The first thing he'd done that morning was sit straight up in bed, the blankets tumbling down to his hips, an exclamation of victory hanging just on the tip of his tongue. He was sleepy and slightly disoriented, and his brain was still clicking together the thoughts that had reached their 'eureka' moment in his sleep, but as the warmth of the room and the cold, grey light slipping in through the windows struck him, he remembered himself. Carefully swallowing back his triumphant cry, he looked beside himself. Roxanne was curled up there, her short hair sticking every which-way on her pillow, one of her arms shoved underneath her head. Slowly, he let out a breath. She was still asleep. Good. He always felt badly when he woke her up, especially since he was beginning to realize that the average human couldn't operate on just four hours of rest and a couple of sugar rushes.
But the idea was still demanding that he pay attention to it, sending a surge of excitement through him. So, rather than lying back down, he tip-toed carefully out of bed, crossed the room, and headed for the bathroom. One of the brain bots whirred at him curiously from the corner beside the closet, but he shushed it and hurried through his morning ablutions. When he crept back out again Roxanne had rolled over to the middle of the bed and was hogging all of the blankets around herself. Warmth spread through his chest like the tenacious threads of a spider web, and he moved over to her, looking at her for a solid moment before he leaned down and pressed a kiss onto her cheek.
Sometimes, he still had trouble believing it all.
Roxanne sighed and murmured something unintelligible, and he left her to her rest, dressing quickly and finding Minion already awake in the kitchen. Skipping breakfast, they left in a hurry – it was still novel, having to drive to his lair, rather than simply sleeping around all of his projects – and Minion expressed an obliging interest in their work and what little he could properly convey about his idea. He was mentally sketching out plans as they drove, and hurried into the false observatory as quickly as he could once they finally arrived. The lair's brain bots all perked up and shadowed him, familiar enough with his moods that they knew better than to swarm him when he was in such a determined mood. The computer systems sprang to life as Minion gave them his voice code. The air tasted familiarly of metal shavings and chemicals and the sparking-tang of energy currents. It's going to be a good day, he thought, humming Bad to the Bone under his breath and calling up the schematics for his water filter plans.
It was funny. When he'd first started his reform, he'd thought that inventing 'useful' things would be considerably more boring than inventing his tools of mayhem. And, on some level, they were certainly less flashy (particularly since the mayor had requested that he stop installing laser-lights and decorative spikes onto the ones for city use) but they were also much more challenging. Maybe it was just because he'd been doing the villain thing for so long that he'd exhausted a lot of his ideas. His new job required him to stretch his brain in completely different directions, which was pretty much the opposite of boring.
"Minion, get the three-dimensional map online," he requested, absently straightening one of his gloves and frowning thoughtfully at the computer screen.
"Will do, sir," Minion cheerfully agreed.
Yes, Megamind thought to himself. Yes, that could work. All I'd need to do is –
'Back in Black' started blaring from the overhead sound system, loud and urgent. Blinking in surprise, he looked up, and then switched the screen he was using to the various feeds coming in from the brain bots that were patrolling the city. He'd programmed them to sound off different alarms when something strange was going on in the city. Of course, being floating robotic brains, they sometimes had very peculiar ideas of what constituted 'strange' (Bot No.451 still kept sounding off with 'Come on Feel the Noise' whenever it caught someone putting ketchup on a hotdog) but so far the system had been incredibly handy. He'd started out with regular alarms, and then switched to music because regular alarms sounded awful. Like someone had taken the old shool bell and run it through a wood-chipper.
"Where's the alarm coming from?" he asked Minion.
"Hold on, sir, I'm checking," Minion replied. "There's some interference with our connection today."
Megamind sighed. "Make a note for the to-do list – 'Improve City's Communication Lines'. Maybe we'll actually be able to get that done now that no one will stop us halfway," he suggested, scanning the various feeds by eye and looking to see if there were any fireballs or screaming crowds or masked individuals toting machine guns within his immediate line of sight. The surveillance around City Hall immediately caught his eye. He saw spandex and flying and with an audible sigh turned away from the screen, not even bothering to take particular note of the details. Heroism always seemed to be required at the most inopportune times. Just last week he'd been right in the middle of… well, the bottom line was that neither he nor Roxanne had been terribly pleased with the sudden call to arms.
"Alright, let's head out. This'll have to wait," he decided, feeling disappointment at the interruption to his work, but also a certain tremulous touch of excitement at going out to do his purpose for another day. "Get out the Super Incredibly Awesome Not-Doom Suit, Minion. Brain bots! Daddy needs his battle outfit and the Black Mamba Mark Two!" He clapped, and the lair sprang to life as he moved to suit up and Minion got their best exo-suit ready for action. Two brain bots opened the display case for his cape (he still preferred wearing black when it wasn't a special occasion, and thankfully no one had objected to that) and another handful zipped over to open up the case containing his leather combat clothes. At the back of the lair one of the large, black exo-suits whirred to life, its blue lights casting a harsh glow over everything.
"Shall I open the hatch, sir?" Minion asked, finishing the activation sequence and then moving to pull on his own set of hover boots.
"Yes! And let's get the system raring to go around City Hall," he agreed, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "It's time for a show."
Dark clouds billowed up from the vents around the City Hall building, obscuring the view to onlookers and ominously lining the horizon. The brain bots swarmed, their domed heads throwing sparks into the shadows, making the entire morass look like a concentrated storm that had descended between buildings. The sound system kicked on with a low boom. Megamind grinned, cutting the thrusters on his exo-suit and landing just in front of the building's steps, Minion close behind. He looked, but couldn't spy his opponent straight away.
"Who dares challenge Megamind, Defender of Metrocity?" he bellowed into the microphone in front of him, planting his hands upon his hips and striking a suitably intimidating…ly heroic pose. The limbs of the exo-suit, of course, mirrored the gesture. In the distance he could just hear the sirens of emergency vehicles coming to cordon off the scene.
For a moment there was no response. "Well?" he tried. Another minute ticked by, and he felt a twinge of exasperation. "Oh, c'mon! I know you're out there. There are only two kinds of people who go around dressing like figure skaters and flying under their own power, so you're either a villain or a-"
Thwoom.
