FBI Warning: I do not own Megamind. Yet. I also do not speak Spanish, nor do I know anything about Mexican, Native American, Spanish, Glaupunktian, or really any other culture. Please don't take offense if I inadvertently or advertantly grossly insult your heritage. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to events, real or fictional, are purely coincidental. This disclaimer is copyright me. Void where prohibited.

Roxanne had learned to dread the sound of flamenco guitars, and sighed to herself as the familiar notes cut through the formerly quiet saloon air. Picking up a rag, she began to wipe down the bar from behind the counter, ignoring the figure she knew was already standing in the doors. She didn't need to look up to know how he was moving or when during his self-proclaimed "theme song" he was going to snap his fingers. For though he was certainly the most unconventional person she had ever met, he was also quite notably the most predictable.

He would be wearing the same strange get-up he always did. The flowing black cape with the bright blue lining. The frilly shoulder pads, each adorning a large silver spike that resembled the horn of a bull. That formal black coat with two vertical lines of blue buttons running down the front, each connected by matching tassels. Those black pants that were far too tight and yet somehow managed to show off nothing at all. The black leather cowboy boots, complete with silver spurs. It was a mish-mash of styles from different cultures, signifying an outfit that yearned to be accepted by people everywhere, but fit in nowhere. And it suited him.

But his outfit was not what drew every pair of eyes in the saloon – save Roxanne's – to the man. No, his natural appearance was far more outlandish than any set of clothing could hope to be. That blue skin. His freakishly oversized, bald head. The piercing green eyes, the angular features, the small goatee running down his chin, the long fingers, the slender frame, and the short stature. Over the years many people had whispered about his potential origins. Some said he was an alien. Others claimed he was a demon. Still others insisted that he was perfectly human, but had been born deformed or physically transformed by some strange scientific experiment. There were theories that he was a supernatural servant of a Native American god, or perhaps a member of a strange, unknown tribe from South America. But nobody knew for sure.

Roxanne had never joined in the speculation. She didn't care where he'd come from so much as where he was at the moment. Which she usually hoped was far away from her. But, alas, the man had seemed to take it upon himself to become the bane of her existence.

As he sauntered up to the bar, she doubled her efforts to ignore his presence.

His attempts at Spanish were frequent, but so painfully bad that Roxanne had become convinced he'd never actually met anyone who spoke the language. And yet, he tried. Why he tried, she wasn't sure. But somehow even a simple 'hola' would get mangled with its English translation and come out as a word that was entirely nonsensical in both languages.

"Ollo, Miss Ritchi," he said with a devious smile. His theme song continued on in the background as they talked.

Roxanne sighed, keeping her attention on cleaning the bar. "What do you want, Mentedor?"

"I come bearing gifts!" he said, with an air of grandiosity. With that he lifted a bag marked with a dollar sign and dropped it before him casually. The sound of heavy coins could be heard as the bag hit the bar. "I believe you'll find this to be more than enough to cover the damages from the...unfortunate event last week."

Roxanne looked at the bag for a very brief moment before going back to cleaning. "I told you, I don't want your stolen money."

"Stolen?" exclaimed Mentedor, holding a hand to his chest in an attempt to look offended. "Seh-nor-it-a, you wound me! Really, you mustn't make such assumptions before at least asking how I attained such a vast display of wealth."

Roxanne was in no mood to indulge him. She moved to the back counter and began cleaning shot glasses. After a lengthy silence she heard the soles of his boots suddenly hit the counter and she saw in the mirror on the back wall that he was standing on the bar, gesturing broadly.

"It was my most ingenious heist to date!" he announced. "I held up a bank, but not just any bank, mind you. I pulled one over on First Metro County United!"

Roxanne actually looked over at him and arched an eyebrow at this. "Seriously?"

"Got your attention, have I?" He admired his fingernails with a smug expression on his face.

"That's the most heavily guarded bank in the county. How are you not dead?"

"Precautions, Miss Ritchi. With enough preparation, anything is possible. For me, at least."

Though she had no intention of ever admitting it out loud, Roxanne had to admit that Mentedor was, indeed, quite probably the only person in Metro County that could pull off a heist of such proportions. Despite his general idiocy, he had the knack for inventing amazing creations to assist him in his various crimes.

