Author's Note: Though this started as the second half of the previous chapter, its tone and the events in it convinced me to split it off. There was going to be more beyond it, making the thing even longer, but that will have to wait for chapter 12. Unless the Muse does something strange again, there will be turkeys in twelve!

XI

The Encounter

According to Wayne's notes, there were only two grocery stores of any size on the upper peninsula, one in Sister Bay and the other in Egg Harbor. Though the first was closer, they decided to go to the second for most of their supplies, since they had yet to make the drive along the Green Bay side, through the little New Englandish towns that were a very picturesque draw to many visitors. They had their late breakfast in the nearest of those small towns, Ephraim, at a little restaurant that Wayne had indicated was great for breakfast but to be avoided in the evenings, as it then hosted one of the nefarious fish boils. The place had a beautiful view of Eagle Harbor and the eastern side of Peninsula State Park. The latter was a heavily forested area atop massive stone bluffs, many times higher than those at Cave Point. Eagles had once made their aeries in those cliffs, and were said to be growing in numbers again, though none were visible in the day's wet and gloomy skies.

The couple agreed that the place would look much more impressive on a sunny day, and positively spectacular in full autumn foliage. What they couldn't agree on was the pronunciation of the town's name. Roxanne insisted that the word, which was Biblical in origin, was pronounced, EH-fraim, with a short E sound on the first syllable and a long A on the second, but Megamind, remembering how James and others had said it, insisted that it was EE-frum. The debate was settled by a t-shirt that they saw available while they were paying their check, for though Roxanne was right about the word in its original form, Megamind was right about the form the settlers and now the locals had chosen for their town. He almost bought the shirt just to wear it and poke fun at his lady's stubbornness, but without Minion's deft fingers to make the alterations to accommodate his large skull, it was unfeasible.

The amused clerk, however, found a button bearing the slogan, and slipped it to him when she returned his credit card and his receipt, refusing any payment with a playful wink. When Roxanne's back was to him as he held the door for her to leave, he pinned it to his shirt, and it was the source of numerous chuckles and giggles and outright laughs for the remainder of the day. After so many years of correcting his peculiar pronunciations, she figured it was only fair for the shoe to be on the other foot for a change, and he was justified in making the most of it, even if just for one day.

Between Ephraim and Egg Harbor was the second largest of the towns in that part of the county, an unincorporated village called Fish Creek, which was situated around a harbor area on the western side of the large state park. It had a quaint little city center full of inns and small shops and eateries that were usually so popular with the visitors, the major crossroads at that point could get quite congested with pedestrians on busy days. As they'd made their way down from Ephraim, the rain had gotten heavier and the wind a bit stronger, so the crowds were somewhat less than they might've been, had the day been sunny and on a weekend.

Before they'd left the house, Roxanne had suggested making a stop here, if it wasn't too busy. She'd run out of certain bath supplies, and there was a shop in town that specialized in such items. They found a parking spot not too far from the place, fortunately on the side of things away from one of the most noted fish boil locations and its large signs declaring it so. Megamind accompanied her into the shop, but was a bit overwhelmed after only half a minute. The various scents of all the bath products, while pleasant as a simple aroma or two, were overpowering to his sensitive nose in such large quantity. With the rain and the wind, the doors had been closed, compounding the problem.

"I'll wait outside," he suggested while the brunette was checking out the startling variety of products that were available. There was a door in back that led to quiet area with an awning, with several other small buildings with tiny shops visible in a sort of courtyard area beyond.

"I'll try not to take too long," she promised. "Just don't wander so far that I can't reach your cell phone."

She laughed when he took a quick look around and deemed it safe enough to stick out his tongue, also quickly. Back at the restaurant in Ephraim, Roxanne had thought she'd heard her cell phone ringing, but when she pulled it out, she discovered that it wasn't even able to get a decent signal. Being situated in what was essentially a stone bowl that was open only to water on the north, it was nearly impossible for anyone to get a signal to their cells, as there were no conveniently located towers or repeaters around to direct the signal into it. Even Megamind's booster wasn't quite enough to give either of them more than a bare trace of a signal. The discovery had irked him, and he was determined to rectify the situation when they returned home. For now, it gave her something to tease back with, in light of the whole pronunciation thing.

