ON WITH THE SHOW

IDK why Roxanne is worried

seems like a silly thing to worry about

but then SHE doesn't know that this fic is being written by a hopeless shipper so maybe that's why

I love you guys, hope you're safe and well! Big hugs.

(this chapter has been slightly edited from its original version because the italics were killing me)

Chapter 10

Sound the Bells – Dessa

Megamind leads the way into his silent Lair without looking around, his mouth a thin line, his jaw set. He gives his big drawing board a wide berth. A half-finished platform with a scorch mark on the ceiling above it makes him pause, but he doesn't look over at it. For the most part, he keeps his eyes on the floor and moves with as much purpose as he can muster towards the doorway at the far corner of the room.

The other two follow him through the dim hallways, which are lit in the morning by sparse shafts of sunlight that find their way in through the multitudes of tiny windows Megamind has set into the ceilings. They both know where they're going, but they let Megamind lead by unspoken agreement—this was his home, after all, not theirs. Metro Man, drifting along in the rear with his toes barely touching the floor, kicks up dust in a V-shaped wake behind him rather than leaving more footprints. The motes lift and dance in the sun as he passes.

Megamind eventually turns into the room Roxanne and Wayne had been in before, stepping over the twisted door. "Here I am, and there it is," he says, jerking his head at the tripod-mounted gun. It's as he remembers it: unfinished, its mechanisms and circuitry exposed. He can't stand to look at it for long. "What do you need?"

"Okay," Metro Man says. "Can you get this thing hooked up to a bigger generator? It's gonna need a lot of power. The power supply you've got on it won't be nearly enough. I was hitting it with my laser vision at almost full blast before the res—um, the reconciliation device kicked in."

Megamind nods once, quickly, and presses his palms against his legs to stop clenching and unclenching his hands. "I can. I…" He pauses, frowning. "Your lasers? How did you manage that?"

Metro Man picks up the headset Roxanne had modified the day before and passes it to him. Megamind turns it over a few times, peering at the additional wiring, the new couplings, the adapter. He studies how it's grounded for almost five whole seconds before aiming a questioning glance up at Metro Man, who coughs awkwardly and nods at Roxanne.

Megamind looks over at her. "You adjusted this? To work with the disruptor?"

"Yep," Roxanne says, looking pleased with herself. "It worked pretty well, I think! You have a lot of power cords, it wasn't hard to find the right ones."

Ah. Megamind's stomach clenches. "How long did it take you?" he asks. "Where did you learn how to do it?"

"I called a friend who does electric stuff at construction sites and he filled in the bits Google didn't," she replies with a little shrug. "It didn't take long—an hour, maybe. Is something wrong?"

These bonds aren't meant to break. A muscle pulses in Megamind's jaw for a moment, but he finally shakes his head. "…No. Nothing's wrong. Well done, I'm…impressed." He looks at Metro Man again and asks, "What else?" before Roxanne can push him for more answers, but the hero pauses. Megamind's expression sours. He's not interested in uncertainty. He doesn't have time for uncertainty. "You two said you'd need my brain to build whatever it was you needed. I can do that, but I'm going to have a tough time thinking of what you do need—"

Metro Man interrupts with, "A harness." So, he'd known what was needed. Why would a harness make him hesitate? "And a rope that'll reach through several cascading Einstein-Rosen bridges while being tethered on one 'end' to the harness and the other 'end' to something in the here-and-now—preferably a winch or a really big reel or something."

Fine, sure, Megamind can handle that well enough. A harness, a reel: those things are easy. He has those on hand. The rope…now, that might take some finagling. But overall, these things don't sound like a tall order. It's not so much.

If he can see where to start, that is.

He grits his teeth for a moment against the poisonous question, but where to start has been his biggest problem for more than a year. "What do you need first."

Metro Man glances around the little room. "First…okay. For right now, I'm just gonna need you to get this gun of yours plugged into a hefty power supply. If you can get that, I'll go ahead and widen up the field a little."

Megamind jerks his head in a nod and leaves without another word.

After he's gone, Roxanne approaches Wayne. "What are you doing?"

He doesn't look up from where he's tightening the nuts holding the gun to its tripod to keep it stable when he switches out the barrel. "You're not gonna go offer to help him?"

"We don't need another power supply," she says quietly. "Your laser vision works; why change it? And why the harness? Couldn't a brainbot just hold onto the rope? I thought that was the plan."

"That was your plan," he says, drifting around the gun to get at the bolts on the opposite side. "But a brainbot won't be able to navigate the kind of space we're playing around in."

