"Really? Now?"
Roxanne, tied extremely loosely in her customary kidnapping chair, sees, in the viewscreen over Megamind's shoulder, Metro Man is still sitting on his white couch, a plate of nachos balanced on his lap.
"Come on, man," he says, "the game's on!"
"Well, I'm terribly sorry to interrupt your busy day of couch-potato-ing, Metro Man," Megamind says, "but evil does not follow a sportsball shed-u-al."
"—really?" Roxanne can't help but interject. "Funny, how there's never an evil plot while there's a baseball game on. What a coincidence that the evil schedule always happens to be clear when the Metro City Wolverines are playing."
Megamind glances over his shoulder at her, barely suppressing the smile she can see threatening at the corners of his mouth.
"I have no idea what you mean, Miss Ritchi," he says.
"Can't it wait? Wayne says. "I mean—"
"Hey!" Roxanne says, a little sharply, "I could be in mortal danger, here!"
"Dire peril!" Megamind adds.
"Desperate straits!"
"Terrible jeopardy!"
"My very life at risk!"
"Ugh, come on," he says, "why do we have to go through this same silly charade again?"
Megamind's spine straightens.
"Silly charade?" he says, voice stiff, and Roxanne can tell by the set of his shoulders that he's genuinely offended.
Wayne, though, either doesn't notice or maybe doesn't care. He picks up a chip and takes a bite.
"Yeah," he says, mouth full, gesturing with the half-eaten chip. "Roxy's been kidnapped, I'm gonna stop you; we've been playing through this our entire lives. Why do you keep trying? Face it, little buddy." He pops the rest of the chip into his mouth. "I'm invulnerable. You're never gonna beat me."
Megamind's hands ball into fists at his sides. In the viewscreen, Metro Man eats another nacho with a bored, complacent air.
"You know," Megamind says, "what your problem is, Metro Man?"
"Besides you?"
"You think that you're above everyone else," Megamind says, "that the rest of the world is beneath you. You spend all of your time up on cloud nine, looking down on the rest of us. Well, you are about to be brought down to earth, Metro Man. Brought down by your one true weakness...Roxanne Ritchi!"
Megamind's eyes flick over to meet hers as he says her name, a wicked smile playing around the edges of his mouth and Roxanne takes a sharp breath.
(Your one true weakness, Roxanne Ritchi, and it sounds so much like Megamind's standard evil monologue, but it's not—Megamind isn't threatening her, isn't even really playing at threatening her.
He's threatening Metro Man with her.
Not a pawn, not a damsel in distress—a weapon, a partner.)
Wayne sighs a deeply put-upon sigh.
"Okay," he says, "okay okay okay—let's get this over with."
The air around him blurs as he starts up his superspeed, and then he disappears from the viewscreen. Megamind presses a button, making the screen go dark, and then he whirls around, cape billowing, eyes shining with anticipation.
"We are warmed up and ready to go, Sir!" Minion calls, and Megamind rubs his hands together in glee.
"Places!" he cries, for no apparent reason, since they're all already in their places, her in her kidnapping chair, Minion at the console in the corner, him at the viewscreen. "Places; places; places!"
"Bowg!"
"Bowg bowg bowg!"
"Bowg bowg!"
The brainbots seem to find Megamind's excitement contagious; Roxanne watches as Megamind runs around in a little circle, brainbot cloud spinning around him, before he ends up in exactly the same position as he started.
And—
—and—
—god, he's so—so—
And maybe she should—maybe she should laugh, or at least want to laugh, but something that is definitely not laughter catches in her throat, beneath her sternum and what she wants, what she really, truly wants is—
Megamind glances over and meets her gaze, and his grin fades into a look of puzzled bemusement. He tilts his head, a question implied in the gesture, and Roxanne opens her mouth to say—to say—
She's not sure what she intends to say, but it definitely starts with Megamind, and there's a please in there somewhere, and whatever it is has her heart fluttering in her chest, a trapped bird in her ribcage and Megamind's brows draw together in something that looks like concern, and he takes a step towards her and—
Metro Man bursts through the roof.
He comes through just where they expected, landing in the one conveniently clear spot which just so happens to have a spotlight on it which glints off of his hair and shiny white teeth.
He straightens up and strikes a heroic pose while the dust is still settling, hands on his hips, expression more sternly determined than threatening.