Given how notoriously boring Metro County and its citizens were, Roxanne couldn't help but find herself at least vaguely intrigued by some of these exploits. And since he wasn't leaving anyway, she figured she might as well casually goad him into giving her some more information. She put on her best unimpressed face and said, "Uh-huh. You hire some drunkards to do the legwork for you?"

"Hardly! Do you honestly think I would stoop to associating with the rabble when my sheer genius is more than enough to lead me to victory?" He pointed a finger at her. "Do not forget, los chick-a, to whom you are speaking! I am not some ordinary, run-of-the-mill bandit. I am El Mentedor!" As he spoke, his theme music swelled and ended at the perfect moment. He stood there a moment, posing proudly before the song "Old McDonald" started playing and threw him off guard. He turned toward the doors and grunted, "Mount!"

"Uh...sorry, señor!" came a voice from outside the saloon. After a moment the song stopped abruptly.

Mentedor looked back to Roxanne, smiled, shrugged, and shook his head. "Horses," he said, as if attempting to commiserate. Roxanne knew he was using the word in the broadest possible sense of the term. She'd seen Mount before and he certainly wasn't what the average person would consider a "horse". He was really more of a talking fish in a small tank atop the neck of a mechanical horse's body. The creature served as Mentedor's companion, as his primary mode of transportation, and as a sort of portable gramophone.

"Now, where was I?" continued Mentedor. "Ah, yes! The heist. It was a plot truly worthy of my brilliantly evil mind. Under the cloak of night, Mount and I made our way to the building. I dispatched my homemade bombs of sleeping gas into the bank, leaving the nighttime security unconscious before me. It was then I went to work replacing all the firearms in the facility with decoys! Harmless metal toys only distinguishable from the genuine article in their lack of function. Couldn't let myself get shot, you know. Terribly unseemly, that. Then, so that I could be sure the heist would go quickly and smoothly the next day, I disabled the locks on the safes. The next morning, we returned to..."

"Wait," interupted Roxanne. "You're telling me you broke into the bank, knocked out everyone there, disabled the locks, and then left without taking anything?"

Mentedor arched an eyebrow at her. "Yes, of course. Why?"

"Why didn't you just clean them out while you were first there?"

Mentedor rolled his eyes. "Because, Miss Ritchi, nobody would have been there to see me do it!"

"Um...yeah," she said. "Wouldn't that be a good thing?"

"You forget that I'm evil. I'm hardly a fan of 'good things'."

"So you just set out to do everything in the dumbest way imaginable?"

"No. I just prefer a bit of flair." He grabbed the edge of his cape and tossed it dramatically around himself.

"Whatever. Look, we both know Wayne is gonna be over here looking for you any minute. If you leave now you might be able to..."

"Oh, let Sheriff Scott do his worst! I'm not afraid of that man."

"Well, could you go not be afraid of him outside? I'm still repairing my roof from the last time you guys duked it out in here." She looked up toward the semi-patched hole in the ceiling.

"A bit of property damage is to be expected when you live a life of crime."

"Granted. But why does it have to be my property?"

"All part of the plan, Miss Ritchi."

"Oh, right. The 'plan'. How could I have forgotten about your mysterious 'plan'. Tell me, does your plan involve slowly putting me out of business?"

"I just brought you more than enough money to..."

"I. Don't. Want it."

"Oh, come now. Who's gonna know?"

Roxanne gestured incredulously toward all the people in the bar.

Mentedor turned to see that they were all staring intently at him. "Oh, right," he said sarcastically and rolled his eyes. He drew his gun and swung it around his finger. "Like they're gonna rat me out." The patrons quickly looked away. He cast a smug glance back at Roxanne. "They know what I'm capable of."

Roxanne knew that this statement couldn't have been further from the truth. For in all the firefights she'd seen between him and the sheriff, not once had he landed a shot that harmed another person. At first she had assumed he just had terrible aim. But upon observing him over time it had become apparent to her that he was missing on purpose. That he had no desire to harm Wayne or any of her patrons. Admittedly, she'd heard speculations of cruelties he might have committed elsewhere, but she didn't believe them for a moment. She believed what she saw. And she knew what he was capable of. Being a pain and nothing more.

"I still don't want it," she said. "It's not mine. It's wrong."

Mentedor sighed, looking a little helpless. "Come on, Roxanne, just..."

