She was cold. But that was alright. Roxanne was pretty used to being stuck in high, cold places, and at least her perch on the balcony beside the Megamind statue gave her a beautiful view of the city. She leaned against the Plexiglas railing in front of her. The wind plucked at the blue silk of her sleeves and ruffled the corners of her borrowed cape. It was probably just her imagination, but it felt like all of Metro City was just sort of holding its breath, watching her out of the corner of its eye. Waiting. Reaching up with one hand, she adjusted the light goggles she'd put on for the evening. The night-vision settings made the museum's lingering lights glow like suns around her. It was kind of spectacular.
Idly, she laced her fingers together, and let out a breath. As she was about to turn and walk away – the third day in a row since Dinomight's 'death' that nothing had come of it – she heard a soft tap, tap on the balcony behind her. The scent of smoke hit her nose. Her nerves jumped.
When she turned, Slasher was, of course, standing there. He was leaning against the opposite side of the balcony, a lit cigarette drooping idly from his mouth, arms folded and one leg crossed slightly in front of the other. Rather than looking at her, he was staring off at the night sky overhead. The tip of his smoke glowed vibrantly against her night-vision. So, Roxanne reached up and switched it off, lifting the goggles from her eyes and letting them rest on her forehead. She pursed her lips.
Slasher took a long drag from his cigarette. "Roxanne Ritchi. Former reporter for Metro City News. Former affiliate of the late Metroman. Current affiliate of the career criminal Megamind. Wanted fugitive." He breathed in more smoke, the embers flaring and paper burning until it was spent almost all the way down to the filter. Then he dropped it, crushing the stub under one booted heel.
Roxanne stared at the ashy mess it left on the walkway. It made her inexplicably irritated.
"Here to take me in?" she asked.
Slasher's eyes narrowed. "You're not a killer, Ritchi. What's your game?" he asked instead.
It was, she supposed, the moment of truth. Funny – she'd felt more nervous when she'd attempted her bank robbery than she did right then, standing across from a superhero, playing the role of the villain as well as she could. Her heart was beating fast, and for a few seconds the adrenaline made everything around her seem sharper. The scent in the air. The cold. The angles of her opponent's figure where he leaned, the sense of the Plexiglas barrier just a few inches away, the whoosh of wind through the nooks and crannies of the museum building. Her lips curved into a smirk that had been carefully cultivated in front of the mirror every morning. The most sinister expression she could manage – she was actually just a little bit proud of it. "I don't play games." Her mouth was dry. She shrugged, and the cape helped make the gesture look very fluid. "You took one of mine – so I took one of yours."
Her opponent gave her a long, disconcerting look. "Where's Dinomight?" he asked.
Licking her lips a little bit, Roxanne extended one hand, and traced the outline of an explosion in the air. Then she mouthed the word 'boom', letting her mouth curve into a smirk again when she was finished. Her heart hammered against her ribcage. It made her pulse feel like a drumbeat against her temples. Mockingly, she raised her eyebrows. "I would've expected you to notice. It was all over the news."
The tension in the air snapped like a taught string, and before she could blink something sharp and metallic was curving through the air beside her neck, cutting through the collar of her borrowed cloak and nicking the skin just below her jaw. She had time to see her own wide eyes reflected back at her against the hard surface of Slasher's sword-arm. Huge and blue. Then his un-bladed hand closed tightly around her throat. Not hard enough to make her choke, but it was a near thing. He was glowering at her, his eyes fixed on her face, and so she knew for certain that he didn't notice the little bit of light scanning him from the watch on her wrist.
"Lady, for your sake I hope to hell you're lying," he growled.
Ow, Roxanne thought triumphantly, before he dragged her away.
BrainBot 133, Mark IV Sinister Model, Designation: House Bot No.3, or Biter for short, had a job to do. Amendment – Biter had the most important job to do, out of all three of the House Bots, because he was the only one who had been able to figure out what RoxanneRitchi, Friendly Designation: Hostage, Creator Amendment: Daddy's Special Friend, Amendment: Mommy had been driving at when she'd spent all of those evenings talking to the three of them. Biter was of the firm opinion that this was because he was the smartest, and the handsomest, and the best at figuring out the many layers of File: HumanPsychology. Also, Mommy liked him more than the others. BrainBot 132, Mark IV Malevolent Model, Designation: House Bot No.2, or Spiky for short, contested his conclusions. Spiky's processes had determined that they were to maintain the living environs until Daddy returned from prison. Standard protocol. In his opinion, doing things for Mommy were only necessary as part of Routine 4.789, LookAfterRoxanne. Biter thought that Spiky was overly prone to overlooking Routine 36.111, ListenToRoxanne, which inevitably led to a disagreement between all of them, because then BrainBot 131, Mark III Malevolent Model, Designation: House Bot No.1, or Clawjaw, would bring up Group Memory File: Purse Incident. Not Biter's finest hour.
Then it would all just devolve into angry blaring and whirring and nothing would get done. But Biter knew that his own processes were superior, so he decided to forgo the arguing stage in favor of enacting Routine 36.111, Addition 33.7, Project: SpaceJailBreak (he had quite proudly drafted the whole program for himself) without even bringing it up. The sequence kicked into gear when the clock passed one a.m. and Mommy didn't return to Residence. Clawjaw was restoring battery power behind the television and Spiky was circling the door in an anxious fashion, beeping and clicking, transmitting a general inquiry as to whether or not he should enact Routine 4.789, Addendum: UnableToReachDaddy, Emergency Protocol: CallPolice. His hesitation was understandable. All of them privately thought that Daddy had made some sort of error when he programmed them to call the police if something was going wrong.
Initializing Disguise Sequence Theta, Biter drifted into Interior Closet No.2 and retrieved a long, tan-colored trench coat and a brown fedora from one of the flat boxes on the top shelf. Securing the hat over his brain dome, he suspended the coat via two of his claw arms and inserted the buttons through their cloth button-openings. Disguise Sequence Theta complete, Biter then went over to Residence Window No.6 and carefully unscrewed the latch. The pin fell with a soft 'plink' that went unremarked upon. Biter pushed back the glass, then zipped his way down to street level, and began hovering so that the bottom of the coat was no more than three centimeters above the ground.