Roxanne shakes her head. "Wait, no, I'm confused. If we aren't sending a brainbot, then what…"

"You'll see," he says shortly. "Trust me, it'll be fine. Pass me that wrench?"

She gives him the wrench, but trust me, it'll be fine isn't something she's particularly interested in. "Seriously, what are you thinking?"

He's floating on his back as he loosens the barrel connection underneath the gun first. "I'll go."

"What?" She shakes her head and drops into a crouch so she can see his face. "What if something goes wrong and we can't get you back?"

"You've got a super-genius," he says. "And I'll have one, too. Might take some explaining to get the one on my end to listen, but he's even got his whole brain and everything. But it's not going to be a problem," he rolls to the side to start on another coupling, "because if it was, it would've already happened."

She bites her lip. "I don't know. I still think a brainbot—"

"I told you, brainbots can't navigate like I can," he says shortly. "Roxie, it's gotta be me. Now, help me balance this thing."

They've gotten the old barrel off the gun and Roxanne is holding a wider one steady while Wayne screws it into place when Megamind returns. "Finish what you're doing and then step back," Megamind snaps. He's carrying a concave dish under one arm, and his other arm is stuck through several…Wayne isn't sure what they are, but they're all metal and they're all more or less round and they all have holes through the middle, and he's carrying them as close to his shoulder as possible. He's wearing his gun belt again and he's also carrying a standard toolbox, but even as heavy as that looks, the way he's leaning says the giant rings are heavier still. Wayne knows better than to offer to help, but…

Megamind kneels to set the toolbox on the floor, then carefully bends sideways and unthreads his arm from the rest of his burden. He stands back up with the dish in hand, picking at the multitude of insulated wires taped to the back of it. He glances up once, scowling, and wiggles his fingers in Wayne's direction. "Step back, I said," he insists. Roxanne has already moved to stand by the wall. "I need to get in there."

Wayne drifts back a few feet, then up and around so he can look over Megamind's shoulder—he's busily stripping wires and binding them to the ones trailing from the back of the dish; it looks like this is going to be part of the gun's new power supply. "What's that?"

"None of your business."

Wayne frowns, nettled. He knows the little guy doesn't like him, but seriously? "I really think it is my business."

"You think everything is your business," Megamind says in a flattish tone, carefully adjusting the angle of the panel downwards. He doesn't look up as he returns to the pile of metal rings and starts shoving the largest one into position on the floor with short, quick movements. "You find my notes, you find my plans, you assume you know my machines—"

Wayne's lip finally curls. "Okay, look," he says, sharp, "I'm trying to rescue your friend, here, not start a fight. Grow up." When Megamind doesn't answer, he takes a deep breath and blows it out in a rush. Hopefully, that'll be the end of it. "So. Can I move any of that? It looks heavy."

Megamind bites his lip hard, then says, "Just…move it two feet that way."

"Can do." The thing is made up of several hundred narrow, identical bricks—they'd be wide, right-angled triangular prisms, if not for the fact that their most acute angles are cut off to create a short fourth side—arranged in a ring with a small gap between each brick. There are tangles of tiny wires visible in each gap, and the slanting edge of each brick is bright with copper panels.

Megamind opens the toolbox, removes a strongly-beveled cone with both ends square, fits this into the center of the ring he'd had Wayne move, and then turns it and lifts a little to click and lock it in. "Pick it up," he says shortly, then crouches to scoot underneath, long fingers making quick work of checking the connections. Satisfied, he nods and gets out of the way so Wayne can put the thing back down again.

"Roxanne," he says, and she jumps a little. "Can you fit the dampener into the ocular focus?" She blinks a few times, and he adds, "That's the, um, the giant ring-washer and the circle made of little silver boxes."

"I can try," she agrees.

"Thanks," he says, and sits down on the floor next to the toolbox, pulls out a lump of whitish metal and what looks like a diamond-edged cheese grater, and starts shaving little filings into a pile.

"What's that?" Wayne asks, and Megamind glances up at him, already glaring.

But then he sighs and his shoulders slump a little. "It's…just magnesium. I need it to burn, that's all—the Catastrophic Converter will do the rest."

Okay… Wayne nods again. "Okay, well, I'm gonna finish changing out the barrel, yeah?"

Megamind tenses, but shrugs and says, "Do whatever you have to," and proceeds to pointedly ignore anything happening after that until the magnesium is fully shredded.