Megamind let out a completely dignified and in no way womanly shriek of surprise as something smashed into the front of his exo-suit, striking with enough force to nearly topple it over. The glass viewer cracked straight down the middle. He spied a brief flash of long hair and bare skin before it was gone again, vanishing into the clouds he had generated. Eyes wide, he immediately attempted to regain control of his systems, almost putting his foot through a nearby fountain and swinging one extended arm carefully through the air. "Minion! Did you see her? Or possibly an extremely effeminate him?" he demanded.
No reply.
"Minion?" he tried again, looking to where his friend had touched ground – but there was no sign of him. Dread began to climb in his throat. Reaching out, he quickly activated the suit's emergency shield, turned on the thrusters again, and headed up to gain a bit of altitude to see things better by (maybe the smoke had actually been a bad idea for once). Hopefully he'd be able spy either Minion or their enemy. His muscles were incredibly tense as he went through the motions, a few beads of sweat starting to form at his temples. That had been a hard hit. Like, serious-super-powers hard. He wracked his brain for recent events news, trying to think if there'd been any mention of someone causing havoc on such a level in any of the nearby cities. But he couldn't think of anything.
The brain bots started buzzing and sparking. Wham. The suit was struck again. Anticipating it a little better that time, Megamind reached out and tried to capture his assailant as she flew smack-dab into him. He curled into the blow, closing one hand around the strong, almost-definitely-female form, and flinched as there was a tearing groan of metal and wires. The color drained from his face. Whoever he'd caught was ripping through the exo-suit, curling back the fingers of the hand and pounding rigidly against his shield. Blue sparks danced across his view as the shield strained under the pressure. An instant later the brain bots closed in, reacting to his obvious distress. Their red-hot lasers cut through the black clouds and struck the figure in his grasp cleanly, but just as he thought he heard a somewhat gratifying cry of pain there was a burst of white light, and half of their number exploded.
What! he thought, horrified. As the light cleared little bits of metal and wires rained down to the ground below. The bright bloom hadn't just overloaded the bots or damaged them. It had blown them into dust. There won't be enough left of them to repair…
Another explosion took out a second cluster of bots, and the tip of a green cape swirled past the periphery of his vision. With a final shrieking groan the hand on his exo-suit snapped off, falling a ways before vanishing in the same disturbing, bright white light that had taken out his brain bots. A moment later he found himself thrown back by another determined strike to his shield. The generator for it only really covered the main carriage of the suit – he'd found that he could only make them so big – and it seemed that his enemy (or enemies, as the case was) had figured that out, because the next hit was aimed at its left knee. "Minion!" he tried over the communication channel again. Terrifying silence was the only response he got. He rocked back and forth inside the cockpit of the suit as the blows came rapid-fire then, brain bots exploding all around him, his shield flickering and beginning to emit a high-pitched whine that probably wasn't a good sign.
In fact he was kind of thinking that it might explode soon. The bigger ones were always just a little unstable.
The high-pitched whine got even more high-pitched and whinier. There was nothing for it, he realized, as the exo-suit's leg finally snapped off and was subsequently disintegrated. He was going to have to use the emergency escape, and then… somehow do something else. But survival was paramount. His fist slammed the red 'eject' button just as another blow sent him rocketing backwards, thrusters shrieking and a clattering, shearing sort of sound informing him that the emergency failsafe had just… well, failed.
"Oh, curses," he breathed. His life went flashing behind his eyes – the stupid mistakes, the happy accidents, the few glorious triumphs. His inventions. Minion.
Roxanne.
The shield went up in a flurry of blue sparks, the whine finally reaching its peak and shattering like a champagne flute in front of an opera singer. He reflexively folded his arms over his head and curled into his seat, trying to mitigate the damage somewhat as light filled up his vision…
Wait. That wasn't explode-y electrical light. He blinked, his mouth going completely dry as he realized that he'd been surrounded in a kind-of-glowing sphere of white energy, the bubble hovering around him, suspending his person, his seat, and a small portion of the exo-suit's cockpit up over City Hall. A caped figure in brown and green was hovering several feet in front of him. His hands were shining with the same light that had blown up the brain bots. The same white light that was currently keeping him from dropping to his death. One palm was extended out in his direction.
"Surrender," the figure said. "You're finished."
Megamind blinked.
"Uh… alright. Yes. That would… seem to be the thing to do. At this point," he agreed, freezing up and feeling an odd combination of relief and discomfort. Then he blinked again. In addition to the whole 'glowing hands' thing, the man in the air was wearing a strange, stylized sort of army helmet. It would have just been one of those stupid little details that a lot of hackneyed villain-types employed in their costuming (like clown make-up – what was with that?) except that he found himself recognizing the look of it. It was from one of Roxanne's old interviews, back when Metrocity had first unofficially appointed her as chief purveyor of all news pertaining to the epic struggle between good and evil. "Wait. Wait! You're Commander Courage!" he realized, stunned. "Wait! There's been some sort of misunderstanding! I'm not evil anymore!" Lifting his hands, he gestured pointedly towards himself and tried to offer an earnest expression of non-villainy. He even tossed in a encouraging nod for good measure.
The commander's brows furrowed. But before Megamind could get any further, a handful of the remaining brain bots swarmed onto the flying figure's back, making loud popping and buzzing sounds of anger.
"Courage!" a female voice shouted in anger. The bots ripped and tore at him with their clawed arms, forcing his attention away. The mostly-transparent sphere around Megamind flickered and went out, but before he could even manage a real shout of fear, a familiar, gorilla-esque arm reached through the air and caught him. Minion held him at his side, hovering at mid-level with the swirling smoke.
"Oh, thank evil heaven," he sighed, forgetting himself in the moment. "Minion. I was afraid that something had…" he trailed off as he looked up. Minion was staring at him, but his expression was bizarrely blank and detached, his eyes glassy and his jaw slack. "Minion?"
The arm holding him was extended sharply outwards, then, and Megamind found himself face-to-face with the scantily clad woman who had struck the first blow against him. A shock of denial and betrayal and confusion swept through him as he realized that his life-long friend was apparently handing him over to one of their attackers, before the woman scowled, and drew one fist back.
