Metro Knight
Blood on Leather
By cgaussie & threequarterfox
The oven made a cheerful bell-like noise, and Minion turned to open the door. His seventh tray of cakes, these ones chocolate chip. The first tray was just ready to cover with frosting. Plan Cupcake was in action.
Hovering above the table, a Cat Bot eyed the multiple trays of baked goods with great interest. They had tiny metallic ears on top of their domed heads, and long spindly legs hung beneath their metal bodies. At the back of them, though, were long tails that could be used to grip things. Its jaws were small, and a large domed head revealed sparks of electricity that represented the mind that worked behind the little robots that Megamind had created years ago. They were a mix between pets, minions, and security.
Last time she counted she had at least over one hundred of them, and they always turned up somewhere throughout the evil lair.
"Mowg?" it asked, its singular eye blinking as one of its long arms reached down to possibly steal or just bat at one of the cupcakes.
"No!" Minion whipped out his over sized tail, and the little cyborg retreated.
"Fzzzztttt!" it hissed cybernetic-ally at him before joining a few of its fellow Cat Bots in a high corner of the ceiling.
"These are for getting the Mistress out of prison. We can't eat them." Minion placed the final tray of Plan Cupcake on the table and started emptying out the chocolate chip cakes onto a cooling rack.
Another Cat Bot approached and curled itself into a seated position on the corner of the table, watching with interest. "Mowg?" it asked, brain sparking. 'Mommy' hadn't been around recently, and it was something the Cat Bots picked up on easily.
"You want your Mommy back, don't you? Don't you?" Minion tickled the Cat Bot in passing and missed being snapped at by a hairsbreadth. "I sent at least ten of you out to finish the other half of the project, where are they?"
As if they had been waiting for him to question them, ten Cat Bots with various colour head-domes came flying into the room. The air filled with their electronic 'mowgs' as they circled excitedly above Minion.
"Here we go. Okay, do you have the umbrellas? And did you finish the welding?"
Three of them proudly dropped umbrellas onto the floor while another was rolling along the ground now, batting at the welder playfully. While they knew when a job was on it was time to concentrate on work, they also knew once a job was done it was playtime. And for Cat Bots, play things were anything that wasn't tied down.
And if it was tied down they'd claw, or bite, through the ropes to play with it.
Minion reached into the sink and retrieved four large round cookie cutters, then rolled one out of the door.
A few curious Cat Bots followed it, mowging as they went.
It had been a few days now, and Megamind was still in jail. This was peculiar, since normally the woman would slink out of jail expertly and return home after a day, tops. This time, however, it seemed as though she wasn't making any attempts at breaking out at all.
It was worrisome. Minion was determined to get to the bottom of it all. He rolled another cookie cutter out of the door, and went back to covering cakes in thick bright coloured frosts.
Well, whenever Megamind would return, she'd have a boatload of cookies to enjoy.
"Mistress?" Minion wandered through the smoke, carrying a few more of the Batch Three cupcakes just in case anyone turned out not to be Mistress. "Mistress? I seem to have been turned around..." Lot of smoke...
A near by inmate, who knew this ordeal would be coming, waved his hand at some smoke. "She's been moved to the Western block, fish guy. New room 'n everything. Better hurry."
"Oh. Ah. Thank you." Minion turned and dashed away. Western block? Snazzy.
He hurried as quickly as he could, and soon found a round white dome like room sitting at the end of a long corridor. Outside it was a console with various screens and keyboards making up majority of it. Had the jail made this especially for his mistress? Going by a profile x-ray vision of her head, and her large brain, had to be. "Mistress?"
No answer. Was she in there? Was this old data? He tried various buttons, and none opened the door. A fire alarm stuttered to a halt in the distance, and Minion heard half of Batch Two of the cupcakes go off in rapid succession. Running out of time.
The door had a port-hole window, so surely if she was in there she would be looking out to find out what was going on. Minion went to the window and peered in.
There she was, lounging on the white chair situated in the centre of the brightly coloured room. She had her back to the door, and judging by the scratch marks on all of the faces of the happy little animals that were painted on the walls, Megamind was not in a happy mood.
Very slowly she rolled onto her back, and turned her head to look at Minion. For a moment the fish was worried she had been drugged. She stared at her friend sadly before looking away.
Not good. And running out of time.
