According to No Plan

Ninnik Nishukan


Summary: "The night you dumped me. Alone. In the rain." Title stolen from the song of the same name by the band Broadcast.


I can't see nothing good
And nothing is so bad
I never had a chance
To explain exactly what I meant

Nylon Smile, Portishead (2008)


The restaurant had been like walking into his old school house for the first time all over again. The shocked stares, the stiff, fight-or-flight body language of his horrified audience— he couldn't get out of that restaurant fast enough. At the time, it'd felt almost like a blessing to have somebody to chase after.

When she'd reached her, however, the closed-off, pained expression on her face caused his mind to come to a screeching halt. He'd started out with determination, but then the electric brain impulses that controlled his mouth seemed to fizzle out and die. After a certain point, after he'd blurted out the only defence he could think of— book by its cover, book by its cover— he'd lost all ability to speak.

I can explain, he'd claimed, but then he'd barely managed to get a single word out. He'd just stood there, still as a statue, staring at her.

She'd always managed to make him lose his place, make him forget his thoughts and say stupid things instead or nothing at all, even back then…so why should now be any different?

It should've been, some small part of him begged, it was supposed to be.

They'd gotten to know each other, trust each other— except she thought she was putting her trust in Bernard, who was the kinda guy who wanted to defend the city, not terrorize its citizens by using the city as his own personal playground.

That was why he'd had no idea what to say. He'd been in the grip of emotional intoxication for weeks, and had kept pushing the moral implications of what he'd been doing to the back of his mind, simply for the sake of gaining continued access to the irresistible taste of pure happiness. She'll never find out, he'd bragged to Minion, that's the point of lying! What she didn't know couldn't harm her, that's what he'd been telling herself; that's how he'd been fooling himself. Being confronted with what he'd actually been doing, that he had been inevitably leading up to truly hurting her, her, HER— it'd been like a super-powered punch to the face, and he certainly knew what those felt like.

He sighed. He should've waited until she'd calmed down, he should've thought things through, should've written a dazzling speech. He was so good at those.

He hadn't made a plan, he realized. For once in his adult life, he hadn't planned ahead, hadn't had any real agenda. He'd more or less just been fumbling himself along the wall of a dark room, hoping to find the light switch. He'd had absolutely no idea what he'd been doing. He'd been working with nothing but an intense emotional need and social instincts that had never had the chance to get even adequately honed, let alone perfected.

Yet somehow, she'd seemed to like him. That was probably why he'd lost control. Why he'd just kept going, despite Minion's warnings and the alarm bells ringing in his own head, which had become increasingly silent with each date.

How ironic was it then, that the one time he didn't have a nefarious purpose, didn't have an angle, didn't have a master plan, heck, didn't even have a clue what would happen from one moment to the next…that was the one time where she was finally convinced that he was indeed the sinister manipulator he'd strived to be all these years?

Didn't that just take the proverbial cake?

Tired of walking aimlessly around in the rain, getting himself increasingly wetter and colder, he headed home. Minion would still be there. He had to be.

Perhaps that was part of the reason why Minion had been so upset about his feelings for Roxanne. She was a wild card, the outcome of their relationship unpredictable, and Minion, like himself, was used to predictability and planning.

He should've planned a way to make it all okay, but he'd been desperate not to lose her, so he'd just gone running after her.

Now that he'd realized how much he'd truly upset her, though, he wondered if he should've just let her be instead of only making it worse for her.

Maybe it would've been better if he'd just let her believe he didn't have any feelings for her at all, that he'd only done it because he'd been evil and bored or something— maybe that would've been less painful for them both.

He wondered if she hated him now, or if she was simply hurt and confused. He wondered if she'd looked back. He wasn't so sure if he'd have looked back if he'd been in her place. He wasn't sure if his ego would have been able to deal with something like that. For that matter, he had no idea if he could deal with being dumped, particularly when he knew it'd been all his own fault. He couldn't even dislike her.

Roxanne had been right.

Minion had been right, too. He was a bad guy, and the bad guy didn't get the girl. He shouldn't have tried to stray from his rightful place in the world.

He'd deprived her beloved city of its hero and had intended to keep lying to her indefinitely.

If she had looked back, he probably didn't deserve it.


Author's note: I seem to have gone a little lyrics crazy. The lyrics will always be only snippets, though, and only quoted at the top of the story, never during the story itself. That stuff's just disruptive, which is why I don't like songfics. :P You can always skip looking at the lyrics if you feel like it— it's basically just me having some fun. :D

By the way, the reason I call these short stories/mega-drabbles isn't because it's about Megamind—it's because the only thing that actually qualifies as a drabble is a story that's EXACTLY a hundred words long; no more, no less. That's the correct definition of a drabble, just in case anybody's wondering. Anything else can't be called a drabble. ;)

For some really good Megamind drabbles (exactly a hundred words!), go visit the Live Journal of mekosuchinae, AKA Memlu. :)