Roxanne Ritchie was a nerd magnet. The guys who were all brains and no social skills would head for her like she had some sort of homing device. So it didn't seem strange at all that, when Professor Mayhem came to town, a few weeks after Megamind's victory over Titan, the first thing he did was kidnap her.
He slipped into her apartment while she was at work and planted a bottle of compressed knock-out gas under her bed, with a motion sensor to open it when she went into the bedroom and a radio transmitter to notify him. Shortly after he had removed the unconscious reporter, Minion showed up to bring her to the formerly evil lair for dinner. (It wasn't really a date. There hadn't been any dates yet. This was more of an attempt to start on the process of making up for all the inconvenience they had caused her in the past.) The fish recognized the residual smell of the gas, guessed what had happened and decided to rescue Roxanne himself rather than call his boss and interrupt the cooking process.
An hour later, an infuriated Megamind abandoned the dinner (now grown cold) and used the GPS chip in Minion's cell phone to locate him. The blue hero was shocked to discover, in the network of limestone caverns just outside the city, the lair of this previously unknown villain. He went back to his own lair, shed his impressing-Roxanne clothes, and returned outfitted for infiltration: a tight coverall and gloves of the thin protective material he'd invented for all his "action" outfits, boots with thin, tough soles for maximum agility and traction, and the de-gun in a concealing holster on his belt. To the belt he added a pouch with a waterproof bag for carrying Minion, a few small tools and a remote control for the sniffer brainbot he brought along to locate his rescuees. (The brainbot did respond to voice commands, but the remote allowed him to control it silently.) Everything except the de-gun was a plain matte black, and the brainbot showed no lights. Infiltration is all about not being noticed.
He had the brainbot find Minion first. His henchfish was not in his suit but in a deep pool in the stone floor of the cavern, on the lowest level of the lair. Several layers of net wrapped around him, holding him at the surface. The ends of the net went to machines on either side of the pool. Minion was glad to see Megamind but understood the necessity of silence. The blue hero was examining the machines that held the ends of the net, with an eye to finding and disabling any alarms, when the elevator door to his left opened. Megamind leaped for the shadows as the Professor emerged, carrying a bound, gagged and furious Roxanne, followed by a camera bot on wheels. His costume was badly designed, Megamind noticed with some satisfaction, and its tightness revealed that he did not work out. Clearly he was setting up for the live broadcast that would notify the city of his existence, of the hostages he held, and of his demands. He laid her down at the side of the pool.
As soon as her weight was off his arms, Megamind dehydrated him, then ran to her and cut her free. As she stood up, he cut the two ends of the net holding Minion. He was just reaching for the waterproof bag when all the explosives in the place went off. Still holding the net around Minion with one hand, he grabbed Roxanne with the other and dove into the pool. It was deeper than it looked, its bottom an underwater tunnel. The force of the explosion sent them down, then up. They emerged in a little cavern with no floor, just a stone bubble about ten feet in diameter. If it hadn't been for the glowing crests along Minion's back, it would have been pitch dark.
"What happened back there?" gasped Roxanne after her first breath of air.
"I would guess that your captor had his detonator on a dead man switch. When the switch didn't detect any vital signs from him for thirty seconds, it blew the place up. Come and hold Minion while I get this stuff off him." They were both treading water. Roxanne held Minion while Megamind unwrapped the netting, careful not to tangle Minion's fins, crests, lower tendrils or the antenna on top of his head. As soon as he was free, the fish slipped away in the water, then popped up near the center of the cavern.
"Sir, Ms. Ritchie, there's a shallow place here where you can stand," he said. They kicked over to it. Shallow was relative. Megamind and Roxanne were still neck deep in chilly water, but their feet were on a solid bottom and their legs could rest. Roxanne's shoes were gone. Her toes tried to grip the stone. The spot was so small that they had to stand touching each other. "That tunnel we came through?" Minion continued. "That keeps going. I'm going down there and scout around, see if I can find a way out."
"Be careful, Minion," said Megamind.
"I will, sir." And the fish was gone, leaving them in total darkness.
"Careful of what?" Roxanne asked. "Do you think there's some kind of predator down there?"