"Bid thy consciousness farewell, murderer, for 'tis bound to escape thee," she said.
"Wha-?" he managed. Then she hit him square on the head, and the world went all sorts of fuzzy shades of black.
"But I didn't really kill him!" he protested for what felt like the millionth time. "Just ask Roxanne Ritchi, alright? She knows. She'll tell you." He thought for a moment. "At least, I'm reasonably certain that she's willing to sell him up the river for me. I mean they used to be friends, but she was pretty mad that he faked his death and she doesn't seem to think that his music is good enough to make up for the whole 'lying and abandonment' thing. I don't know, I thought it was alright. A little mellow for my own tastes of course. Still, what can you expect from a-"
The burly man with bad personal hygiene, who'd been guiding him down the ramp towards the space shuttle, stopped and extended one bladed arm to his chin. "Shut up," he instructed.
Megamind closed his mouth with a barely audible pop, his nerves jangling with a fear that he wished desperately could turn into something else for just a little while. Something that wasn't frantic over the lack of knowledge of what had happened to Minion. Something that wasn't worried sick about how Roxanne was taking all of this, and what she must have thought when the freaking Heroes Collective had turned up to arrest him. Something that wasn't the gnawing anxiety that maybe a prison situated in orbit would be significantly harder to escape from than one he'd grown up in. He swallowed hard, and nearly tripped over his own feet as his escort turned his hand back into an actual hand and gave him one sharp, 'encouraging' shove. The shackles they'd put around his arms and wrists twisted painfully.
"Are you sure you d-"
The hand turned back into a blade.
He decided that discretion would probably be a better idea than trying to make a case for himself. Just for the time being. After all, even if the prison was in space, so what? He was a master escape artist. Getting back out again would probably be a walk in the park.
One-hundred and twenty-eight hours and thirty-three minutes. That was how long he'd been trapped in the horrible confines of his darkened cell. Alone. Letting out a breath, Megamind sat up, blinking into the shadows and resting a hand against the hard frame of his mattress. His joints popped and protested at the movement. Even through the thick walls around him he could hear the hum of the prison's power generators, the whirr of the mechanisms which kept the cell doors electrified, and the distant shriek of a voice screaming somewhere in incoherent rage.
The jumpsuit they'd given him wasn't orange. It was, instead, a dark sort-of-purple color, which somehow did even less for his complexion, and itched almost constantly against his wrists.
Thirty-four minutes. Thirty-five. Thirty-six. His own breath echoed in his skull. Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight. Right on cue, the station's lights blinked on, bright and just slightly off-yellow. There was a faint hum as the environmental filters kicked into high gear, and some of the distant screaming finally died down. With the lights on he got a good, clear view of the whole lot of nothing which comprised the contents of his cell. It was a stark place, bereft of any hint of color on the walls, floor, or ceiling, with Spartan off-grey furnishings that left no corner of the room to hide in, and few places that could disguise any sort of contraband. If the inmates could even get contraband in outer space. There were no screens or windows anywhere to be seen. Nothing to look out of or into, nothing to read or write with, not even a hint of decoration to distract himself by. Nothing comfortable or warm or familiar. No brain bots. No Minion. No Roxanne.
It was hell. A slow, boring hell, and he was sure that if he didn't find something to do with himself soon then he was going to jump out of his own skin and float away. His mind was rioting against its inactivity, his body wracked with energy that had no outlet. His straights were so dire that he'd been reduced to counting minutes, feeling his own life tick by in the cavernous swell of the space prison, constantly aware of the silence even when he tried desperately to dredge up some mental distraction. At first he'd tried going through the idea he'd been working on before his arrest. But something about the cell, the space around him, made focusing on that incredibly difficult. It was like the more complex functions of his mind had been covered in non-stick spray, and whenever he reached for those thoughts he just found himself sliding off. He was sure that the effect had been manufactured somehow. There was probably some kind of device in the walls or chemical in the air, or, well, maybe they'd even implanted something in his brain (gah) in order to keep him from devising his usual schemes.
One-hundred and twenty-nine hours and nine minutes. The low smacking sound of footsteps on the space stations' floor began to sound off at the end of the hallway. Scowling, Megamind stood up, brushing himself off and positioning himself so that he was a little bit closer to the electrified entryway of his cell. The door – in fact, the entire wall around it, too – was completely transparent, but gave him only a limited view of the empty hallway and the blank wall on the other side of it. A letter '7' was etched onto the top of the probably-not-glass in a sharp off-white. His fingers still stung from his few attempts at bypassing it.
The footsteps were odd. They were soft and slapped just a little, like bare feet. Over the course of his stay Megamind had noticed that various heroes took shifts manning his orbital cage. The schedule seemed fairly random. One day it had been that hard-hearted Amazonian woman who'd punched him out who was prowling around. Then it had been the bot-slaying weirdo with the glowing hands for about thirteen hours, before switching to the chain-smoker with the bad personality for the next eleven. He wasn't sure if they planned it that way so that their respective villains wouldn't be able to take advantage of their absences (which seemed likely) or if the job just went to whoever had time for it (also quite possible). He'd never known Metroman to take any extended leaves from the city – though, given how fast he moved, he could probably come and go however he pleased from any number of places.
The steps drew closer. Megamind schooled his features into an expression of disdainful superiority, leaning against one of the walls of his cell and stretching his neck out as high as it would go.
The hero who came into view was considerably more naked than most. Which wasn't to say that he was entirely without clothes, he at least had on a… tiny white speedo. That looked suspiciously like underwear. But that was about it, which would explain the odd sound of his footsteps. Unlike most people, the current prison guard wasn't wearing any shoes, for some reason. On his own he was the sort of sight that a person would stare at even if they weren't confined to a cell full of the most boring non-things imaginable, if only in a 'can't stop gawking at the car-crash' sort of a way, but Megamind only spared him a glance before his eyes moved straight to the figure trailing behind him. His shoulders stiffened and his jaw went slack, pretention failing in the face of shock.
