HEYYYYYY Y'AAAAAALL LOOK WHAT'S BACK FROM THE FUCKIN DEAD :D :D :D IT'S COLD FUSIONNNNN
I'm moving this series over to AO3 dot com and editing it as I go! Cold Fusion and True North are up there in full already, and Hallows Eve is a work-in-process. I do finally know where the plot is going, and I've been slowly picking away at the next few installments over the last few years. You're going to notice a couple things in this chapter that are part of those edits, so don't worry if you see a continuity error! It's intentional, I promise.
But what made me update this fic here, on Fanfiction Dot Net, now, instead of waiting until my AO3 caught up to my FFN?
MEGAMIND IS GETTING A SERIES. AFTER EIGHTY-FOUR YEARS. I AM SCREAMING. I AM SO EXCITED. It's going to be marketed towards younger kids, so probably very silly, but hey: new content!
join me in screaming, friends. and wish me luck finishing this series after [mumbledymumble]ty years!
Chapter 21
So he goes outside and scrubs himself down with lighter fluid to get the oil and grease off, and then he goes upstairs, changes yet again, for what feels like the tenth time today, and then he comes back downstairs and helps Minion back into his suit so the filtration system can clear the turkey juices out of his water. And then, finally, he can return to his own dinner, which Roxanne has put in the oven to keep warm for him.
He feels better than he has all week. Lighter. His chest still squeezes every time he thinks about returning to Metro and the mess he and Roxanne are surely walking into, but—
But today, Minion is here. And Roxanne is here, too, and Wayne and Drew: Megamind's friends. Which is why, when he's finishing his warm dinner and his girlfriend who kept dinner warm for him reaches over to scritch gently between his shoulderblades, he hums happily and tilts his whole upper body sideways to rest the side of his enormous cranium on her warm shoulder.
Roxanne laughs and slips her arm around him, kisses the top of his giant blue head. He knows he's surrounded by people, knows he's being watched, but he can't care: he blinks up at her and rolls back up to sitting, still smiling as he cants forward to touch foreheads and let his eyes slide closed. Love you, he thinks, bringing a hand up to cradle the back of her head as a helpless smile splits his face. I am the luckiest son of a gun in the world.
Around them, conversation ebbs and flows, rises and falls. Minion is in deep debate with Raj about whether Children of the Grave or Spiral Architect is more hashtag-relevant and to whom, and why. Wayne is laughing with Orson about the hoverbike blueprints. Drew, Lorena, and Nadine are discussing the relative merits of fishhooks, and whether Nadine should use treble or siwash hooks, purely hypothetically, in her braid (the correct answer is of course treble, for greater stability, but Megamind isn't getting involved in this one. They'll figure it out). Linda and Irma and Eric are talking in low voices about how much homework the kids have over winter break, and whether it's comparable to what Drew and Roxanne were assigned when they were in school years prior.
It's…warm. Nice. If this is Christmas…Megamind could get used to it, maybe, he thinks.
Roxanne stirs a little, and Megamind drops his hand, sits back, still smiling at her. Then he glances down—she's just poked him with something. A piece of folded paper? From the magnet pad on the fridge, it looks like.
He glances up at her, questioning, but she shakes her head. He unfolds it, frowning a little in confusion.
Don't say anything, it says. We need to talk. Give me your watch and any other electronic devices or weapons you're carrying.
Mystified, he follows these instructions. Roxanne carries his things over to the kitchen counter by the sink, then places her cell phone, her watch, and her earrings on the counter about three feet away, on the other side of the sink. Megamind watches, his peaceful feeling slipping somewhat, as she turns around and heads for the front door, jerking her head at him as she goes past.
He follows. Catches his jacket when she tosses it to him, zips into it, and follows her outside.
Did—did he do something wrong? Back there? Did he miss something, or—
She walks down the driveway, past the line of cars, and into the street, and she doesn't speak until they're two houses down. Megamind follows her lead and stays behind her, not saying anything and trying hard to bite down against his misgivings. This is Roxanne. This is Roxanne. He's off-guard and outside and unarmed in a strange place, and his warm calm feeling from just a minute ago is fading into deep worry right now, but this is Roxanne.
"Okay," she says, stopping by a mailbox and turning to look at him, "hopefully this is far enough."
Megamind stares at her. "Far enough," he repeats, trying to figure out where this is going. "Far enough for what?" She's disarmed him, removed any hope of communication and taken him from his tools and materials, away from Minion, and her note said we need to talk, which can't be good, but—
But this is Roxanne. She would have told him if he did something wrong. She would have said so.
Is that what she's doing now? But she knows him, she knows better than to do this to him—hand him a vague note and let him stew about it without talking to him—she wouldn't do that to him, she wouldn't.
Ugh, and this was such a good night! Why is she doing this now? If it's something they need to talk about outside? Why would she do this now?
Roxanne runs her fingers back through her hair, brushes her bangs to the side, shoves her hands in her coat pockets. "I don't think anyone can possibly be listening out this far from the house, so…fill me in?" She frowns at him and bites her lip. Megamind only stares at her. "Something is wrong," she says, after a moment. "I know it is. You've been off all day, and there've been a couple other times when I wondered if…I don't know. So, talk to me. What's up?"
