Chapter 1

"This is a chance to change your destiny, Sir."

Minion's voice cuts through the silence, through Megamind's scowl and reverberates with truth. His huge robot suits sags stiffly for a moment and it's a sign that Megamind needs to make more improvements for his friend's design. The dome, he thinks, is perfect as Minion is able to easily give him a pointed look and look menacing as he floats in the water.

"You," he points with a clunky robotic finger, "can do real good."

The word good rings, holy and angelic. Almost as if a beautiful and scary archangel has granted himself entry into this homey kitchen, but the word rings, almost sung as it floats in the air. A golden word, a sacred word, and it's being used to describe him. An alien who has been defined himself being bad, not right, just wrong, not–

Not–not good.

Minon is standing and Megamind can only cross his arms more tightly around his wiry frame, his thin lips pressed together firmly in his seat. He ignores the way his heart aches, to just believe, to just try. Because at twenty-two, the world still seems so vast for someone who has never left Metro City before.

But I've traveled through galaxies, seen stars, and found home.

And there is some truth to what Minion says, the young fish more wise, more understanding, more everything than Megamind sometimes. For possibilities are endless and there are no absolutes (unless you're dead, that's always an absolute). He's done the math.

And with a heart that hasn't been fully scorned, one that clings to true optimism, the furrowed crease between Megamind's brow starts to lessen. Hope seeps into his pores, warming his heart, warming his soul. For despite that he's blue, he has just a soul as anyone else, he knows. He has to.

Thin arms unwrap themselves and nimble hands find their ways to his knees. With ease he pushes himself off, the chair screeching against the cold concrete floor of their makeshift home.

His words are low, shaky even as he tries to stand tall. "You think I really have a chance?"

They're honest words spoken from the most frighten part of his being.

Metal grinds on metal as Minion crosses his arms across his chest, looking pleased and smiling warmly. "I think you can do anything, Sir. You're the smartest person I know."

Megamind quirks a small smile. "I'm the only person you know."

Minion laughs and moves to the stove, going to check on pasta sauce. "Well, that may be true, but I wouldn't suggested this if I didn't think you weren't capable."

The blue alien sits back in his seat, shrugging on a sweatshirt while he does so. Propping his feet on the second chair, he asks, humor inflecting at the end. "Are you saying there are things I can't do?"

While still perfectly stirring the pasta sauce, Minion turns his fish body full around while moving his robotic limbs. His smirk is mischievous, all teeth and grin. "I mean, Boss, if you want to go be a hat model. I'm not gonna stop you…"

Megamind snaps his fingers, bare and gloveless. "Damn, there goes that career."

Through the speakers, Minion laughs as he turns around, it sounds a little watery, but still comes in clear enough. He pauses, the only sound audible in the kitchen is the the hum of the old refrigerator, the flame licking the large pot, and the spoon scraping the bottom. The silence is comfortable–stable for now, but uncertain.

Leaning back, Megamind tips his large head over the back of his chair. "So, teaching, huh?"

"Yes, Sir. Teaching."

"But," he lets the question sit in his mouth for a second. "Why?"

Minion places the spoon on its rest and heaves a great sigh while staring at the stove. "Because Megamind–" The directness is startling, the fish only using his charge's name in important situations. "As your minion, your friend–hell, your brother even–if I didn't try to actually help you achieve real happiness, what good am I?"

Megamind's heart crawls into his throat and words escape him as Minion's declaration weighs heavy on their feels like he's burning holes into the back of the gorilla robot suit with his gaze, intent and unblinking. Time ticks by, edging further into the future, before decision makes up its mind.

What good am I?

As your minion, you friend, your brother–

No, Minion, Megamind thinks, what good am I without you?

With two hands, Megamind scrubs his eyes, groaning. "Fine, fine! I'll do it!" He gets even louder, grousing and unhappy. "Only because this is what you want for you birthday." Under his breath he mutters, "It's a stupid present…"

"It's a chance," Minion singsongs, happiness bubbling in his small body.

You are destined for–

At his friend's glee, Megamind stands and rolls his eyes, popping his back as he stretches. "Yeah, yeah, you fish. Call me when dinner's ready."

There's a smile in his voice when he replies. "Of course, Sir."