Minion made a snap decision, and slammed his mechanical paws on the buttons. Something shorted out, and the door opened drunkenly. "Come on, Mistress, we are leaving now." He leaped into the room, grabbed his mistress by the scruff of her prison scrubs, and started dragging her out the door.
She was quite limp. She didn't struggle, although her posture really didn't seem to be designed to help him pull her through the narrow opening into the smoke filled outer chamber. Minion dragged her further, carrying her like a cat carries a kitten. Maaan she's light. I don't think she's eaten a thing since she came in here.
Megamind coughed, finally, as they entered the rest of the jail but still made no attempt to assist her friend in escaping from prison.
What is the point of it all?
She finally sighed and lifted her head to peer upwards. "Minion. Minion... I should just stay here..." Megamind mumbled, grabbing her friend for support as she tried to get to her feet while still being dragged like a kitten.
"Not on your life, Mistress. I don't think you've eaten at all here. And you need to keep your fluids up..."
"I hate their food here." she grumbled, but her stomach suddenly grumbled even louder, verifying Minion's fears. "But what's the point? Out there..."
"You get me to make food like here all the time, Mistress." Minion manoeuvred her through another doorway, and then carried her down a long steep staircase. "And I've made cupcakes at home, you love cupcakes."
"I do love cupcakes." she whispered shyly, as if she wasn't a super villainous woman but a little girl all over again. "Wait. Hold up... let me get up..."
"So long as you're not trying to go back up those stairs." Minion let go of her, and reached up to jimmy the door ahead of them open with the long claws on his suit
Megamind got to her feet quickly and dusted the bottom parts of her orange prison garb. "There..." she glanced up those stairs; still feeling as though leaving was a mistake. What was awaiting her out there? A hero who wanted nothing to do with her, cops who hated her, and stores she repetitively stole from.
In hind sight though... Minion was out there. So was her Cat Bots.
"There we go, Miss. Now we just need to make a bit of a dash. Do you want to climb on my back?" There was the sound of alarms out of the doorway, and a steep stairwell upward.
She nodded. Minion could run incredibly fast thanks to the streamlined body she gave him that mirrored the body structure of leopards. And she didn't have a lot of energy, so running under her own steam was probably a bad idea. "Yes, good idea." she climbed up onto his back, and wrapped her arms tightly around the neck of the cat body.
"Okay. Hold on tight." Minion dashed straight up the staircase. Behind him, where he had abandoned the rest of Batch Three, there was a series of explosions, ending in a rumble as the building picked up the oomph. They shot out of the staircase at top speed, bolted across the courtyard and straight over a fence, as fast as a locomotive. Minion swung around in his bubble and checked his load.
Megamind was still there, and her eyes were shut tightly as Minion ran to safety. Behind them were shouts of the officers, and the sirens wailed louder still.
Suddenly bullets hit the grass around the two, causing Megamind to cry out in alarm.
Muttering angrily to himself about amateurs, Minion dodged the bullets, ran straight up the wall of a building, Megamind still attached to his back as if with superglue, and then climbed in a window.
Then the worst thing Minion could imagine happened. There was one final bang of a bullet just as they were getting out of range, and Megamind screamed in pain. One of her arms loosened immediately, and she began to slip off of his back. Megamind strained against the pain suddenly burning up her right arm, and desperately tried her best to keep her left arm tight around Minion's neck.
Minion ran straight through what was turning out to be some sort of office block, and out the window on the other side, then jumped down onto the ground and continued running.
"I'm bleeding. I'm bleeding. I'm bleeding." Megamind was whimpering quickly as the panic began to set in. She'd never been shot before. The shock was rushing through her now, as quickly as the blood that was running down her arm.
"I'm going as fast as I can. The car is around here somewhere. Hang onMistress."
"What do you think I'm doing?" she asked fretfully. If she didn't hang on any tighter she'd go falling off his back entirely.
"Well, don't let go." Minion cornered wildly, almost throwing his Mistress off his back in his haste, and bolted towards something which looked more familiar. Car park. Good. Fine. Car Park. Now... Car?"Almost there!" The sounds of pursuit were slowly disappearing into the distance.
His one saving grace was that the Invisible Car had been parked in front of a poster advertising some new sales the largest store in Metro City was having. The space in particular appeared empty, but the closer Minion got to it, the outline of the faithful car came into view.
Megamind was whimpering still, and tears were now running down her face. "Shot. Shot like... like a common criminal... oh God..."
