A fourth video went out from the Overlord's office the next week. It opened as before, except that the mayoral desk was piled with boxes.
"This is the Evil Overlord speaking to you from City Hall on the subject of public safety. It has been pointed out to me that, since the demise of Metro Man, the increase in violence against persons on the street has begun to disrupt ordinary life. I lay this problem at his door. He called you helpless. He liked you that way. I do not. It is my will that you, the citizens, take upon yourselves this responsibility. To that end, I have here several cases of extremely close range non-lethal weapons. The boxes on this side are pepper spray. The ones on the other side are electroshock weapons, not TASERs, but a competing product that is slightly easier to use. And these here are old-fashioned brass knuckles." He dangled an example of the last from one gloved finger. "I will be giving them away free of charge to those women who have enough courage to come up and ask me for one while Minion and I are taking the air in Spider Bot in Simons Park this coming Saturday night. My definition of womanhood will be biological. If your body has the characteristics of a human female who is capable of reproduction, or who has been thus capable in the past, you can have one, no matter how many or few birthdays you've had. At the same time, we will be using Spider Bot's infrared lenses to identify padding, so don't you boys try to fool us. We shall start in the soccer field. See you there, ladies." As before, this announcement was also summarized on posters put up by brainbots throughout the city.
###
Testing of the Death Ray as a power supply began, with dramatic beams of light flashing down through the sky at all hours of the day and night. Many citizens were braced for an explosion, but it didn't come. After the first test lasting more than an hour, however, the cables overheated and the whole process had to be halted while they were replaced.
###
Madison's story met with skepticism, at first, from her fellow fans. It seemed too much like a fantasy encounter for some of them. But then went live, with the button in the upper right, just as he'd promised. The fans were all over the official site. Particularly popular were Minion's pages and a section called "Gallery: Prison Memories", which contained over a hundred sketches of young Megamind and Minion, sometimes with adult prisoners, all drawn by Luis Gutierrez, artist and forger, who drew them while serving twenty years for his part in the Omar Jenkins organization.
Roxanne had spent several hours working with Minion on the content of the website. She had met Tio Luis, an elderly Mexican-American shorter than herself and so scrawny that he made the Evil Overlord look burly. She'd seen men with that build before, in Mexico and Central America. They were the poorest of the poor, the ones who didn't own any shoes and who often went to bed hungry. It was explanation enough for why a man with so much artistic talent had chosen a life of crime, but it still saddened her. So did the pictures of Megamind and Minion as wide-eyed children, most of them, anyway. She thought of the sketch of the welding infant. Raised in a more suitable environment, he'd have grown up to make an amazing contribution, but what environment would have been suitable?
Meanwhile, the adult Megamind had gone through a phase of wanting to, as Omar predicted, fill it up with bragging, but she had managed to limit it to a one-minute evil monologue podcast at the beginning (which he could replace with another at any time) and a continuous Greatest Hits video loop showing the destruction of the observatory, the freeing of the prisoners and the taking of City Hall. It wasn't too hard to convince him that most of his weapons should remain mysterious rather than being shown in action on the website where his enemies could scrutinize them for weaknesses from the comfort of home. The announcements and the relevant news reports went into a blog.
At first, Megamind was shooting Minion new evil monologues to post a couple of times a day. The fish created an evil monologue archive. When Father Anthony Lalli, whose broadcast sermons were the region's most popular religious radio program, preached against the weapons giveaway as part of a theme of turning the other cheek, praying for those who mistreat you, and generally not resisting evil, Megamind devoted his next evil monologue to Father Lalli, praising his initiative, courage and intelligence, calling him "the kind of moral opponent every Evil Overlord ought to have and to value." He also had Minion put a link to the sermon on the website. Eventually, the evil monologue replacement rate settled down to about once a week.
###
Saturday evening. Darkness was falling. The soccer field in Simons Park was crowded with women, including Roxanne, who moved through the crowd with microphone in hand, trailed by Hal with his camera, doing spot interviews. Teams from the other stations were doing the same. The women were of all ages, sizes and ethnicities, but were almost all poor or working-class, the kind who might struggle to afford self-defense gear if they had to buy it. She heard stories of repeated muggings, rapes, domestic abuse. (One woman stood there with a suitcase, saying that once she had an electroshock weapon, she was going to night court to start divorce proceedings.) There was a figure in a burka whom Roxanne particularly wanted to interview, but who would slide away through the crowd whenever the camera came close. Two of her interviewees mentioned the rumor that the free weapons were in some way booby-trapped, that they would turn everyone who used them, or perhaps everyone on whom they were used, into mind-controlled slaves. Both brought it up in order to say they didn't believe it, although the woman with the suitcase said she wished that would happen to her soon-to-be-ex-husband.