"Well, well, well!" came a booming voice from the doorway. Silhouetted against the sunlight was the large frame of Wayne Scott, sheriff of Metro County. He strutted into the saloon and looked straight at Mentedor. "First Metro County United, eh, Mentedor? Setting your sights pretty high I see."

Mentedor smiled down from his perch on the bar. "Oh, I think you'll find evil can climb to heights that goodness could never hope to reach!"

"No mountain is too tall if you bear the hiking equipment of virtue."

"But what is to stop you from tumbling down the other side into the canyon of failure?"

"Justice, my friend. The rule of the law."

"Rules are meant to be broken!"

"No, horses are meant to be broken. And I'm about to tame you."

"Evil can never be tamed! You cannot silence villainy!"

"Well, I'll just have to teach you that silence is golden!"

"Fool's gold, maybe. And you're the fool!"

"Uh, ladies?" interrupted Roxanne. "Could we not do this today?"

"Don't worry about me, Roxanne," said Wayne, flashing her a smile. "I can handle him."

"Not worried about you. Worried about my bar."

A blast of concentrated energy fired right by Wayne's head, hitting the wall behind him and sending splinters flying. The patrons of the bar began fleeing or ducking for cover. Mentedor held his gun with an evil smile. Roxanne had never figured out exactly what it was that weapon fired, but it certainly wasn't conventional bullets.

"If you truely believe you can best me," said Mentedor, "you're more than welcome to try,"

"Oh, I'll do more than try!" said Wayne. With that he pulled out his two conventional guns and began firing at his opponent.

Mentedor quickly hopped down in front of the counter as the bullets hit the mirror behind the bar, shattering it. He tumbled gracefully on the floor and the two men went about firing and dodging as the rest of the bar was descended into blind panic.

Roxanne groaned, throwing his arms up in exasperation.

When she'd first met Wayne, she'd actually found him charming. She was never interested in him romantically – which is just as well, as it was common knowledge that he himself had no interest in the fairer sex – but she'd found something about his heroism very admirable. All that changed after the first few times her saloon was trashed. At least Mentedor claimed himself to be a villain when he destroyed her property. Wayne, on the other hand, was so intent on capturing Mentedor it seemed he hardly noticed the damage he caused.

Roxanne watched in familiar frustration as tabled were smashed, windows were shot out, and the hole in the ceiling was blasted open again as the two men continued their battle.

And then something different happened. One of Mentedor's blasts directly hit a wooden pillar that reached from the floor to the roof. Whether that pillar was particularly integral to the structural integrity of the building or whether the saloon had finally just given up after its years of abuse, Roxanne didn't know. But half of the building began collapsing onto itself. And as the patrons screamed and ran out the doors, all Roxanne could do was stand there and stare. Mentedor dodged the falling balcony as two of the walls and a good portion of the ceiling descended into the main area of the building, taking about a third of the saloon's total interior with it.

Roxanne continued to stand there, stunned. Seeing the saloon trashed was never a pretty sight. But this was on a different level entirely. This couldn't be fixed by buying some new tables and patching up the walls. Half the building would need to be rebuilt before her patrons could return.

If they were ever foolish enough to return.

Her eyes wandered from the destruction over to Mentedor who was looking at her with an expression she wasn't used to seeing on him. One of sincere regret.

Wayne strode over to Mentedor and picked him up by the back of his cape. "Justice has been served!" said the sheriff with a wide grin. "And you're the main course!"

Mentedor didn't bother struggling. He was too busy looking away from Roxanne guiltily.

"Time to go downtown!" Wayne continued. With that he turned and, Mentedor in hand, began walking out of the saloon.

Roxanne just kept staring at what was left of her bar, dumbstruck. Then her eyes made their way to the bag of money that still rested on the counter. She considered for a moment, then reached her hand out toward it. But before she could touch it, a larger hand came in and snatched it up. "Oh, and I'll return this to its rightful owners at the bank," said Wayne, flinging it over his shoulders with a smile. He nodded at Roxanne. "Ma'am." And then he left.

Roxanne stood alone in the remnants of her saloon as a few extra pieces of debris dropped from the ceiling into the rubble on the floor. This sucked.

Preview: In the next exciting chapter of The Successful Failures of El Mentedor: Tensions rise when Mentedor shows up unexpectantly in Roxanne's bedroom. What will happen? Will they talk? Will they quarrel? WILL THEY HAVE SEX? Tune in to find out!