Author's Note: My deepest thanks to all who have been reading, reviewing, and keeping my husband and I in their thoughts and prayers. We still have another ten days to go before his surgery (and other parts of Real Life aren't helping one bit with my stress levels), but I think that with the grace of God, all will turn out well, once we get past these next few difficult months. I have every intention of keeping up with my writing for both this story and "PinUp Boy," since between the two, they'll provide me with outlets for angst and for humor, as I need it. So without any further delay, let's continue the tale!
Chapter Six
The Chain of Destiny
Four. It was a number of both delight and horror, of promise and perfidy. The beginning, and the end.
In four months, Mykaal would be born, defying both Nature and the predictions of History. He would live, and thrive, the next Great One to come among them — and the last.
For in four months and perhaps five days, their world and their star system and the life within it would die, swallowed by the voracious appetite of a scientific changeling. The powerful but benign thing that the scientists who were slowly and patiently nurturing it to be a power of great promise had been stolen from its incubator, hastened to a twisted completion by less skilled hands, and forced into birth as not a child of great potential but a monster of almost unimaginable destruction.
It was strange yet fitting, Kyrel mused one day as she watched the wind moving gently through the blossoming fruit trees growing on a hillside near their home. Those trees, so lovely and colorful and full of flower for the coming growing season would never live to bear the fruit of their flower. She didn't know which was worse, to never reach the time of fruition, or to bear a harvest of extraordinary bounty only to see it destroyed along with the world that could have benefited from it.
Mykaal would live and be born and survive, of that Kyrel was now certain. All the careful work that she and Eliaan and Toomia and even little Ootori had put into ensuring it was now a solid certainty within her. If she continued to follow this path, she would give birth to her child — their dazzling son, the name Eliaan had suggested that night soon after he had been conceived, while they watched the stars and the ribbon lights dancing brightly in the clear early autumn skies above their home. At the time, she had thought only of the brightness of the skies and of the spark of life within her, but now, her husband's laughing suggestion meant so much more. Mykaal was incredibly unique; his gifts would take many years to truly manifest, and it was cruel that the monster recently born in their system would rob him of his chance to achieve a great destiny.
Such a terrible injustice could not be allowed to happen. Kyrel felt as certain of this as she did of her child's strength and health. The bastard beast that had been made when Varaan's brainchild had been stolen would not have the final word in this drama of Fate, oh, no! The Natoshi'ana always were born among their people at a time of great change and even greater need, when decreed by the hand of Destiny. Indeed, if one looked back across the vast tapestry of their history, of their many thousands of years of civilization in which only fourteen Natoshi'ana had lived to blossom into the fullness of their gifts, it was clear that the Great Ones were born only to answer the need for some equally great change in their entire world and all its people.
There was a purpose for Mykaal's existence, and as Kyrel had pondered this during the weeks since Varaan had told them his terrible news, she had begun to see what that purpose might be, and how they could help him to fulfill it. To that end, she had called together her immediate family, for there were those among them who were in a position to help make her ideas into reality.
"Let me see if I understand you properly," her bondfather, Methraad Thejhan, said when she had told those gathered what she believed to be the will of Destiny, for their world and her unborn son. Like Kyrel's mother, Tayames, Methraad sat upon the Council of Elders who governed and guided their people. As the Thejhan had long been the most gifted Ayalthan engineers and inventors — and also the most insatiably curious of all their people — it was fitting that Methraad had been chosen to head the part of their government that oversaw such things as the development and deployment of the interstellar probes and survey ships.
His shockingly vivid deep blue eyes were now narrowed in even deeper thought as he digested all his bonddaughter had just said. "You're confident now that Mykaal will indeed survive birth and the critical days after, and bring a new Great One among us only days before the unstable gravitational vortex may completely destroy our entire system."
Both Kyrel and Eliaan nodded. "I had my doubts at first, Father," the latter admitted, "but as the months have passed and I've seen him continue to grow and thrive, I do believe that Kyrel is right. Mykaal will live, and have a great destiny before him."