"I'll be good," he assured her, the childish gesture replaced with a charmingly impish smile that made a couple of young customers who were standing nearby giggle. Just for effect, he waggled his eyebrows at them, making the girls blush and giggle all the more, then stepped outside.

Being August, the rain was thankfully warm, but coming down heavily enough to discourage much in the way of foot traffic. Most of the surrounding shops had wide eaves or awnings, and those who were out in spite of the rain generally dashed from one to the next to avoid getting wet as much as possible. The only building that had no such protective overhang was a small, very old log structure in the middle of the courtyard, so small that it could barely be called a cabin. The lights inside, however, were bright and spilled out into the gloomy day like the welcome of a candle in the window on a dark night. Its door was open, and in the two small windows that he could see, there were what looked to be either oddly shaped glass sculptures or rocks. Since the cabin was close and he was curious, he decided to have a closer look.

Inside, the place was a single oblong room with an unused fireplace opposite the one door. A glass-fronted counter with a cash register was to one side of the fireplace, and the corner diagonal to it had a work bench and some odd power tools, all covered with a gritty kind of dust. The rest of the place was lined with shelving units, and on every available flat surface, including the window sills, there were stones and crystals. Some items were objects made of stone — carvings and globes and jewelry and the like — but the vast majority of the wares were mineral specimens, ranging from small tumbled stones to huge split geodes that stood almost half the alien's height, rough looking gray stones filled with rich-hued amethyst crystals. Most items, though, were small, things that one might pick up to add to a mineral collection, or use as a striking piece of nature's art.

When Megamind entered, there were only three others in the shop: the male clerk behind the counter, a female customer who was asking him for advice about a selection she was trying to make, and a small child of no more than three, sitting on the floor behind the woman. The little blond boy was running his fingers through a basketful of tumbled stones, enjoying himself in a simple way; he looked up when the reformed villain entered, blinked for a moment, then plunged one hand into the basket and pulled out a particular stone, giggling with childish glee.

He held it up toward the alien with a wide smile. "Blue!" he declared with immense satisfaction, displaying for Megamind a stone that perfectly matched the alien's skin tone. "Blue!"

"Yes, Timmy," his mother said, her inflections showing a bored patience with her son's current learning obsession. "You know all your colors, that's very good."

Timmy giggled again. "No, Momma," he insisted in the way only a child his age could get away with. "Blue!"

Momma sighed, and the clerk who was being kept busy by her had his nose in a guide or catalog of some type. "I know, Timmy, blue is your favorite color. Could you just be quiet and play nicely for a bit? Mommy's busy."

Megamind recognized her type, the society woman who had more money than time for her own children, and was completely focused on fulfilling her personal needs, no matter how trivial they might be. He looked down at the disappointed little Timmy, then squatted down and smiled at him. "Blue's my favorite color, too," he said quietly, secretively, not wanting to draw Momma's attention from her oh-so-important business. He plucked at his shirt, which was a reverse blue and black version of his lightning bolt design, the blue more vibrant than his leathers. "Are you looking for blue stones?"

The boy nodded vigorously, glad to have someone's undivided attention. "Uh-huh! I got lots!" He picked up a small basket from the floor beside him, which had about a dozen of the tumbled blue stones in it, not so many that it was too heavy for him to lift. "These're pretty, but I like that 'un better!" He twisted his head and pointed to a larger specimen on a shelf behind and above him, too far for his small arm to reach, but not too far for Megamind.

"Which one?" the hero on holiday asked, since there were three different specimens, all of them some shade of blue. "This one?" He indicated the nearest one, which was a rather drab gray-blue.

Timmy's blond head shook vigorously. "Nope. That 'un!"

"This?" He touched the third large stone, a sort of flat greenish-blue with darker streaks.

Timmy giggled. "No! That!"

The blue finger came to rest on the one in the middle, which was a cluster of strikingly intense blue crystals. "Oh, this one?" he said with a droll smile.

"Yep!" Timmy clapped his hand. "It's real pretty!"

"You can't have it, Timmy," Momma scolded in an exasperated way as Megamind picked up the rather heavy stone, which fit comfortably on the palm of his hand. "Don't touch!"

"I ain't touchin', Momma!" the boy protested.

"I know you are," she insisted. "Don't touch or there'll be consequences!"

