Pale Blue Shadows

Chapter 3: Blackest Night

At some point, Roxanne had pulled herself to her feet. Her stomach had growled at her furiously. Her throat had scratched, parched for liquids. She had walked into the kitchen and stared around herself, utterly listless and lost, with an increasing sense of wrongness in her gut. She had been trying to do the right thing by not going home with Mr. Edwards. The whole thing was an accident. People got caught drunk driving all the time. There had been twenty-five drunk-driving incidents in Metro City in the past year alone. Five of them had resulted in deaths.

Had any of their families and friends disowned them? Roxanne wasn't sure. She was sure that none of them had been incriminated in the presumed murder attempts on Metro Man or accused of staging their own kidnappings.

Roxanne opened cupboards with a restless disregard for neatness. She pulled out a glass and filled it from the kitchen tap, downing the water, relishing the cold in her throat. She paused, suddenly she no longer felt hungry. Who was she to take pleasure from anything? She had killed someone. Someone she'd known, no less. There was no getting away from that.

A bottle of wine stared at her from an open cupboard. She stared back at it. A silent conversation passed between her and the bottle. "What the hell?" she finally snarled, "The damage has already been done, hasn't it?"

Three bottles of red wine later, Roxanne was about a third of her way through the bottle of vodka she kept at the back of the fridge for holidays when her friends were over. She figured that she no longer had any friends, so what point was there really in saving it for them? The bag in her room was packed to the brim with things that were black. At some point, she'd stopped really looking and anything black had started to make its way into the bag. Black was how she felt right now. Black black black. Black as the heart of a person who murdered people by driving their cars into them. Black as the soul of someone thoughtless enough to drive drunk.

She wasn't sure when she had started laughing at the news reports on television. The theories were getting truly ridiculous. Suddenly, someone was claiming that she might be the one behind the whole conflict between Megamind and Metro Man. As if she could orchestrate something of that scale. When they interviewed Metro Man, she began throwing things at the television's general direction from her china cabinet. "Liar!" she punctuated her yell with a dish, which smashed gracelessly against the wall behind the television. "Stupid hypocritical piece of betraying shit!"

She took another swig of vodka. There was a light outside. She stepped up to her window, staring down at the small crowd that was staring up at her general direction. They stared at her balcony and pointed. Perhaps she was lucky she was too high for them to necessarily know that she was standing in her window looking down at them. There were signs, she noted dully. "Wonderful," she told the room caustically, "Because obviously big, strong Metro Man who protects the city from everything bad or horrible can't resist my terrible manipulation. That's exactly why he decided to abandon one of his only real friends." She stared sadly down the crowd. "If you only knew," she said with a bitter scowl.

A large banner unfolded above the crowd. "Turn yourself in, evil bitch," it read in bright red paint.

"God, you people are horrible," Roxanne commented darkly.

"I've been telling you that for years," his voice startled her away from the window.

"How did…" Roxanne looked from Megamind to the open balcony door. The night breeze moved the curtains gently, but nothing could be seen directly outside.

He shrugged, a slightly shimmering cape falling from his once-again gloved hand to her couch. "Once I had the science for invisibility shields for the car, it was easy enough to transfer the polymeric compound to fabric," it was as if it were nothing to him. Roxanne shook her head. The city thought she was the mastermind behind Megamind's plans? Fat chance.

He leaned leisurely against a wall, his expression blank. "You know you did the world a favour by killing him, right?"

Roxanne stared at him in disbelief. "What? By your standards?" she retorted sarcastically.

"No," he ground out, "By your own. The man was financing illegal arms dealers in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. He also owned controlling stock in several factories in Bangladesh which use exclusively child labour." He investigated his gloves dispassionately, "And he routinely hires prostitutes here in Metro City, but of course, they don't officially exist."

Roxanne stared at him with wide-eyes. "How do you know any of this?" she asked breathlessly, uncertain why he would look at all.

He looked up at her, his green eyes regarding her calmly, "Pays to know your competition for most evil, doesn't it?"

Roxanne watched him uncertainly. "Compared to that…" she looked from the window she had just recently looked out of, "You really aren't all that evil at all."

Megamind shrugged again, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hands. "Don't you know anything about your profession, Miss Ritchie? What the media says is true, must be true. What the majority thinks is all that is really real." He took a few steps towards her, pausing when he stood just by her shoulder, though his gaze was directed out the window. "Besides," he murmured softly, "It's true enough isn't it? I've killed people, Roxanne, I deserve whatever they can dish out."