Shenaal, Kyrel's father, made a sound of skepticism that was not quite rude. "He'll have the same destiny as us all, unless this singularity can be unmade. No infant can stop what is coming, even if he should be the greatest of all the Great Ones ever born."
"He can't stop it, Father, that's true," Kyrel said with remarkable poise. "But he can escape it."
With the exception of Eliaan, everyone in the room — the couple's parents, Varaan, and Kyrel's elder siblings, Adyrel and Dynraas — stared at her in some kind of surprise or disbelief. "He can't," Dynraas, who was one of the members of the engineering team that had been working on Varaan's proposed wormhole drive, said with a shake of his head, his green eyes full of sadness. "We have only the six interstellar capable ships, and all have been very busy attempting to undo the effects of this... abomination, before it destroys us all."
He sounded intensely bitter — no surprise, since he was in charge of the laboratory simulations and tests, and knew better than anyone why the drive was not yet fit for use. There had been whispers and rumors accusing Dynraas of being the one responsible for this catastrophe, though most came from the other planets, or from some on their own who were terrified by the thought that in a matter of months, everything that they had ever known and loved would be destroyed.
Varaan, who had arrived on the fastest ship from Glaupek only three days before, sighed heavily. "Four ships," he corrected, not liking to be the one to say it. "Possibly only three. There was an... unexpected shift in the size of the vortex, not more than an hour ago; I was informed just before I came here. The event horizon suddenly altered its shape while Aljaam, Yaraad, and Orellanes were moving into position to deploy the emission satellites that would attempt to inhibit any further expansion of the wormhole. Aljaam's and Yaraad's ships were lost instantly, and Orellanes attempted a hyperjump to escape. If we receive no subspace communication from her within the next three hours, we can presume she was lost as well."
"Then the only way to save Mykaal would be to stop this vortex before it destroys everything," Annien, Eliaan's mother, said grimly. She was the least gregarious of them, a quiet but gifted geologist whose love for the bones of their world had led her to learn all the traditional arts that made use of stone, and also to work with others to find new uses for their mineral resources, such as the data gems that were now in common use, replacing older, larger, and less efficient means of information storage. "It would be unconscionably irresponsible for even one of the remaining ships to be used for anything but an attempt to save all life in our system."
"I agree," Kyrel said, unperturbed. "And I'm not thinking of my survival or Eliaan's, but the survival of all that our people have labored so hard for so long to learn and achieve. It's the survival of our culture and our knowledge that is most important."
"And you believe that the survival of your son would ensure that?" Methraad asked, not in accusation but genuinely curious to understand her reasoning.
She smiled wanly, exchanging a glance with her husband. "Perhaps not ensure it, Father," Eliaan answered. "But we believe that Destiny was at work in bringing Mykaal into our lives now, as he is, Natoshi'ana. The Great Ones have always come among us for a purpose — and what greater purpose can there be but to carry on the greatest legacy of all: the survival of our civilization, not here on Ayalthis but on another world?"
The others were all quiet for some long moments, shocked by this reasoning. Tayames was first to find her voice again. "You understand, my children, that this means that you accept not only the survival of your son beyond the crucial post-partum phase as fact, but also the inevitable destruction of our entire system and its peoples."
Both Kyrel and Eliaan nodded. "We hope that the latter is proven wrong," Kyrel said for them both, "but we cannot wait to find out whether or not it will be so. At this point, we need to accept that Destiny has marked the end of Ayalthis so that we can move forward with the preparations to save Mykaal and all our knowledge, history, and culture. Since a stardrive-fitted survey ship cannot be diverted for this, our plan must be as simple as possible."
Adyrel made a soft sound that was half bitter laugh, half groan of grief. "And will you set him adrift in a makeshift boat to be taken in by the min'yaaunen, like the infant heroes of all the ancient fables?"