Oh. Oh. The—she knows. She noticed he was hiding something.
But she doesn't sound angry! Her frown looks more puzzled than anything else. But—we need to talk. We. Need to talk.
And he doesn't think this is a fight, really he doesn't, but he's annoyed at being called away to talk without knowing what it's about and his stupid crap idiot brain keeps playing this loop of, I'm hiding this from you, hiding things from you always ends with you hurt, always, every time, again and again and sooner or later I'm going to cross the line and there won't be any more agains, and—
Roxanne speaks again, making him jump. "Megamind? You locking up on me?"
"I," he says, and his throat closes. Fuck.
She starts to step forward, reaching for him, but he startles back. Clenching and unclenching his hands, flexing his fingers.
He drags words out before she can ask again. "No, it's—I'm. I'm okay. Disarmed in a strange place, outside, without my watch is—is not good, and—"
"Megamind, you know I'm not going to hurt you—"
"I know that," he snaps, suddenly sharp, annoyed, but he sees her eyebrows go up at his tone and he wrenches himself back. He scrunches his face down hard as his ire rises. Great! So, this is a thing that's happening now. Fan-fucking-tastic. "Sorry," he grits out, even though the last thing he wants to do is apologize. "Sorry. Um. The note wasn't—good. Wasn't. It's throwing me off. Sorry."
Roxanne blinks at him, watches the way his mouth twists and his eyes flash hurt and angry for a bare second before he sinks his chin down against his chest with a small, frustrated noise. Oh, she thinks.
It's been a while since this happened. But today was very busy, with a lot of new people and new emotional situations—this whole trip was new—and if she's right, then he's already stressed about something else. And, she realizes, her note was vague; that probably wasn't helpful, and yes, he is completely unarmed right now, which…yeah, that does always make him jittery. Whoops.
"I'm not going anywhere," she tells him, "and I'm not angry."
"Mm-hm," he says, but doesn't lift his head, doesn't look at her. "What. Did you want to talk about."
She swallows. "Ordinarily I wouldn't have asked you to leave everything inside, but…I'm worried." She assumes he'll fill in the blanks on why she's worried; he tends not to need full explanations for things outside their relationship. "There's something you're not telling me. And—"
Megamind's shoulders twitch at that. It's not quite a flinch, but it's close.
"—and it's probably okay, you're allowed to not tell me everything," she quickly continues, "but whatever it is…has you worried, and that makes me worry. I'm just worried, sweetheart, that's all." She bites her lip. "Megamind, love, I just want to know what's happening."
After a moment, he pulls his head up. His jaw is clenched. "Can I," he says stiffly, "can I have a hug. Please."
Startled, Roxanne nods and reaches towards him, waits for him to jerk his chin in a quick nod. His arms are slicked to his sides and his eyes are still angry, but he holds still when she steps in close, keeps still even when she reaches for the tab at the base of his throat. His breath shivers and catches when she unzips his jacket, but he doesn't shy away from her.
She puts her hands on his sides under his jacket and nudges with her fingertips until he lifts his elbows, and then she finally slips her arms around him and pulls him against her, and he does curl into her, a little, and lift his hands to her back. They're shaking.
"Hey," she says quietly. No matter how many times this happens, she will never get used to the way the bottom falls out of her stomach when Megamind forgets they're a team. It doesn't happen half as often as it used to, but he does still struggle, from time to time. "Hey. I…yeah, I think I might've given you the wrong impression with that note."
"You think?" he snaps, but then he groans again and tucks his face down against her shoulder. "Sorry," he whispers. "Fuck."
She swallows hard but bundles him in tighter against her. "It's okay," she tells him. "I'm sorry, too, I should have been clearer." He doesn't say anything to that. She brushes her thumbs up and down his back. "Wasn't expecting you to ask for a hug."
He stirs. "Trying something new," he says. "I'm—this is—not a good response. I know that. So. Opposite of what I want to do is hopefully more likely to be a correct response."
Roxanne blinks. "Huh," she says, still massaging gently with her thumbs. "Smart. Is it working?"
"Head's big for a reason," Megamind says. His tone is still flat, but she can read some warmth in it now, some amusement. "Not sure if it's working or not. I hope so. Worked after Vitre. Why did you make me leave all my stuff inside?"
She kisses the side of his head, hugs him tighter. "This morning, you were worried about a bug in your phone. Anyone who can get a bug in your phone can probably get one into Minion's suit or my watch or something, so I thought…" She trails off, then sighs. "I need to know what's going on, but I'm guessing there's no way we can talk about it in the house. Or with any of our usual gear around. That's why I left my stuff, too."
"Ah," he says, and she feels him breathe, feels him relax just a little against her. "That. Makes sense."
For a few moments, they just stand and breathe, their arms around each other. Megamind's hands have mostly stopped shaking, now, and he's twisted them into the back of her jacket. Roxanne pulls her own chin back to shove her nose against his shoulder and breathe him in, and she feels his stance shift a little. Hopefully that's a good sign. If not, well, she'll keep trying.
"You smell good," she mumbles, after a while.
"I smell like engine lubricant and butane."
She nods and burrows closer. "Yeah, it's more you than you've smelled all week," she tells him, and he chuckles and finally moves, finally locks her in the circle of his arms, one hand up on her shoulder and the other clenched in the middle of her spine.
"So," she says, a moment later, not moving, "can I do anything to help with…with whatever the heck is going on? Can you tell me what is going on?"
Megamind is quiet for almost half a minute, a small eternity for someone who thinks as quickly as he does, but he doesn't tense up again and his arms stay strong around her while he considers. Finally, he says, "If…I don't tell you. What it is. Will you be angry?"
"I don't think so," she replies, slow. She'll be worried, absolutely. But angry? "Does this thing affect me?"
He nods. "Yes," he tells her. "Yes, I'm afraid it does."
She doesn't need to ask if it's dangerous. As far as how dangerous… "I need to ask," she says, "just…just to assess severity. Would I be safer if we broke up?" He stops breathing, and she squeezes him hard against her, splays her hands over his back under his jacket. "It's just a question," she tells him, "it really is."
"But—you've never—"
"Easy, love. I know. Again, I am not going anywhere, I don't care what the answer is. But with how freaked out you are, it's the only thing I can think of to see how much of a threat we're talking about." If he wants her to not be weird about that insecurity, if he wants her not to tiptoe around it…well, but this is the first time she's suggested it, herself, he's right. She twists her head until her neck twinges, but the pain is worth it because now she's able to press her lips against the side of his throat. "So, I need to at least ask. Would I?"
"—I don't know," he admits, halting and hesitant. "I hadn't really thought about it." He pauses, then quietly admits, "Probably not."
A chill lances down Roxanne's spine. If Megamind isn't taking this opportunity to tell her she'd be safer without him…
"No, then," she tells him through numb lips. "No, I won't be angry if you don't tell me. I assume you have reasons. I trust you. If me knowing would put us in more danger…" She shakes her head. "I just don't want you to tackle this alone if you don't have to. I was hoping…maybe I could help. That's all."
He's quiet again. When he speaks, his voice is low.
"I—think—the city is in danger. I don't know from whom. Maybe not just Metro. There have been…rumblings in some of the other cities I do business in. Domestically and overseas. I don't know anything about it for sure, but…everything is piling up."
"You don't have to explain," Roxanne whispers, but he shakes his head and clenches his hands in her coat again.
"I want to," he says. "I want to. We're partners. And if…if something happens to me, you need to know all the pieces so you can…get out. Or fix it, if leaving isn't an option."
If something happens to—
"The fire," he says, before Roxanne can say anything. "The fire at Scott Manor. We still don't know who set it, or why. If it was your run-of-the-mill arsonist, there would be other fires to link it to. If it was for revenge, we'd have a better suspect list by now—Bernard's fingerprints implicate him, but I just can't see him being the type."
Neither can Roxanne. Bernard? she wonders. This must be a new development; she hasn't heard anything about it.
"And those guys who kidnapped Max," Megamind continues, in the same quiet voice as before, "they're all dead, and we don't know who killed them. It looks like suicide, it was publicized as a suicide pact, but nineteen? Just as a response to a failed kidnapping attempt? That can't be right, it can't be. And Fred checked into it, he told me, fully half of them had no priors. None. I haven't heard anything from the coroner's office; I ordered a second round of autopsies back in November, but…nada.
"And the two men who came after you in that alley—they—they knew you'd be on your way to meet me. They knew where the Lair is, they knew we were together, and they knew what route you usually take."
Roxanne holds onto him and doesn't say anything. Megamind moves a hand to her hair, rubs his fingers absently over the curve of her head.
"When I made Wayne's watch, I didn't have to show Nibs how to get scans. It knew. Someone with my user code gave all the brainbots access to my backup files, everything, and…" Roxanne feels him swallow. "I don't think it was me. I thought…when I found out, I thought I just forgot. I don't know how forgetting works for…for people, for humans. But. I think, when you do something and forget about it…if somebody reminds you about it, later, I think you remember?"
"How long ago did they get the codes?" Roxanne asks. "If enough time passes…"
"A month before Nibs told me about it."
She shakes her head a little. "No. You definitely would have remembered," she tells him, and he hisses a breath. "Is there anything else?"
Megamind hesitates, then nods slowly. "Yes. The…the drug. The thing Drew is making, his side project. It…" He clears his throat, which doesn't help. "It would work on me."
In his arms, Roxanne goes very still.
"When he called us," he says, "before we made it to your mother's. He said it was supposed to work fast, it's supposed to…to slow conscious brain function, I suppose, is a safe way to explain it."
"What," Roxanne whispers.
"He can't stop working on it," he tells her. "I've told him to keep going. If it is for me, and he stops working, then whoever's behind it will know something is wrong. They might figure out we're onto something. Which…at this point, I don't think I have to tell you how badly that would turn out for us."