"But that's not true!" she heard herself exclaim, "People have only died by accident! You didn't know…" she trailed off as he turned his head to nod at her knowingly. She swallowed hard. "You're right," she said slowly, "They create their own reality, don't they? They make the villains. Even when there are worse people who they should really be giving their attention."

"Welcome to my world, Miss Ritchie," he replied darkly, his green eyes glowing faintly as he lithely moved towards the couch and scooped up the cape. He paused midway in his affixing of the cape around him. The effect was bizarre, the parts of him concealed by the cape nearly invisible to the naked eye, but those parts which weren't covered still brightly and uncomprehendingly present. "Did you pack that bag?" he asked.

Roxanne nodded silently, her eyes trained on the effects of the invisibility cape. "Good," Megamind replied as he pulled the cape completely around himself. Apparently, the cape was more of a cloak, as something that appeared to be a hood was pulled over his head, rendering him entirely invisible. Roxanne felt his presence pause by her elbow for just a moment. "I truly am sorry you're having to experience this, Miss Ritchie," his voice said softly, disembodied as it was, "But at the same time, it's nice… to have someone understand."

Roxanne bit her lip as the presence departed. The curtains moved in the breeze and the sound of dim shouts and distant jeers floated upwards into her apartment. She closed the balcony door. Suddenly, she felt foolish, holding the vodka bottle. She dumped the rest of its contents down the drain.

She went to bed. She pulled the covers up to her chin and turned her back on the rest of her room. She wasn't sure what was happening exactly. She should probably get a lawyer, or something. As Megamind had forced her to point out, in his own befuddling way, the death on her hands had been an accident. And apparently, the man she had killed was, in actual fact, better off dead. She shuddered now at the thought that she really did almost go home with the slimy man.

Maybe she shouldn't hold herself so responsible for the death. It had been an accident. Accidents happened. She felt remorseful, yes. But… the media… and the public… were quickly turning her into some sort of monster or expert manipulator. She needed a lawyer, someone to defend her and her honour. Or at least, what could be salvaged of it. She would have to do her time for the drunk driving charge. And quite possibly manslaughter. But at least the world would know she was innocent of the more heinous crimes and acts that were being leveled against her. Things would certainly look brighter in the morning.


Things did not look brighter in the morning. The rest of her front door was etched and grafitti-ed with horrible things and the wall of the hallway directly in front of her door was filling rapidly. She had started calling lawyers' offices around 9 am, but had been hung up on, laughed at, ignored, pitied but still turned down, and told off several times over by noon.

"Listen, I believe you," the woman had said, "But there's no way to win this case. It would inevitably go to a jury, and public opinion and the media has jumped on this like ants on a picnic basket. I would be happy to defend you, but there is no way the firm would accept such an epic loss. I'm afraid you're better off just laying down and taking it. Plea guilty, accept the minimum sentence for a DUI and manslaughter, do your time, and then start over. That's the best advice I can give you."

That was the nicest thing she'd been told.

The nicest.

Her mother had blocked her number.

Several of her friends had called. After the first few verbal onslaughts, she had started letting them go to voice mail. Each one sounded the same.

"I can't believe you had me fooled for all these years, Roxanne Ritchie! You are a lying, deceitful, inconsiderate, slime of a person. I can't believe how you have manipulated things to your advantage. People wonder how you've gotten so far in your career. Ha! You aren't even that good of a reporter. In fact, you're a hack! All of your scheming and manipulating got you far, but now everyone's caught on! I'll bet you even slept with Edwards to get that last promotion. Everyone saw you eating dinner with him. So cozy, and then you went home alone. What did he do? Turn you down for seconds? So you smashed into his car? I'll tell you, I thought I knew evil but you are something else!"

Roxanne stood by her living room window, idly watching the crowd below. They hated her. It was taking some time to process, but the truth was soaking in quickly. The hatred and bile these people felt was acidic. It turned her stomach. It made her feel nauseous. It made her rage against their stupidity. They were ignorant, stupid sheep, believing anything they were told! Any half-assed suspicion or rumour was immediately being caught up as incriminating evidence, no matter how far-fetched.

A week ago, she had been one of them.