Megamind is barely out of the doorway of their small kitchen when he looks over his shoulder and sees Minion dancing in place, totally satisfied with himself. When the blue alien rolls his eyes this time and sighs to himself, it's more of affection than annoyance.

His thoughts are circling around his latest inventions (cyborg animals, but what animals), but there's one part of him that's more emotive than logical. A small part that clutches to hope that things can be different, that goodness can spring from his fingertips, that life is more than this cosmic destiny.

It's a small thought, but a thought of nonetheless.

You are destined for something.

(He doesn't know that things will go wrong though, that no matter how hard he tries to escape density, it still somehow catches up with him. It's not a pleasant future that awaits him, for it's one filled with more hardships and more pain, but that does not mean there won't be happy moments–fond memories for him to loftily think about as he drifts off to sleep. His life has already been set in stone, but that does not that every rock is jagged. Some are quite smooth).

(These are things that he just doesn't know, things he hasn't lived just yet. But life happens, just as bad and good things do. For Megamind, bad luck is as essential as breathing).

"This is a chance to change your destiny, Roxie."

Wayne's voice is quiet in her ear, the party's roar drowned out as he cuts through it. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see her tall friend floating in midair, looking totally at ease and mischief dancing in his ice blue eyes. His hair, Roxanne thinks, looks perfect as usual with its coil styled just right.

Roxanne scoffs into her drink and gives him a shove. He's learned to be more gentle, more demure, and effortlessly lets her force move him slightly. There is real improvement in the way he's been controlling his strength lately.

But the air between the two is light and even she feels like she's floating.

"Have you been watching weird fantasy and superhero movies again?" her tone is teasing as she leans against the wall.

Wayne let's out a chuckle, sipping his drink with a grin. "Maybe."

The air in Wayne's campus house is vivacious. It's alive, it's singing, with people dancing and drinking and smoking who knows what. But everyone is safe and that's what's most important.

Before them, couples are on a makeshift dance floor, their steps barely in time with the latest Top 40 songs from Usher and Alicia Keys. No one seems alone for their bodies are melding together under disco lights and colors from all around. Hands in hair, fingers under shirts, arms around necks, lips on skin.

At twenty-one, it makes her heart twist, loneliness climbing up and whispering in her ear.

Don't you want something like that?

You do, I can tell.

"Why aren't we like that?" she asks her non-human companion.

Wayne barks a laugh, so caught off guard that when he throws his head back, he makes a dent in the wall. He doesn't even care that plaster is in his hair. "Because you're gross."

Roxanne sticks her tongue out at him, just dancing on her ribs and scaring the loneliness away. "I know. You're gross too."

Across the house, someone is calling for "Metro Dude". More voices start to chorus in as half the house yells for the one person that actually hear the pin drop. He's growing out of his juvenile moniker, but frat boys cling to boyhood charms. Roxanne laughs when he rolls his eyes.

"I'll be right back," he starts to tell her.

But she shakes her head, a yawn caught in her mouth. "Nah, I think I'm going to head home. All the RAs have to get up early tomorrow and plan events for the upcoming quarter."

He's about to offer to take her home, but Roxanne cuts him off. "If I need you, Wayne, I know how to call you."

He nods much like how a parent does and presses a soft kiss to her forehead. "Okay, Roxie. Be safe."

And with that, he's gone–almost like he's vanished in thin air, but she can hear his laughter and joy booming from the other side of the house.

"Did anyone call for a Metro Dude?"

(She doesn't know that one day that he will vanish, almost evaporate because of a death ray. Never thinks of it currently. Because why would her best friend not tell her the truth that he's tired? That he wants to give up his destiny in lieu of something else. For a while she doesn't know the answer to that, but none of that matters because he got his wish).

Well, she said she was going to go home, but that's not what's happening right now. Last second as she was grabbing her coat, she saw a portable radio in the closet. Without a hesitation, she nicked it and decided to find adventure.

She might have also grabbed a bottle of whiskey too.

Though that also is an affirmative as she's sipping her whiskey and moving towards the waterfront.

Metro City University and the Inner Industrial District aren't that far from each other. The Metro City River, while more impressive on the outskirts of town, still snakes it's way over here for trading and aquatic research. A multipurpose river really.

