Megamind was beginning to think he had been—precipitate—in deciding to test the disguise watch now.
But it had seemed like such a perfect opportunity for a test! He needed to break into the mayor's office and retrieve that file, and the party would provide the perfect distraction—and when the file was found to be missing, the mayor would be much more likely to suspect one of the party guests, rather than Megamind, who, as far as anyone would know, hadn't even been there.
Never mind Minion's objection that the watch was just a prototype and so far they still hadn't been able to get the hard light to render clothing! Megamind was perfectly capable of wearing normal human formal wear!
Wearing it for an interminably long amount of time.
In a large crowd of people.
Who all hated him.
Without his usual suit and spikes for protection.
…and, since the city hall security team searched the guests before letting them into the building, also unarmed except for a pocket knife oh yes this hadn't been a bad idea at all.
You are not going to have a panic attack, he told himself unconvincingly as yet another person jostled his elbow unexpectedly, you are not going to have a panic attack. Just breathe! Just—
The sea of people parted for just a moment, and Megamind saw—
Roxanne.
—and stopped breathing for another reason entirely.
Here. She was here. They were in the same place and she wasn't tied up and no one was screaming and there wasn't any doomsday device for him to concern himself with and he could just
exist.
In this place with her.
(the next time his elbow was jostled, Megamind barely even noticed.)
Roxanne's gown was dark red, a mark of bold color in a sea of pastel, and there was a kind of simple elegance to it that instantly made every other dress in the room look gaudy and cheap in comparison.
Her lips were the same dark red as her dress, and she had on long, dark evening gloves that Megamind found himself instantly and vividly fantasizing about her removing very slowly—
He pulled his thoughts away from that image with a jerk, flushing hot—he was in public, good lord; bad enough to fantasize about her in private, but even more inappropriate to do it here.
The crowd shifted and Megamind lost sight of her.
He swallowed, trying to get ahold of himself. He'd known she would be here, damn it, and yet, as always, the sight of her, the fact of her, still knocked him—
Head over heels, he thought.
—god, he was such an idiot.
And he needed to get himself under control, or someone was going to really seriously notice his idiocy; that tabloid article had—
He'd moved across the ballroom floor, he realized, without meaning to, moved in the direction of her, as if she'd pulled him to her on an invisible thread.
She was standing next to a large statue of Metro Man with a champagne glass in her hand. Standing alone. For one insane moment, Megamind considered going to talk to her. He wavered in indecision, and then—
Metro Man—Wayne—was there with her, suddenly, saying—something; Megamind couldn't hear what—to Roxanne.
Megamind narrowed his eyes, but Roxanne gave Wayne a smile and started to answer.
Not wanting to be caught staring, Megamind moved away from them before casually doubling back.
They were still talking. Roxanne looked—well, she didn't look overjoyed, but there was none of that—tension—in her manner that he would have expected after a breakup.
A breakup handled by Metro Man in the most disrespectful way possible; he'd given an interview claiming that he had actually never been in a relationship with Roxanne, which was—
—ludicrous.
Of course it was ludicrous.
As Megamind watched, Roxanne said something to Wayne, gesturing idly with her champagne glass, and Wayne laughed.
Megamind's lips twisted into a sneer.
Didn't Wayne feel guilty at all for breaking up with her? And for such a—a—a trivial reason, that tabloid article claiming that she was having a secret affair with Megamind, which clearly and obviously wasn't true! Not only would Roxanne never in a thousand years touch Megamind, of all people, but, even more importantly—Roxanne wasn't that kind of person. She wouldn't do something like that. Anyone who knew her would know that.
Didn't Wayne feel guilty at all?! Didn't Roxanne feel angry at all?! Didn't—
Megamind moved with studied casualness in another direction, and then doubled back again towards the two of them.
They were still talking to each other in a way that was—distressingly and incorrectly normal!
Why—
—unless—
—unless there hadn't been a breakup.