Eliaan's smile was watery. "Not quite. To begin with, we know Mykaal can't remain in this system; the time between his birth and the final destruction will be brief, but hopefully not too brief. Without the starships, the only other devices we have that are capable of making a hyperspace jump are the probes we send to observe other worlds in distant systems. We've never had many, but there are two currently in storage."
"And one would be large enough to be retrofitted as an escape vehicle for someone as small as an infant," Varaan said, thinking rapidly now that the possibility had been raised. "Yes, it could be done, with the Council's approval. But what point is there to saving his life without knowing that a safe haven exists? And how is the Destiny you mention served by this? A baby is still a baby, no matter his potential. He will be with us for a few days at most. How can our civilization and our knowledge be preserved by sparing the life of one so young?"
Neither Kyrel nor Eliaan were upset by these observations. "Mykaal is Natoshi'ana, brother," Eliaan reminded him. "He won't be trained and educated when we send him away, but he will have the ability to learn whatever he puts his mind to. We can't go with him to be his teachers, but we can send with him all the collected knowledge and teachings and history of all our people. Even if he has no personal interest in acquiring it all for himself, he'll at the very least be able to find ways to pass it on to the people of another world who can benefit from it."
He pointedly turned his amber gaze to his father-in-law. "You're a Director of Education, Shenaal. You know all the ways we have to collect and store information, how to pass it on to students who can't come or be brought to the teaching centers, and how to key these instruction devices for the individual student. In four months, could this be done for our son? Could all the knowledge of all our disciplines be stored, to be sent with Mykaal in a way that he will be able to access when he's old enough to learn properly?"
Shenaal's hazel eyes widened hugely. "All of the disciplines? And complete social and political histories for all our peoples — meaning every planet in the system?"
"As much as possible," Kyrel confirmed. "Our knowledge in all the sciences and arts, of course, but if only the historical and cultural data of our own world can be assembled in time, that would be sufficient. Our goal is to give Mykaal everything possible that comes from his own people, so that if he successfully reaches adulthood and comes into the full capacity of his gifts, he will be able to learn whatever he wishes, and perhaps become a Great One for those of his new world, to help guide them into a brighter future — with the complete understanding of who he is, where he came from, and what possible paths lie before him."
"That's... incredibly ambitious," Methraad said, shaking his head ever so slightly in wonder. "There must be uncountable variables standing in the way of this plan ever reaching fruition. Even if we accept that Mykaal will survive, that everything you want can be prepared in time, what world could you send him to where he could have a chance of achieving this destiny?"
"We have two that we're considering," Eliaan replied, pacing as he spoke. "It is, of course, essential that the world to which we send him be suitable for sustaining life of our kind, compatible in atmosphere, temperature, food sources, gravity, etcetera. It also requires a civilization and technology sufficiently advanced to accept Mykaal, and what he may have to offer them when he matures. We intend to examine the information we have on these two worlds as closely as possible between now and the departure time, so that we'll be able to choose the best place where Mykaal can thrive and be happy."
"But you can't send an entire educational facility with him!" Dynraas pointed out, quite logically, he felt.
Shenaal smiled. "Not the entire facility, son, no," he confirmed. "But the knowledge? Oh, yes, that can be done, using the finest data gems as storage and a Master Teacher to impart the information to him, when it's time. If Mykaal is indeed Natoshi'ana, when he reaches his maturity, he'll not only absorb information like the thirstiest sponge ever known, his mind will be able to sort and make use of it without further direction. It would be easier for him if he had others to help prepare him for such assimilation, but he could certainly manage it on his own. If he is a true Great One."
"He is," both Tayames and Methraad said in chorus. The latter chuckled softly. "You should know better than to question the analysis when the two geneticists who made it are in the same room with you — and one is your wife. No, there's no doubt about that; our grandson will be Natoshi'ana, that much is certain. Hopefully, the end of our world will be less assured."