"Amateurs. Rank amateurs, Mistress. They didn't even seem to realise the cupcakes were non-fatal..." Minion opened the door, gathered her up and deposited her inside the car.
She hissed as he set her into her passenger seat, and grabbed at her bleeding arm to put some pressure on the bleeding wound. "Minion, oh Minion..." she hiccuped as the tears continued to stream down her face. "Why do I do this? Why?"
"You'll be fine. Just stay calm, Mistress, I'll get you out of here." Minion shut the door, leaped the car in a single bound, and opened the other door. "They can't see us now, we're invisible. Just hang on, okay?"
Bernard sighed as he made his way across the large open living area of the manor. Things had been especially grim around the Scotts' Manor since what happened at the opening day of the museum. Wayne had responded in his own way to the broken promise, and it almost seemed as though Megamind was entering a state of rehabilitation in the jail before her break out the night previous.
Now here they were at square one all over again.
He made his way into the Laundromat and inspected the work being done by the girls. There was a hamper where 'miscellaneous' objects that wouldn't be washed that was set to the side and Bernard normally inspected it to find what Wayne forgot in his pockets. Most of the time it was his keys, wallet, money, or watches.
Today he found a bag. A small black bag that looked familiar. "Huh." he lifted it before carrying it out from the Laundromat and began his trek up the stairs to check in on Wayne that morning.
The bag was unexpectedly heavy, for such a small item. A chinking sound. More than one... metallic object...
"What have you got there, Bernard?"
"Found it in the 'not to wash' hamper." Bernard reported as he opened up the bag and peered inside. Seconds later a brilliant blue light suddenly illuminated his face. Bernard blinked in surprise and lowered the bag, before lifting his hand to shift his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. "...okay...?"
"Not to wash? Oh. I see. Leather." Wayne took the bag from him while he rubbed his eyes. "Oh. It's... that."
"It flashed me." Bernard muttered as he stuck his hand into the bag and retrieved the only non-jewellery related item in the bag and held up a watch.
"I guess it must be booby trapped for anyone who isn't her." Wayne opened the bag up and looked inside. "Just a few pieces of jewellery."
Bernard inspected the watch, how it had three smaller faces inside the main one. "Hm." he turned it over before setting it aside on the table. "Oh well. So. Are you feeling any better today?" he asked, looking up at the taller man as he sorted through the jewellery.
"You keep asking me that." Wayne pulled the bag shut again, and put it on the table next to the watch. "It's not going to change." He turned on his heel to walk towards the wide windows, and stare outside.
"So you're just going to mope?" Bernard asked.
"Do you have a better idea?" Wayne glowered at the window.
Bernard frowned slightly at the taller man, and folded his arms. "Don't take that attitude with me."
Wayne opened his mouth to say something more, looked sidelong at Bernard, and stopped. Then he sighed and threw himself into the nearest armchair. "I don't see what other attitude to have."
Sighing, Bernard walked around the armchair to stare out the large window. "Well. She hasn't caused any trouble recently. And from what the Warden reported, she was actually kind of sorry this time."
"She's just coming up with something worse. And... And I thought..." Wayne growled in frustration.
Bernard raised an eyebrow at him.
"And it's not like that!" Wayne picked at the arm of the chair. "It isn't."
"No?" Bernard asked.
"No. Of course it isn't. I'm... I'm going to go and work on the Metromobile." Wayne stood up and walked out of the room.
"Hmm hmm." Bernard watched him go and rolled his eyes. "Boy's in denial up to his eyeballs."
"I heard that!"
"You were meant to!"
"It's not true!"
"Lies!" Bernard sang.
"All Lies!"
Bernard couldn't help but laugh in amusement before getting to his feet and followed Wayne, grabbing the watch as he did.
The mansion was built over the most incredible cave system. First both of them went down normal marble staircases... but then they walked through a door always kept locked, a small service entrance which the servants were paid not to ask about. Then the staircases started properly. Down and down. Bernard would have preferred to use the elevator, but the noise it made was too distinctive. They tended to use the stairs except in emergencies.
Caves. Bernard looked out over the wide slightly sloping floor below them, dotted with half finished projects. It looked a lot like an evil lair. The world of a vigilante. At least it was well lit.
"Lovely place, isn't it? It's certainly spruced up a lot since we first moved in here." Bernard commented as he followed after Wayne before looking at the watch in his hand again. "Nice work on this, think she made it?" he turned it around and seeing the 'M' emblazed on the silver backing. "Oh yes. She made it."
"The other jewellery looked like it belonged to the Museum." Wayne made a beeline for one of the cars, the side and front panels of which had been completely removed so that he could access the inner workings. "You sure she didn't just brand that with her mark?"
"She doesn't label the stuff she steals." Bernard said.
"Wouldn't be the first time. Remember that car? She re-badged it. She definitely didn't make that."
"Somebody is being a little too technical."
"Hmmm." Wayne leaned into the vehicle and rummaged around. "Speaking of technical, do you still have the manual for that sound system thing?"
"For what?" Bernard asked.
"The thing that makes the car scare away anything that is within range."
Bernard made his way over to a filing cabinet and began sorting through some other manuals before returning with it and opened up the small book, flicking through the pages. "I think I found it."
"Good. Troubleshooting. Cats." Wayne pulled something out of the inside of his vehicle, and looked at it confusedly. "I swear I hit one the other day... it made a sound like a cat. But..." He turned the item upside down. "All I can find is these odd bits."
"Don't let Megamind hear you say that."
"I didn't intend to hit it. And like I said, there was no cat. It was like it just disappeared. Whoosh. Magic."
"The magical disappearing cat-sounding corpse. Leaves only the fresh scent of pine." Bernard smirked as he looked down at the manual. "You'd hate even having a dead animal on your conscience."
"Thus our attempt to make my far-too-fast-car not too much of an issue for the local pet population. Except that this... whatever it was? Left a large hole in the front of the car. And meowing noises."
"Maybe she made a robot?" Bernard guessed. "She's not above tinkering with mechanics as we all know."
"It wasn't Minion." He finally pulled a small bit of metal out of the engine. "See? Now, that last piece was a bit of our car. But this..."
"If it was you wouldn't be standing here. She would have come down on you like a ton of bricks."
"She's still in the Asylum." He waved the bit of metal around. "And this is a bit of the cat!"
Bernard blinked in surprise and walked closer to him, and reached out to touch the piece of metal. "Huh."
"Yeah." The piece was only thin, and as long as his finger. It was articulated, perfectly able to curl into a tight circle. "Does it look like something she'd make? Or is it someone else?"
He was asking the right person since Bernard knew even more about Megamind than Wayne did; if that was possible. He could recognize the woman's handiwork a mile away on his best days, since she had a certain flair to her mechanical creations that would stump regular people. Bernard reached out and took the piece from Wayne and held it up above his head, observing it.
"...it certainly borrows from her earlier work, look at the joints..." he ran his finger along the thin piece of metal. "It's an old piece, whatever it was a part of."
"Hmm." Wayne dropped the bit on the table, and reached over, collecting a small paper cup. "Here's the rest." He dumped them out. A couple of washers, another bit of articulation far shorter than the first, and what looked like half a silicon circuit piece, the size of a large coin. "I have no idea if they're all from the meowing thing."
Bernard picked up the pieces and touched them carefully with his fingers, before grabbing a nearby magnifying glass. He held it over the piece of circuitry. There was mostly oil slicked to it, but something else perked his interest.
"There's dried blood on this."
"Where?"
"Right here." he moved the magnifying glass so Wayne could look at it. He had taken a job in the criminal lab with the police force a few years back, so being able to identify blood was easy for the man. "See? Right here," he pointed to it before letting Wayne take both the circuit and glass from him before picking up another piece of machinery. "Wonder if there's more..."
"Well, there's all sorts of bits inside the front of the car."
"Make a habit of killing things with your car, do you?" Bernard asked dryly.
"No, but whatever it was... It was a very strange cat. Is that cat blood?"
"Can't tell by just looking at it. We'll have to run a test on it."
"Run the test. I'll see if I can find any more pieces." Wayne turned back to the car, and thoughtfully rummaged around.
Bernard busied himself in the far corner of the underground lair. It housed all manner of electrical equipment that could be found in any laboratory up on the surface, but theirs was just that little bit better, and quicker. It helped if you had the kind of money Wayne had access to, to help fund your own research area.
He ran a scan of the sample of blood and slotted it in against the database that had the genetic material of every person (presently up to date) in Metro City. When you fought crime like Wayne, this sort of thing came in handy when you found blood at a scene but had no leads. Bernard adjusted his glasses as he watched the huge screen mounted on the wall glow a faint green as it ran through the system.