"Megamind," Roxanne says, appalled, and she's—thinking of the last drug she'd thought of him succumbing to, which was anesthesia, and she's thinking—now—thinking of how he said, that night they were in bed and she tied him on his back, spread-eagle on his back, no gag, not while I'm on my back, not like this, no, and—when he wakes up in the night, he always, he always moves his fingers first and starts clenching and unclenching his hands; god, she's never thought before about why he might do that—
—and this, a drug that's custom-made for him; custom-made to slow his mind—
—god.
"I didn't want to hide it from you," he blurts out after a moment's struggling silence, "I didn't, I didn't want to, but…I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Roxanne, please, I…you are so curious, all the time, but you cannot investigate this, I…please."
"What?" she says again, swerving off the terrible road her thoughts were taking and blinking back to reality. "Wait, so…you didn't say anything about all this because you were worried I'd look into it?"
"And I wasn't sure whether all of it is really linked," he says in a rush. "But. Otherwise. Yes."
She can hardly blame him for being panicked. He's right: she does want to look into it; this is exactly the kind of thing where she wants to start digging immediately. That's not something she's even remotely upset about.
"I'm sorry," he adds again, and she nods and hugs him tighter. Her arms are beginning to ache, but she can't make herself relax.
"I know," she tells him. "Don't be, it's okay, it's absolutely okay. I'm…hang on, I'm still trying to get my head around all this." She turns her face down against his bony shoulder instead of his neck and tries to focus. "So," she says slowly, into his jacket, "security at the Lair has been compromised. I think we can safely assume we're being watched?"
"Yes." He sighs. "I don't know how much of the time."
"And we're going to have to pretend nothing is wrong." She pauses until she feels him nod. Ugh, this is. So creepy. She takes a deep breath, forces herself to relax. "Okay. We can do that. At least until we figure something else out, there's not much else we can do." He nods again, agreement. "And I'll leave it alone, I promise," she adds, and Megamind gusts a sigh of relief into her short hair and relaxes slightly. Oh, sweetheart. "We'll work out a system of code words," she murmurs. "Code phrases. Hand signals? They'll have to be subtle, since the brainbots might be compromised, too, but…"
"I should have told you before," Megamind says, loosening his hold on her so he can lean back and gaze at her face. "Ages ago."
"How?" she returns. "When? We've always been around our phones or your watch or the car. Before that, we were in Metro, and you don't know who's watching or listening there."
His lips curve into something like a smile. "My dear Miss Ritchi," he says, "I am a genius. I should have found a way."
She shakes her head, smiles a little. "It really is okay. Thank you for filling me in." She pauses, glances away, then looks back at him through her eyelashes. "Kiss me?" she asks, because he's staring at her with his heart in his eyes, and she can't not want to kiss him when he does that.
He grins, brings a hand to her chin so he can tip her face to his and bring their mouths together.
She hums a little, slides her hands up his back under his jacket until she's able to hook her fingers up over his shoulders, dig her fingertips into his trapezius and stroke against the lingering tension knotted there. He sighs and breaks the kiss to smile at her, and then he leans forward to press his lips to her forehead—which gives Roxanne the perfect opportunity to run the tip of her tongue up his throat and make him choke and startle back, laughing, pink to the tips of his ears. She smirks.
And then her smile and her body both go rigid, and a split second later she uses her grip on him to drag him into the shadow of a parked car. To his credit, Megamind doesn't yelp, just stumbles a little as he follows her down.
"What?" he breathes. Roxanne ducks back past him to peer out around the bumper. "What is it, what did you hear?"
It isn't often that she hears something before he does, but living with Minion and the reactors powering the Lair has increased her sensitivity to lower ranges of sound than Megamind can pick up on out of the water. This is a deep, steady thrum, somewhere close by; after living in close proximity to and working with so many various engines and power supplies in the Lair, Roxanne is pretty confident it's some kind of small aircraft.
Yes. There. It's hovering low over her parents' roof, because of course it fucking is. She points. "I'm going to get closer," she whispers.
"What?! No—Rox—"
She ducks across the street in a crouch, then scoots up the sidewalk from shadow to shadow, Megamind close at her heels.
"What are you doing," he hisses, and she reaches back and grabs his hand.
"Shh! In here." She twists sideways and vanishes past the branches of the tall holly at the edge of the neighbors' property, tugging him after her.
What, Megamind thinks, incredulous, but he follows her, scraping past the prickly leaves into—
—oh. A surprisingly open space in the interior of the shrub. It's shot through with skinny branches and leaves still stickle-prickle at him here and there, but the holly affords a surprising amount of cover while allowing more than enough room for two smallish adults to comfortably stand fully upright.
Roxanne is glaring up at the aircraft. "I know that design," she whispers. Megamind steps up beside her, resting his hand on the small of her back for reassurance because some of his brain is still doing that thing where it tells him he's horrible, he's the worst and he doesn't deserve her even though everything is fine, Megamind, seriously. She wasn't even remotely upset with him. And, to his relief and gratification, she leans into his touch even as she continues, "Rrgh, this is so annoying, why do I know that design? I swear I've seen it before somewhere. Do you recognize it?" she asks, but he has to shake his head. He's quite sure he's never seen it before in his life.
A figure appears at the edge of the roof, crouching low, and shoves something off. A ladder of some kind? Looks that way; the figure turns and swings its legs over the edge of the roof, starts to descend with a businesslike air that says whoever it is has done this a few times before.
Suddenly Roxanne gasps. Megamind jumps and blinks at her, but she's—grinning, her eyes dancing with poorly-concealed laughter. "Oh—it's—I don't have time to explain but I need you to trust me, this will be so funny—"
"Okay," he whispers back, confused but game to follow her lead, "okay, yes, go."
She darts out of the tree, sneaks across the narrow side yard in only a few steps. Then she folds her arms over her chest, cocks her hips, and waits a few seconds for the shadowy figure to climb down onto the grass.
Then, "Hey!" she says brightly.
"Aaaaaa!" The shadow hops into the air with a yell and whips around, hands akimbo.
He sees Roxanne, freezes, then glares at her in consternation. "Aaaaa," he says again, accusingly this time as Roxanne bursts into peals of laughter. "Haaa. Whaaat. is wrong with you."
Roxanne is outright cackling. She folds her hands over her nose and mouth for a moment, trying and failing to stifle herself, and then she just puts a hand on the stranger's shoulder and leans on him, gasping. "Oh—oh, your face—Billy I can't even be sorry, I can't, your face was so worth it—"
"Ugh," he says flatly, but rolls his eyes and gives her a few awkward pats on the back anyway.
She turns a little, waves for Megamind to come out of the holly. "Megamind! It's okay, he's a friend of mine from school!"
Megamind approaches somewhat cautiously despite Roxanne's obvious comfort with the stranger: a square-jawed, blond man in a blood red antique-style doctor's coat and elbow-length gloves. The newcomer doesn't look at all surprised to see him—and no wonder. Wariness notwithstanding, Megamind stands with his old poise and keeps his head up, quirks his lips to the side as he drops effortlessly into his supervillain's inflection. "Doctor Horrible, I presume."
Doctor Horrible blinks once, lifts his eyebrows briefly before dropping them back into their semi-permanent scowl. "Oh, wow. That's original. I definitely don't hear that one at least once a week."
Roxanne snorts, stepping back to slip her arm around Megamind's narrow waist. "That's right, I forgot—love, you said you two met at a convention a while back?"
Megamind nods, doesn't take his eyes off the other supervillain. "You were still in white, then," he says, "if memory serves." He cocks his head, gives him a quick once-over. "The red works for you."
"Oh. Thank you, yes, I thought so," Doctor Horrible replies. "Ah—can we—talk? Briefly?"
Megamind frowns. "Everything okay with Vitre?"
"Vitr—oh. Yes, he's fine. Well, for a given value of fine. He's alive. Had a heck of a concussion, though, when he woke up."
"Good," Megamind growls, and Doctor Horrible's answering grin doesn't reach his eyes.
Roxanne shakes her head, smiling fondly at both of them. "C'mon," she says, steering Megamind in the direction of the back yard, "let's go talk on the deck. Unless—oh, do you want to come inside? Are you warm enough?"
"This coat's flannel-lined," Doctor Horrible replies, falling into step on her other side, "and I won't be staying long, so the deck is fine. It's, um, good to see you, Annie," he adds, his flat tone lightening slightly. "How, how are you? These days?"
"Traumatized but dealing with it," she says with a laugh, "and dating the biggest brain in town. So, same old, same old! And how is the taking-over-the-world business treating you?" She drops her arm so she can tangle her fingers with her boyfriend's much longer ones as they head up the stairs to the deck.
"Running into a surprising amount of competition," Doctor Horrible says. "Domestic, international. It can't be a one-man operation anymore. Too much specialization leaves you open to attack, not enough specialization means you can't compete…long story short, it's a nightmare." He drops into the chair next to the smoker, scowling harder than usual. "But what am I going to do, give up? I don't think so. The world is a mess and I need to rule it."
"So what are you going to do?" Roxanne asks, in a tone Megamind recognizes from her kidnapping days. It's a prompt, more than a real question.
The red-clad supervillain shrugs. "Adapt. Overcome. Rise above. Take a seat," he adds, frowning around at the other chairs scattered around the deck and then up at Megamind. "The League is great, but if I don't talk to another supergenius, I am going to go out of my mind."
Megamind pulls a chair around for himself, since Roxanne is already making herself comfortable on the bench on the far side of the table. He would sit next to her, but if Horrible is truly here to see him, rather than Roxanne, he doesn't want to offend unintentionally.
"So," Doctor Horrible says, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded over his chest. "Metro City. Central hub of inner-spaceports in the US, importing resources from Earth's colonies on Mars and Europa and exporting midwestern agricultural goods and Terran commodities. Third highest-populated city in the country, after New York and Los Angeles."
"Yes, I live there, I'm familiar." Megamind throws one leg over the other, steeples his fingers without really thinking about it. "And?"
"I'm wondering if you've—heard anything." Horrible's ever-present scowl is pensive, now, searching. "Anything interesting. Or strange."