All the others agreed, especially the two men who had been major participants in the drive project that had been so terribly subverted. Another matter was on Adyrel's mind. "If the probes can be refitted to act as escape vehicles, couldn't more of our children be saved if others were built?"
To her disappointment, many heads in the room shook, dispelling that hopeful thought. "There aren't any in production at the moment, only the two in storage," Methraad sadly informed her. "A new design has been in development, and it was decided over a year ago to conserve resources by suspending the probe deployment program until the new ones were ready, sometime next year. Even if we started to build more of the old type at once, there would barely be enough time to complete a dozen or so before the end comes, and they would still require another two months to gain the necessary charge for a hyperspace jump."
Shenaal sighed. "As it is, we of the educational centers will be hard pressed to complete the data gems for the full spectrum of disciplines, arts, and history in time to send with him. It can be done, but it will require diverting many people to the project, and we'll need to start as soon as possible. A project of this scope will require the approval of the Council, since there is still some doubt as to the Destiny of our world."
"Some," Varaan said with deep regret, "but not as much as I could hope. The... person responsible for the accident provided me with all the information he had concerning the modifications he made to my designs, but it isn't enough to easily determine a means of undoing the vortex before it's too late. We'll continue to try, but..." He shook his head as his voice trailed off into silence.
Tayames considered her younger daughter's bondbrother with a hard expression, though it wasn't meant to indict him. "Has the Glaupek who did this offered to come forward to our Council and admit to his guilt?" There was no need for her to explain how she knew it was the fault of a Glaupek; emotions were running so high that with so many of the emotionally sensitive people in the same room, they could almost taste what was being felt but not said.
"He did," Varaan confirmed, "and without any prompting from me. But I told him that he should confess to you and my father first, in private. After that, if you still believe that there is anything to be gained by having him grovel to all our people for something he cannot change, then so be it. But I believe all our time and energies would be better spent in seeking solutions, not vengeance. If we succeed in stopping the vortex from destroying our system, then we can determine suitable punishment and restitution. If we don't... Well, then, all that anger will have been wasted, wouldn't it?"
The two who were Elders agreed with that assessment, as did most everyone else. Dynraas was still disgruntled, stinging from having the project ruined by a tough-hided, thick-skulled Glaupek with a superiority complex, but he didn't protest, as Varaan was still the project leader, and his position was damnably reasonable. But if they did manage to undo the disaster that Koan Rii had caused, the merchant would hear from him, oh, yes, and he would definitely be punished for his underhanded, thoughtless ways.
Methraad, as the senior of the two Elders present, drew the final conclusion. "If we are agreed, then, Tayames and I will assemble a proposal and the necessary requests for permission to begin this project and present it to the full Council as soon as possible. Shenaal, see to whatever must be done to prepare the items our children have requested for our grandson. We will have any funding and additional staff you require available to you once the project is approved."
"Then you believe it will be?" Kyrel asked, almost afraid to hope.
Her mother smiled at her, softly, sadly. "My dear daughter, if you can believe in the Destiny of your son despite all the conventional wisdom that argues against it, the Council will surely believe in it as well. It's vastly preferable to look through a tiny window of hope that Destiny opens to us in a time of great need than it is to stare into a vast pit of despair, without bottom or hope. This will give them something positive to act upon, to believe in. Mykaal may well be the last of our people, but his reach will far exceed us all — if he is given the chance."
ooo
Thus the project to save the civilization and technology of the Ayalthans and transplant the seeds of it on another world began. The news of this Destiny spread like wildfire once the Council had approved it, and it reached the ears of Koan Rii before he was able to depart and hurry back to his family on Glaupek. The idea of the Ayalthans saving one potentially exceptional child — a boy who would otherwise have been no more important than any other child of their people — by sending him to another world touched the merchant, in more ways than one.