"Minion can deal with that. His ancestors were fierce predators themselves, but they are a semi-tropical species. It's the cold that presents the real danger to him, and the water will get colder the deeper he goes. Speaking of cold, I think we should conserve our body heat by physical contact, if that won't be too uncomfortable for you." She understood, pressed her body to his, and their arms went around each other in a close hug. The warmth felt good.
"So," she said. "If Minion doesn't find a way out, what are we looking at? Hypothermia, collapse from exhaustion, drowning?"
"I'm afraid you've summed it up pretty well, Roxanne. He is our only hope."
"Then I want you to know something, just because this might be my last chance to say it." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "If you had been good from the beginning, I think I could have loved you."
"Oh, Roxanne, I have loved you from the moment I saw you, although it took me a long time to admit it to myself. Love seems so unvillainous to begin with, and then to love a good person? It would have complicated things horribly. I didn't know whether being loved by you in return was something I desperately wanted or desperately feared."
"You know, that explains a lot."
"What do you mean?"
"The way you were all scary and menacing, but careful and polite at the same time. There was a real come-here-go-away kind of message to it."
"Nicely described, as usual, Roxanne. Listen. I wonder if I might, in the nature of a last request, run my fingers through your hair."
"Sure." It seemed to take him a moment to detach one hand from her back. He was taking off his glove, she realized. Then, on the opposite side of her head from the one pressed against his face, she felt his fingers touch her, lifting the wet locks off her skin. After a minute or so of feeling that, along with his cheek against hers and his heart beating against her chest, it seemed natural to kiss the side of his face. He responded in kind and they worked their way to each other's mouths. They were still at it when the return of visibility signaled that Minion was back.
"Sir, I need some infrared. It's fucking cold down there." Roxanne was startled. She had never heard Minion swear and never expected to.
"Certainly," Megamind replied. "Roxanne, could you open my back zipper down to my belt?" She didn't understand, but she complied. Before she had her hand away from the tab, Minion slipped inside and she felt the front of his piscene face against her side, through Megamind's garment and her dress. It seemed as cold as if he'd come straight from the Arctic. Megamind flinched a little at the touch, but made no move to avoid contact. Now she understood.
"If I leaned against him from the other side," she asked, "would that help him warm up faster or would it just squish him?"
"Let's try it," replied Megamind and broke the hug. She expected Minion to wiggle in between them, but instead Megamind, who appeared as a silhouette with light coming from behind him, turned so that the side where Minion lay was facing her.
She leaned in gently until she felt Minion's voice say "Okay" against her belly. He was like a slab of pure cold, like he shouldn't even be alive, but she could feel his heartbeat. Megamind put his arm around her neck. She embraced him again, resting her hands on his far shoulder. Afterward, all three remembered that as the moment when they became a family: when Roxanne shared her dwindling supply of body heat.
She noticed that, along with the light, the ends of Minion's lower tendrils hung out of the open zipper. "Is there a reason why part of Minion is hanging out in the water?" she asked.
"Those are what he uses to breathe, Roxanne. They have to stay out." She didn't answer, just rested her forehead on his near shoulder. He put the side of his face against the top of her head. They stood like that as Minion spoke.
"There's another short dive like the one we came through," he said, "and then another breathing spot like this one. Then there's a really deep dive, fifteen or twenty feet. You have to go at a slant, and it twists around some and splits four times, so I'll have to lead you. Where it comes up, there's an easy slope out of the water, and some kind of artificial light. The thing is, I know you can do it, boss, but it's a pretty long dive for a human."
"Then here is what we'll do. Minion, you will rise to the surface to give Roxanne light. Roxanne, you will stand on my shoulders and then leap as high as the ceiling will allow. I'll dehydrate you and then decoupage the cube so you won't be rehydrated when you fall back into the water. Then you won't need to breath and I can carry you easily. Sound like a plan?"
"Yeah," said Roxanne.
"Sure, but give me a minute," said Minion. He stayed between them, warming, for another minute or so. Then he said "Okay," and began to wiggle out. Megamind made a stirrup with his hands. Roxanne stepped into it, grasped his shoulders, and hauled herself up. There was a long clumsy moment while she climbed on him, struggling to balance, while water from the hem of her dress dripped on his head.
Drawing the de-gun, Megamind said "One more thing, Roxanne. As you jump, fill your lungs, just in case I miss and we have to try again." Minion was back on the surface, his glow showing her where the ceiling was. She flexed her knees, leaped, inhaled and pulled up her knees to delay by a tiny fraction of a second the moment when her body would hit the water.
