The familiar dim, red glow of Roxanne and Megamind's favorite restaurant surrounded them, just like it always did on the last Friday of the month. Megamind fought to ensure that these date nights were only interrupted or called off by matters of utmost importance - which is why he only allowed Minion to contact him during them. If anything became too much for him and the Brain Bots to handle, Minion knew where Megamind was.
This allowed Megamind to enjoy what had become his favorite activity quite some time ago: talking and laughing with the most perfect woman he'd ever laid eyes on. He could watch her simply go over the menu the way she was doing now for hours. Her gorgeous sapphire eyes flitted this way and that, examining every item thoroughly and pretending she wouldn't order the same pasta dish she always did. Her forehead slightly tightened in concentration, her delicate hand coming up and sweeping her hair out of her face - he didn't always understand her, fully, but he knew one thing for certain: he loved every bit of her.
It must have become increasingly clear that he had abandoned his menu several minutes ago in favor of looking at Roxanne over the top of hers, because without warning, a smirk grew on the edges of her mouth and her eyes flew up to meet his. Startled, Megamind looked down at his own menu hurriedly, causing Roxanne's mischievous smirk to grow into a laugh. He couldn't help it; her laugh was his favorite sound in the world, and without being able to resist, he looked back up at her and smiled in spite of himself. She was beaming, and he was more than happy to bask in her glow.
"You know, I don't spend time with you just so you can be afraid to look at me," she said playfully once she had stopped laughing.
"Is that so, Miss Ritchi?" he countered, adopting his own smirk and ignoring the waiter pouring them white wine. "Then why, prey tell, do you spend time with me?"
A surge of triumph coursed through him as he got exactly what he wanted: a disbelieving and mildly disapproving face from the woman sitting across him. He felt his smile go wider still as she looked to be preparing a rant in her mind.
But instead, she reached across the table and took hold of his hand, sending all sorts of different surges through him. His smirk faded into a genuine smile, and he sheepishly lifted his eyes to meet hers.
"Megamind, I spend time with you because I love you," she said simply, never having looked more serious and sincere in her life. "And you know that, you big goof." Her gorgeous smile reappeared, and he smiled affectionately back without letting go of her hand.
"Well," he said, fiddling with the ring on her finger absentmindedly, "I should hope that this was the case. Otherwise you answered my question the other night very poorly."
"Good thing I know I gave you the right answer," She replied, reaching for her wine glass with her other hand. She took a drink, looking thoughtful, and when she set her glass down she looked at the ring on her hand as though studying it.
Megamind couldn't blame her; he had done this often before proposing. He had read that diamonds were the traditional engagement ring stone, so that's what he made the large middle gem. But he also took into consideration that he and Roxanne were anything but traditional, and so he added two small blue diamonds on either side of the larger stone. He'd taken it out of the box and looked at it several times, wondering what she would say when he asked. The longer he had thought about it, the less he was sure that she even wanted to get married in general, and much less to him. There were several times when Minion had to talk him down from a panic about the subject, and it was Minion who eventually talked Megamind into asking Roxanne when he did. Even now his mind spun about what she was thinking as she looked at their hands intertwined. Was she regretting her 'yes'? She had just said, of course, that she knew she'd made the right decision, and he'd really been trying to listen more to people than to the fears in his head. So he clung to what Roxanne had said as truth, fighting against anything in his head that said otherwise.
The waiter returned to their table and took their orders; Roxanne requesting her usual stuffed raviolis, and Megamind venturing out to try a sophisticated Japanese dish.
They ate and drank for the remainder of the evening, avoiding topics of conversations that involved Megamind's hero work and Roxanne's job as the city's top reporter. That's another thing that these particular date nights were reserved for: a total escape from work. The topics strayed instead towards Megamind's most recent inventing endeavors and Roxanne's latest read. They meandered through favorite books in general, and Megamind's disgust of how aliens were portrayed in modern literature.
Roxanne put her arm in his as they stood to leave the restaurant and they stepped out into the light snowfall together.
"I cannot believe I forgot that umbrella," Megamind grumbled, pulling his coat tighter around his sides. Roxanne chuckled at him and buried her hands in her pockets and her head into his shoulder, and they made for the parking garage that was just around the corner.