Once he was some distance from Residence (far enough that the other bots' proximity detectors wouldn't be able to pick up what he was doing, and subsequently object), he booted up the sequence for Routine 4.789.2, RoxanneTracker. It took a while for him to get a signal. Once he finally did, it was much farther away than he'd expected. Initiating Basic Protocol 6: PlayItCool, Biter extended one of the coat's sleeves outward and attempted Subterfuge Routine 17.99.3, AcquireHumanTransportation. He had devised that particular routine himself after consuming a great deal of television media, and was confident that he'd be able to pull it off. He hovered carefully down the street, heading for slightly busier roads until, eventually, a somewhat tired-looking cab pulled up beside him.
"Where to, bud..dy…" the driver began, speaking out of his rolled-down window before trailing off. His eyes widened slightly.
Biter bleeped at him.
After a second, the driver rolled up his window, shook his head, and took off down the road again without permitting him access to the vehicle. Pausing, Biter ran a few assessment programs, and determined that his inability to imitate human vocalizations was going to be a hindrance. Using one of his claws to straighten his fedora (if it fell off, his disguise would be ruined) he proceeded to Subterfuge Routine 17.89.4, . The majority of vehicles along the roadside were unoccupied. Biter located one which was a suitable shade of dark blue. Then he used his laser cutter to remove the obstacle presented by the driver's side window, disengaged the locking mechanisms and alarm system, and arranged himself onto the seat behind the wheel. It was fairly simple to use one of his claws to force the ignition. After a brief delay, the engine rumbled to life.
Perfect.
Letting out a self-satisfied buzz, Biter waited for forward motion to commence.
And waited.
And waited.
After five minutes had passed without result, he re-examined the vehicle. There must have been a step he'd missed. For a moment he debated initiating Routine 177, TrialAndError, but given his previous experiences with that routine, he decided instead to go with Routine 516.1, GoogleIt. Piggy-backing onto the nearest wireless network, he searched for information on the standard operation of vehicles. There was a lot of it. It took him another several minutes to find out what he needed to know, but when he did he was satisfied that he'd made the right choice.
Opening the car door again, Biter zipped out, and carried on down the street until he located a fairly sizable stray brick. Then he went back to the car, re-engaged the engine, and used one of his claws to pointedly drop the brick onto the gas pedal.
Two minutes later, he concluded that he would have to re-assess and improve upon Subterfuge Routine 17.99.2, and very quickly abandoned the scene of the smoking three-car wreck. A few alarms blared and several humans rushed out of nearby buildings (though none had been involved in the crash itself – the other two cars had been stationary and unoccupied). Giving up on Basic Protocol 6 for the moment, Biter jacked up the energy level of his hover system and zoomed away from the crime scene. Flying probably compromised his disguise, but he concluded that he would have to go by air for the time being, at least until he was somewhat closer to the source of Mommy's tracking signal. Buildings whipped by, a myriad of bright lights, his eye glancing over the few lit windows he passed. The city seemed oddly empty. As far back as Biter's memory files went, there had always been other brain bots around the city. Even when Daddy was in prison and they were on stand-by, there were bots who maintained some of their city-wide systems, and bots who spied on certain areas, bots who checked the weather and traffic conditions, and bots who kept an eye on Metroman (or, recently, initiated City Security Routine 1.1). Ever since Daddy's most recent arrest, however, it had only been Biter, Spiky, and Clawjaw who were around.
That was how Biter knew that his mission was so important, though. If everything had just been part of standard procedure then there would have been other bots within communication distance. There would have been Minion, Friendly Designation: Daddy v.2 to consult with, and Daddy would have been sent to the Metro City Prison coordinates, and not Space Jail: Location Unknown.
A light rain kicked up as he made his way, following the signal. It spread wide, dark dots over the fabric of his coat, and forced him to reduce speed by a marginal factor. He kept going until he cleared the highest stretch of downtown buildings, making sure his hat and coat didn't slip too far, and hesitated only when he had passed the outward boundaries of Navigation File: MetroCityMap. As a matter of fact, he was so intent upon his task that he didn't even realize he'd left the city until one of his internal warning sensors went off. When it did, he stopped cold. He was still hovering several stories up. The bright dots of headlights were refracted in the rain as cars moved to and fro on the highway below him. Biter had never left the city before. He didn't think any of the brain bots ever had. Routine 2.339, Emergency Protocol: ReturnToLair threatened to kick in, his basic programming urging him to go back and abandon his task.
Determinedly, Biter cancelled that routine, and initiated with Routine 516.1, GoogleIt again instead. In a matter of minutes he had saved several new map files, and managed to triangulate his current location with acceptable precision. He would simply have to proceed with extra caution and care for his subterfuge routines, he determined, but still opted for speed over more convincing duplicity as he took off again. His internal sensors whirred and jangled frenetically for a moment as he left the range of the city network. There was no turning back. He had made his decision as soon as he had scripted Routine 36.111, Addition 33.7, Project: SpaceJailBreak for himself. Even if it technically required that he become a renegade bot.
He would just have to make a new file for himself under Classification: Badass.
The streets outside of the city didn't look substantially different than the roads inside of the city, but there was a stark disparity in that he felt profoundly alone. Biter proceeded by air until his first battery warning went off. He ran a quick calculation, realized that it would likely be another hour, at least, before he could convert some solar energy for himself, and went into PowerSaverMode. Dropping in altitude, he reduced the output to his hover engine until he was at street-level, and dimmed his external lights. With another check of his hat, he proceeded down the roadside at Speed: BriskWalkingPace. There weren't many pedestrians around, and those that he did see were a fair distance away. By the time a few streaks of early sunlight had started to break through the horizon, dulled by the cloud cover, his second battery warning had gone off. He started to recharge, little by little, but he was still using more energy than he could convert, and when dawn fully broke he was on his last battery warning.
At right around the same time, the signal he was getting from RoxanneTracker abruptly died. Biter halted his forward motion, trying to assess whether the disruption was caused by interference or his own depleted power cells. A quick check of his surroundings revealed no good place for cover. He determined that he would have to raise his battery levels before he could properly re-examine the situation, and so waited, dropping his power usage even further and subtly shifting the collar of his coat so that more sunlight fell down the front. A passing car slowed its pace, drawing level with him before immediately speeding up again. Biter observed its progress with minimal optical settings. In hindsight, perhaps he should have recharged before he set off to provide Mommy with back-up support. He made an amendment to Routine 36.111, Addition 33.7.1, and waited. The meter for his battery slowly, slowly began to tick upwards again. It would have gone faster if the weather had been clear.