"But I ain't!"

"Aren't," she corrected with a snap. "And don't argue with me, young man!"

Timmy's little face was stricken. "But Momma...!" he protested.

Megamind patted his arm in the reassuring way Roxanne often did when he was upset. "He isn't touching it, madam," he said in a normal volume as he stood straight again, putting his hard won skills in dealing with the citizens of Metro City to work. "I am."

The woman threw a most cursory glance over her shoulder, certain her son was somehow lying, then did such a rapid double-take, one could hear her neck crack. From the way she stiffened and gasped, eyes wide with shock, Megamind was certain he was about to face the kind of miserable treatment he still received from certain people back home. But the little boy wasn't to blame for his mother's narrow-mindedness, not toward him or her own son.

Before either of them could speak or move, however, the clerk looked up from his book, saw the new customer, and smiled broadly. "Ah, Mr. Megamind!" he greeted most jovially. "My wife said she'd heard you were here visiting the Door! Glad to have you in our shop! Is your lady friend here with you, Miss Ritchi? The missus said she thought she would be, but she wasn't sure, she'd just heard about you. Is there anything I can help you with? Are you looking for something in particular?"

"No, nothing in particular," he replied in his most pleasant voice, smiling ever so charmingly right into the face of the woman's... he couldn't quite call it hostility, but it was a close relation. Two years of dealing with the citizens of Metro City had improved his poker face when it came to this sort of standoff. "I was just checking out the neighborhood while Roxanne's busy with some shopping of her own. I'm afraid I was responsible for little Timmy's sudden interest in the color blue. Sorry if it created a disturbance."

"Oh, no, not at all," the proprietor assured him, still smiling. The woman wasn't, and Megamind could tell that she was holding in certain unpleasant words she might've spoken, not wanting the owner to see her in such a bad light, since he had no problem with his alien visitor. "Look around all you like, I'll just be another minute with Mrs. Walker, here."

To Megamind's eye, she would have liked to have grabbed her son and run, to put distance between herself and this spawn of Satan. But rather than give solid proof that she was a bigot in front of witnesses, she sniffed in a way that communicated both dismissal and revulsion, and pointedly turned her back on the alien. Bitch, he mouthed to her back, a terribly unheroic thing to do, but neither she nor the owner nor even Timmy noticed.

The boy was on his feet now, happily babbling about how much he liked all the bluest stones in the shop, pointing out all of his favorites to the blue-skinned visitor, who was still holding the one he'd picked up off the shelf. With Timmy so eagerly trying to get his attention, he didn't give it another thought until Mrs. Walker had hurriedly finished her business. She grabbed her son by the hand and rushed out of the shop as fast as she could, but not fast enough to keep the boy from smiling and waving a cheerful, "Bye!" to Megamind. When they were gone, the owner sighed.

"Takes all kinds to make a world," the older man said with a shake of his grizzled head. "That kind, too, sad to say. So, is there anything I can do to get the taste of that type out of your mouth? Don't want you to walk away with any bad feelings about my place."

The alien turned to look at the owner, whose accepting smile was genuine, as were his words. He was about to say no when he felt the stone still in his hand. "Yes," he said, taking a closer look at the thing. Whatever the cluster of crystals was, its blue color was quite remarkable and seemed natural, unlike some of the obviously dyed tumbled stones, but he couldn't be certain. "What is this?"

The man nodded. "Pretty, isn't it? That's called aqua aura quartz. It's not the stone's natural color, it's what happens to ordinary quartz crystals when they're coated with gold fumes in a sort of vacuum process. People like the color, so we pick up good specimens when we find 'em. There aren't a lot of blue crystals that are so vivid and aren't either expensive, like sapphire, or have to be stored in special conditions to keep their color, like azurite. We have some small azurite specimens, but no sapphire, that's a little more pricey than most of our customers want. There's a jeweler just up the street who has some nice cut sapphires, if you're interested in that sort of thing."

Megamind shook his head. "Thanks, no, I was really just curious about the shop. It seems so small, compared to the others."

The owner chuckled. "Sometimes, the best things are the small ones. We may not be big as rock shops go, but our customers like us — even if we're not so fond of all our customers," he added with a wink and a nod of his head, tipping it in the direction Mrs. Walker had gone.