"I might have," Megamind says slowly, wondering how much to tell him. "Our local apex Carrollian has his ear to the ground and he seems to think something might be up in a big way, but he's…" He wobbles a hand in midair. "Not always all there. He comes and goes."
"Does he?" Horrible sounds mildly surprised to hear this. "Huh. Ours is pretty consistently batshit. I'm told that's the norm for that species; they don't…integrate well. Snake Bite has their hands full trying to keep her entertained."
Megamind shrugs. "Ours mostly seems to entertain himself. What's her preferred weapon?"
That gets a laugh. "Weapon," Horrible scoffs. "That's rich."
"Sundown carries a crossbow," Roxanne says, and Horrible stops laughing and looks at her like she's off her rocker. "He's a crack shot, too," she continues, undeterred. "I saw him nail a guy between the eyes in a high wind from a fair distance away."
"He named himself?"
Megamind scowls. "I don't know if he named himself or if somebody else named him," he says, "but he definitely has a name. Yours might, too. You should ask her. Maybe she'll surprise you."
Horrible snorts. "Sure, if I'm ever fool enough to get in range of her." Then he sighs. "Well, I can't blame you for playing your hand close to the vest. I don't know what feelers you're putting out, but my sources seem to indicate someone might be making a gambit for domination sometime within the next calendar quarter." His mouth twists. "With as…irritatingly complex as Earth's systems are, they have to be somewhere with access to extraplanetary resources. Metro City is a prime candidate for base of operations."
Megamind shrugs. Metro City, Beijing, Cape Canaveral, Sydney, Paris, Moscow, Glasgow, Budapest…there are multiple possibilities. "I have heard some things, yes," he admits, "but overall it's been fairly quiet. Of course, it would be," he adds, and Doctor Horrible offers him a mirthless smirk in agreement. "Any idea what kind of gambit we're looking at?" Megamind asks, arching a black eyebrow. "I understand you've made some study of the various methodologies."
That gets a shrug from the scarlet-clad villain. "It's all speculation, of course."
"Speculation has its uses," Megamind says. "Otherwise we wouldn't bother with it." Ordinarily he'd take a more subtle approach, he wouldn't push so hard, but he is wildly curious. Doctor Horrible is notoriously prickly and doesn't play well with others. The fact that he came here, apparently to talk, to share information, is…worrisome. Cause for concern.
Sure enough, Horrible looks at him for a long moment, then drops his shoulders somewhat. "From what I'm seeing? It looks like someone's gearing up for a Total Reset."
Megamind blanches. "Worldwide?"
"That's how that one goes. So, if you've got an ace in the hole—and I sincerely hope you do—I'd keep it there for now." He's quiet for a moment. "You see why I'm nervous."
"I do," Megamind says, genuinely shaken. "Any ideas about these bomb scares? Think they're anything to do with it?"
Horrible shakes his head. "I doubt it. If I'm right, we're looking at a Total Reset, not a Chaotic one. Bombs are easy to control, but their effects are most decidedly not. Aftermath is too messy. Too easy to sweep up and return to the status quo."
Roxanne leans forward, frowning a little. "Hey. Why are you telling us all this?" she asks. "Not that it isn't welcome! Your timing is…serendipitously perfect. But when you said there's a lot of competition…" She glances at Megamind. "He is your competition. Unless I'm missing something?"
Doctor Horrible frowns over at her, the wry twist of his mouth easing slightly. "He's not, really," he says. "He's only ever been concerned with Metro. And this…the resources I'm seeing going missing? Whoever's behind this is interfering with my supply lines. My interests are…fairly niche. I may be an anarchist, but I know when something concerns all of us." He looks at Megamind. "I'm hoping you'll tell me I'm wrong."
Megamind is staring into the middle distance, his head tipped forward, mouth resting on his steepled fingers. Roxanne can't help but smile a little despite the grim conversation—it's so strange to see him sitting like this, talking like this, in regular clothing. "Hm? Oh." He sits up a little, but his gaze is still far away. "No. I wish I could, but you probably aren't. What are you missing?"
"A surprising quantity of yttrium," Doctor Horrible says. "Scandium. A few other lanthanides. Two separate shipments of contained single-domain nanoparticles. Liquid helium-4 in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Non-baryonic photoparticles. P—"
Megamind snaps into focus; Roxanne sees it happen. "Axions," he says, his tone almost questioning as he pulls his head up on his long neck, blinking. "Non-baryonic single-domain—you're building neuromorphic motherboards with cold dark matter as a base." Doctor Horrible sits up a little, loses some of his scowl, and Megamind cocks his head. "Are we talking heat-assisted magnetic? Bit-patterned? Skyrmion spin-based? If you're using yttrium as the upper and lower contact—wait, what other lanthanides, exactly?" His eyes are sparkling with interest. "We are talking ferrofluid-fueled drones, yes? That's where you're going with this."
"Wait. You…can't just. Um." Doctor Horrible waves his hands. "Skyrmion spin-based…?"