"Minion!" he exclaimed. Somehow or another the hair had been removed from his suit, to be replaced with shiny green-blue paint, but it was still undeniably him. No other fish in existence looked like that. Or, you know, how had the brain capacity to operate a robotic body.
Minion didn't react to him at all. But Speedo Man paused briefly in his steps, glancing in his direction. He raised an eyebrow at Megamind.
"You actually named it Minion?" he asked disdainfully.
Taking in the comment and every offensive nuance present therein, Megamind opted to ignore it in favor of trying to get Minion's attention again. There was a time and a place for banter. "Minion, what are you doing? What's going on?"
"He won't answer you," Speedo Man sniffed.
Looking between the two of them, a realization began to form in his mind. Granted, as he got the idea, it seemed a little bit obvious, but the prison was making him extremely out-of-sorts. "You!" he snapped, anger boiling in his gut, fists clenching tightly. "What have you done to him? You're… you're mind-controlling him somehow, aren't you?" The pieces all fit. The glazed look, the atypical behavior, the lack of reactions.
A shrug was his answer. "Fish are fish," Speedo Man replied. "Apparently even alien fish. I have some slight talent for getting them to obey me. But don't worry," he smirked. "Unlike you, I never task my servants to the purposes of evil."
His scowl turned thunderous. Minion had been under mind control once before. That particular incident had been years ago, and had involved a misfiring with the experimental Mind Ray they'd been working on. Even though Megamind had basically just had him sit down quietly until it wore off (mind-controlled people were appallingly stupid, and therefore also sort of useless) Minion had found the whole ordeal extremely unsettling. It was one of the few times they'd just sort of quietly shelved one of his evil plans and moved on, rather than trying to implement it. They hadn't ever talked too much about it, but he knew enough to know that Minion would find his current situation extremely objectionable, and not just for the obvious reasons. His throat went dry and he glowered through the transparent door of his cell.
"I don't care what's in your itinerary. Let him go," he said.
"Well now, let me think about that," Speedo Man replied, folding his arms and cocking his head to one side. "Hmm. Obey the whims of an imprisoned hero-killer and set his loyal servant free to do as he pleases, or… not. You make a compelling argument, Landwalker." Still smirking, he turned, and started walking back down the corridor. Minion followed him. Megamind moved even closer to the door of his cell, trying to angle himself so that he could keep them in his line of sight for as long as possible.
"Put him in a cell if you have to! Or just take his suit away!" he tried suggesting, shifting until he could almost feel the electrical current by his ear. "I thought you were supposed to be one of the good guys! Good guys do not do this sort of thing, believe me, I have extensive experience involving the intricate differences between various categories of villains and heroes! Three completely different types, even!" No response. "Minion! Minion! Let him go! Metroman isn't dead, you can't punish us for killing him when he isn't dead!" He lost sight of the pair, and reflexively leaned forward to try and prevent that. A shock ran through his ear. He fell back, cursing, lifting one hand to cover it and then – in a fit of atypical temper – reaching out and punching one hand against the transparent barrier in front of him. The charge lanced across his knuckles and up through his wrist before he yanked himself back. Then the pain hit, and he pulled his arm closer to himself, sliding down against the wall beside him as his burnt skin protested its mistreatment and promised blisters in the near future. Each breath he sucked in seemed to echo in his skull.
He had to get out. He had to save Minion. He had to go home. It had only been a few days (one-hundred and twenty-nine hours and seventeen minutes) but he knew they wouldn't be able to last long as they were.
It was just… he couldn't figure out how to actually do it. Presumably there was a shuttle craft which delivered the various heroes to and from the station in order to guard them. High-jacking that would probably be the only way to get back to Earth. With the seemingly random shift changes, however, and the fact that the only things they let him handle were made out of various types of paper, orchestrating such an escape was easier said than done. By necessity he'd have to take out at least two heroes. On his own. Functioning at a fraction of his brain capacity, with no tools or inventions and their, you know, super-powers to contend with. And that wasn't even taking into account the fact that he hadn't managed to find a way to bypass his individual cell door yet.
The feeling of self-loathing and failure working its way through his ribcage threatened to drag him down to the lowest he'd ever been.
"Please don't scream," a soft voice said.
Megamind nearly jumped out of his skin. If there was one surefire way to get a person to scream (and he'd done extensive research on the subject) it was sneaking up on them and saying that. Whipping around, he stared towards the back of his cell – where there definitely hadn't been anyone about three seconds ago – and obligingly let out a surprised yelp of masculine indignation.
There was someone standing there. Right there. Like he'd just teleported in, although he probably hadn't, because Megamind had been working on teleportation since he was thirteen and he was pretty sure he'd have heard about it if another super villain or hero or whoever had cracked that code. Secret passage, then, maybe? He swallowed, staring wide-eyed at the man who was just sort of standing there. At least the individual himself wasn't exactly terror-inspiring. He was short, and bald (presumably by choice, because he looked human enough) with dark eyebrows and a pair of thick framed glasses resting in front of overly large brown eyes. For a second Megamind thought that he was wearing the purple jumpsuit of the prison's inmates. But then he realized that the shade was off, and that the outfit was actually a tight, one-piece spandex suit, with a little brain-shaped sigil etched in red on the front and some kind of built-in backpack across the shoulders.
The strange young man raised his hands, looking pensive. "No, no, it's alright," he insisted.
"Where did you come from?" Megamind asked, looking around the walls of his cell. "Is there a secret entrance somewhere? Oh please tell me there's a secret entrance somewhere, because that would actually be really useful…"
His visitor shrugged rather sheepishly. "There isn't. I'm sorry," he replied. "This place was sort of designed to be inescapable. Putting in secret exits and entrances would have been counter-productive. Like windows," he added, gesturing vaguely towards the blank walls. "Issues of aesthetics and comfort were abandoned for security purposes."
"…Well that sucks," Megamind muttered to himself. There was an awkward pause. "So… um… that just leaves me with teleportation. Or hallucination. Or you could be lying, which, I mean, I don't know you, so there's that." He coughed, darting an awkward glance sideways and anxiously tapping the tips of his fingers together. What exactly did one do when an utter stranger suddenly appeared in their supposedly inescapable prison cell?