The alien smiled, knowing that the man was trying to mitigate some of the sting caused by the woman's prejudice. As he returned the piece of quartz to its place on the shelf, his movement made one of the overhead lights glint off another stone on the counter, catching his eye. "What is this?" he asked as he picked it up, noting that there was another stone of the same type on the glass counter top. Though smaller than the quartz cluster, it was heavier, its smooth surface dark, a glossy almost-black flecked with tiny silvery specks that shimmered like stars as it was moved under the light.

"Something you might appreciate a little, we got it from Michigan. That's specular hematite, comes from some of the mines in the UP. It's not rare, but it's eye catching, and big pieces make mighty good paperweights or bookends. That's what Mrs. Walker was after, some stones her bigwig husband could use with his new black and silver office decor. She had me looking it up to prove I knew what it was before you came in, and she couldn't make up her mind between those two stones before she decided to up and leave. She said she'd go consult her husband and come back, but I'll bet you anything she's just hanging out in one of the other shops, waiting for you to leave before coming back. I've had to deal with her type before."

"So have I," Megamind said with a sigh. He studied the dark stone for a few moments, enjoying the way the light made it shine like black metal even as it glittered like a clear night sky. Suddenly, the sigh became a wicked chuckle. "You know, I just finished building Roxanne a home office, and I'll bet she'd enjoy having a couple of attractive paperweights as a little souvenir of our visit." His smile matched the sound of his chuckle.

The owner grinned in return, understanding perfectly. "Would you like them gift wrapped?" he asked with a conspiratorial wink, collecting the second stone even as Megamind handed him the first. Mrs. Walker would be so disappointed. And it would serve her right.

A few minutes later, he left the cabin, package in hand. It was still raining, and a quick glance at the bath shop window showed that Roxanne was still trying to decide among the almost too many choices before her. He was about to return when he saw that the owner of the rock shop had been right about Mrs. Walker lying in wait in another store. He could see her in the bath shop standing not far from Roxanne, pretending interest in something on a shelf. Rather than approach her head on, knowing that she would be looking in this direction, he decided to go around the end of the building and reenter from the front, giving the unpleasant woman time to leave before he came into the store.

As he was coming around the corner of the building's end, he caught the scent of something sweet and much more pleasant than the wares of the bath shop. It was a warm, buttery, chocolatey smell, and it set his mouth to watering even though he'd finished breakfast less than a half hour ago. He looked in the direction the heavenly aromas seemed to be wafting from, and saw a small white-sided building with a sign proclaiming Ice Cream & Confectionary. Almost without conscious thought, the blue sugar junkie decided to make a brief — and certain to be more pleasant than his original course — detour.

Meanwhile, in the bath shop, Roxanne had finally narrowed down her choices for the items she wanted. Normally, she wasn't so picky, but she'd rarely seen so many varieties of soaps, lotions, and other products for body and hair, almost all of which were either natural or fully organic. She wasn't familiar with several of the lines, and she wanted to be sure that she didn't pick something that would offend her perfume sensitive boyfriend. There were a few smells she knew he found unpleasant that were totally undetectable to her nose, so she made a point of checking labels for any of the offensive ingredients. That had taken more time than she'd anticipated. Now, it was just a question of selecting the ones she preferred that she felt he'd also enjoy. The clerks had been very helpful, since until a few minutes ago, the shop had been relatively quiet, with only a few other customers about. That calm had been shattered when a woman and her little boy came charging in through the rear door, more loudly than a simple dash to avoid the rain would have warranted.

One of the clerks had gone at once to see if she needed anything, but the woman had waved her off irritably, instead bending her energies to scold her small son for something he didn't seem to think merited punishment. Roxanne skillfully tuned her out until, after several more minutes of grousing, the woman heaved a sigh of relief that would've qualified as a hurricane level gust. "Oh, thank God, that horrible blue thing is finally leaving!"

Even though she'd been in total ignore mode, Roxanne shifted to full red alert when the words "blue thing" dripped from the woman's tongue like venom. As she was standing comparatively nearby, the reporter turned to the woman and asked mildly, "I beg your pardon?"

The woman mistook the simple question as interest in her plight, which Roxanne fully expected. "Out in the rock shop, this positively ghastly blue freak came walking in like he owned the place, and even had the nerve to attempt enticing my son, in broad daylight!"

"I'm sure you were mistaken."

"Oh, no, it was no mistake, I saw it with my own eyes! The brazen, big-headed monster! What is this world coming to, when... creatures like that have free run of the streets, are allowed to accost innocent children in public places? And this used to be such a quiet and safe little town...!"

The expressions on the faces of the clerks and customers witnessing the woman's rant ranged from confusion to disbelief to disgust for the woman's histrionics, not to mention her attitude. From the look on her little boy's face, he was upset, and not for the reasons his mother was raving about.

"But Momma," the child stammered, "he's a nice man...!"

"Shush, Timmy!" she snapped without bothering to look at him. "Don't interrupt Mommy. You don't know what you're talking about!"

"If he doesn't, I'd say he learned from an expert," Roxanne said in a level voice that was completely at odds with her dangerous expression.

Momma was oblivious to it. "Oh, my dear, you weren't there, you don't know—" Her patronizing complaints choked to a halt as the reporter fully turned to her, her normally pleasant face set in a look that hard only began to describe, her blue eyes burning in much the same way as Hal's had before he did something lethal with his artificially acquired laser vision. If one could have killed with a glance, the ranting bitch would've been a pile of smoking ash by now.

"I know that you don't know what you're talking about," Roxanne replied, her still-level tone sharp and icy. "That 'horrible blue thing' has never hurt anyone in his entire life, not deliberately, which I can't say for you, and he would never accost a child! You need to get your facts straight before you go around making accusations."

"But you weren't there!" the woman rebutted in the manner of one trying to defend the indefensible. "You didn't see him!"

"I may not have seen him in that shop, but I see him every day. That 'ghastly blue freak' just happens to be my boyfriend, and if he once did wrong with his life, it was because of narrow-minded bigots like you who wouldn't give him a chance, much less a choice! He saves the lives of little boys like yours, he never accosts them or would even dream of hurting them in the way you're obviously implying. He risks his life every single day to help put the real monsters where they belong, in prison, and he works longer and harder than you can even begin to imagine to find ways to make this a better world for everyone, even pompous idiots like you! He came here with me to this nice quiet little town to get the first real rest and relaxation he's ever had in his entire life — and if anyone's spoiling the place, it's people like you, not him! If you can't see beyond the color of a person's skin, if seeing things that don't conform to your idea of 'perfect' brings on hallucinations like this, then you don't just need to have your eyes checked; you need to have your head examined!"

Though dumbstruck by Roxanne's dressing-down, the progress of the woman's reactions to it could be seen on her face, first flushing pink at the horror of being caught in a bald-faced lie, then blanching white at the vehemence of the reporter's backlash, and finally blazing red with self-important anger. "How dare you!" she began, voice high and constricted with defensive fury. From her posture and the look on her face, she was used to those three words being enough to end any further discussion.

But Roxanne wasn't even slowed for a second. "I dare because someone has to stand up to brainless social terrorists like you, who go around slapping labels on people they don't even know because they don't like the way they look or dress. I dare because the real monsters in this world go around with more money than brains and the attitude that they can buy anything and anyone they want and walk all over other people's basic human rights to get it!"

"Human?" the woman spat derisively. "That thing isn't human...!"

Roxanne's snort raised contempt to a virtue of the highest order. "Take it from an expert, lady — and I use the word loosely, because you'd have to climb a few dozen more rungs up the evolutionary ladder to qualify as a lady — that 'thing' is more human than half the people who were born on this planet! That big head of his isn't freakish or deformed or monstrous; it has a brain that's obviously a few million IQ points higher than yours, 'cause from this little display you've been giving, I'd say you have the IQ of a brain damaged newt! You don't know him, you have no right to judge him, and you certainly have no right to go around spreading lies about something he didn't do! And if you want to know just how I know you're lying, just ask your little boy. He doesn't have anything to gain by lying, and he's the one who said it: 'He's a nice man!'"

"Out of the mouths of babes," one of the clerks murmured to another customer, who nodded.

The raving socialite, seeing that no one in the place was on her side, not even her son, stiffened her spine, clenched her teeth, and flung out one hand to grab her son by the shoulder. "Come along, Timmy," she ordered, hissing. "I can see we'll never be coming back here again!"

