Megamind feels the gun go off, his hands atop of Carl's on the gun, trying—
He hears Roxanne cry out, feels a split-second pulse of
oh god no please no
and then Carl jerks, red blooming high up on the right side of his chest, blood seeping out from the bullet hole that—oh, thank everything; the bullet-reflecting headband Megamind cannibalized the spikes and the power source of the stasis chamber to make for Roxanne works; Megamind takes back every bad thing he's ever said about the universe, ever.
He yanks the gun from Carl's hands, kicks the back of the man's knee to make him fall and—
Another bullet goes past his head, he feels it buzz by his ear. Megamind turns to Uncle Lou with a wordless snarl, bringing up the gun he took from Carl.
Megamind sees Uncle Lou's eyes go wide, sees him look over Megamind's right shoulder, sees him change the angle of his gun so that it's pointed, not at Megamind any longer, but at Roxanne and—
Megamind shoots him three times in quick succession: once in the chest to stop him, once in the hand to make him drop his gun, and once in the knee to make him fall.
And he does fall, down into the icy mud with an agonized cry.
Megamind feels cold, so very cold, and so very fucking angry, so angry it feels like a physical force, like something that threatens to pull him apart at the seams, threatens to make him fly into a million pieces like an atom spun through a collider until it smashes.
how dare he—how dare they all try to touch Roxanne—
Megamind stalks over to Uncle Lou, who is reaching weakly for the gun with his left hand. He kicks the gun out of his reach, grabs Uncle Lou by the collar, pulls him up to his knees, and presses the gun to his temple.
"What a comfort it must be," Megamind snarls, "to know that this is all just business."
"Blue—" Uncle Lou chokes out.
And Megamind—
(the anger rising and rising, horrible and black and bottomless, a howling wave of rage too far to save yourself, too far to stop yourself—)
—Megamind—
—Megamind—
—Megamind stops himself.
(Megamind always stops himself.)
He shoves Uncle Lou to the ground.
"Spikeless," Megamind says coldly, "get the photographs."
"—bowg!"
Megamind hears the sound of the de-gun being fired, sees Carl twitch out of the corner of his eye; good, Roxanne has hit him with the debilitate setting, god; she's fucking brilliant; he fucking loves her.
"What are you doing?" Uncle Lou asks.
"I want you out of Metrocity tonight," Megamind tells him, in a voice like ice, like ice over the black pool of rage in his heart. "I don't ever want to see you here again. And if any copies of those photographs should happen to find their way into the hands of—anyone, really, I will make you very sorry you ever taught me to hold a weapon, do you fucking understand?"
"Kid," Uncle Lou says in a whisper, "Blue—you let me go like this and they're gonna eat you alive."
Megamind laughs, because it's laugh or scream at this point, and now is not the time for screaming.
"Will they?" he asks. "Will they, really?"
He turns to the people watching from the shadows on the raised edges of the mine, to the ones who haven't fled in terror, like rats deserting the sinking ship of the Doom Syndicate. Most of them have their guns out; all of them look nervous and uncertain.
Megamind raises his chin and spreads his arms wide, and this is every kind of stupid, but he is so very past giving a fuck.
"Anybody else?" he screams, because maybe this is the time for screaming, after all. "Anybody else think they're hard enough to take down Megamind, the Master of All Motherfucking Villainy? Anybody? Go on. Try it. I fucking dare you."
Nobody moves.
"No?" Megamind narrows his eyes. "Then drop your fucking weapons."
Still, nobody moves.
"I said," Megamind says, his voice falling to a growl, "Drop. Them."
And—
—they do.
The weapons fall down to the bottom of the mine, a veritable rain of potential deadly force.
"Very good, children," Megamind says with a sneer. "Now, watch closely. We're all about to learn a valuable lesson."
He turns his back pointedly on Uncle Lou, still crouched in the mud, cradling his ruined hand, and strides over to Psycho Delic, who is twitching on the ground, clearly trying to fight the effects of the debilitation ray.
Megamind grips the bastard's collar and pulls him up. Psycho Delic's mouth works; he's trying to speak. Smoke curls weakly from his skin and then dissipates into nothing. Yes, the debilitate setting is a bitch.
There's another setting that's worse, though.