"Topological distortions in magnetization of superparamagnetic liquids," Megamind says, as though this is anything remotely like an explanation. "You nail down the sextuple-spin interactions and you pretty much eliminate the issue of charge-conjugation parity symmetry—"
"Oh, charge parity," Doctor Horrible scoffs. "I mean, sure, or you could just force neutrinoless double-beta decay, which is much easier, provided you have the containment necessary to—"
"—yes, because I'm definitely going to waste a whole reactor generating enough Majorana fermions to make that feasible—"
"You keep them in their vacuum state!" Doctor Horrible exclaims. "It's a stochastic process, for crying out loud. I'm talking canonical quantisation, not path integrals."
(Roxanne bites her lip, trying not to laugh. This is the most entertaining conversation she's never been part of. It's like watching a game of table tennis.)
"Right, yes, but canonical quantisation doesn't hold up under the non-linear sigma model you have to use for double-beta decay." Megamind shakes his head. "It doesn't work. And we're getting sidetracked. Ferrofluids? Hyperferrofluids?" He cocks his head the other way this time, showing all his teeth in a wicked shark-wide smile, his eyes glittering. "What are you building with all this?"
Doctor Horrible is really grinning, at this point, but he still hesitates.
"Come on," Megamind says, drumming his hands on his knees. He's sitting up straight now, both feet on the ground. "Come on, come on. You can't give me all this and not tell me."
"It's—" He makes a sort of inarticulate grasping gesture. Looks at Megamind. "You know mosquitoes?"
Megamind blinks at him a couple times. Doctor Horrible makes another gesture, this one a sort of there you go, there it is, and Megamind's eyebrows fly up and he bursts out laughing, clapping a couple times and rubbing his palms together. "Oh! Oh, ho ho, that's bad, I love it."
The sliding door scudds open, and 'Ben' pokes his head out. "Here you are," he begins, and then jumps back when Megamind explodes out of his chair in a flurry of flailing hands.
"Go away!" he hisses, all flashing eyes and bared teeth. "Go away go away I do not want you here!"
"Jeez, okay," Wayne says, startled, and closes the door.
Megamind freezes, and then flops back down into his chair with both hands over his face, pink to the tips of his ears and all the way down his neck.
Roxanne stands and shuffles out from behind the table. "I'll go talk to him," she says, trying not to laugh and only mostly succeeding. "You boys talk shop. Should I send Drew out?"
Megamind hesitates, but shakes his head. Doesn't explain.
And she doesn't ask, but she does take his chin and tip his face up for a quick kiss on her way past. He's smiling when she withdraws—good. "I'll just go chat with Ben for a bit, then. And you," she adds, pausing with one hand on the door and pointing at Horrible with her other hand, "are not allowed to leave without saying goodbye to me. I'm making you a plate for the road, you can't stop me."
He huffs but nods, and she heads inside.
Wayne is standing off to one side, looking badly confused. "What'd I do?" he asks when he sees her, and Roxanne finally releases the laugh she's been choking back.
"It's not you," she assures him, when she can breathe again. "He's out there having surprise quality time with Doctor Horrible. I'm pretty sure he didn't mean to snap at you; he's just in supervillain mode."
He relaxes a little. "Oh," he says, sounding relieved. "Oh, okay. That's…is that good? Is supervillain mode a good thing? Should I be worried?"
Roxanne rolls her eyes. "You're going to worry no matter what I say," she says. "But I can tell you, that shirt you gave him? Made him cry."
Wayne blinks. "Oh," he says again. "Really?"
"Well, not full-on crying. But there were tears. I very much hope you didn't give him that as a joke."
He shakes his head. "C'mon, Roxie, you know me," he says, and follows her out to the kitchen, where she pulls down a couple of sturdy paper plates. Behind them, in the living room, the kids and Minion are setting up for a game of dominos while the old stop-motion Rudolph plays on the television in the background. "I'm kind of a jerk, yeah, but I wouldn't do that to him."
"Good." She smiles. "Good, I'm glad."
Outside, both villains are still chuckling. "Hey," Doctor Horrible says, after a moment, "hey. What did the quantum mechanist say when he realized he needed to sum a set of Hilbert spaces?"
Megamind thinks for a moment, then huffs a laugh. "Fock space!" he exclaims, then grimaces. "Oh, that's…that is not good. That's awful. How long have you been sitting on that one?"
"About three years." Doctor Horrible snorts, shakes his head. "I can't believe you got all that off a partial list of missing materials," he says, and Megamind rolls his eyes.
"Well, come on," he says, "scandium? Liquid helium-4 in a Bose-Einstein condensate? There's only so many things you can do with those—'niche interests' doesn't begin to cover it—and then non-baryonic photoparticles on top of that?" He shrugs hugely. "What else could it be? I'm impressed, though," he adds, cocking an eyebrow. "Cold dark matter? You're using the motherboard equivalent itself as the propulsion system. That's gutsy."
"You're one to talk," Horrible says. "That spin-based computing you were talking about, that's the basis for those nanite-colony brainbots of yours, isn't it? The dark ones."
Megamind shifts a little in his seat, uncomfortable. "Not…exactly," he says. "Something like that, I admit, but…not skyrmions, no. And we're getting sidetracked again," he adds. He'd rather not talk about Washington with a supervillain whose end goal is world domination.