So, here she is with cold winter air nipping her face, a black scarf wrapped snugly around her neck, that she finds the perfect place to station the portable radio. The streetlights are glimmering off the water, little stars opposite of those in the sky. The cold ground is a better dance floor and air makes a better dance partner.

Luckily, there are batteries in the radio and static plays into the darkness. It only takes a few tries for her to adjust the frequency, stations coming in and out until she finds the right one. It's classic rock by her standards (the only music worth listening to by her father's) and all that comes back are memories when she was a child, her dad blasting music with the windows rolled down.

We've got to hold on to what we've got

It doesn't make a difference if we make it or not

We've got each other and that's a lot for love

We'll give it a shot

As she takes another sip of whiskey, the heat from the alcohol reminds her of the heat from the sun, from childhood homes in desert places, where she would ride her bike from dawn till dusk. It's a happy feeling, nostalgia tangled in her heart before she moved back East. Sunshine kissing her cheeks, leaving freckles on her skin, blonde highlights in her hair. If she pretends hard enough, she can hear her friend's laughter as they went down different trails.

In memories she feels tethered, feels secure.

She finds her sway, finds her rhythm with the song and spins and sings.

Spins and spins and spins because that is what the Earth is doing. That's what hers galaxy is doing too, the stars in the this sky, the stars in skies she doesn't even know. Spinning and spinning around a black hole. Caught in the cycle, caught in the path of always going, never, never ever slowing.

Woah, we're halfway there

Woah, livin' on a prayer

Take my hand, we'll make it I swear

Woah, livin' on a prayer

The words are spilling from her lips, pouring from all the power in her lungs as she screams into what she thinks is nothing. She just—

This is a chance to change your destiny, Roxie Wayne had said, his words in jest, but speaking to her very soul.

For can't he see that–that she's a little lost right now, just going through the motions with this thing called living? That normal people don't just go off to the waterfront sing randomly, don't seek adventure, don't–don't do the things she's doing now.

But that doesn't mean she's going to stop.

When the next song comes on the radio, Roxanne laughs and hops onto a raised ledge. Whiskey in one hand and the other out to balance herself, Roxanne belts as if she's on the biggest stage in the world. It doesn't matter that she only knows the bridge, she's giggling and letting the moment soak in. It's going into her bones, her soul, her heart. For destiny can wait a little longer just for her to finish singing a song she doesn't quite remember.

Hey baby, whoa my baby, my pretty baby

Darlin' makes 'em do it now

Hey baby, oh my baby, my pretty baby

Move the way you're doin' now

"What are you doing?!"

And just like that, the voice shouts over her radio, making her jump and try to turn around in time to see who it is. But she's been drinking, been spinning, and now she's all messed up because cold January nights and ice do not recommend smooth soled boots without traction.

So, she wibbles and wobbles from side to side until she's about to topple over, land face first into cement. Gravity is working in the same way that things orbit the sun for she's being pulled to the ground.

"Shit."

Rough footsteps echo as the hit the pavement, a sharp shoulder hitting her sternum, and all that Roxanne knows is that the ground has less gravitational pull when something–or rather someone–gets in the way. Her whiskey splashes instead.

"Roxanne?" the voice pauses, almost like he's collecting himself. "Are you okay? What are you doing out here?"

She grunts for a second until long fingers and thin arms push her back to stand on equal ground. Rubbing the spot on her chest with a free hand, all she can see is black clothes before she lifts her eyes to see…blue chin, blue lips, blue face.

He looks so frozen….

And she jumps back, just to take in the sight of him, her eyes wide and her voice panicking. "Oh my god, are you okay!?"

One black brow raises in question and green eyes look like they're dancing as a smile plays on his mouth. It's then that everything melds together, blue and green and black.

I read your latest op-ed for the school paper and while I don't agree with the subject matter–I was really impressed with the writing.

Dancing, bright lights and…

"Megamind."

(Destiny, it seems, has always wanted them to meet again and again and again and again).

A/N: I have been wanting to write this story for...forever! I hope you guys like it! :)

The events of the movie do still happen, but this is a fun little-what could have really been. AHHH. I swear it's going to be most cute. Until it isn't lol.

The first two stanzas were from Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" and the last one was from Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog".