Bernard moved to peer into the crowd, when suddenly his hand was grabbed, and he was being pulled along at a fast pace by a strange blonde woman.

"Hey!" he shouted.

"Come on!" she called back. "We have to hurry, before he sees you!" The voice was familiar, and Bernard literally felt a weight being lifted from his chest. Metrocity was alive!

Before long they were out of the city, and within an hour they had run all the way to the Scott residence. When Metrocity opened the door, she was surprised to see her Mother standing in the doorway behind Mr. Scott, Song in her arms.

"Mom, what are you...?"

"Metrocity!" she cried, thrusting Song into Mr. Scott's arms and throwing her arms around her daughter. "You're OK!" she nearly sobbed. "You're alive!"

"But what are you doing here?"

"After Damion's friend came over, I came here to see where you and Bernard had gone off to, since the girl looked more your age than his, and when I came over, I saw the news, and..." Roxanne bit her lower lip, and Metrocity could see there were tears in her eyes.

"Well, anyway, I'm glad everyone is here...ish. We need to come up with a plan to defeat Damion and Mindy," she said, spitting the last word as if it were dirt. She had known Mindy was low, but she hadn't imagined she was low enough to turn to villainy, and with such a...trampy costume at that.

"Come inside," Mr. Scott said, ushering in the eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds.

"We'll need a plan," Metrocity said first thing, switching out of her disguise—after, of course, remembering she was in it. It was amazing, all the guises Roxanne could see through. "And some new weapons-the only thing I have on me is my dehydranator."

"Dehydrator."

"Right!" Metrocity exclaimed. "Mom, Mr. Scott, if you two could keep watch, Bernard and I could draw up blueprints, schemes, and plans, and after that, get started on the actual fieldwork."

"I don't think that'll be a problem," Metro Man said, and looked to Roxanne, who nodded.

"Now, are there any rooms in the house, suitable for writing, that have no windows whatsoever?"

***Break***

Metrocity and Bernard lay side-by-side on his bed, Bernard flipping through an ancient tome on Megamind's early inventions and jotting down notes, as well as adding his own ideas. Using some graph paper, Metrocity was drawing up her ideas on a few new designs for weapons, as well as jotting down her own notes on the sides.

Every few seconds, Bernard's eyes would dart over to Metrocity and back at his paper, and Metrocity's would do the same with him and her own paper. Every fourth or fifth glance over, they'd look at the same time, meet eyes, blush furiously, and look back at their papers for at least another minute before beginning the process again.

They worked in silence for hours, neither of them noticing the time passing, since Bernard had no clock in his room, and the lack of windows allowed only the very stationary light of the lamp entrance. It seemed they'd been working for all of ten minutes, maybe twenty or thirty, when Roxanne poked her head in and informed them it was midnight and they should get to sleep if they wanted to make any progress. With great reluctance, Metrocity gathered up the papers, set them in a neat pile on Bernard's desk, and followed her Mother into the guestroom.

After Roxanne had tucked Metrocity in, a habit and ritual that Metrocity and Roxanne had never quite broken, and was about to leave the room to sleep on the couch with Song, Metrocity stopped her.

"Hey Mom?" she asked quietly. "How do you know if you're in love?"

Author Comments:

Teehee! This was a fun chapter. XDXD, and you thought she was dead! No, ever the hero, Metrocity has kept on the alert, and though she has many bruises, and possibly a break or two she has told no one about, she has survived! Now she must find a way to face down her shool rival Mindy and defeat her younger brother...and still find time for semi-average teenage-girl issues. ;) XDXD!