Even he isn't sure what he thinks about Metro Man's involvement in all this, especially considering how, last night, it sounded like most of this was his idea in the first place. Roxanne exhibiting concern for him is one thing, but Metro Man? That's something else entirely, and Megamind doesn't know what it is, and it's setting him on edge.

He finishes with the magnesium, scooping up the handfuls of fine filings and dumping them carefully into the chamber in the center of the Converter. Then he places a second ring, similar to the first but smaller, around the chamber and hooks it into the base ring and chamber itself. After that, it's not hard to lock the top of the chamber into place and assemble the dampener and focus over everything else. The receiver gets set up at just the right angle to the reflector Megamind has Metro Man attach to the ceiling above the Converter, and it's done.

"Okay," he says, brushing himself off with quick movements. "That's the power supply taken care of. Now what?"

"You're sure that's gonna be enough?" Metro Man asks. "It's only magnesium, I mean…"

Megamind growls. "It's a Catastrophic Converter. It's not 'only' magnesium; it piggybacks off the energy released as the magnesium burns and pulls out the rest of the energy lost in the oxidation reaction. It uses oxidation itself as the point of fission and gleans all the potential energy from the source. This thing," he snaps, pointing at the device on the floor, "is probably the most totally overblown, pointlessly destructive item I own—we're talking atom bomb levels of destruction—and I turned it into a generator because you said you need one. That should be enough magnesium to keep the bridges open for at least an hour. I don't know what else you want, here."

"Okay, good," Metro Man says, after a couple moments. "Now, the harness."

Megamind's expression tightens, but he nods. "How big are we talking?" he asks, still looking irritated. "Brainbot-sized? Minion-sized?"

"Me-sized," Metro Man tells him.

Roxanne glances over from where she'd been studying the Catastrophic Converter, but she doesn't say anything. Megamind's annoyed expression has fallen abruptly flat, leaving horror and surprised alarm swimming in its wake. Good, she's not the only one with reservations about this.

"Wh-what?" Megamind stammers, sounding almost hilariously dismayed considering how sharp he'd been just seconds earlier. He skips back two steps, shaking his huge head. "You…wait, what exactlyis your plan?"

Metro Man sighs and puts his fists on his hips, squares his shoulders. "It goes like this: we fire up the gun. I put on the harness. We tether me to the here-and-now. And then you shoot me," he continues firmly, even though Megamind's face is turning pale and his eyes are getting bigger and bigger, "with the gun, and I hyper-accelerate and I hunt around whenever, wherever I end up until I find Minion. Then I reel both of us back home." He shrugs and nods at the gun. "That thing should work as an exit as well as an entrance."

"Not. At. Not at the same time," Megamind says.

"Yes, at the same time," Metro Man replies, positive. "This is time we're talking about; we're not working with space here. It can be both at once."

"But…" Megamind's voice trails off and he swallows. "If…if something goes wrong, you'd…never make it back, and…"

"If something was gonna go wrong, Wayne would've come out when Minion went in," Roxanne says, because at this point, she thinks she's getting the hang of this. "That's the last time the gun was functional."

Wayne nods. "Yep, that would've been my exit. This will work," he adds, his voice firm, because Megamind is apparently still too shocked to even scrunch his face the way he usually does when he's not convinced. "All you need to do is pull the trigger and trust me."

"And figure out the rope thing," Roxanne adds. She isn't one to get between Megamind and Metro Man when they're snipping at each other, but this is different.

Wayne shrugs. "Yeah. And that. Oh, and I'll need your best guess for where Minion would've gone, 'cause I'm not coming back 'til I find him." He frowns. "Little buddy, it's gonna be okay. Really. You don't gotta look like that."

Megamind jumps, then spins away, blinking furiously. "Harness," he says, his thoughts all in a tangle, "and rope. R-right! I'll just…g-go and, and get those."

He all but vaults over the stricken door. Anything to put distance between himself and that gun, he can't think next to it with Metro Man talking like that; he can't think of anything but Minion as the gun swung around, Minion vanishing to nothing, Minion's shorn-off carapace sparking sheared-off wires when it toppled forward, and—

Metro Man flits out after him and pulls alongside, rolling halfway onto his back in the air. "Hey," he says in a low voice. "Listen. Do you trust me?"

"That's not the point," Megamind grits between clenched teeth, lengthening his strides. His chest is tight, and he takes a shuddery breath as the memory of Minion vanishing into nothing plays again on the backs of his eyes because all he can think is, I have to do that again, this isn't going to work, he's going to die, he's going to DIE and it really is astonishing how badly that thought hurts.

"Yeah, it is the point, actually," Metro Man replies with surprising patience, and stretches into a lazy, fluid barrel roll. "Do you?"

Megamind shakes his head and gulps past the stone in his throat. He'd never thought he'd ever find help like this from Metro Man's quarter. He's always worked alone, always—except for Minion. And Metro Man has always been the thorn in his side, always so full of himself, always everything Megamind could never be, always looking down his nose, but now…

"You're not expendable," he snaps, waspish again to drown out the way his blood is pounding in his ears, "if something goes wrong, if—if you don't come back, I can't…"

"Megamind, I said do you trust me."

Megamind sighs, swallows, and glances over at him, finds the hero looking surprisingly earnest. "Yes," he admits, and hangs a left into his main storeroom.

The crooked smile Metro Man sends him looks almost relieved. "Then believe me when I say this will work. Yeah? Okay?"

Megamind hesitates, but finally, he has to nod. "Yeah," he says. What choice does he have? "Okay."

Metro Man pulls more upright in the air, curling into a half-crosslegged position and grinning as he grabs his toes in an enthusiastic gesture Megamind hasn't seen from him since middle school. "Cool," he says, bouncing in the air. "Awesome. So…any ideas on the rope thing?"

Megamind bites his lip but slowly nods again, glancing around, scanning the high shelves rising on either side of them. There's no organization, but he's never needed any; he remembers where he puts things. "A few."

"Sweet." Metro Man drifts along after him for a second on his invisible magic carpet, then chuckles. "Look at us, finally getting along, huh? On the same team? That was, like…four whole sentences when you didn't yell at me, just now, huh?" He drifts sideways, bumps Megamind's shoulder.

"Don't touch me," Megamind says, but it's mostly reflex and it lacks any real conviction. Still, he rolls his eyes and manages a reasonably convincing sneer as he forces himself to stop thinking about Wayne trusting his life to his single greatest failure. "Ugh. Why are you following me?"

"Eh, I just…figured you could use an extra pair of hands. Your little robots are all dead."

"They're only sleeping, they'll be fine," Megamind scoffs, and pauses by a bin labeled Strings & Things. "But…all right. As long as you're here, hold these…oh, and I'll need more magnesium, I don't want to take any chances…"

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Roxanne clears her throat. "I have a question about the rope," she says, when they're unloading buckles and ropes and a three-thousand-pound winch onto the floor. "I was thinking…could we do something with light?"

Megamind cocks his head at her. "How do you mean?"

"When Wayne accelerates, it's basically a time-stop, right?" Roxanne says, glancing up at him for confirmation. "Well…it's still light out when he does it. I mean, the photons or…or whatever light is made of, they don't stop moving when everything else does."

Megamind blinks, then looks sharply at Metro Man. "Is that true?"

Metro Man shrugs. "Yeah, it's not dark or anything. How'd you think I get around?"

Megamind blinks again, then bursts into startled laughter. This, this was the distraction he'd needed to pull him away from this whole horrible venture. "Perfect," he says. He'd always figured the sped-up navigation was related to the Glau's interspatial phase awareness, but light, that's totally mundane! He can work with that. He can do all kinds of work with that. "Yes, we can do something with light, absolutely." Then he looks at Roxanne and cants his head again. "What made you think of that?"

"I…I don't know," she says, startled at the sudden attention. "Just…time stuff, I guess."

"Hmm." He studies her for a moment longer—that was the sort of thing Minion had used to say, offer something helpful right before Megamind could think of it, but…it's probably not worth mentioning. Mentioning it won't change anything.

He turns his attention back to Metro Man. "I'll need to run a few tests. Would you recognize the right kind of particle if you touched it?"

"Probably, but it'd have to be almost completely quantum."

"Okay." Megamind frowns. "Do you think…entangled quantum or the 'everything is nothing' kind of quantum?"

"The second one, probably." Metro Man stretches a little, looking nonplussed. "Maybe both? It'll taste like chicken when you get it right, that's all I know."

Roxanne has to laugh a little bit. "Wait, taste? How do you taste a particle?"

Metro Man grimaces. "You'll see."

"Is that why chicken tastes like everything," Megamind murmurs, but his mind is worlds away already. This will take some time.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Metro Man winds up sitting cross-legged on the floor in another of Megamind's labs while Megamind fires a slapdash laser cannon at the hero's open mouth, making minute adjustments based on the Wayne's feedback and trying to refine what will eventually become a photolayer around a regular piece of nylon cord. Since light still exists when Metro Man hyper-accelerates, Megamind reasons that light, with its wave/particle nature, must be at least a little bit immune to time-space shenanigans. Metro Man agrees this makes sense, and while Megamind would not ordinarily put much store in what Metro Manthinks, he's never heard the hero speak so casually—and accurately—about cascading gaussian vector systems in quaternion terms before. It seems his old enemy has hidden depths.

Roxanne stands off to one side, leaning against the wall, wearing a lead apron, goggles, and an amused expression. She doesn't have much to contribute to this part beyond emotional support, and she knows it, but that's okay. Watching the two aliens interact is entertaining enough, and she'll add something if she feels it's needed.

"I don't even have words for half these flavors," Metro Man complains, but after a while he says, "That one was a little poultry-ish." Megamind makes a small adjustment and fires again. Metro Man grimaces. "No, the other direction."

"Which other direction?" Megamind asks, exasperated. "There are six."

"How should I know? You're the genius, I'm just the guinea pig."

Megamind pokes his head out from behind the laser cannon, looking totally flabbergasted, but there's a wicked glint in his eye. "Wow, really? What kind of rodent pellets did they feed you?"

Metro Man rolls his eyes. "'The' guinea pig, not 'a' guinea pig."

"Nope, too late, you're Metro Mouse from now on." Megamind gives him a grin and disappears into his notebook again, writing down the specs of the particle that had been close to the right one. He wouldn't have had to write it down, before, but he's getting used to lists these days. "Okay, testing back-left spin, three percent waveform duality…"

Roxanne eventually sits down on the floor with a sigh. It looks like all this is going to involve more trial-and-error than she'd anticipated.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Five hours later, Metro Man and Roxanne are cranky, but Megamind is still bound and determined to get this right. His brain might be functioning differently these days, but he hasn't lost any of his old determination. "If youguys want to go home, fine," he says flatly. "I'm staying here. There's still about forty things we haven't tried…well, okay, thirty-eight things, but…"

"Aaagh," Metro Man says, flopping onto his back and slinging an arm over his eyes, "I can't feel my face."

Roxanne groans and pushes herself to her feet. Her phone died about an hour ago; she hadn't charged it last night and she wasn't expecting to be scrolling through Facebook forever today. "Megamind, you need to take a break."

"Evil never sleeps," Megamind quips automatically, but Roxanne just rolls her eyes.

"Be that as it may, and as strange as it feels to be glad to see Evil playing with lasers again—"

"Oh, good, it's not just me," Metro Man murmurs without moving. "Wooo."

"—You need to take a break." She goes over to Megamind and gives the laser a gentle shove so that it rolls a couple feet away, then tugs his notebook out of his mostly-unresisting fingers. "C'mon."

Megamind scowls at her. "Quitter," he says, but he doesn't resist when she pulls his pencil out from behind his ear.

"It's called a strategic retreat," she corrects him, "and we'll pick it back up after we eat something and clear our heads. Besides, don't you want to get the brainbots back up and running? They could get started cleaning up around here while we work." She puts a wheedling note in her voice and raises her eyebrows, hopeful that this suggestion will stir Megamind to other pursuits. "Then you won't have to sleep in a dirty, dusty bed tonight."

Megamind pulls up short, blinking a little, his eyebrows twitching together. "Sleep? Here? Me?"

"I…I thought we'd be staying here until this is solved," Roxanne says, a little taken aback at his apparent worry. Then again, he's got kind of a one-track mind these days, she thinks ruefully, glancing down at the notebook and the pages he'd filled. They're totally Greek to her.

Megamind catches her eye when she looks back up. "We," he repeats, questioning.

Metro Man lifts his arm and waves to get their attention. "I'm not staying here overnight," he announces. "I have a job protecting the helpless citizens of Metro City."

Roxanne ignores him. "Yeah," she tells Megamind. "We. I'm not leaving you alone until all this is over, one way or another."

Megamind blinks at her, his heart full, his eyes thankfully empty. "A-all our stuff is at your apartment," he says, with a glance at the still-supine hero. "And if…if I'm going to sleep at all, it won't be here."

"Ah." Roxanne nods. "Right. Did you get any sleep last night?"

"I…drifted. For a couple hours."

She reaches out and briefly cups his cheek. "Okay," she says. "We'll go home tonight, then."

Metro Man sits up, bracing his hands behind him and leaning back as he cocks his head. "Hold up," he says. "So, you two are actually sleeping together now? I missed that part, I think."

Megamind stiffens, immediately defensive, but Roxanne just laughs and slips an arm around his waist, hooking her thumb in one of his belt loops and tugging him close. "Didn't realize we had to tell you all the details," she says playfully. "That okay with you, Mom?"

Metro Man wiggles his feet at them and makes a disgruntled face. "Hey, it's none of my business. I was just curious what'll happen when we get Minion back. How's thatgonna work?"

Megamind pinches his lips together and twists his eyebrows together in the middle of his forehead, but his irritation is belied by the way he's slowly curling into Roxanne's side. "I'm not going back into villainy," he says flatly, then jumps as Roxanne reaches behind her back to grab his hand and pull his arm around her so she can place his hand on her hip. At that, his face relaxes into a weak smile. "Not after this," he continues in a softer voice. "I can't do this again."

"Huh. That's cool." Metro Man nods slowly. Then he looks up. "Hey, you lovebirds wanna get subs? There's a great sandwich place not far from here. C'mon, let's get lunch."

Roxanne nods back, then looks encouragingly at Megamind. "Let's," she urges. "I don't want you to get too wrapped up here."

Megamind swallows, wanting to go, needing to stay, feeling absurdly calm in the back of his head. "But," he says. "Minion."

"I know. But he's waited this long," Roxanne says, and tips her head forward to rest against his, "he can wait for you to eat some food."

Megamind sighs. This is true. "Okay," he agrees, thinking, Lovebirds? "Let's get lunch."

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

He's nervous as they land and approach the shop. This is his first time out and about in daylight without his uniform in…ever. And yes, he's flanked by Metro Man and Roxanne, but strangers' stares still prick him from all sides.

"Your face is gonna stick like that if you aren't careful, little buddy," Metro Man remarks, and Megamind realizes he's been glaring.

He manages to clear his expression, but it's hard. Glaring is safe; he always knows what his face is doing when he's glaring. He'll have to pay attention if he wants to keep his features neutral. Honestly, it's probably more than he can handle, and he's glad when Roxanne asks the hostess for a booth. Having his back exposed to the room is definitely out of the question if either of his companions wants him to participate in conversation.

Still, it's a nice-looking place, clean, with red trim Megamind tentatively approves of. The hostess all but flees after she seats them; that's…reassuring. He's still too jittery to look at the menu, at first, but then Metro Man snorts.

"What?" Roxanne says. Wayne is gazing over the back of the booth behind her and Megamind, grinning.

"Looks like the servers are drawing straws back there," he says, then nudges Megamind with a toe under the table. "I think you scared 'em."

"I'm not scary," Megamind protests. He's out of uniform and covered in dust, unarmored and unarmed. How can anyone possibly find him scary like this?

Roxanne laughs and elbows him low in his side, making contact well away from his gills—was that intentional? Mind-reading might have had some benefits. "You're not scary?" she scoffs. "Since when? You've been missing for a year and now you're doing something nobody's ever seen you do before. And you put how many years into making sure people were terrified of you?" She rolls her eyes at him, but her smile is warm. "Shut up."

There's not much he can say to that, so he drags his face into amusement and chuckles and elbows her back, remembering their midnight shove-war at the kitchen table not so long ago. "Make me."

A young woman clutching an order pad to her chest approaches their table. "Hi I'm Stacy and I'll be your server today what can I get you to drink?"

"Just water for me," Roxanne tells her, lips twitching. Megamind glances at her, unsure why she's trying so hard to pretend she doesn't notice the woman's obvious discomfort.

"I'll have a Sprite," Metro Man says. His act is much better than Roxanne's.

"Uhhh is Seven-Up okay?"

"Yeah, that's fine."

"Okay. A-and for you? S-sir?"

Megamind looks at her, frozen. Part of him wants to pull out Evil Grin #3, all teeth, eyes lit, and tell her, blood, just to see what she does. Part of him wants to be scary—if they all think he is anyway, why not? It's what they expect. Give them what they want! But there's another part that just wants to know what a normal conversation with a stranger is like, and yet another part that's just plain tired of meeting everybody else's expectations. "Ehhh," he says, and realizes his mouth is open and he's been dithering, and that's just. wrong. unacceptable. He jumps and clears his throat. "I. I'm. Um. Uh…"

"He'll have a Coke," Metro Man tells Stacy, whose frightened expression is slowly falling to puzzled at the way Megamind seems just as scared of her as she is of him.

"I'll…I'll h-have. Yes," Megamind agrees, too embarrassed to even be upset that Metro Man is ordering for him. Aw, crap, he can feel himself turning red. It really is a curse, how easily that happens. "Y-yes, that. Coke. Thanks."

"Sure, no problem," Stacy says, and as she leaves, she hears Metro Man say, "Little buddy, you are a piece of work." There's a groan and then a thump, and when she glances back, the blue supervillain has his head down on the table. She frowns, pensive, then disappears into the back.

"I miss my spikes," Megamind whines, muffled. Metro Man laughs and turns his attention to his menu.

"You're fine, plenty of people lock up in new situations," Roxanne says. "It's nothing she hasn't seen before. So…not to change the subject…"

"Yes, please, let's change the subject," Megamind says fervently, sitting back up. Anything to draw focus away from his general failure at simple interactions! God, how embarrassing.

"Assuming we're right, and Minion is back in time, where would he be?" She reaches over and squeezes his hand. "Best guess."

That's not quite the subject Megamind would have picked, but—whatever! He'll take it. "That's a good question," he admits. "I'm not sure. He can't be pre-Lair, not with how I've configured the reconciliation device. The kind of energy needed to send anything back that far would have fried it. So, he has to be in the Lair, but…I think I'd remember a second Minion showing up. He wouldn't hide from me."

Roxanne seems to hesitate at that. "I'm…not so sure." She fiddles with her napkin-wrapped silverware. "You were a mess when I found you. No offense," she adds quickly, "it sounds like you held on for a long time, fighting to find him and get him back and all! But…maybe whatever happened to you happened to Minion too, but differently. It might have happened faster, or slower. We don't know."

"But he would have come to me," Megamind argues, reaching for his own silverware and tugging off the napkin ring. He blinks at how easily the ends come apart—it doesn't even tear, the glue just falls open—then busies himself folding a triangle from the corner so he can tear off a square. "Even though I wouldn't have known what was going on. I know him."

"You know him when he's linked to you." Roxanne bites her lip. "Minion is why you never had to make lists before, right? There's no way to know for sure, but…I think he's the one who handles the…the progression of things? Like tasks, and…and all the pieces in your fast brain, and putting the pieces together. Kind of like I do at work, with a feed in my ear and I'm watching the video screens and scanning through twitter for information."

Megamind watches her warily, his hands still working at folding the little paper square, and waits.

"So…what if the relationship goes both ways?" Roxanne finally says, watching his fingers move. "What if he uses your fast brain for…well, for some essential piece of his thought processes?"

"He might not have been able to evaluate his options clearly without Megamind's input?" Metro Man asks quietly, and Roxanne nods.

"That's pretty much it, yeah."

Megamind is silent for a long moment, bending the paper and pulling on corners, creasing along lines, before he says, "This relationship definitely goes both ways. It's mutually beneficial." Because, really, Roxanne shouldn't be able to learn to rewire sensitive, custom-made electronics in under an hour. She's smart, but her intelligence is a different kind of smart than that. The seismographier had been years ago; she shouldn't have even remembered it as an option. That sort of thing is Megamind's job. And she shouldn't have thought to use light the way she had. It worries him badly. "For Minion," he says, and stops. "I don't know what it would be like," he eventually says. "I don't know exactly what he'd have lost, but…if he didn't find me, then he'd have gone into the lake."

Metro Man shifts in his seat. "The lake? Are you sure?"

Megamind nods without looking up. "Humans can sense things you can't; you can sense things they can't. It's the same with Minion and me. Minion is attuned to…rhythms, I guess." He shrugs. "The moon and the sun. The waves in the lake would be comforting to him. And he is fully aquatic." He sets a tiny, lopsided paper crane on the table, then sets himself to making a second one. He pulls his gloves off, this time—creasing the paper is difficult without being able to use his nails.

Roxanne sits forward a little, her head on one side. "Wait," she says. "What was that about humans sensing things Metro Man can't?"

The hero sounds embarrassed. "It's not major stuff," he says, but Megamind grins sharply and fixes Metro Man with a sly grin that looks almost exactly like one of his old ones.

"Oh no? How about that time you got into the fight with the wind turbine?"

"It wasn't a fight," Metro Man protests. "I just…kinda…ran into it."

"It ran into you, and you panicked and cut off two of its arms." Megamind cocks an eyebrow, smirking, and turns to Roxanne. "The faster something moves, the harder it is for him to see in the normal light spectrum," he tells her. "The ends of wind turbine blades, especially on the really big turbines, are almost invisible to him."

"Shut up," Metro Man says under his breath, shaking his head, "shut up, Megamind, don't you dare."

"We had a school trip, and Don Quixote over there was showing off," Megamind continues brightly, and Metro Man groans at the nickname. "I'll never forget the noise it made. SPAK!" He drops his half-finished crane and claps his hands together, flat and glancing off each other like he's crashing cymbals. "I laughed for days."

"Yeah, okay, thanks," Metro Man grumbles, as Roxanne cracks up. "I can see them just fine when I'm focusing on energy transference."

"Yes, but you weren't, were you? You were filtering visible light." He sneers. "Amateur."

"Hey, we're both self-taught; you're no more of a literal professional than me," Metro Man points out.

Megamind snorts and waves a hand. "Semantics. But I should tell you," he adds, sobering and returning to the unpleasant present, "Minion is also more in tune with his instincts than I am, so I don't know if he'll be…all there." He hesitates, then tells Wayne, "Don't let him bite you. I don't know if he'd do you any damage, but he's venomous."

Stacy reappears at the table so abruptly that all three of them jump. "Hi here're your drinks have you decided what you want to eat?" she says in a rush, and Megamind immediately feels himself clam right back up again. Ugh, what is with this? This is the worst. He used to be so good at handling the public. Well, bad, really, but he'd been darn good at bad. But this is just…this is just plain bad.

A slight tapping sound gets his attention, and he glances down and then sharply back up again. Stacy isn't looking at him, but she is tapping a long, painted fingernail on the tabletop near where she'd set his drink—along with a small spiral notebook and a pencil. Megamind breathes, and he has his order written down by the time Roxanne is finished asking for a Reuben on wheat instead of rye. He's also written THANK YOU at the bottom, in all capital letters, underlined.

Okay. Maybe Roxanne was right. If the waitress is so used to people needing to write their orders that she brings a separate notepad, discreetly…then maybe it's not so bad after all. Maybe it does count as some version of normal. Even if it's embarrassing, he's clearly not the only one having this problem.

"'Kay, I'll be right back with those," Stacy promises, and takes the little notebook and hurries away again.

Okay. He can do this. And if…when Minion gets back, it will be easier. So much easier if he can think with his whole brain again, instead of just pieces of it at a time. So much easier if he can talk to his best friend again.

But if Minion is somewhere in the past, then…he's been there this whole time, waiting for Megamind to come get him, and…

He reaches for his Coke and chugs about half of it, hoping the sugar rush will help. It doesn't. I'll get him back, he tells himself. I'll get him back. We. We will get him back and everything will be okay. We'll get him back and everything will be fixed.

And then what?

He wants—he wants to reach out to Roxanne. That's still such a new feeling, this wanting to seek physical reassurance, that he doesn't realize what it is at first. And then, when he finally does identify it, he still has to push past his gut reaction: don't be ridiculous, you know you aren't allowed to do that.

He slides his hand crabways on the red, fake-leather seat of the booth until he's able to hook his long fingers over Roxanne's hand and curl them into her palm. Ha, he tells his gut when she looks at him and smiles, in your face.

"If this works," he says out loud, "what happens to you?"

Roxanne blinks at him. "Hm? What do you mean, what happens to me?"

"I mean…" He squeezes gently, trying not to show how worried he is. "If I…re-bond with Minion, the link…it will probably break the link I have with you. I don't know if this can go three ways. I'll be me again. The old me. I'll. Be able to think again." He swallows, glances down at their hands. "Will you…are you sure you can still…"

"I told you before, I'm still up for whatever we can do," Roxanne tells him, turning her hand over and netting her fingers with his. "You're my friend, first and foremost. Anything on top of that is bonus, but I'm not just going to abandon you as soon as Minion gets back." She ducks her head a little, trying to make eye contact. "Okay?"

Megamind blinks at her and nods, his expression unreadable. And hopefully he isn't able to tell what Roxanne is feeling, either, because right now, she's feeling deeply conflicted.

On one hand, she really likes this new, quiet Megamind who shares his life with her. On the other hand, she hates that he's only like this because he's effectively had part of his mind ripped out and replaced with something he isn't fully sure how to use, and she's really hoping Minion is okay and they're able to re-establish whatever bond they'd had. As much as she likes Megamind now, she misses his quick smile and his ability to be entertained by small things.

She just hopes the feeling is mutual, and she's hoping to any god that'll listen that Megamind still wants her when Minion returns.