The signal didn't come back, though. That meant that there was probably some sort of interference. Or the transmitter had been destroyed, which wouldn't be good, because if the transmitter was destroyed then he was supposed to start Routine 36.109, EmergencyContact, and alert Daddy as well as every police station, hospital, and fire station in the city – but Biter couldn't do that when he wasn't in the city, could he? So it was probably simpler to assume it was interference of some kind. When there was enough sunlight filtering down through the rain clouds that he could move without expending more power than he converted, Biter resumed his trek, heading for the signal's last recorded origin. It took him a considerable amount of time. The road he was on branched out into further roads, winding its way through blocks of buildings and stretches of short green grass. After a few hours the rain began to diminish, until only a few lingering drops ran down from gutters and splashed into puddles against the concrete. A jogger passed him. Biter kept his collar up and nodded to him, and the man wound up staring at him for so long that he miscalculated his trajectory and collided with a street sign. He was cursing as Biter marginally increased his speed in an effort to avoid further contact. But after that, it was clear that the majority of the non-Metro City human populace was rousing. People came and went from buildings. Dogs barked. More vehicles poured into the streets, and Biter found himself watching it all carefully, intrigued by the activities that weren't too unlike the ones in Metro City, and yet very alien, as well.
The group database for Metro City was very large. Biter could look up the names and residences of nearly anyone who lived there if he wanted to. But beyond the city, everything was disconnected – and more uncoordinated, he concluded, as the third pedestrian in an hour tripped while walking past him.
"Oh my god!" the woman exclaimed, extending a shaking hand in his direction. Biter immediately tried to initialize Basic Protocol 6.1, NothingToSeeHere, emitting a cheerful whistling sound and tipping his hat slightly, but it didn't have the desired effect. The woman started screaming. Pointing and screaming. Calculating the angle of her finger, Biter was forced to conclude that she was pointing at him, and not some potentially undisguised figure behind him. Routine 10.22, TacticalRetreat kicked in, because he didn't have any back-up and there was no one to find and repair him if he was blown to pieces right then, and he utterly abandoned his subterfuge routine in favor of speeding off through the gap between two nearby buildings.
In his haste he improperly calculated his angle, and his fedora was knocked back and off of the dome of his skull. Letting out a startled bleep, Biter reached back to try and grasp at it with one of his clawed hands, but the wind caught it and carried it out of his reach. Behind him, the sounds of human distress were increasing. He couldn't risk turning back. So instead he increased his speed and tried to find cover, darting between the small, square buildings around him. It wasn't easy going. There was a lot of space that was simply comprised of grass or road, and nothing seemed to be very tall. He navigated as quickly as he could, and after a brief assessment of his status, shifted the trench coat so that it was covering the top of his head. All the while he attempted to re-connect with the signal from RoxanneTracker and keep along his course. After an uncalculated length of time he found himself amidst several taller, shabbier buildings, with a few colorful signs out front and more crowds of people making their way along the streets. If he'd still had a complete disguise he could have tried to blend in. As it stood he was still retreating, the strange environment setting off alarms that told him everything was wrong, wrong, all wrong, and he wasn't programmed for this sort of thing, until eventually he picked up a small blip on his proximity detector.
Biter wasn't sure what it was, but it was familiar, and right then that was all that really mattered to him. He adjusted his course and tried to follow it.
As far as intimidating rooms went, Roxanne would give the one she was in a three out of ten. It looked like the standard interrogation cell from a bad cop drama, with thick, grey walls, a single light bulb swinging from a chain, a table, and a chair that she'd been sat down on. But there were a couple of things to undermine the starkness. Namely, a few wine crates pushed up against the far corner, and the distant murmur of voices filtering in through the crack around the door. If she had to guess, she'd say that she was in the back room of some place – a bar, maybe, or a liquor store. The knots around her wrists were just tight enough to be uncomfortable, but they were the only part of her that'd been tied, and even then they'd been tied in front of her. Apparently she wasn't considered too much of a threat, though the anti-kidnapping gun, the goggles, the cape, and the watch had all been removed. Her mouth was filled with the fuzzy taste of knock-out gas. It was a little sweet, and reminded her of the early formula that Megamind had used.
He'd revised it after the first year of kidnapping her, though, because she'd built up a tolerance, and started waking up earlier than he'd planned for. Apparently, Slasher hadn't gotten that memo. She supposed that was why she was alone in the room. Either that or he was trying to build up tension, leave her wondering what he planned on doing with her. Roxanne leaned forward a little, twisting her wrists to test the ropes. In all honesty she hadn't been quite sure what would happen to her when the Collective got wind of her actions. Slasher turning up by himself was just one of the possibilities. It was hard to say if it was an advantage or a disappointment that she hadn't been taken straight to the prison, but either way, she was going to try and work with it. Flexibility was the key to any good plan, and superheroes were, ultimately, just as set in their ways as supervillains.
She hoped that at least one of the brain bots came through, but she couldn't rely on that. Leaning back again, Roxanne mused that it would be easy to get out of the chair, at least. All she'd have to do would be stand up.
The door opened. Light streamed in from the rooms beyond it briefly as Slasher came inside. He caught sight of her, and his eyes widened a bit, the cigarette drooping before he caught himself and closed the door again behind him. Roxanne raised her eyebrows and gave him a pointedly unimpressed once-over.
"Wow," she deadpanned. "You really pulled out all the stops for this one, huh? Got the little chained light bulb and everything." She nodded up to the fixture in question.
Slasher gave her a sour look as he stalked across the room, big and foreboding, the dull greys of his outfit blending rather neatly with the dim light. It was actually pretty intimidating. Roxanne's nerves jangled a bit, and she forced them down, reminding herself that she knew what she was doing. Sort of. She rallied herself internally, and without really thinking about it found herself slipping neatly into the role of the villainess – Slasher was a career hero. He knew his part of the game, no matter his appearances. That thought didn't stop her from jumping a little as he slammed his hands down onto the table across from her, though.
"We're in my town now, Ritchi," he growled. "Where's Dinomight?"
You're the supervillain, she reminded herself again. Presentation. Slowly, she curved her lips into a mocking smile, and put on her best 'you'll have to do better than that' expression. "Oh, so we're in Port City? Thanks for the tip," she replied. "What is this anyway, the back room of some kind of bar? Did you have to clear out a bunch of boxes to make space for me in here? That must have taken you a while. Next time try renting a storage locker. They're creepier and they have better sound-proofing."