Slowly, the other man nodded in understanding. Then he moved back a step, reached out, and extended his arm clear through the wall behind him. He didn't even so much as flinch as the limb disappeared right up to his elbow. Megamind did, though, his jaw dropping, and his eyes going huge. "You can phase through solid objects!" he realized. There were incredible implications to that. It would have to be kind of the opposite principal of the one his new shield system ran on, probably, where… where… if…
His thoughts stuttered and skidded. He raised his hands to either side of his skull and let out an involuntary groan of frustration.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you," his unexpected visitor said, immediately returning his arm to his side. "Maybe I should go…"
"No!" Megamind snapped, dropping his hands and stepping forward, as if he could somehow stop him. "No, don't leave. Er, unless you really are a hallucination. Then it would probably be better for the both of us if you went ahead and did that now. No offence." He wasn't quite far-gone enough to start wishing for dementia as a source of entertainment, he didn't think.
Almost. But not quite.
Mister Moves-Through-Walls let out a huffing laugh, and absently ran one hand over the dome of his skull. "I'm not a hallucination," he promised. Then he shifted, adopting a suspiciously hero-ish stance and nodding. "My name's Jansen. I am – or… was, really – the Collective's tech expert." Reaching out, he made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the cell around them. "I was the primary engineer for this station."
Megamind's jaw dropped. He eyes narrowed, and he shook his head, keeping a cautious distance between the two of them. "…Okay…" he said. "You're one of the superheroes."
Jansen nodded. "Yes."
"And you designed the space prison?"
He shrugged. "Not alone. I had some help from several international experts in the field, and a few heroes with unique talents."
"And you can move through walls?"
"Uh… technically, yes."
Megamind noted the hesitation in that answer, but one more part of the obvious puzzle required urgent explanation. "And your name is Jansen?" he demanded. "Seriously? Jansen. Jansen? That's like… that's ridiculous. It isn't even a superhero name. That's a name-name." His expression pulled into one of utter distaste. Jansen blinked, his eyebrows arching up. His mouth opened and closed a few times before he cleared his throat and summoned up a response.
"I… I suppose. Um. I've never really introduced myself by my superhero name before," he admitted. "I don't think you'd know it. Most of the newspapers used to just call me Techmaster."
He didn't recognize it, but then, he'd stopped paying attention to conflicts outside of Metrocity around about the time he realized that A: Metroman was much more powerful than the other heroes, and B: he was way smarter than the other criminal masterminds. "Oh. Alright then," Megamind agreed. "So now that that's been cleared up…"
Awkward silence stretched between them.
Jansen straightened his glasses.
Megamind waited.
Eventually, when it seemed that no further commentary would be forthcoming, he threw his hands into the air. "Presumably you used your walking-through-walls ability for a reason, right?" he asked.
Jansen started, then looked faintly embarrassed and nodded rather quickly. "Yes, of course," he agreed. "I'm sorry. I overheard your, um, your discussion with Mermanus. You were saying something about Metroman not being dead, and I…" he trailed off briefly, fidgeting with his glasses again. "I was curious. You don't sound like you're lying. Maybe I can help you."
His mood lifted a little bit, and Megamind felt some of the tension ease from his frame. He swallowed, folding his arms across his chest. "I'm not," he replied, and then took a breath, about to elaborate – it was about time someone started listening to him – when he heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor again. Jansen apparently heard them too, by the way his attention jerked towards the entrance of the cell. Following his gaze, he noted that Speedo Man hadn't yet come into view, and then turned back.
Jansen was gone.
The Amazonian woman in the red skirt and the metal bikini gave him a dark look as she stood in front of the door to his cell. She was carrying a plate of the usual, mind-numbingly bland food that he'd been subsisting off of since his arrival. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how he wanted to look at it – she was carrying it at chest-height, which meant that the first thing he did when she turned up was zero-in on her considerable cleavage. He wasn't quite sure what to do with that. On the one hand, it wasn't like the view was exactly bad. On the other hand, he was sort of sketchy on where 'ogling' (incidental or otherwise) to stood on the scale of Acceptable Boyfriend Behavior. Television and his prison dads had all been notably divergent on the subject. It wasn't as if he would ever consider actually doing anything with the woman, though. His current situation aside, she was kind of terrifying and inexplicably spoke in Ye Olde English and wasn't Roxanne, which were all considerable deterrents. But the train of thought would inevitably lead him to wondering what Roxanne was doing while he was gone, and how long it would be before she started thinking of moving on, and if she'd wait for him and whether or not he'd escape only to find some new guy that he would have to dehydrate because, hey, it wasn't like she was lacking for admirers…
"Hands behind thy head, fiend," the woman instructed him.
Sighing, Megamind did as he was told. He cocked one eyebrow into a mocking expression just for the sake of it. The electrical current in the door died down, and part of the transparent barrier slid back – just enough for his jailer to push his cardboard tray of food inside. It made a light slapping sound as it hit the ground, but the bowl stayed upright, and its contents were thick enough that they didn't splash or spill.
Which was really great.
"So listen," Megamind said as the opening snapped shut, and the electrical current came roaring back to life. "I'm just curious. Who built this place? I mean, how did you guys come up with this idea?" he asked carefully. He did his utmost to look harmless and unassuming. For the past few days he'd been on behavior that was so good, the Warden back home would have suspected him of trading places with some cloned look-alike. That had to earn him some points. Didn't it?
The woman gave him an arch look. "To give advantage freely to one who hath killed my kinsman would be folly. I shall not answer thy queries, o master of constructs wicked and dire. Spare thy breath," she replied, before turning promptly on her heel and stalking away.
"Was that a 'no'?" he called after her.
"T'was," she said simply back, not even pausing between steps.
When she was gone, he let his shoulders slump again, and wandered listlessly towards the tray. Plucking it up, he sat with it on his cot, and absently stabbed at the gloop with his cardboard spoon. A few minutes later, when he happened to glance up and saw Jansen standing across from him, he managed not to do much more than stare.
But he stared really hard.