"Miss Ritchi," Megamind says, "please set the gun in your hands to 'demoralize'."
He glances over at her, sees her twist the setting.
"And bring it here, if you would," Megamind continues.
Incredibly, she does, walking towards him without hesitation.
He holds the gun in his hand out to her, offering it. He feels her take it from his hands, feels the familiar shape of his own gun being pressed into his palm.
Megamind looks over at her, standing beside him, dressed in her pajamas and a hastily constructed crown of spikes, holding a handgun, her eyes wide and her mouth set in a determined expression.
He forces himself to look away from her, to look at Psycho Delic, to look at the utter waste of carbon that thought he could threaten her and get away with it.
Megamind shoots him with the demoralize beam.
Psycho Delic's mouth falls open; he goes completely limp in Megamind's grip, not even fighting at all anymore. He groans low in his chest, the sound like a wounded animal.
"I told you," Megamind says, voice hard, "that you would regret threatening Miss Ritchi. Tell me—" Megamind presses the gun to Psycho Delic's head, "—are you regretting it yet?"
Megamind hears Roxanne take a sharp breath.
Psycho Delic whimpers.
Megamind shoots him again, at point-blank range, holding the trigger down so that the demoralize beam hits Psycho Delic in a steady stream, keeps it on for a good fifteen seconds while Psycho Delic jerks and twitches. When he finally releases the trigger, Psycho Delic's eyes have gone blank and he's emitting a low keening noise, tears and snot and drool dripping from his eyes, from the ruin of his nose, from his slack mouth.
And Megamind feels a sick twist of disgust: at Psycho Delic, at this goddamn city, and most of all at himself.
(He hates this he hates it he hates it so much)
He drops Psycho Delic in the mud.
"I trust the moral is sufficiently pointed," Megamind says.
He looks around at the rest of the Doom Syndicate, some of them conscious, some of them not.
"This?" he says. "This was really the best you could do? All of you together, and this was the best you could do? You couldn't even manage to kill me. I am so very, very disappointed."
He glances at Roxanne, at her wide eyes, at the way she's looking at him and—
Megamind laughs, sudden wild impulse taking hold: an idea, the breathtaking simplicity of it—
"And you know what else I am?" he asks the assembled criminal population of Metrocity. "Done. I am so incredibly done with all of this! Fuck it! You can all go back to cutting your cocaine with whatever you like and living in fear of the police and running scared from Metro Man! I am done babysitting you! Nine years of misery and this is the thanks I get? No. No more. I quit."
A shocked murmur ripples through the watchers. They begin to shift uncertainly.
God, Megamind feels—lighter than he has in years, like dancing, like laughing, like—
"Now we," Megamind says, gesturing (with the de-gun, not-at-all-incidentally) at himself, Roxanne, and Spikeless, "will be going! If you value your continued existence as living, breathing, thinking—" he waves a hand at the ruin of Psycho Delic, "—people, then I very strongly suggest that none of you try to stop us."
There is a moment of breathless silence, and then all of the watching criminals start for the nearest exits at once. Of course, this leads to difficulties, with all of them trying to be first, posturing and threatening and—
—yep, there goes the first punch, god, what a bunch of fuckwits; Megamind is well rid of this pack of idiotic, short-sighted, squabbling morons. At least with all of them this distracted, he shouldn't have any trouble getting Roxanne out of here.
"This way," he says, tilting his head at her (what he really wants to do is take her hand—but there's no way she's going to want him to—)
She grabs his hand.
She—
—clearly she—
"—your feet," Megamind says, horrified, noticing for the first time that she is barefoot, walking through an ankle-deep layer of dirty ice.
(Spikeless doesn't have the capacity to carry her, not alone, Megamind would need several brainbots to—)
Fuck it. Fuck him. Fuck everything.
Megamind picks her up in his arms.
Roxanne makes a shocked noise, but she lets him do it, the element of surprise working in his favor. He starts walking, figuring she'll be less likely to try and fight him if they're actually moving, and, sure enough, after a couple of steps, she hesitantly puts her arms around his shoulders, tightens them around him.
No doubt she's worried he's going to drop her.
She still doesn't protest, though, doesn't say anything at all, just lets Megamind carry her out of the strip-mine in silence.
...to be continued.
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