Slasher struck the table again and leaned in closer to her, the burning end of his cigarette coming within inches of her nose. She wrinkled it distastefully and leaned back a little. "Where. Is. Dinomight?" he asked again. The flat of his hand, splayed out on the table between them, grew sharp and metallic.
"I already told you," Roxanne loftily replied. "He's with Metroman now." She laughed. It was a nervous reaction, but she managed to twist it into something of a maniacal chuckle with surprisingly little effort.
With a disgruntled glare, Slasher leaned back again, and started circling the room around her. "Cut the crap, Ritchi," he advised. "I'm going to ask you this one more time, and then I'm going to stop playing nice. What did you do with Dinomight?"
"I think you might need to see someone about your memory problems, Slasher. I've already answered that question a few times now," she replied, following his progress until he moved behind her, and out of her range of vision. She shifted slightly in her seat. "How many ways do you want me to say it? He expired, he got crispy-fried, barbequed, terminated, finished, blown to kingdom come, blasted, decimated, destroyed, sent to the big dinosaur farm in the sky. I killed him. To death."
Blam. All at once something that sounded like a gunshot went off. The light bulb overheard exploded in a flurry of broken glass and sparks. There was an incoherent cry of rage, and then Roxanne was ripped from the chair and slammed against the nearest wall with enough force to knock the breath out of her. Pain blossomed across the back of her shoulders. Real, visceral, reactionary fear hit her in a sudden flood of emotion, and she reflexively kicked out. Her leg landed against unyielding muscle. A fist landed against the wall next to her head with enough force to crack it. She choked back a scream, reminded suddenly, terrifyingly of when Hal had dropped her into traffic and then caught her again, his hands as hard as iron where they grabbed her.
"How long have you and Megamind really been in league with each other?" Slasher suddenly demanded. His voice boomed in her ears, and spittle flew from the corner of his mouth.
Roxanne couldn't manage to reply. She was sure that if she opened her mouth, the only thing that would come out would be an inarticulate squeak.
"What are you doing? What have you been planning? Was this your idea from the beginning – are you setting the Collective up for something? Trying to take down all of our members?" the hero continued, sounding increasingly unhinged. "I should have seen it. No one successfully kidnaps the same woman over and over again like that. Any sane person would have left the city, moved on, gotten out of that mess. You two have been in on it from the start, haven't you? Probably set this whole thing up!" He hit the wall again. She flinched. "What are you planning? What are you planning?"
He dropped his voice again on the last sentence. The effect was probably anger-inspired, or maybe it was meant to be really intimidating, but the end result just left him sounding kind of constipated. Roxanne swallowed, fixing on the unintentional humor there. Reminding herself that he didn't kill people – he intimidated them, took them down, and she knew that. He was playing his end of the game with her. Only, his game was considerably rougher than the ones she was used to.
"I think you need to eat more fiber," she managed to say, her voice wavering only a little towards the end. Up close she could smell nothing but tobacco, and could see the white of her assailant's eyes, the wrinkles in his mask. He hands were still tied, and she would stand a snowball's chance in hell of taking him in a fight even if they weren't. But that didn't matter. Slasher was used to dealing with psychopaths and maniacs, the kind of complex villains who piled plans upon plans upon plans, each more convoluted than the next. His archnemesis made Megamind look straight-forward by comparison. Dealing with that sort of thing had made him paranoid – as he himself had just demonstrated. A person like that probably wouldn't believe the truth of her situation even if she flat out told it to him. In fact, flat-out telling him would probably make him even less inclined to believe it. When she'd been laying her scheme out, she had worried that she was too transparent.
"You're out of your mind, Ritchi," he said, pulling back a little.
"I'm out of my mind?" she couldn't resist tossing back.
With a slight jerk of his wrist, Slasher let her go, and left her to slump against the wall. Her heart was pounding so hard in her ribcage that she wasn't sure how she'd missed it before. "Tell me what you're up to, and maybe I'll see to it that you get a nice cell right next to your boyfriend's," he offered.
"That'll be hard," she replied. "Considering that he'll have broken free of your little prison about, oh… two hours ago?"
Slasher's eyes widened. Roxanne smirked. Then, for added effect, she tossed her head back and indulged in a full-blooded evil laugh. It was kind of interesting how a good 'mwahahaha' could ease some of the tension. She wondered if that was why it was such a popular pastime for supervillains. She was still going at it when Slasher wrenched the door to the room open and dashed out, slamming it closed behind himself again. Of course, she was just lying, but usually supervillains liked to employ a little kernel of truth into any lie they told. Roxanne didn't share that kind of compulsion. She just wanted to get her jailer out of the room in a hurry.
Unfortunately, he didn't forget to lock the door behind him when he left. That would have made things much simpler. As his footsteps thundered away until she couldn't hear them anymore, Roxanne moved over to the doorframe. She tried the handle, just for good measure, but it wouldn't twist. Stepping back for a second, she took a good look at the hinges instead. There were three of them – all basic, steel interior ones, not really that different from what she had back home. They were sort of like the kind that had been used in the basement of the old theatre, though those had been brass instead. She remembered that incident. It had been one of the few times when Megamind and Minion had left her untended in a room after kidnapping her.
With a slight grin, Roxanne leaned down and, after a little fumbling, got one of her leather boots off. Keeping to the ground, she settled beside the lowest hinge on the door, and used the heel of the boot to start hammering at the bottom of the hinge's pin. The trick would be to get it up high enough for her to yank it out. They weren't really designed to come loose, after all, but she'd found that as long as she had something suitable to stand in for a hammer, she could get the job done. It took a few blows before the pin popped up high enough that she could try pulling it with her fingers. The effort left her with limited success and a bruised thumb. Scowling, Roxanne gave the room another look over, and then glanced down at the ropes around her wrists. They were strong when she tested them, but not really thick. That probably suited Slasher's style – he seemed to like sleek things. Experimentally, she wrapped the edge of the roped underneath the tip of the pin. It squeezed in.
Shifting to her knees, Roxanne braced herself, and then yanked her wrists sharply upwards. There was a soft ping of metal hitting metal, and then the pin came loose, clattering to the floor with enough noise to make her wince.
She held her breath. A few seconds ticked by, however, and there was no shouting, no sounds of footsteps, or sign that she'd been caught out. Shoving the pin into her pocket, she picked up her boot again and went to work on the middle hinge.