"…I was starting to think you were a hallucination," he admitted. The man looked much the same as he had when he'd first appeared and then vanished again several days ago (he'd lost track of his minutes in all of the confusion). Megamind had been on the verge of concluding that he was sort of losing his mind. Maybe as a side-effect from whatever was stopping him from focusing properly. Maybe just in general.
Jansen at least had the decency to look sheepish. "I'm sorry," he said. "Doing this takes a lot out of me. If I'm not paying enough attention, I'll run out of energy and, uh, vanish."
Frowning, Megamind tapped his spoon against the side of his bowl for a moment, and then pushed the whole tray away. He wasn't really in the mood to eat. "What are you doing, anyway?" he asked. "Are you using some sort of device?" He had a theory that it had something to do with the built-in backpack on the other man's shoulders, but didn't want to admit as much. It would make him look clever if he was right, but all factors considered, he was hesitant to draw too much attention to his mental capabilities. Their depletion was incredibly unsettling. Not to mention frustrating.
Jansen blinked hugely behind his glasses. "Oh. No," he replied. "This is a, um, a gift of mine, I guess you could say. Telepathic projection." He ducked his head, as though telepathy was somehow embarrassing, and not, say, really, really cool. "I'm not actually here, in this room with you. It just seems like it."
Megamind stared at him again, as though he could somehow see the evidence for such an ability on Jansen's person. Which he couldn't. So instead he just blurted the first thing that occurred to him. "You aren't reading my mind, are you?" he asked.
"No!" Jansen immediately declared, waving his hands in a frantic gesture which implied that the question had come up before. "No, no, no, of course not! That would be… incredibly rude. Besides, I'm not very good at that part of it," he admitted. "I'm much better at this – projecting consciousness." A smile lit up his face. "It's come in handy a time or two, let me tell you!"
In spite of himself, Megamind felt a twist of jealousy in his gut. He frowned. His own lack of any sort of psychic powers had always been vaguely disappointing to him. After all, he had a huge, incredibly amazing brain that (normally) could think of all sorts of amazing ideas and remember things much more clearly than the average person. It seemed only reasonable to assume that such a brain would come equipped with telepathy or telekinesis or something, but nooo. He couldn't move things by thinking at them (unless installing engines in them counted) and he couldn't read thoughts. He'd never even considered the possibilities for astral projection.
Though, as he did, they seemed kind of limited. It was also severely disappointing to learn that some sort of de-materializing device wasn't involved. If one had been, then he was pretty sure he could have overpowered Jansen and stolen it. There were few people he could confidently say he'd take in a fist-fight, but the diminutive hero definitely looked like one of them.
Jansen smiled a little nervously at him, and cleared his throat. "Um. So. Metroman?" he asked, almost hopefully.
Megamind arched an eyebrow. "Ah yes. My old foe," he found himself replying, leaning back and tenting his fingers. "The whole reason I've been dragged to this interminable torture chamber to begin with."
"You said he was still alive," Jansen agreed with a nod. "Will you tell me about it?"
"Ha! Good luck getting me to not tell you about it!" he blurted, unable to contain his excitement (this seemed like an opportunity, dammit, and he was going to seize it) and springing abruptly to his feet. He folded his hands at the small of his back and started pacing the length of his cell, keeping his visitor in the corner of his eye while he did. "I tried to convince your friends, but they wouldn't listen to me. The foolish fools. As if something as pedantic and simple as copper and a solar concentration cannon could ever really destroy him! In hindsight I'm kind of embarrassed that I didn't figure it out sooner, but then, I never really imagined that he would want to fake his own death. As far as I could tell he had the good life. I mean, he wasn't the one who got defeated and thrown in jail every few weeks, and I thought he had the girl, and – anyway, that's not important. Apparently he's decided that music is his true calling in life. So, after I'd tricked him into flying into the Metrocity Observatory and was waiting for my cannon to charge with the full concentrated power of the sun, he…" Megamind carried on, explaining the story from start to finish, and glossing over some of the more embarrassing/private bits with Roxanne. He was a little proud of himself for managing to reduce the entire Bernard incident to one throwaway sentence ("I was disguised at the time").
When he finished, Jansen had a dazed look about himself. He opened his mouth to say something, then paused, closed it, and ran a hand down the side of his face, skewing his glasses a little. Then he opened his mouth again. "…Music Man?" he finally asked. He sounded utterly befuddled.
Megamind shrugged. "Eh," he said, making a so-so gesture with his hand. "Look. I wouldn't be complaining if it weren't for the whole tetchy issue of my being imprisoned in space and everything. The guy wants to make music. More power to him. Personally, I like the industry I'm in, but then I think about that time when I was briefly considering a career as a specialized scientist rather than a grab-bag evil genius gizmo master and all of the 'could have beens' and I don't know if I'd have been less happy that way, or more, so-"
Jansen tentatively raised a hand, forestalling further comment. "I believe you," he said.
A wash of relief surged through Megamind. It was so strong that he almost fell over. "You… you do?" he double-checked, past experience still bracing him for a let-down.
"I do," Jansen confirmed, letting out a breath and folding his arms. He tapped his chin in consideration. "It's been my experience that when people lie, they attempt to keep their lies within the general realm of plausibility. Frankly your story sounds too preposterous to be made-up."
"Thank you," Megamind replied. "Finally." He let out a stilted sort of laugh, running his fingers across his forehead. "So… what now? You'll tell the others?"
Jansen shook his head a little bit, tapping his chin again. "I would, but I'm afraid it wouldn't do much good. They haven't listened to me in quite some time," he admitted ruefully.
Megamind's expression fell.
"But!" Jansen continued quickly. "But, that doesn't mean I can't do anything. I designed this place, remember? Even if I can't convince the others to let you go, I might be able to help you get free on your own."
"How?" he asked. It wasn't that he couldn't see how knowledge of the prison would be incredibly useful for an escape. That was obvious. He just wanted the specifics.
"Well… for starters, there's this," Jansen replied, reaching out a hand and putting it through Megamind's chest. There was a feeling like falling, a strange disorientation edged with something hot and bright at the corners of his perception, and then a sharp yank that made his head pound and his limbs burn. When it cleared he found himself standing in the middle of his cell. Only he was also (according to his eyes) sitting on the corner of his cot, with a blank expression on his face that reminded him uncomfortably of Minion. An unsteady dread coiled through him. He turned accusingly towards Jansen.