Unless it was some kind of plot between the two of them to get Megamind to stop kidnapping her by pretending that they weren't dating oh god oh god the tabloid she'd figured it out she'd figured out he was in love with her and—
Megamind fairly fled to the other side of the ballroom. There was a convenient pillar in the corner; he took cover behind it.
oh god oh god oh no please no—
No. No! That couldn't be it. It couldn't be! If they'd done it to trick Megamind, they would have framed it as an actual breakup; they wouldn't have pretended they'd never been dating!
They knew he wouldn't believe that; Roxanne had insisted for months, during the early days of the kidnapping, that she and Metro Man weren't dating, and Megamind had never believed her and—
—and—
—and.
The world seemed suddenly to go slow and quiet around Megamind, as if the room was filled with water instead of air, everything muted and distant and oddly slowed.
Holy shit.
Holy shit; had she been telling the truth?
Surely not. Surely the fuck not.
Megamind shook his head and the world snapped back into place and he needed to—needed to think; needed to—
He needed to not think. He needed to not think about this, because if he did, he really was going to have a panic attack and this was not the place and he needed to focus.
Megamind mentally shoved the question of Roxanne and Metro Man violently aside.
He would think about it later. He would figure it out later.
He was here for a reason.
To get that damn file.
Which was what he was going to do.
(later later later think about it later)
He managed, after several false starts, to make his way across the ballroom again, mentally steeling himself to walk past Roxanne and Metro Man on his way into the hall. When he got there, though, he saw to his relief that they were both gone.
Thank evil heaven.
Megamind slipped quietly out the door and began to walk in the direction of the velvet rope that separated the brightly lit entrance hall from the dark corridors of the rest of the building.
Once she'd made her way upstairs and found the mayor's office, the lock on the door proved easy to pick. Roxanne did it quickly, and then stepped inside and closed the door behind herself.
She didn't turn on the lights; she didn't want someone to notice, and besides, the wall behind the mayor's desk was entirely windows, and the light of the city that came through them was more than enough to see by.
Roxanne went to the desk, and turned on the computer, first.
(not even password locked; how very stupid)
A search through the computer yielded nothing, though—it had to be an audio file, or possibly video; when she'd overheard the Mayor and Judge Sludd talking two weeks ago, the Mayor had sounded as if what he had was absolutely positive and incriminating.
Don't you threaten me, Sludd; I've got proof on all of you; real proof, and it wasn't Nixon who went to prison!
—'real proof', and the reference to Nixon—it had to be audio at least.
No video or audio files on the computer—but—ooh—an audio recording application hidden away in one of the files, and—
Roxanne examined the computer itself. Hidden microphone; hidden microphone—there had to be—where was—
She looked closely at the mouse. Ahh, yes. There it was.
So. He'd recorded the audio with the microphone hidden in the computer mouse—recorded it onto the computer—and then transferred it onto some kind of disc, deleting it from the computer itself, just as Roxanne had suspected he might. So very satisfying to have her hunch confirmed, but it did complicate the search.
Roxanne opened the desk drawers and rifled through them. No flash drives, no discs, nothing, just pens and thumbtacks and rubber bands. And a Metro Man pez dispenser.
Roxanne picked it up, rolling her eyes. The sheer amount of Metro Man merchandise in this city was absolutely ridiculous. She flicked the plastic head back absently, but apparently it was empty; no pez appeared. Roxanne went to replace it in the desk drawer, and then something—
—there was something not right; something wrong with the thing in her hand; something that didn't make sense. What—?
It was too heavy, Roxanne realized. Too heavy for a pez dispenser in general, if she remembered her childhood right, and definitely too heavy for an empty pez dispenser.
She pulled the plastic head, tugging the thing open as if she was going to refill it.
There was a flash drive inside.
A slow, gleeful smile began to curve Roxanne's lips.
...to be continued.
notes: Happy day six of my Birthday Fic Month! I'm going to change the rating of this story to M when I publish the next chapter, so if you want to continue reading, make sure to change your viewing options to show M stories! I hope you all liked the new chapter!