She found Omar Jenkins in a crowd of his female relatives, all dressed up as though for church on Sunday. Some of them admitted they were there only because either Omar or his sister Shondra Jenkins Greene, whom they called Big Mama, made them come. Shondra Greene, a very black old woman who wore an auburn pageboy wig and leaned on a walker, went into a rant about young people these days, how they were soft and couldn't take care of themselves, and how nobody was going to say that about her girls. (The girls in question, the eldest of whom were middle-aged and accompanied by their own daughters, looked as if they wished they were somewhere else.)
A snarl of electric guitar music ("Christmas / Sarajevo 12/24" by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra), accompanied by bowging, heralded the arrival of the Evil Overlord. Suddenly the sky was full of brainbots, and more were moving in at ground level, clearing a path. Spotlights lit up a circle of seemingly empty grass and suddenly Spider Bot appeared, with Minion at the controls and Megamind in the gun turret. Megamind's cape was red with white fur trim and Minion had an unmistakeable Santa's elf hat perched on his tank. Some of the brainbots carried bags full of boxes, and had reindeer antlers mounted on their domes. Roxanne stifled a giggle.
Spider Bot moved further into the center of the field as the crowd became a little thinner. It really did move like a giant spider; the arachnophobes were fleeing. Then it stopped. The music faded out and was replaced by the voice of the Overlord.
"Welcome to the give-away, ladies. One at a time, if you please. You've got to be ready to look trouble in the face." The news cameras moved in. "Who's first?" Roxanne wasn't surprised to see the Jenkins women move up, forming a line as they got closer. Some of their eyes got as round as Minion's when they addresed the blue man, but none of them hesitated, and each came away with the weapon of her choice. Others joined the line behind them. Hal got a side shot of Omar standing back and looking proud while a toddler boy clung to his leg, then swung around to catch a Jenkins teenager, who looked like she'd be more comfortable in athletic clothes than in the dress and high heels she was wearing, putting on her new brass knuckles and taking a swing at an imaginary attacker.
Roxanne moved in for another spot interview and the other news teams fanned out, talking with those in line and those coming away with their gifts. Another news team approached the figure in the burka when she was about fifth in line and got a headshake. Nevertheless, since this was the only person present in traditional Moslem dress, every news camera in the field focused as she came up to Spider Bot and said something that wasn't quite clear.
"What's that?" asked Megamind, leaning forward and cupping his hand behind his ear, and every camera caught the ball of pink fire that came at him from the figure's right hand. He ducked sideways, but not far enough; the fireball struck his shoulder and splattered onto his arm and the side of his face. As he shrieked, several brainbots converged on the figure in the burka, one clamping itself onto the hand that had just released the fireball, the others biting wherever they could reach (provoking a shriek from the attacker that matched Megamind's), while one bot produced a nozzle from its underside and began spraying him with white foam.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Roxanne said, going instantly into battle-reporting mode. "Megamind has just been hit by a ball of pink fire, the signature attack of the supervillainess Hot Flash. He has responded with biting brainbots." Spider Bot kicked the figure away. More pink fire sprayed from the left hand onto Spider Bot's undercarriage. Minion's metal fist, extended directly from his shoulder, passed through the air where the veiled head had been while another brainbot flew in and began applying foam to the new flames. "Counterattacks have also come from Spider Bot and Minion, interrupting the launch of a second fireball, which has struck Spider Bot instead of the Overlord."
The fireball thrower flew a good fifteen feet, knocking down the woman behind her while others fled, or dropped and rolled if they were directly in her way. Hal swung the camera with his usual expertise, following the action. "It looks like a bystander has been hit." As the mechanical arm retracted, Megamind, now with foam on his face that ironically resembled one side of a white beard, took hold of Spider Bot's big gun and swung it around to face his attacker. He held his fire for a moment. The figure was indistinguishable under the mass of brainbots all struggling to get a bite in. Spider Bot moved closer. "Megamind is bringing up a dehydration weapon, but it looks like his line of fire is blocked by his own brainbots." Pink flames suddenly engulfed two of the brainbots, which fell off, charred and inert, their domes grey with smoke. At the same moment, the figure slipped out the bottom of the burka on the side away from Spider Bot, so that the brainbots still clutching the empty cloth formed a kind of cover between her and the big dehydration gun. "Now the attacker is abandoning her disguise, and it is definitely Hot Flash."
As she rose to run, two gunshots rang out. Spots of pink flame spurted from the side of her costume, but she kept running. The brainbots gave chase, dropping the empty burka, but by then she was among the trees, hiding and dodging and flinging more fireballs into the branches. "She is apparently using fireballs as decoys to confuse the brainbots, and it seems to be working." Spider Bot, its infrared cameras still able to pick her out, went after her. Megamind fired and kept firing, never quite hitting her, but dehydrating a tree with every miss. "Megamind is going directly on the attack, eliminating her cover."
