to Wayne's POV :D)