"Megamind," he says, "you—"
"Now!" Megamind and Roxanne shout at the same moment, and Minion's big robotic hand slams down on the console button.
And the gun, the big showy one which seemed so clearly to be pointed at Roxanne, goes off, shooting backwards.
The gravity beam itself is invisible to the naked eye, so Roxanne can't actually see it. She sees the moment it hits Metro Man, though, because he gets a very surprised look on his face and then promptly falls over, collapsing in a way that reminds Roxanne of Saturday morning cartoons, Wiley Coyote flattened abruptly by a falling anvil.
"Urgle," Metro Man says, and—
—completely fails to move at all.
Metro Man doesn't get up.
He makes a strangled noise and Megamind can see his muscles straining, but—
He doesn't get up.
(a trick it has to be a trick of some kind; there's no possible way—)
Metro Man's eyes bulge, his features contorting into an expression of shock—an expression so ridiculous that it has to be genuine, because there is no way Wayne would ever make his face look like that on purpose.
"Gnngh," Metro Man says, and Megamind hears himself make a choked kind of noise, a spasmodic, half-smothered laugh that edges much closer to overwrought hysteria than evil exaltation.
(villainous plot after villainous plot, but he never expected any of them to really work, never expected them to succeed—)
Megamind looks up from Metro Man, still lying on the floor, to Roxanne, sitting in her kidnapping chair. Her lips are slightly parted, and her eyes, when they raise from the fallen Metro Man to meet Megamind's gaze, are very wide.
"Oh look," Minion says, tone mild, clearly the only one here who actually expected this to really work. "We did it."
"We…did it," Roxanne says.
"...we did it?" Megamind repeats, clutching the edges of his cape in what feels like a vain attempt to hold reality itself together.
"We did it!" Roxanne crows, leaping up from her chair. She gives her wrists and ankles an impatient wriggle and the ropes fall away. "Ha! I was right! Didn't I tell you, Megamind? Didn't I tell you his powers work off of antigravity?"
"Brilliant," Megamind says, unable to keep himself from moving towards her, unable to keep himself from holding out his arms to her, all of his rationality drowned in the radiance of her, "Brilliant; you're brilliant, Roxanne!"
She laughs, loud and jubilant and somehow wild, her eyes shining, and runs to meet him, feet barely seeming to touch the ground, triumph carrying her like Winged Victory into his arms.
Megamind catches her and sweeps her the rest of the way off her feet, whirling her around in a circle while they both laugh, until, dizzy and off-balance with spinning and with how glorious she is, he has to stop.
"—worked, did you see—"
"—absolutely genius—"
"Tell me, Megamind," Roxanne demands, leaning against him, her arms around his neck, "tell me you couldn't have done it without me."
The room is still spinning around them, as if the two of them are in the eye of a hurricane or a cyclone, and Megamind's breath catches—catches at the command in her voice and at the nearness of her.
"Never," Megamind says, breathless with awe. "I could never have done it without you, Roxanne; I tried for years, and you! The very first time—"
"—help," Metro Man says, voice very flattened.
"Oh, shut up, Wayne," Roxanne says, not even turning her head to look at Metro Man, her eyes still fixed on Megamind's own, and Megamind's heart absolutely thrills.
"—dying—" Metro Man says.
"No, you're not; you're fine," Roxanne says, rolling her eyes and still not looking over at him, still not looking away from Megamind. "It's literally just gravity, Wayne; normal people feel like this all the time."
Metro Man makes a pained, disbelieving kind of noise and Roxanne makes a sound of deep annoyance and turns her head at last to look at the fallen hero.
(her arms still around Megamind's neck, his arms around her waist, her body pressed against his, and Megamind thinks that perhaps the room is never going to stop spinning, that he's never going to be able to catch his balance again.)
She shifts her balance, leaning even more fully into him, and Megamind stops breathing.
"Roxy—why?" Metro Man gasps out. "Betrayed—"
Roxanne's eyes narrow and her arms slip from around Megamind's neck as she turns to Metro Man. She regards him for a long moment, long enough for Metro Man to falter into silence.
Then, slowly, deliberately, she stalks over to Metro Man, her spine straight and her shoulders set.
(a cape, Megamind thinks disjointedly, she needs a cape; it should trail out behind her, red like fresh blood or black like shadows or dark blue like deceptively deep water)
She stops directly in front of Wayne and looks down her nose and him, then smiles like slow-working poison.