They didn't even make it to the corner, however. Before they could get more than twenty paces from the door of the restaurant, a shrill, frantic beeping rang out in the winter air, and as Megamind turned his head to look at what was going on, an explosion erupted in the window of the restaurant they were just in. Shattered glass was sent everywhere, and instinctively, Megamind turned his head away and put himself between Roxanne and the explosion, covering her head in his hands.
The explosion was small, but the chaos was not. People were screaming and calling to people who were presumably still inside the smoke, and others were flooding out what was left of the door to the restaurant. Megamind spun around as soon as he was sure the explosion was over, and sprung into action. He began directing people to safety and soon, Roxanne was by his side, calling ambulances in one breath and calming down a frightened child looking for his mother in the other.
Megamind turned towards the restaurant, intending to go inside and ensure that everyone was getting out safely. But instead, a metal glint in the remainder of the window sill caught his eye, and he gravitated towards it. As he got closer, he fought to see through the smoke, and ended up coughing in his arm several times. When he was finally close enough to pick the metal object up, however, it was heavier than he expected. He used his sleeve to wipe away whatever smoke stains he could, discovering that it was the bomb that had been set off. He flipped it over in his hands, and almost dropped it when he saw the design that somehow made it through the explosion. Plastered on the front of the bomb in his own signature blue was his old super villain logo.
His brain short-circuited. What kind of a person would do this? He scrambled to tuck it into his coat pocket before anyone could see, and turned around to face the authorities that had arrived without him noticing, despite their blaring sirens. The gears in his mind churned restlessly as he looked for Roxanne, and instead found a police officer that was too close for comfort.
He was only about two feet away from Megamind, and Megamind didn't recognize his face. He made an effort to become acquainted with all the police officers Metro City hired, and in light of this anomaly his furrowed brow deepened.
The officer stepped closer to Megamind and jotted something down quickly before looking up at him.
"Hello Megamind. I'm going to need to ask you some questions…" he trailed off as though remembering something and scribbled something down on his notepad. Megamind rolled his eyes internally. An amateur.
"We'll tell you anything you need to know," Roxanne said in her chipper reporter voice, linking her arm through Megamind's again and shooting him a look that said I know something's bothering you.
The officer looked up again, his expression screaming that he was not at all impressed by Roxanne appearing on the scene. He turned back to Megamind.
"You are the resident superhero to Metro City, yes?" he drawled.
"…Yes?" Megamind replied, caught somewhere between disbelief and scoffing.
"But wasn't it less than a year and a half ago that you were Metro City's resident super villain?" he retorted, placing emphasis on the 'villain' part.
Megamind's jaw dropped as a way of reply. Countless replies flew through his mind, and he was trying to settle on one to use when Roxanne stepped in for him.
"I'm sorry, but what exactly does that have to do with anything?" she asked, glaring at the officer.
The officer rolled his eyes, making no attempt to hide it from the people standing in front of him, and slowly turned his head to face Roxanne.
"Ma'am, I am an officer of the law, and we don't take explosions lightly, especially when a former criminal who had several life sentences to his name was at the scene of the crime. Now, I don't expect TV's pretty face to understand any of that, but that's just the way it is." Megamind saw Roxanne's face go hot and felt his doing the same as the officer wrote something down in his notebook.
"Don't you dare talk to Miss Ritchi like that again," Megamind hissed, clutching her arm tighter. "I believe that's the end of this interrogation."
Megamind and Roxanne began to walk off in the direction of the parking garage with the officer calling after them.
"I'm sure the station will be in touch about this!" he shouted.
Megamind gritted his teeth and trudged though the still-falling snow, fighting every instinct in his body that told him to set the clueless new officer straight. They rounded the corner in silence.
"Don't listen to him. He's new and cocky and wants to prove himself. I see it all the time at the station," Roxanne said once they were out of earshot, face still blotchy from embarrassment.
"That's not my biggest concern," he muttered, thrusting his hand into his coat pocket and running his fingers over the remains of the bomb. Only one thought echoed in his mind: how much had the officer seen?