And so it was that when Koan boarded a private courier ship that would return him to Glaupek even more quickly than he had come, he brought with him a crated item that would be a gift for his wife — and his son. After all, if a child of one of their worlds deserved a chance to live and there were two pods available for modification, why shouldn't the second be used to save a truly exceptional child of the Glaupek?
"He stole it," Wayne groaned as Megamind came to the end of his story. "First my father stole the designs to build something he shouldn't have tampered with, starting the disaster that destroyed all of our planets and peoples, and then he stole the ship he sent me away in! Didn't this guy know how to do anything without stealing? Is that a problem with people with too much money and power all over the universe?"
Still leaning back against the wall with Roxanne beside him, there to offer support and comfort but also listening with intense interest, Megamind shrugged as he finished his tale and the water Warden Alvarez had brought for him. "I don't know, though I suppose it could be. Having a lot does make some people think they deserve to have anything they want, by whatever means are necessary. I must admit, I found it interesting that your birth father had some traits in common with your adoptive one — though I have a hard time picturing Lord Scott as being hard enough to act like a robber baron."
"You'd be surprised," Wayne confessed with a sigh. "He came across as very mild-mannered to most people, but at work, he could be ruthless, and at home he was a classic passive-aggressive tyrant. Whatever he wanted was the law, and there was no arguing with it. I know a lot of people think that it was my mother's coddling that made me such a brat, but she was really trying to counterbalance my father's demanding nature. He wanted me to use my powers for profit — if not the monetary kind, then the kind that would enhance the Scott name and reputation, and then bring in more money. He hated that I used the name Metro Man, he just wanted me to stick with Scott for everything, so that there'd never be any questioning my connection to the family and its corporations."
Both his former foe and never-girlfriend looked at him in astonishment. "Wow," Roxanne said after taking a moment to wrap her mind around that fact. "I never knew that about you and your family, Wayne."
"It's not something I'm comfortable talking about, or proud of," the musician admitted. "I kept quiet about it at first because I knew it'd make things even harder for Mom if I ever told people, and more recently 'cause I didn't think it was right to speak ill of the dead. But... yeah, that's the way things were. Weird to think that my real father was kinda the same way when it came to business, just on a bigger scale. I wonder how he would've done as a father if things hadn't gone down the way they did while I was still a baby?"
"We'll never know," Megamind said as he tossed the empty bottle toward a wastebasket halfway across the room.
It would've missed the mark if Wayne hadn't given it a little puff of superbreath to correct the trajectory. He then looked back at the blue hero with a sheepish smile. "It's amazing that they were able to send all this information with you. So, I was saved because I was the son of an over-ambitious merchant who felt guilty for destroying our solar system, and you were saved because you were a genuinely rare prodigy who might have a destiny in saving the universe — or at least the Earth. I think I like your reason for being here a lot more than mine. There I was as a bratty kid, telling you that you had no business being here, when the truth is that I was the one who didn't belong here. Kinda ironic, isn't it?"
Though he smirked slightly to hear his ex-nemesis admit it, Megamind couldn't find it in him to be cruel about it, not knowing all the things he now knew. "Very. But you didn't know how you'd come to be here, any more than I knew why my parents — and apparently most of my people — believed I should be saved. I always knew I was different, and I liked to think of myself as special to make up for how much being so different hurt, but until last night, I honestly had no idea that I was special, in a truly incredible way. I'm still trying to come to grips with it, probably will be for a long time."
"It's an awful lot to take in," Roxanne acknowledged gently. "Give yourself that time, sweetie. It's a big change in how you see the world, and yourself."
Wayne nodded. "Even more than it is for me. Though it makes me even more sorry for how I treated you from the start, Megs. We really should've been friends, and I should've been apologizing to you for what my father did."
Again, the slim shoulders shrugged. "Like I said, you didn't know, neither of us did. And if my parents were right, I was born for a Destiny that wasn't meant to be fulfilled on my homeworld. If your father hadn't done what he did in stealing my uncle's work, I probably would've wound up rotting away on some protected little pedestal on Ayalthis, feeling bored and frustrated and unfulfilled because that wasn't where I was supposed to be — rather like you started to feel, just a few years ago. More cosmic irony, isn't it?"