"Wayne," she says sweetly, "when's my birthday?"
Wayne gives her a look of deep bafflement.
"And how many times," Roxanne continues, still in that same tone of honeyed venom, "how many times have I asked you to stop calling me Roxy?"
Wayne's mouth opens and closes a few times.
"That's—that's it?" he manages at last, "That's—what kind of a reason is that!?"
He sounds not just utterly flabbergasted, but actually offended, and Roxanne's eyes and mouth harden, her chin going up, and evil gods, but Megamind wishes she were wearing her crown.
"You," she says, lip curling with contempt, "are confusing the symptoms with the disease, Wayne."
He blinks at her blankly.
"…disease?" he says. "What disease?"
Roxanne makes a noise of extreme annoyance.
"The disease is a metaphor, Wayne!" she says.
"Oh. Uh. For what?" he asks.
"For your personality!"
"Wh—I have a great personality!"
"No!" Roxanne says. "No, you don't! You are, in fact, a giant dick! People just tell you that you have a great personality because you're rich and superpowered and they think you're attractive!"
"That! That is not true!"
Metro Man looks beseechingly at Megamind, as if expecting some kind of support from him.
"That's not true…right?" he says.
"Uhhh," Megamind says, trying to think of a tactful way to exit this conversation.
"Oh!" Minion says, with a note of barely-detectable malice in his cheerful, helpful tone. "Like you were saying yesterday—it's lucky that he's all muscle and beef, elsewise no one would want to date him at all!"
"Minion!" Megamind hisses, and Minion gives him a look of limpid innocence from his suit's aquatic headpiece.
"Sir?"
"I have a great personality," Metro Man says sullenly.
Roxanne gives a comprehensive snort of disbelief and Metro Man glares at her.
"Oh, right," he says, "like you're any better! I'd rather be muscle and beef than—than—needles and complaining!"
"Minion," Roxanne says, casual, conversational, strolling around Metro Man.
"Yes, Ma'am?" Minion asks, and pretends not to see the way Megamind's head whips around to stare at him, and then at Roxanne in turn.
(ma'am? since when does Minion call Roxanne—)
"You remember that higher setting I said we should put on the gravity beam?"
"—there's a higher setting?" Megamind asks. "Since when is there a higher setting?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Minion says, ignoring Megamind's question and radiating as much pure innocence as it is possible for a fish to radiate.
"Use it," Roxanne says.
"You got it, Ma'am!"
"WHAT?!" Metro Man shouts, and then makes an undignified shriek of pain as Minion twists the dial.
Roxanne signals to Minion to lower the setting again—signals to him with Megamind's own private strictly-for-use-with-the-henchfish setting-lowering signal, which she is not supposed to know about! And which Minion is definitely not supposed to accept from people other than Megamind, and this was not part of the plan, never part of the plan, and—
"—no—" Metro Man chokes out.
Roxanne—Roxanne laughs, not a performatively evil laugh, but a real, wickedly-amused one, and Megamind gulps and has to stumble back to grab for the edge of the console when his knees threaten to buckle.
"Rox—anne," Metro Man says. "—not too late—turn back—side of good—help—"
"Help?" Roxanne says, voice rich with amusement. "What happened to I'm invulnerable? What happened to you're never going to beat me?"
Metro Man makes a garbled noise and Roxanne laughs again.
Around Megamind, the shoal of brainbots are silent, hovering in the air, each of their eyepieces and attention fixed on Roxanne, each one of them as absolutely riveted by her as Megamind himself.
"You've lost, Metro Man," Roxanne says, voice soft.
She glances over at Megamind then, and smiles at him, slow and—and what he can't help but think of as seductive and Megamind's grip on the edge of the console is definitely the only thing keeping him on his feet right now.
"Say it," she purrs, still looking at Megamind. "Say that you've lost."
"—Roxy—"
"Minion," Roxanne says. "The next setting again."
"—no!" Wayne shouts, and then shrieks in as Minion twists the dial.
After a moment, Roxanne signals to Minion to turn the setting back down.
"Say. It."
"I've—I've—lost," Metro Man gasps out.
"And you're done," Roxanne says, beginning to circle him again, like a cat playing with a cornered mouse, "aren't you, Metro Man. This city—Metrocity...is ours."