"What did you do?" he demanded.
The unassuming hero beamed at him. "I'm projecting the primary part of your consciousness," he replied, gesturing between the two of them. "It took me years to figure out how to do it to someone else. I was actually working on devising a solution the complex problems of the prison's internal energy barriers when I discovered the secret. I won't bore you with the details, but it was quite the feather in my cap when I first succeeded."
"…Oh," Megamind replied. He blinked down at himself, uncertain as to whether or not he was unsettled by the fact that he didn't look – or feel – much different than he normally did. "So just to be one hundred percent clear, you didn't kill me? I'm not a ghost?" he checked.
Jansen sighed, grabbed him by the arm – his hand was burning hot – and tossed him with surprising strength towards the glassy-eyed version of himself that was still sitting on the cot. His vision blanked for a few seconds, and it felt sort of like he was being crushed. He was reminded vividly of the time Titan had sent him smashing into a building. Then he blinked and toppled over, his legs twitching uncontrollably and his shoulder hitting the hard mattress with enough force to knock the breath out of him.
"Don't panic!" Jansen advised. "Just calm down!"
"Oh-that-was-so-weird," Megamind gasped, finally regaining enough control of himself to relax a little bit. He stopped moving. The cell around him swam a bit, and he was pretty sure he was going to have one murderous headache in a few minutes, but still.
Neat.
"Are you ready for the tour?"
The station's command center was a teeny-tiny room when compared to the types of command centers which Megamind generally employed. Ironically, space was at a premium in space, and so the whole operation was basically just outfitted with a single desk, a chair, and the feeds from several security and maintenance cameras. It was the sort of place the felt incredibly cramped even when two of the three people in it were incorporeal. The desk in front of the consoles was occupied by the scantily clad woman with the odd speech patterns. Jansen had identified her as 'Lady Mythman' (with stipulation that he not ask what had happened to whoever had gone by 'Mythman'). She had her shiny booted feet propped up on a corner of the desk, one eye on the security screens while she talked into a microphone headset she was wearing.
Megamind leaned forward and examined it curiously.
"Who's she talking to?" he whispered out of the side of his mouth.
Jansen shrugged. He'd perched himself on the far end of the desk, underneath a couple of screens which showed the exterior of the space station. "She's probably checking in with the security team on Earth. You don't have to whisper, by the way. She can't hear you."
"If you're sure," Megamind replied, still whispering.
Lady Mythman let out a deep laugh, then, which sent him pin-wheeling backwards in surprise. He meant to catch himself on the wall behind him, but mentally hiccoughed on the distance and instead fell through into the plating and wiring just past it. For a second he froze, his eyes going uncomfortably wide, and swallowed at the sight of several solid objects jutting right through bits of himself. Okay, he thought. Don't panic. He'd moved through solid objects before, though both of those had been transparent doorways – the one which led to and from his cell, and the one which led to and from the command room. Sucking in an imaginary breath, he took a step forward. Or tried to. But when he went to move he found that it didn't work. His shoulders turned a little and his fingers flexed, but each attempt forward was met with firm resistance. Like he was stuck. But that didn't even make any sense, unless there was some sort of energy through the walls which interfered with his astral-projection-whatever-it-was-Jansen-had-done, which would probably be very, very bad.
He pushed harder, but only found himself increasingly restricted. A sharp pang ran through him, defying the logic that he shouldn't feel pain, that there was nothing to really hurt him. He started to panic. Then he felt something white-hot and firm close around his wrist, and with a subtle whoosh feeling he tumbled back into the control room.
Jansen was hanging onto his arm, his brows knit in concern, eyes assessing behind the frames of his glasses. "Sorry," he said. "I should've warned you about that."
"What just happened?" Megamind demanded, patting himself, unconsciously checking for holes in the places where he'd seen things sticking through his chest. Jansen sighed, releasing his hold on him and flapping one arm in an apologetic fashion.
"It's… tricky," he vaguely asserted.
Megamind gave him a look. "Tricky?"
"Sorry," he apologized again. "When you aren't used to being incorporeal, sometimes you create mental blocks for yourself without meaning to. You aren't really used to moving through solid objects yet. When you fell into the wall, you probably decided that you were trapped, and that wouldn't let you move back out again." He tapped one booted toe against the smooth floor beneath them. "Sometimes those blocks are handy, though. The same thing's keeping you from sinking through the floor right now."
Reflexively, Megamind looked down. It occurred to him that that was a good point. If he wasn't impeded by the walls then there really wasn't anything to keep him from moving up or down as well as side to side, and… oh crap, now he was sinking. He jerked his arms up in surprise, and Jansen took hold of him again, pulling him back up until he was floating just a couple of inches overtop.
"Ever flown?" the scientist asked him.
"Ha! Ever flown. That's a good one. Who doesn't fly?" he demanded.
Jansen rolled his eyes, but one corner of his mouth twitched up in amusement. "Stick to that, then," he suggested. "At least until you've got the hang of things."
Tentatively, he let go of Megamind's arm again. When a few seconds passed and he didn't start sinking again, Jansen's smile turned full-blown, and he gave him an encouraging thumb's up. Over by the desk, Lady Mythman abruptly straightened in her seat. Her expression had turned thunderous. For a second he almost panicked, but then he realized that she wasn't looking at either of them. She was listening intently to her headset. "I believe," she said carefully, "that if thou couldst recall thy evening, o knife-armed drunkard, then thou wouldst find 'twas thine own mother that was thusly despoiled!" Then she smashed one of her gloved hands against a button on the control panel. Megamind jumped. Jansen flinched.
"…Whoa…" Megmind smirked. "Well, well. What's this? Dissent between the ranks?" That was always a good sign. He couldn't even count the number of times he'd escaped from prison just by getting the guards at each other's throats.