Both his wife and his erstwhile adversary looked at Megamind with considerable surprise. "Do you honestly believe it, that coming here to Earth was your destiny?" Wayne wondered, finding it hard to believe.
But the ex-villain was quite calm about it. "I know it was. After all, the other half of my soul wasn't anywhere in our home system; she was here on Earth. And we were meant to be together, not a galaxy apart."
Wayne was genuinely startled by that very matter-of-fact declaration; Roxanne smiled and nuzzled her blue hero's cheek before kissing it. "And I know you mean it," she told him fondly. "Don't look so surprised, Wayne. I believe it, too."
The big lug blinked and shook himself to get out of his shocked stupor. "I guess you do — and really, it makes a lot of sense. It sure would explain how the two of you could come together after all those years of kidnapping and bickering! Destiny. I don't know if I believe in it for myself, but then, maybe my being here and working as a superhero for so many years was a kind of destiny, too — only this one was to do time for what my real father did."
He looked at Roxanne. "Are you planning to bring this up in tomorrow's interview?"
"Not unless you want to," she replied. "This might come off as a kind of excuse to some people, especially since right at the moment, the only proof we have of what happened before the two of you came here is in a recording device that we can't just take clips from to show the audience."
"That's true," Megamind confirmed, though one could see the workings of his mind shifting into a higher gear. "Though it's not impossible to transfer the data to different media. It wouldn't have the depth of the direct neural feed via the Teacher, so a lot of the powerful emotional aspects would be reduced or lost, and it would require the design and construction of an appropriate transference system — a few weeks' worth of work, at most, but definitely not something that could literally be done overnight. It's a pity that none of us have psionic powers to allow direct communication from one mind to another — though that could be achieved with the proper instrumentality as well, and come to think of it, there are some indications that telepathic abilities weren't entirely unknown among my people, though they were generally an extension of our native emotional states and natural empathic capacities, so even if I did develop some form of that power at this stage in my life, it's not likely to work well with anyone but the people with whom I already share a strong emotional bond."
Wayne's jaw hung open as he listened to the reformed villain's mild babble-fit. He finally needed to swallow, putting his voice back on track. "Okay, I'll take that as a no, can't be done right now. Cripes, little buddy, are you deliberately trying to show me that this story about you being some kind of exceptional genius even for your own people is true? 'Cause it's okay, I already believe you are — I always have, to be honest."
Megamind shook himself out of it. "What? Oh, no, I was just thinking out loud. I wasn't expecting you to want to use any of what I just learned tomorrow; it really isn't revelant — relevant to the interview. What your birth father did that you knew nothing about until five minutes ago doesn't have any bearing at all on what you did a few years ago."
He cocked his big head as he considered things for a moment. "Now, if you want to get into the ways your adoptive father messed with your head and tried pushing people around, leaving you to clean up his messes and the family name..."
The musician snorted. "Yeah, I suppose that does come into the whole mess — though when it came to leaving the city in the lurch, I knew what I was doing. If somebody wants to call it a delayed teenage rebellion, they can knock themselves out, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm responsible for all the choices I made."
The green eyes watched him curiously as he spoke, their expression thoughtfully amused. "It seems that I'm not the only one who needed to grow up," Megamind chuckled.
Roxanne was about to protest when Wayne forestalled it. "No, no, he's right. We were both stuck playing out our childhood issues even though we were grown adults, and we both need to face up to it, acknowledge our mistakes, and try to move on. That's what the interview is really about, me facing my mistakes, making a clean breast of it to everyone I hurt, and picking up whatever pieces are left so I can move on with my life with a clear conscience. Megs did that three years ago, and now it's my turn."