She glances over at Megamind and he can't remember how to breathe, can't remember how to stand up properly, can barely manage to stop himself from falling to his knees.
When she smirks at him, Megamind promptly loses the battle with the last of his dignity and slides down the console and onto the floor.
Roxanne blinks at him, surprise and confusion and a little concern in her expression, and she takes half a step towards him before she checks herself. Out of the corner of his eye, Megamind sees Metro Man's gaze moving back and forth between him and Roxanne, terrified and confused.
"I—yeah," Metro Man says. "It's, uh. It's—yours."
Roxanne's head snaps back around and she pins him in place with a glare.
"Say that you'll never interfere with us again," she demands.
"I—I—yeah, sure, what—whatever you say—"
"Swear it!"
Her voice rings out, loud and snapping, and Megamind understands with a jolt that she was still toying with Metro Man earlier, because this, now, this is Roxanne being serious.
(Metrocity is ours and never interfere with us again, and she doesn't realize, does she; she doesn't realize she's talking like—like—)
"I swear!" Metro Man says, sweat standing out on his brick-red face in beads, "I swear! Jeez—"
Roxanne bares her teeth, hands clenching into fists.
"I don't think you're taking me seriously, Metro Man," she hisses, tone well beyond dangerous.
"I—"
"Hit him again, Minion."
"NO!"
Minion does, and Metro Man thrashes, screeching before Minion once again turns the setting back down at Roxanne's signalled command.
"Swear that you'll never try to harm us again!"
"I—swear!".
"That you'll never try to convince anyone else to do it either!"
"Yes! Yes!"
"That you'll never even attempt to work as any kind of hero ever again!"
"Yes! God—please—"
Roxanne holds up a hand as if she's about to signal to Minion to turn up the dial again, and Metro Man sobs.
For a long moment, she stands looking down at him, hand half-upraised, and then she slowly lowers her hand.
"Release him, Minion."
"...Are you sure, Ma'am?" Minion asks, tone almost disappointed.
Roxanne whirls back around—really, she needs a cape—and Metro Man's eyes widen again in terror.
There is an indrawn breath kind of pause, and then—
"Oh, once more for old time's sake, Minion!"
Metro Man screams as Minion twists the dial.
"—all right, all right!" Roxanne says after a few moments of screaming. "Really, though, Minion, you can let him go now."
Minion, sharp-toothed grin wide, presses the button and Metro Man sags in relief.
"—how—how could you?" he asks Roxanne, voice somewhere between tragedy and accusation. "You—you—what is so funny!?" he demands, as Roxanne and Minion and Megamind all exchange a look and then burst out laughing together.
"Oh, that was so much fun!" Megamind says, still sitting on the floor, giggling.
"I told you it would be!" Roxanne cackles.
"Fun!?" Wayne says, outraged. "Fun!? You—you tortured me! You—"
"Oh, don't be so melodramatic," Roxanne says, rolling her eyes. "I told you, it's just gravity, Wayne. Earth standard gravity! Normal people feel like that all the time!"
"People that are used to it!" Wayne protests. "Besides, the—the higher—the higher—the higher setting—stop laughing at me!"
"There—there isn't—any higher setting!" Megamind says, holding his sides.
"That—that was just—just a placebo dial!" Roxanne gasps out, tears in her eyes from laughing so much.
"Bu—wh—agah?" Metro Man splutters.
Megamind and Roxanne, who have at last managed to mostly stop laughing, look at him and then glance at each other again, which sets them both off again into peals of laughter.
Wayne looks between the two of them, and then draws himself up stiffly, offended dignity and muscle cramps.
"I," he announces to the room at large, "am going home."
"Good, good," Minion says, mostly managing to smother his own mirth as he expertly herds Metro Man out, the brainbots following in their wake. "That's, uh, that's good. Why don't I call you a cab."
…to be continued.
Only one more birthday celebration update left to go! I hope you all enjoyed the new chapter.
When Megamind thinks of Roxanne as like 'Winged Victory', he's referencing Nike, the Greek goddess of victory / Victoria, the equivalent Roman goddess. Nike/Victoria were generally portrayed as having wings. Nike was generally associated with victory in athletic games, while Victoria was associated with victory over death and victory in war.
Thank you to my own Victoria, displacerghost, for betaing this, and for helping me so much with the style and tone for this. 3