Undeterred, Horrible shakes his head. "I couldn't believe it when I read about it. That stunt you pulled back in '94…you could be a one-alien army. I'm trying to take over the world, but you? You could actually pull it off. You could pull it off tomorrow, if you wanted to."
Megamind frowns. He could, probably, but not well. Not sustainably. "I don't want to. Mostly I just want to be left alone."
The scoffing noise Horrible makes in his throat as he looks away isn't something Megamind would call friendly. "What a waste."
For a moment, they just sit, looking out into the night, out over the dark ocean. The wind in December is much warmer here than in Michigan, but it's still chilly enough that Megamind's glad he has his coat.
"Roxanne told me the two of you dated briefly," he says. "How on earth did you wind up with a journalism student?"
Horrible shrugs. "You'd have to ask her. We were…in the same physics class. I think." He sighs. "So, you are hearing things, then. Troubling things."
"I'm always hearing troubling things," Megamind says. "I'm heavily involved in Metrocity's criminal underworld; troubling things is what I do." Then he sighs. Horrible has given him a surprising amount of information; the least Megamind can do is compare notes. "But yes. Things are happening that I don't remember happening, I'm not receiving supplies from Europa with any reliability." He hesitates, then slowly says, "If…if you see any brainbots in LA, avoid them." He's pretty sure he recalled all the ones posted there, but with the Host compromised, it's going to be hard to tell.
Horrible is a supergenius, though; he cocks an eyebrow. "You've been hacked?"
"Possibly. I hope not."
"Fuck," Horrible breathes. "Okay. So, we're fucked, then."
"Maybe not," Megamind protests. "Not if I can get out in front of it."
"Get out in—you'd—have to go analog," Horrible exclaims. "If your systems are compromised, you—everything you do, it has to be under the radar. Under your own radar. You live with ninety thousand surveillance drones!"
"A hundred and thirty thousand," Megamind says, and Horrible splutters and throws up his hands. "But give me some credit," he adds, bristling a little bit with affront. "You aren't the only supergenius here, remember. The head's big for a reason. I can handle it."
Horrible sends him a skeptical face. "But the risks…Megamind. You know the relationship between odds of survival and odds of success under these kinds of conditions, for these kinds of stakes, according to the Chaotic model."
Megamind's lips thin. "I can handle it. And you said, yourself: this is Total, not Chaotic."
Dr Horrible sits in silence for a while, until finally he says, "Listen. You made it. Destroyed your nemesis, got the girl, the whole nine yards. I won't—I'm—not denying I envy you.
"And we may be villains. We may be a collection of egotistical, backstabbing, short-sighted sons of bitches. But if you fail—"
"You are not gaining entrance to Evil Lair," Megamind interrupts him. "Dead or alive, I'm not letting you in. You are a fight on sight for the Host if you come within a mile of the place and I'm not changing that."
"Fine," Horrible snarls, "then I'll figure something else out. But pass my professional contact info along to Roxanne, in case—in—in case she needs an extra brainiac inventor. Yes? If the shit hits the fan, I want to hit the ground running." A muscle pulses in his cheek and he stares away out over the yard. "We may be villains," he says again, "but we watch each other's backs."
"Nobody else is going to," Megamind agrees, suddenly tired. "Fine. And—thank you. But you're allowed into Metro over my dead body, just so we're clear."
Horrible jerks his head in a nod.
After a moment, Megamind clears his throat. "I…heard about what happened," he says slowly. "How you got into the League."
Horrible doesn't look at him, but the hard, angry lines of his face go harder, angrier, and a muscle pulses in his jaw.
"I'm so sorry," Megamind says, quiet.
Dr. Horrible stands up. "I should be going," he says, his voice flat. He hands Megamind a piece of paper. "My card," he says. "Just in case. Thanks for the conversation."
Megamind slips it into his pocket and nods. "Thanks for the tip," he says, shaking his hand. "Take care of yourself."
Roxanne hands the foil-wrapped plate off to Megamind so she can give her old friend a hug. He looks extremely stiff and startled about it, but Roxanne is used to stiff, startled supervillains; she isn't bothered. She just squeezes him briefly and then passes him the plate, and says, "Hey, don't be a stranger, okay? This was nice. We should talk more."
Doctor Horrible scowls at her but accepts the food anyway. "I'm not—I am not nice. I am trying to take over the world."
"To make it better," she points out, stepping back and taking Megamind's hand again without really thinking about it. "I think that counts."
He sighs, but doesn't argue further. "Well," he says. "Take—take care. Roxanne." He glances down at where her fingers are netted with Megamind's long blue ones, then up at Megamind. "Don't lose her."
"I'll die first," Megamind replies simply.
Doctor Horrible's jaw tightens and he gives a jerky nod, and then he turns and walks down to the lawn, rounds the corner of the house without looking back.
Roxanne squeezes Megamind's hand. "What was that about?" she asks.
He hesitates. "…I'm pretty sure he accidentally killed his version of you."
She blinks. "Oof," she says, and Megamind nods. Squeezes her hand right back.
"Oof, indeed," he agrees. "Come on. Let's go inside."