Jansen rolled his eyes. "That would be an understatement," he replied. "Back before he, um, faked his death, Metroman used to keep order. He had the last say on any disagreements. Without him, things are sketchier." As he listened to the scientist talk, Megamind took in the screens around them. There were a lot of cells, but most of them looked to be empty. Only a small handful were marked as occupied. "Commander Courage and Lady Mythman are both considered too out of touch to be practical leaders. Mermanus has the same problem. Under the ocean there's no one more powerful, but on land or in space, he's kind of underwhelming. Naturally, that just left Slasher to take charge – but no one wanted to hand command to him without a fight. He's not… very… socially pleasant," Jansen diplomatically explained.
"From what I've seen, they're nothing but a pack of jerks and weirdoes," Megamind asserted, still looking at the cameras. His eyes drifted over the few occupied cells, their purple-suited occupants all looking pale and thin and miserable. In the background, Lady Mythman started talking in low tones to someone called 'Dr. Stevens' about how her authority was being undermined again.
Jansen let out a startled laugh. Then he raised a hand to cover his mouth, shaking his head a bit. "Being a hero will do that to you," he asserted. "It's a thankless job."
Glancing in his direction, Megamind arched an eyebrow at him, then turned back to the screens. There was one section that had caught his attention. Several cameras seemed to be situated around it, but rather than being transparent, all they seemed to show was a dull, pulsing red light. "Thankless? You should try being a supervillain. Ever since I became a hero all people seem to do is thank me. They built me a freaking statue! Well, I mean, the brain bots helped, but that was more for practicality's sake. The Mayor offered to do it without them." Why was there so much surveillance fixed on a big red blur?
"Just wait," Jansen advised. "You'll see."
Opting to let the matter drop, Megamind gestured instead to the screens he'd been scrutinizing. "What's that?" he asked. "Some kind of power source?" That was his best guess.
Straightening his glasses, Jansen followed the line of his arm. Then his expression promptly fell. He looked down for a moment, and when he looked back up again his eyes studiously avoided staring at anything in particular. "Yes," he said. "Yes. That's the main power source. That's… yes." He raised a hand briefly and cleared his throat. For a moment he didn't say anything more. Megamind looked uncomfortably between him and the screens. It was obvious that he'd struck a nerve, but he wasn't sure what he'd done. After a few seconds Jansen spoke up again. "I spent a long time with that," he said. "It produces more than enough energy to keep the station running for decades. But that's not all it does."
Curious, Megamind looked back at him. "Oh?" he asked.
Jansen nodded. "I'm sure you've noticed that things get a little fuzzy for you up here," he said.
Abruptly, Megamind stiffened, and gave the other man his complete attention. "Are you talking about the fact that I can't think of anything? Because I did kind of notice that, yeah. In a 'most unsettling thing ever' sort of way."
"That's the dampening field," Jansen replied with a wistful sigh, folding his arms. "My greatest invention. With it, endless power is possible – why it would keep all the light bulbs in the Western Hemisphere lit for two thousand years! But the energy isn't free. It has a cost, and I sometimes wonder if it isn't too high…"
"Yes, yes. Blah blah blah. Nothing is ever free," Megamind waved a hand dismissively, "What's it doing to my brain?"
"It's affecting the range of your intelligence," Jansen said. "Think of it like sound – a dog can hear things that are completely out of range for a human. You think in a wavelength that is separate to that of the average being, I suspect that it's due to your alien physiology, but that's irrelevant right now. The field is restricting the scope of your thoughts. Containing your natural power. I'm sorry. I didn't know how it would affect someone like you. Strange, that the greatest invention of Jon Jansen – the brilliant Techmaster – would be so… vampiric." He laughed. It was a hollow, tired sound.
"But it's not permanent?" Megamind insisted. "If I left then the effects would wear off?"
"Certainly." Jansen sighed, then turned and headed back through the transparent door. After a beat of hesitation, Megamind followed. But it was still much easier to move through something when he could see through it. "Therein lies the difficult part, however. My invention is what powers the prison – as long as it's functioning, escape will be nearly impossible for you. If you could leave, then perhaps you'd be able to devise a means of circumventing it. But you need to circumvent it in order to leave…"
"…and as long as I'm here, I won't be able to think my way out. Right, right, right. Turning off the power source while I'm on the station is probably a bad idea, too," he decided. "I mean I assume it's the reason why I'm not floating around and suffocating, isn't it?"
Jansen waved dismissively. "Actually, that's not too much of a problem. I designed a back-up generator in case the main power source ever failed. Which it will."
"It will?" Megamind asked, pausing in mid-hover.
The heroic techno-whiz stopped walking as well. He sucked in a deep breath. Then his shoulders slumped, and he shook his head a little, closing his eyes. "Oh yes," he said quietly. "When I first constructed this place, I warned the others that there was a flaw in my design. They all assumed I was being over-cautious. They didn't listen, and once the work was finished, they put it from their minds and all but forgot about me. They didn't want to hear that the system I devised was imperfect, and costly." He clenched one hand into a fist, and when he opened his eyes again, they were hard and sharp with conviction. "But that's alright," he said.
Megamind blinked at him uncertainly. "It is?" He asked, because Jansen seemed kind of on the upset side for 'alright'.
He nodded. "Yes, it's fine," he insisted. "I never thought I'd get an opportunity to rectify my mistake. But now that someone like you has come along, I've got a reason to think differently. If… if you're willing, then I think that the two of us can kill two birds with one stone. We're going to fix my biggest regret. We're going to destroy my greatest invention." He looked up a little, gaze searching, as though he was looking through and into all of the walls around them. Megamind figured that if they'd had a good sound system at their disposal, right about then was when the stirring Anthem of Determination would strike up. Something nice and orchestral.
Unfortunately, they didn't have a sound system.
"Yeah. Okay," he agreed.
Author's Note: Ok, some quick info - Jansen and Commander Courage's names were both straight-up lifted from two of my favorite heroic parodies. It seems like it's probably going to take me about a week to get each chapter out, maybe a little more or less, and I'm not completely sure how long this story's going to be (though I do have a plot outline for it). Special thanks to everyone who R&R'd, you guys rock! Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Up next: more of what Roxanne's got shoved into her sleeves.