The second one came more easily than the first, but the third proved itself much more stubborn – she had to drag the chair over to stand on in order to get enough leverage, and whoever owned the building she was in obviously didn't believe in WD40, because the metal was stuck pretty fast. It took her more time to get the last one done than it did the other two combined, and she'd almost given up on it when the pin finally gave, and she overbalanced and almost toppled off of the chair. The door shuddered. Righting herself, Roxanne shoved the last pin into her pocket and yanked her boot back on. She moved the chair to one side, and then, carefully, pushed forwards.
Without the pins to hold the hinges together, they split apart like puzzle pieces, and the left side of the door gave way. The other half still offered some resistance, locked as it was, but when she put her shoulder into it she managed to get one end of it clear of the doorframe, and then it was a simple matter to push sideways – completely nullifying the way the lock had secured itself – and catch the door before it fell into the wall directly on the other side of it. Yellow light filled up the short hallway she found herself in. Carefully, Roxanne leaned the door against its frame, and assessed her location. Going off of the strong smell of seafood and the distant sounds of conversation from the open end of the hall, it seemed she'd hit close to the mark with her guesswork and she was in a small restaurant of some kind. There were boxes stacked up around her, and what looked like a staff bathroom just a few steps away. The closed end of the hall hosted an emergency exit.
She was tempted to just go through that door and make a break for it. But if she'd wanted to avoid getting caught completely, then it would have been easier to try that in Metro City, where she had a hover bike and brain bots and a few good hiding spots to fall back on. No – she needed to get her stuff. Slasher had taken it, so all she needed to do was figure out where he'd keep it.
'In the bathroom' was probably a long shot, but after some thought, she crept over to it and through that door anyway. Flicking on the light switch revealed a small, closet-sized room with a toiled, a sink, and a cracked, unframed mirror hanging in front of some tacky wallpaper. Roxanne examined her reflection. She looked pale and a little haggard. Her hair was a mess, and there were a few purpling bruises around the base of her neck. A few more would probably show up on her shoulders. Ouch. Not daring to run the water, in case the sound of the pipes drew attention, she ran a hand through her hair and did her best to straighten up a little. Without the cape she looked less like a would-be supervillainess and more like someone on their way home from a rock concert.
The sound of footsteps startled her a little. Reaching over, she hit the light, and flattened herself against the wall by the door. The bright glow of the hallway streamed in from around the frame. It flickered briefly as someone walked past.
There was the distinctive sound of cursing. She heard a loud clatter, and then what sounded like someone rushing over to the end of the hall and throwing open the emergency exit. After a few seconds the footsteps came back again. Slasher's distinctive voice bellowed for someone. Roxanne held her breath as she listened to the conversation through the thin bathroom walls. It occurred to her that she might have done better to try and put the door back to the way it was. Then maybe her absence would have gone unnoticed for a little longer.
"She can't have gone far, can she? I mean she didn't look like very much when you brought her in, Slash," an unfamiliar male voice.
"You should know better than to underestimate one of them," Slasher's voice said back, low and furious. "The worst ones never look it."
Roxanne barely had time to react, then, as the door to the bathroom was flung sharply open. All she could do was suck in a breath and try to merge with the wall behind her. The peeling paint stopped just short of her nose. For a few seconds, it seemed like time had stopped.
"Damn," Slasher swore. Some of the pressure on the door eased up a little bit.
"Want me to put the word out? Get the eyes on the street looking for her?" the other man asked.
"Do it," Slasher moodily replied. There was the sound of a lighter clicking. "I'm going hunting."
"Man, I wish you wouldn't smoke those death sticks-"
"We all wish for a lot of things, Patches. Doesn't amount to much in a world like this one."
"I don't believe that."
"I know you don't. That's why you'll always be a better man than I am."
Internally rolling her eyes, Roxanne tuned out the rest of their conversation, until the heavy sound of footsteps told her that both men had moved on. Banter. It came in many flavors, and most of them were patently ridiculous. For a few minutes she stayed where she was, afraid that it was actually some kind of trap, and that the first second she moved she would be caught. Some of the lights beyond the bathroom dimmed a bit. When her bruised shoulders started to really protest being squished against a dingy bathroom wall, Roxanne finally got up the nerve to move again, peering cautiously around the door and inching back into the hall again. For the second time, she felt the urge to just make a break for the exit. For the second time, she pushed it back, and instead gathered up the tattered edges of her courage and slunk over towards the open end of the hallway.
To the right of the hall were a pair of silvery doors that led into what was probably kitchen. In front was an open dining room, lined with worn booths, and little scrubbed wooden tables. The place looked like it had something of a pirate theme going on. There were tropical birds and ships painted onto the walls, and the lamps on the booths were shaped like little treasure chests. A short bar stretched from the wall opposite the kitchen doors. From her angle, Roxanne could see the back side of it, and couldn't help but grinning a little at her luck – peeking out from the top of a box shoved into the bottom tier was what looked like the shoulder of her borrowed cape. With another quick check of the room to make sure no one was hiding in any dark corners, she darted forward, crouching behind the bar and sliding the box forward. The cape was in there. The gun and the goggles weren't, but the watch was, and so were a few other loose odds and ends that didn't matter nearly as much. Folding the bulk of the cloak's material up, Roxanne tucked it under one arm, and then strapped the watch onto her wrist. She felt hyper-aware of her surroundings, and the fact that she could get caught at any moment kept her ears sensitive to any and all sounds around her, and made her hair stand on end.
Turning the watch's face, she checked its most recent scan, and then watched as her body morphed and shifted until it was considerably larger and more spandex-clad. One of her hands was shaped like a metal blade. It would probably have to stay that way, unless she could get another scan of Slasher, which seemed like it was pushing things a little.
Satisfied, Roxanne peered up over the edge of the bar, wondering which exit it would be better to try and leave by – the front or the back. Or maybe it would be better to go back to the bathroom, and hide out until the restaurant opened again? Then she could change that watch's settings to something inconspicuous, like Bernard, and try to slip out with the breakfast crowd. Provided a dive like the one she was in even had a breakfast crowd.
Before she could make a decision, the front entrance swung open again. A burly man with an eye-patch strode into the dining room, his strides heavy, the corner of his mouth downturned as he walked straight for her hiding place. Roxanne ducked down again, but before she could react he had already moved close enough to see her. The man paused and blinked at her. She froze, and her first thought was that she'd been caught red-handed, and had screwed up enough that she was about to be recaptured.
"I thought you said you were heading out?" he asked.
Oh. Right. She still looked like Slasher. Thinking fast, Roxanne glanced down at the box in front of her, and then slid it back into place.