It didn't take long for a match to be found, and Bernard stared at the name for a moment before sighing, and rolled his eyes. "Three guesses." he called out as he pressed the 'print' button on the screen.
"You're kidding?"
"Here's a clue. Green eyes."
"I didn't hit her I swear!"
"Blue skin." Bernard looked down at the sheet of paper that he had ripped from the printer.
"Isn't her blood blue?"
"No, it's red. If it was blue her ears wouldn't be that lavender color."
"Mmmh. What was her blood doing on... a robot cat thing?"
"Her nipples are probably purple too." Bernard said aloud before looking back down at the paper. "I don't know. It's weird, I mean there's no reason for her blood to be on one of her robots."
"That's... That's great. Thanks so much."
"You're welcome."
"I'm not going to get that image out of my head now... Do you think it went rogue?"
Bernard had a satisfied, smug expression on his face as he read down the information, even if most of it he already knew. It was interesting how similar to human blood the alien girl's blood was. "I don't know. I mean, she knows how to work in the three laws of robotics into everything she makes... she never seeks out to hurt anyone so why would one turn rogue?"
"An experiment gone wrong? She does call herself evil sometimes."
"Perhaps she was experimenting with a different A.I and it got out of control. That, or she's hurt and bled on it."
"Bled on it? I guess she could have just cut herself on a tool when she was working on it."
"So then why was it racing across town and ended up under your car?" Bernard asked.
"I have no idea. It was sent to get her a band aid?"
Bernard laughed. "Maybe. Or maybe tampons. Maybe it's that blood."
"You should be able to test for that."
"I can?" Bernard asked, blinking in surprise. "Huh. I forgot about that. But I'm not thatcurious. Are you?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I'm... Well, in theory we could find out whether there's a pattern between her cycle and her breaking out of... No. I don't think I am. Lets just leave it."
"I agree. There is such a thing as knowing toomuch about a woman. Especially a woman who wear latex and her main accessories are spikes."
"Perhaps she caught herself on a spike."
"Or a robot scratched her by accident."
"Well, that seems to be the last of the stuff in the car." Wayne dropped one last item in the tray, and started bending pieces of engine back into the correct shape.
Bernard tossed the print out into the shredding machine before heading back to the car and leaned against it. "Wonderful. So do you think it'll be another night in for you, or are you going to be racing out?" Bernard asked.
"There's always someone out there who needs a hand." Wayne dropped the tray into Bernard's hand. "Can you make anything of any of that?" Small bits of mangled metal, a glass bead and what looked like some sort of coin had been dropped into the tray.
He stared down at the tray, before balancing it with one hand. He lifted the coin. "A penny. My lucky day." he said sarcastically before setting it back down amongst the other bits of metal. "Hrm." he frowned as he inspected the pieces. "Besides the worst necklace ever conceived?" he asked, before shaking his head. "No, I can't." Bernard informed him.
"Right. I guess it was nothing important then." Wayne bent various parts of the engine back to where they were meant to be and frowned. "Do you think anyone is going to notice that my engine always has finger prints in it?"
"I think they'd be more preoccupied by the actions you're doing rather the state of your engine." Bernard said as he carried the tray away to a table, and set it down. "Anyway. I'm off. Try to stay out of trouble tonight, hm?" he asked.
"I always do."
The heat coming off of the burning van was intense, and Roxanne panted as she lifted a hand to wipe at her brow and swore when she lowered her wrist to discover not only sweat but blood on her sleeve. Another night in paradise. She looked around as the ringing in her ears continued to buzz, drowning out the noise around her but it didn't affect her sight. Keeping her gun drawn the woman ran across the road to kneel down besides her partner, whose face resembled a bloodied pulp.
"God damn it." she swore as she pulled her transceiver from her belt and shouted a request for an ambulance and back up. A bizarre scattering of flaming scraps of paper came raining down from the skies above.
Only once her requests were shouted did she reach down to pick one up, one that hadn't been burned as badly as the rest. It was here she realized they weren't just bits of paper...
They were cards. Playing cards. Every single one of them was the same card, yet from so many kinds of deck designs since the picture was different on every single one. In the light given off by the burning truck Roxanne stared at the singed card in her hand, and frowned.
A joker grinned back up at her.
In the distance, barely audible to the woman whose ears still rang from the exploding van, there was a faint but hysterical laugh that slowly faded into the night.
To be continued