Being dehydrated was every bit as unpleasant as she'd heard. There was a sensation of being crushed while at the same time she felt something like insects crawling over every cell of her skin, including some internal skin. Awful. Then it was over and she was in water that was wonderfully, gloriously warm and full of a light that seemed almost too bright after the long time in darkness. She oriented herself to gravity and straightened up until she found herself waist deep in the shallow end of a heated swimming pool in a bare, utilitarian building. She immediately crouched back down; the air felt chilly. Then she turned around and saw Megamind. He was about five feet away in a corner of the pool, with the de-gun in one hand, grinning. He was bare-chested and waist deep in the water. It was the first time she'd ever seen him shirtless. She found that she liked the sight.
"How do you feel, Roxanne?"
"Glad to be alive!" She almost shouted, she was so happy.
"I mean physically."
"Still kind of cold, but other than that I'm fine."
"Well, if you want to warm up, this contoured part is heated." He leaned toward the edge, put the de-gun there, and the way he moved revealed that he was sitting, not standing, in much shallower water. For a moment, the waistband of a pair of black swim trunks was visible above the surface. He lay back, demonstrating that the bottom under him was, indeed, contoured into a reclining couch, with a neck support that held his face above the water while the rest of him stretched out. She climbed up on the contoured part. It radiated warmth. She reclined beside him, still in the clothes in which she'd been kidnapped, and began to really relax. The last time she'd been beside him like this had been on the picnic in the park, when he'd been disguised as Bernard. For the first time since his deception had been revealed, the memory didn't enrage her. The disguise seemed silly now, rather than malicious. He had just wanted to get close and he hadn't known how else to do it. She was about to take his hand when Minion popped up on her other side. She felt a flood of affection at the sight of the fish.
"Hi, Ms. Ritchie."
"Hi, Minion. Call me Roxanne. Hey, is it possible to hug you?"
"Sure, Roxanne." He swam up so that his chin rested on her shoulder. "Put your elbows across my tail, not the fin, but the muscular part." She did as he instructed and squeezed him gently. He giggled. Then Megamind rolled toward them and added his arm to hers. In a gesture that would have shocked her if she hadn't been thinking about it herself, he bent his blue head and kissed his henchfish between the crests. She did the same. Then she discovered that, while her head had been bent forward, Megamind had slipped his other arm in under her neck. She looked up at him. He leaned toward her and they kissed quickly. As soon as they broke off, Minion slipped under their arms and around behind Megamind.
"Listen, boss, I gotta say something private." Megamind leaned back until his ear was just above the water.
Minion whispered.
"Agreed," said Megamind. "Roxanne, Minion suggests that we tell you our names."
"You mean, the names you call each other."
"I mean the names that were given to us by our parents on our home planet, but that's only the beginning. We wish you to learn our language and the stories of our people, which no human has even known, so that you can help to keep them alive. Will you do it?"
"Of course. I'll be honored."
"Then I will start by telling you that our family name is Ilu." He emphasized the second syllable. "I am Ilu Amnang and this fantastic fish is Ilu Menang. His species is called the Opuulu," he stretched out the middle syllable, "which is both singular and plural. Mine is called the Yi#velit," at the # he made a kind of gulping sound in the back of his throat," plural; the singular is Yi#vi."
"Let me see if I can pronounce that." She had to give the gulping sound several tries, but she did manage to say all the names.
"Now try Tseri#uu," said Minion, oops, Menang. "It's the name of our language and, well, everything we are together."
She repeated the name.
"Got it on the first try. Any questions?"
"Tons, but it's getting light." There were skylights above the pool. They had been black when she'd first seen them, but now they were showing the pale blue of dawn.
"Ah. The rest of the world is calling." Amnang looked up. "Do you work today, Roxanne?"
"'Fraid so. I mean, this is the morning after the kidnapping, right?"
"It is. You were only dehydrated a few hours."
Menang spoke. "I'll have the brainbots bring my spare suit and one of the boss' bathrobes, so you can wear it while I get your clothes dry."
"No hurry," she replied. "I don't go on until the six o'clock broadcast. What I could really use is a cell phone." She sighed. "And to stay right here for another couple of hours."