"And good riddance!" someone called out.

"Don't let the door hit you on the way out," one of the clerks agreed, adding with a snicker, "oops, too late, guess it did!"

After the irate woman had tripped her way out of the store, reluctant son in tow, Roxanne shuddered, letting go of some of the physical anger that had fueled her tirade. One of the other customers, an elderly lady, patted her arm in sympathy. "There, there, dear, just take a deep breath. That was a brave thing you did, standing up to her like that. More people should, with her type. They don't own the world or the people in it, and they need to be reminded that other people have rights, too, no matter how different they look."

Roxanne gave the woman a grateful smile, feeling a little weak now that her outrage was dissipating. She turned to the clerk who'd been helping her. "I'm sorry if I lost you a customer..."

"Her?" The clerk made a dismissive gesture. "Pfft, no loss. Mrs. Walker comes into the shop every time she's in town, monopolizes the staff for an hour, insists on being waited on hand and foot and sampling everything, then spends a few dollars on a stick of lip balm if she buys anything at all. Her little boy's a sweetheart, that's why we put up with her."

"He must get it from his father," the other clerk chimed in. "If he took after her, he'd be hell on training wheels!"

That brought a chuckle to more than Roxanne's lips, and the lingering tension drained. Just then, the front door to the shop opened, and the "horrible blue thing" that had been the subject of debate came in, a brown paper-wrapped parcel under one arm, a red and white striped bag in hand, and a contented look on his face as he finished chewing on something that was plainly very much to his liking.

"Ah, Roxanne!" Megamind greeted cheerfully, swallowing one last time to clear his mouth, blissfully unaware of what had just occurred. "Did you know there's a shop next door that makes the most fantastic fudge you ever tasted? Not at all gritty like that stuff Wayne likes, and they have so many different kinds! I don't know what it is around here with this obsession for cherries, I never really cared all that much for them before, but they really do some delicious things with them — you have got to try this chocolate cherry fudge...!"

His comments and his attitude were so relaxed and blithely unmonstrous, so completely at odds with everything the biased Walker woman had said, it won chuckles and laughter and giggles from everyone in the shop. Puzzled by this unexpected reaction, Megamind stopped and blinked, brow furrowed. "What'd I say?" he asked as he moved closer to his girlfriend, complete beflummoxed by the inoffensive laughter.

Roxanne smiled as she kissed his cheek. "Just the right thing, sweetie," she promised him, eyes shining. "You just fixed something pretty nasty just by being you."

The green eyes widened innocently. "I did? How?"

"I'll tell you later," she promised. "Just let me make my purchase and we can go."

"Are you sure you're ready?" he had to ask, seeing a large array of bottles and tubes and jars atop the counter that even Pinky would have a hard time putting in any sensible order. "If you need a little more time, there's a leather shop on the corner I could check out."

She grinned now, both at his well known fondness for leather goods and his willingness to be an actual participant in a shopping trip, which many men would have hated without there being plenty of hardware and electronics in the offing. Though he loved those things, too, he didn't object when they weren't there, so long as he got to do a little exploring of things that he found intriguing, whether they be leather or spikes or sweets. "Why don't I meet you there?" she suggested. "I know you have an easier time with the smell of leather than all this girly stuff. I'll be along in a few minutes."

His happy smile told her that he was pleased with the compromise. He kissed her cheek in thanks and headed back to the door, humming and digging into his bag from the candy shop as he went.

The clerk who had been helping Roxanne watched him go with a smile of her own. "He's sort of like a big kid, isn't he?" she said once Megamind had gone. "Sweet and kind of funny."

"You have no idea," the reporter confirmed, laughing. "That's why I knew that woman was lying about him accosting her son. He lived with so much bullying when he was young, he couldn't ever do it himself, especially not to a child. Not that he doesn't know how to fight back like a grown up; he does, but only when he has to. It's part of his job, now, and he takes it very seriously, but it hasn't changed that excited little boy part of him at all — thank God. I don't think there's another person in the whole world quite like him."

The clerk nodded. "You're a lucky woman, Ms Ritchi," she said with a wistful sigh.

Roxanne's eyes sparkled with glints of humor as well as tender gratitude for the strange workings of fate. "And believe me," she promised, completely in earnest, "I know it."

To be continued...