Abruptly the villainess turned and deliberately flung a fireball at Roxanne. It struck the reporter's hip, splashed across her torso and thigh and penetrated instantly to her skin. She screamed, started to slap at the flames, and suddenly the world was going blue and the air was crushing her. She heard another shot and Hal's voice shout "Roxie!"...
...and the next thing she knew, she was lying on a gurney and a medical team was gathered around her, working fast, getting her clothes off and attaching tubes and sensors. I'm safe, she thought, and then the pain arrived. She gritted her teeth and whimpered and it got worse. She struggled not to scream or squirm, but her reflexes were getting away from her.
"Morphine!" one of the medical people said over her shoulder, and another one came forward with a hypodermic. Roxanne normally hated needles, but that one was the most beautiful sight she'd seen in a long time. Out of habit she looked away as it went in and saw that, where she was burned, the pantyhose had fused to her skin; the person with the blunt-tipped scissors was cutting around it because it couldn't be pulled away. For a moment she fought down nausea and then everything started to feel good and her vision was getting grey and fuzzy and that was okay...
The next several days were composed of lots of sleep, hospital routine and alternations of pain with medication-induced fuzzy-headedness. Her sleep cycle was totally disrupted; she might wake up at any hour, day or night. She lay on her unburned side with a kind of tent in the bed holding the sheet off her lower body. Both her hands were bandaged and splinted, with plastic mesh bubbles keeping anything from touching her burned palms and fingerpads. She had to be fed. She had to have help using the toilet and bathing. When she wanted to make a phone call, someone had to put the hands-free set on her head, although she had a new phone with a giant keypad so she could dial with her big clumsy bandanged fingers. They weren't any slower than her medicated brain. Her mother was always there, steadfastly, and would get Roxanne anything she asked for except video clips of the coverage of the battle. She said Roxanne should avoid thinking about stressful thngs like work.
One afternoon, coming out of sleep, she could hear her mother's voice and Hal's.
"...understand, Mrs. R. He listens to her. In fact, it's really Roxanne that's running the city. She tells him what orders to give."
"She told you this and she didn't tell me?" Roxanne had learned to convey skepticism by imitating exactly that tone of her mother's voice.
"She didn't tell me. I was there. That first order, where he told the banks to come and get their money back? I filmed that."
Roxanne found her voice. "Hal's exaggerating, Mom. I have some influence." She managed to get her eyes open. To her surprise, Hal was lying face down on a gurney, wearing a hospital gown, with another one of those tents holding up a sheet over the lower half of his body. "Hey, did you get hurt, too?"
"Yeah. Stupid injury. She got me in the butt." Roxanne squeezed her eyelids tightly together, suppressing a laugh. She knew that buttock injuries are often neglected because that body part isn't taken seriously.
"Hot Flash?"
"Yeah. It was right after you got cubed, whaddayacall it, dehydrated. I bent over to pick you up, take you to an ambulance, and she nailed me. Then Megamind nailed me, too, and somebody had to come and get both of us."
"So that's why you were talking about him?"
"No. It's this letter your mom got."
"Let me read it," said her mother. She read from a piece of blue paper. "Dear Mrs. Monahan. Hey, at least he bothered to find out my last name. Please inform Roxanne that any costs of treatment for her injuries which are not covered by her insurance will be covered by me, personally. This includes whatever cosmetic surgery is needed to eliminate scars. I will also take care of any expenses accumulated by you and any other members of Roxanne's family in assisting her recovery. You can send the bills and receipts to Minion at City Hall. Villainously yours, Megamind."
"Wow," Roxanne said. She thought of Omar's description of how he took care of the families of his gunmen. "Hal, did your family get a letter like that?"
"Yeah, but mine didn't say anything about cosmetic surgery. Tanya Johnstone's did. Hot Flash got her in the face. She might not work again for, like, a year." Tanya was a reporter for Channel Five. "I guess he doesn't think scars on my butt are so important."
"Come on, Hal. I know you. As soon as you're healed, you're going to go shopping for a pair of shorts that'll show some of the scar, so people will ask you about it, so you can brag about your combat journalism experience." Hal looked sheepish but didn't deny it.
"You know," said her mom. "In all the years he was kidnapping you, he never put you in the hospital. Never gave you anything worse than a rope burn."
"No," Roxanne agreed. "He was always pretty careful about not hurting anyone who wasn't actually fighting him. Listen, Mom. I need to see those news clips. I can't stand Hal being better informed than me."