"Just checking some things," she grumbled out, internally flinching at the dissonance of hearing such a rough voice come out of what was, technically, her mouth.
It must've been the right thing to say, though, because the man just sighed and shook his head a little. "You and your ideas," he said. "I told the fellas to be on the lookout for your escapee, anyway. Give 'em ten minutes and they'll probably have it all over the city."
She swallowed. "Good," she replied. "I'm going." With a nod she stood up, and after a second of thought, determined that Slasher was the kind of person who likely used the back door. She headed for the rear exit. The man with the eye-patch gave her sword hand a curious glance, but didn't say anything, and didn't try to stop her.
As the emergency exit closed heavily behind her, Roxanne let out a breath, switched the watch's setting to Bernard, and worked on putting a little bit of distance between herself and the seafood restaurant.
All things considered, she wasn't doing half bad.
Having endured a little more than a month's worth of jail time, in what was quite possibly the most boringly awful prison ever devised by man, had given Megamind a lot of perspective on certain things. For example, he'd learned that if he wedged himself into one of the room's corners and planted his feet on the opposite walls, he could climb up all the way to the ceiling. Of course, he'd been able to do something similar as a child, as well, but it had been a long time since he'd had cause to try it again. Of course, the broad, transparent doorway meant that the activity wasn't even useful as a hiding place, but given the way he was practically bouncing off of the walls for the need to expend some of his body's natural energy left him doing it anyway.
He'd also learned that being patient was much harder when one had a very limited number of distractions to call upon. It was all well and good to agree to help Jansen take down the prison's security systems, for example, but with his diminished brain capacity, wrapping his head around some of the more complex ideas was incredibly difficult. Not to mention incredibly frustrating, since he knew for a fact that if he was his normal self, he would have had no trouble at all.
"Oh. You're up there again," Jansen's voice drifted towards him. Megamind glanced down, and then dropped a little gracelessly to the floor, where the heroic apparition was blinking up at him. He straightened a few awkward wrinkles from his jumpsuit, and then moved to sit over on his cot.
"Please tell me it's been two weeks since the last time we talked," he requested. "I think I'm actually getting even dumber. I was trying to recall my childhood yesterday and I only got as far as my shool days before my memory quit on me." That had been incredibly disconcerting. For a few minutes he'd had to try and avoid hyperventilating at the thought that the prison's dampening field would slowly eat up more and more of his life history, until all he could remember were grey walls and bland meals.
Jansen gave him an appropriately apologetic and sympathetic look, straightening out his glasses a little bit. "I'm afraid it's only been two days," he replied. "There are another twelve to go before the station's maintenance routines kick in."
With a heartfelt sigh, Megamind slumped back, almost striking the wall beside his cot with one of his hands. He glared at the offensively spotless ceiling overhead. "Well that sucks."
With a noncommittal sound of agreement, Jansen strode over, and took him by the hand. There was the by-now sense of burning and separation. When it cleared, Megamind found himself hovering in the center of his cell, his unoccupied body lying still and glassy-eyed behind him. He wasted almost no time in heading through the transparent cell door, and Jansen obliged him by keeping pace, following him towards the station's control room.
Technically speaking, there wasn't much of a reason for them to go there. The plan that they'd more or less cobbled together wouldn't be put in action for, as Jansen had said, another twelve days – provided that the Collective actually kept to its supposed schedules. However, the control room was definitely the most interesting part of the station, and Megamind had convinced Jansen that he needed regular distractions if he was going to stay sane and competent for the duration of his imprisonment. To his credit, the bespectacled superhero hadn't taken a lot of convincing, and was fairly decent about turning up now and again to drag him through the walls and passed the locked doors. A couple of times they'd been to visit the other inmates, but that was just… disturbing. There weren't many of them, and those that there were had obviously succumbed to mental illness. Whether they'd done so before their imprisonment or after remained up in the air.
"So how much of your life can you typically remember?" Jansen asked him idly as they made their way through the corridor.
Megamind blinked. "All of it, of course," he replied. "Why? How much of your life can you remember?"
"Um. Considerably less than that," Jansen admitted. "When you say 'all of it'…"
"Yes?"
"You don't mean," he turned his wrist rather vaguely, "all of it? Surely you can't remember what life was like when you were an infant."
Pausing, Megamind gave him a sidelong look of befuddlement. "Well, not my very first day, no," he replied. "Doesn't everyone's memory kick in when they're two days old?"
Jansen's eyes widened considerably. "Ah. No."
He took a moment to consider that, resuming their trek through the station as the other man carried on. "Your memory must be part of your advanced brain capacity, at least in part. That's fascinating. Most humans can only go as far back as their early childhood, and even then, memories tend to degrade with time."
Huh. That… actually, that explained quite a bit. He'd always wondered why Metroman seemed confused whenever he brought up their shared flight to Earth. A sudden jolt of alarm leapt through him, though, and he paused again, darting a quick look at Jansen. "How long does it normally take for humans to start forgetting things?" he asked. As soon as the question left his mouth, though, he realized that his fears were a little unreasonable – he knew it had to be longer than a few months, because it wasn't like he hadn't had extended interactions with people who weren't Minion, but still. He'd been worried about his own memory. It had never occurred to him to worry that, in his absence, Roxanne might forget him. Not literally, anyway.
Jansen blinked. "It depends on the memory's information," he replied. "Little things, like dates and times and trivia, can disappear fairly quickly if the brain deems them irrelevant. More important matters can last a lifetime, provided that the person who remembers them doesn't suffer from any illnesses or traumas which affect their recollection. I'm afraid I can't be more specific than that. Neurology isn't one of my specialties."
Megamind made a noncommittal 'hmm', his brows furrowing. That sounded like an incredibly finicky system to base something as important as a life's history off of. He wondered, briefly, how much of the system relied on conscious effort – did humans decide what was important for them to recall, and what wasn't? Or was the whole thing involuntary? If it was involuntary, how did their brains determine relevant information from useless data? Megamind had forgotten things in his life, so he supposed he wasn't completely unfamiliar with the concept, but the stuff he 'forgot' was always still in his mind – it was just difficult to sift through all of his brain's catalogue of information in a short period of time. For example, he knew that he was supposed to pronounce it 'hello', but he tended not to remind himself of that in the split second it took to answer the phone.
His greeting sounded better anyway.
Absently, he tried to focus a little more on the probabilities involving biological data storage, but his brain quit out on him again. He sighed. After a few seconds, Jansen sighed, too.