###
The first clip was KMCP's own coverage of the battle. Hal's camera had actually followed the fireball from Hot Flash's hand to Roxanne and caught her moment on fire before the dehydration ray struck her. Then the report went to grainy citizen-shot video. Hot Flash, dodging Spider Bot among the trees, was deliberately targeting the news crews and the few bystanders who had not fled the area. Every time she hit somebody, Megamind immediately dehydrated the victim, which kept him too busy to get a bead on her. After she hit Tanya, Minion leaped from Spider Bot and went after her on foot. At that point, she abandoned the cover of the trees and sprinted for the fieldhouse. She was dehydrated about halfway there. Minion picked up the cube, held it up and Spider Bot played a few bars of "We are the Champions" by Queen, accompanied by Megamind's amplified laughter. Emergency responders began to move in immediately, gathering up the dehydration cubes, putting out the fires and checking on the uncubed humans. Minion climbed back aboard Spider Bot, handed the cube that was Hot Flash over to his boss and took a look at the Evil Overlord's injuries.
Next came the Channel Five and Channel Seven reports. She had to admit that Seven had the best video because the camerawoman, Ruth Ezekiel, had gone up in a tree as soon as the first fireball hit, so she had captured an overhead view of most of the battle, while her reporter, Daniella Cruz, had dropped flat and held up her microphone. Daniella was one of the people with minor burns.
As for Five's coverage, well, you could tell Tanya and Dinnie McAlister had only worked human interest before this. They made no effort to follow the action. Instead, the camera looked for bystander reaction, victims going down and zoom-ins on the faces of the combatants. Their best shot was two seconds of Omar Jenkins running back toward the fight, drawing his pistol, while his family shouted after him. (Roxanne was pretty sure she could read "old fool" on Shondra Greene's lips.) After Tanya went down, there was a good side shot of Minion running and then the best footage of the battle's conclusion.
All these reports had gone out live. The follow-up reports that aired at eleven added that five people, including Roxanne and Hal, had been admitted to the burn unit of Mercy Hospital, while three others had suffered minor burns, and added that all the trees that had been dehydrated had died. Then there was a shot of a pink-and-black motorcycle, which had been found in the fieldhouse. It was believed to be Hot Flash's intended getaway vehicle. Last was a return to Spider Bot, walking through the park as the Evil Overlord's voice announced that the distribution of non-lethal weapons would continue, and a reporter for each station saying that it was continuing even as the report went out.
Channel Eight had a brief interview with Omar, his hand bandaged. "See, I knew that Hot Flash [bleep] back in the day," the old man said, "and I remembered that even though bullets wouldn't stop her, they distracted her some. So that's what I was going for: a little distraction. I think I spoiled her aim a little when she went for that gal who was in the grass with the microphone sticking up, but then she got my gun hand. Doctor says it'll be all right. Anyway, it was worth it, you know, just to feel like I did something."
Later stories reported that the weapons had all been given away in the end, with a burst of interest just after 2 a.m., when the bars closed. They were in great demand with cocktail waitresses, strippers and other women who dealt with drunken men in the course of their work. Also, one goth club DJ had actively promoted the distribution during last call, causing half the club to show up. The Evil Overlord was reported to be using only his left arm, and remnants of foam were still visible on his face and costume.
One of the doctors who had been treating Roxanne was interviewed about the burns suffered in the battle. This doctor had seen Hot Flash's victims before; she remarked that the immediate dehydration, which put out the flames, had made for much less serious injuries. The main problem with it was that dehydration cubes were symmetrical on all sides, so unless they had been picked up with careful attention to which side of the cube was up, patients might come out of it in any orientation, perhaps head down, perhaps sideways, perhaps lying directly on their burns. It was also easy to mix up the cubes, since they all looked alike. First aid was severely disrupted for several minutes when a cube believed to be an elderly woman with minor burns turned out to be a thirty-foot Norway maple.
Next up was a ten-minute analysis of the battle by Bernard Schmidt, who was still the city's resident expert on the local supers in spite of the disappearance of his job when the museum was destroyed. He guessed that Minion had stayed in Spider Bot as long as he had because he could see better through the bot's infrared cameras. He also guessed that Hot Flash had not originally intended to act alone, that she'd had confederates who were to attack after she took Megamind out, but when he succeeded in dodging that first fireball, they ran out on her. Schmidt also gave fifty-fifty odds that Megamind would rehydrate her in order to question her about the identities of these allies.
After that, the reports petered out. There was a short piece on the damage to the park; a retrospective on Hot Flash's career; and a mention on Channel Seven's evening "tabloid" show, as part of a larger piece on the increase in prostitution under the Evil Overlord's rule, that some prostitutes had acquired weapons in the giveaway, and that was it. The battle made the national news and Super Action Round-Up, a weekly broadcast magazine that covered superhero and supervillain activity around the world, but both shows used recaps of the local coverage. The news cycle had rolled on.