"It really is a shame," the hero mused. "Under ordinary circumstances I think we could have the most fascinating conversations with one another."
Megamind nodded. "You would probably learn a lot," he agreed.
Jansen rolled his eyes. "I'm a super-genius myself, remember? I'm sure I know a thing or two that you don't."
"Oh, you're obviously very clever," he assured him. "When this is all done you'll have to tell me more about this dampening field and power system of yours so that I can properly appreciate it. It's just that I'm, well. I'm me."
"Hmph."
"I mean I'm really smart. Really. This isn't just for show," he insisted, pointing at the top of his head.
"Size isn't important. It's how you use it that matters," Jansen insisted, crossing his arms and turning his head, adopting an expression of quiet affront.
"Obviously," Megamind agreed. "But you use your brain the same way I do. For incredibly brilliant plans and astounding technological innovations that would boggle the minds of the world's so-called masters of science and academia! So between you and me, size matters, and mine's bigger so I win. So there."
"This is juvenile," Jansen argued. "Besides, I have psychic powers."
Glaring, Megamind mimicked his posture, sticking his nose into the air and letting out a huff of his own. "Psychic powers don't count."
"That seems a little arbitrary of you."
"Does not."
"Does too."
"Philistine."
"Braggart."
"Upstart!"
"Egotist!"
"Nerd!"
"Grandstander!"
As Megamind debated the relative merits of trying to start an incorporeal slap-fight, they passed through the entryway to the command center. He came up short. The room was very crowded. Mermanus had taken up position at the surveillance desk. He was paying more attention to the handheld game he had balanced absently on one knee, though – it looked like one of the cheap little dime-store trinkets that was made out of magnets and only had two buttons. Minion was slouching in one of the room's corners, floating listlessly in his suit, not seeming to really look at anything at all. Megamind stopped in front of him.
"You're sure you can't do anything about this?" he asked, not for the first time.
Jansen sighed. He walked over to Mermanus, leaning over his shoulder to look at his game, before glancing up at the surveillance screens. "I would if I could. At this point, having your friend on our side would be incredibly useful," he replied. "Unfortunately, whatever telepathy Mermanus uses is on a really weird 'frequency'."
Nodding, having expected that answer, Megamind nevertheless raised a hand and waved it back and forth in front of his friend's face. He really hated Mermanus. As soon as he was capable of hatching not-villainous, entirely merited plans for vengeance again, he was going to come up with something really nasty to do in retaliation. Like maybe turning his underwater kingdom into a block of ice. Or making an army of exploding robot seals. Or transporting him to a desert wasteland inside of an impenetrable bubble dome that contains one single bottle of water which is accessible only through an increasingly deadly and complex series of traps…
The communication systems on the desk lit up, and the headphones that Mermanus had set onto the console started jangling with noise. For a few moments there was absolutely no reaction from the aquatic member of the Collective. It could have been Megamind's imagination, but he thought he saw Minion's fins twitch a little. He looked closer, staring at his friend for a solid minute, but nothing else happened.
Another minute passed. He threw up his arms.
"Isn't he going to answer that?" he demanded. "You know, maybe some time this century?"
Jansen leaned closer to the headset, tilting one ear towards it. "Shh. I think I can make it out," he said. "It's a priority message from one of the other leaders on Earth."
"What's it say?" Megamind demanded, moving closer as well. He winced as Mermanus shifted a little bit and put a shoulder straight through him.
"I can't tell. It's just asking him to respond," Jansen replied.
As if he could hear the exasperation in his fellow hero's voice, Mermanus finally heaved a sigh, leaned forward, and stuck his hand right through Jansen's jaw in order to pick up the headset.
"Mermanus here. What is it?"
There was a muffled flurry of conversation from the other side. Megamind shared a glance with Jansen, and they both leaned forward to try and make it out a little better, but short of sticking their heads inside of Mermanus' (which neither of them seemed inclined to try) they couldn't make out very much. After a few seconds, the hero straightened in his seat, looking towards the surveillance feed. His eyes narrowed a bit. Following the direction of his gaze, Megamind was a little surprised to see that he was looking at the surveillance screen for his cell. Where he was still lying glassy-eyed on his cot, not doing much of anything.
"Yes, I am looking at him right now. He isn't doing anything," Mermanus said. There was more muffled, urgent-sounding conversation from the other end. "What? No. Nothing has happened."
Megamind's eyebrows went up. After another minute, Mermanus muttered something unpleasant under his breath, and stood. "Fine," he ground out. "But this is a waste of time." Reaching up, he took of his headset and tossed it aside again, grumbling something about paranoia and idiots as he turned towards the control room's exit.
Jansen closed a white-hot hand over his forearm. "Quickly. He's heading for your cell," he said, tugging Megamind along before he could properly respond. They zipped down the corridor with dizzying speed, moving through walls and levels that they generally didn't pass through, until they broke past the side wall of his personal prison. His head was still reeling as Jansen flung him back into his body, and then retreated quickly to the far corner of the room. With a feeling of slamming and compression, Megamind gasped, tumbled off of the cot, and banged his knee pretty hard against the floor.
"Was that really necessary?" he demanded as he tried to get his bearings back. Jansen shrugged.
He was still picking himself up off of the floor and silently beseeching the room to stop spinning when Mermanus turned up. Minion was just a few steps behind him. Sucking in a deep breath, Megamind treated the superhero to his best glare.
"Come to gloat again, Speedo Man?" he asked, leaning himself against the nearest wall. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Minion's fins flutter again, but when he looked directly at him there was no sign of it.
"You haven't miraculously escaped since this morning. What a shock," Mermanus flatly replied. "Hands behind your head," he instructed, before reaching over and deactivating the door's energy field.
Megamind raised his eyebrows, but complied, watching with increasing disbelief as the door to his cell slid back and Mermanus entered the room, his trident extended in front of himself. He wondered just what had gone on with that little transmission. Someone thought he'd escaped? Had Jansen let something slip on his end? He glanced briefly over to his ally, but the techno whiz looked just as baffled as he felt. When his gaze flitted back over to Mermanus, it was just in time to see him scratch his wrist with the sharp tip of his trident.
"Ouch!" he protested, immediately retracting back and grabbing his scratched skin. A small bit of blood oozed up against his fingers.
"And you're not some kind of optical illusion. Another shock," Mermanus muttered, backing out of the cell again. Megamind contemplated trying to tackle him, just for the sake of it, but then the door slid shut again, and the moment passed.
"What is this, 'Random Cruelty to Prisoners Day'?" he demanded. "Or did you and that last little thread of your sanity finally agree to go your separate ways?"
As the power flickered back into action, Mermanus casually wiped off the tip of his weapon. "No," he replied. "Just your girlfriend telling tall tales."
He froze.
"What?" he asked, his voice surprisingly quiet. That had to be slang for something, right? He wasn't actually talking about…
"You know, the reporter. Your girlfriend," Mermanus reiterated. "Slasher went after her. I suppose he was intimidating enough that she just told him whatever he wanted to hear." He snorted derisively.
In three short strides, Megamind found himself standing close enough to his cell door that he could feel the hum of electricity bouncing off of his skin. "What do you mean, Slasher went after her?" he demanded.
Mermanus grinned at him. "Oh yes," he said. "I suppose you wouldn't know. We don't get a great deal of news up here, do we?"
He wasn't in the mood to banter or trade jabs. "What's happening to Roxanne?"
But the hero was already turning away, motioning for Minion to follow him as he headed back the way he'd come. For a second Megamind considered shouting after him, even though he knew it wouldn't do any good. Whirling away from the door, he marched towards Jansen instead, his heart pounding in his chest.
"What did he mean?" he demanded in a low hiss. "What's been going on?"
Jansen raised his hands in a placating fashion, his eyes wide behind his glasses. "I don't know. But I can try to find out," he offered.
It wasn't much of a comfort when he vanished, then, not even bothering to wait for a response. Leaving Megamind alone in his cell once more.
Biter looked up at the high walls of the warehouse which surrounded him. The building reminded him a great deal of Lair No.17, Lairs No.21 – 30, and Lair No.33, even if it was outside of the city and so not somewhere he'd ever actually been before. There were a few high slits up at the top to let in sunlight, and a lot of dust and concrete columns, and corners where small rodents made rustling sounds. Under ordinary circumstances he would have happily recorded the location and transmitted his footage to Daddy's computer, and probably gotten accolades and praise for finding such a good potential lair. As it stood he settled for running a basic scan and saving the information to his own local files. More important than the building were the little blips he was still getting on his proximity detector.
He'd managed to follow the unknown signals so far, but this particular building seemed to be the end of it. He had left, but the signals kept drawing him back… and yet, there wasn't anything inside. Processes whirring, Biter decided to run Search: LocateInvisibleObjects. He hovered low, searching the floor of the warehouse carefully for stray rocks and pebbles and little bits of things. Whenever he found one he extended a clawed hand and plucked it up. After he'd gathered about a dozen or so suitable projectiles, he moved to the furthest right corner of the empty structure, and started launching them through the air. They didn't hit anything. Undeterred, he collected them up again from where they'd landed, and moved to another corner to repeat the process. After about an hour he'd covered the whole warehouse, but hadn't found anything.
Letting out an annoyed buzz, he ran another laser scan. Inconclusive. Not for the first time, he tried narrowing down the signal he was picking up on, but that only got him to the center of the empty warehouse. Biter stretched his eyestalk upwards. The roof was there. Then he looked down. The floor was there.
The only conclusion, then, was that what he was looking for was either on top of the building, or underneath it. He had already examined the top of the building.
Extending one claw carefully forward, Biter knocked on the hard material below him. Analysis of the sound was inconclusive. He circled the area for a moment, knocked a few more times, and then tried to run his best scanner on the floor, but that didn't reveal any new data. With a contemplative whirr, he gained a little more altitude, and then aimed his laser-cutter for the surface. The beam struck ground, thrumming and glowing bright red as it began to burn a groove into the concrete. For a moment it didn't seem to be having any sort of effect. But then the laser inched forward, colliding with something just slightly uneven to the rest of the surface, and Biter's sensors flared up as an electronic system came to life.
Input: UnknownSystemActivation. Initializing Routine 115.2.10, Subroutine 11: RemoteDeactivation. The process kicked in without a second to spare, and Biter jolted a little as his systems let out a pulse, and whatever he'd unintentionally turned on was subjected to enough jangling interference to turn it back off again. Curious, he stretched his eyestalk forward. The likeliest explanation for the reaction was that there was a hidden entrance located in the floor. With a self-satisfied hum Biter resumed use of his laser cutter, sawing through the uneven square of floor until he'd burned out a sizable chunk. It fell into the hollow space below it with a resounding clatter. Another electrical system started up, but RemoteDeactivation worked on that one, too.
The space below the floor was dark. Biter examined it for a moment, shining light down into the dust motes he'd created. There was a set of stairs that he'd missed by several feet, and a long opening which led further than his tiny light could reach. But the signals were a little stronger now. Switching to nighttime mode, Biter descended through the opening he'd made, and followed the steps down. The underground room was half the size of the above-ground warehouse. Apart from some dust and grit which he himself had caused, it looked like a clean, open space. But that wasn't what caught his immediate attention. Because the room was full to the brim with deactivated brain bots.
Immediately Biter let out an excited bleep. But the action garnered no response – his siblings were all lying upon various shelves, still and unmoving, their lights dimmed in deactivation. Perplexed, Biter hovered forward, and poked the nearest one curiously with his claw. Silence. No transmission, no energy signal, no anything. The other bots were quiet in a way they only were when Daddy was repairing them, or they'd been broken. After a few seconds of visual observation he noted that the bot's power cells had been removed. The nearby bots all seemed to be in a similar state of disassembly. That explained why they were responding to him, but it didn't explain where the proximity signals were coming from. Keeping his lights up, Biter continued down the room, examining the disconcertingly still forms of his peers until he came to the end of the room.
Several of Daddy's smaller exo-suits were lined up against the back wall. A check revealed that they'd had their power cells removed, too, but one of the suits still had its back-up battery intact, though the reserve was almost entirely depleted. It had been setting off an automatic warning, which must have been what his proximity detector had latched onto.
There was no sign of Mommy or the signal from RoxanneTracker. Clicking his jaw absently, Biter fluttered to and fro between the suits. It looked like someone had removed a sizable portion of the lair to this location, and then deactivated everyone. He processed that information carefully through his systems, and after a few minutes, revised Routine 36.111, Addition 33.7, Project: SpaceJailBreak to include a new stage. Project: SpaceJailBreak, Phase 3.2: Reactivation. Step One – ReplacePowerCells.
With a resolute beep he got to work.
Author's Note: Love to everyone who's reviewed so far!