He saw the small frown twitch across the blue face. "Okay, I know, it's Mykaal, I'll try to remember it more often. Thanks for telling me this, about why we both ended up here. You've given me enough to chew on for now. Maybe one day soon, if I haven't been tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail, you can tell me the rest of the story."
Megamind accepted the implied apology. "Whenever we're both free. It's not all terrible, Wayne. Your father may have been an impatient, foolish jerk with delusions of grandeur, but he did love you. So did your mother."
A smile slowly crept across the retired hero's chiseled-featured face. "Thanks. It may not change anything, but it's good to know." He pushed himself up from the chair where he had settled to listen to the long answer to the question he'd asked about their beginnings. "If the two of you are okay now, I'm gonna go check with the warden, see if he needs me for anything else, then head back home. Mom told me that I should do this, but I know she'll be glad to have me back soon. She's got a birthday dinner party planned for tonight with some old family friends, and she'll fret if I'm not back hours before it starts."
"Say hi to her for us," Roxanne said, watching him stretch before heading to the door. "And happy birthday, Wayne."
Megamind frowned at her, though not angrily. "Actually, his real birthday would be on — happy birthday, Wayne!" he interrupted himself when his wife gave him a look that said he was providing too much, and possibly unwanted, information. He added a wide, cheesy grin just for good measure, to make sure Roxanne was happy.
Wayne gave a short bark of a laugh. "You can tell me when my real birthday is when you tell me more of that story, little buddy. Promise." He then gave them both a brief salute in farewell and headed out.
Megamind grumbled again once the door was closed. "Maybe I should also tell him that for a Glaupek, he'd be considered the undersized runt of the litter!"
Roxanne blinked. "Is that true?" She had a hard time imagining that a guy who was pushing seven feet in height and half that in breadth could be considered undersized, anywhere in any galaxy.
Her spouse sniffed huffily, folding his arms across his chest. "Well, actually, no, but it might at least make him reconsider this habit of using insulting nicknames for other people!"
She smiled now as she gave him a peck on the lips. "I'll talk to him about it. After all, you reminding him from time to time has gotten him to almost remember that I prefer Roxanne to Roxie. Are you feeling up to going back to work with the techs, or do you just want to head on home now?"
Megamind considered the options, then sighed. "I should probably at least go back and reassure Norm and Lee and the warden that I'm all right, that this wasn't their fault. And if there's anything I can do to help get the system up and running again that won't take very long, I suppose I should do it. It was my fault that things blew so spectacularly, though whatever knockout gas they used is giving me a headache."
"Then we can make it quick," she decided. "If Hal has to spend another day or two in regular isolation, they can always put the fear of God in him when he's moved back by telling him the whole system's been upgraded to use x-ray scans and lasers if he so much as scratches himself in the wrong place."
"To hold a real criminal threat, it should be upgraded, but for that idiot?" Megamind stuck out his tongue and made a most eloquent pffft. "All they need to do is turn the lights and the locks back on and take away the TV. To him, that'd probably be worse punishment than bringing out the rack and thumbscrews."
"Okay, but try not to take too long. 'Cause no matter what, I'm taking you home for a nap when you're done. That should get rid of the headache, and I want your head clear by the time Minion gets home."
"Why? Unless they changed things pretty radically, anything he has to tell us about the parade won't require that much concentration."
"Oh, I know that, I just want you focused so you can answer the part of Wayne's question you didn't cover." When he gave her a profoundly perplexed look, she elaborated. "You told us why he and you were sent to Earth, but you didn't mention why Minion was sent along. Is he really supposed to be some kind of bodyguard or lackey or slave to you?"
Megamind made an odd face as he accepted her hand up from the cot. "Not a lackey, though I hate to admit I treated him like one for too many years. A guardian, yes, you already know that his mother thought he had the potential to be a min'yaaun, a protector. But that was seldom a one-on-one thing on our homeworld. Our people worked alongside the Potrell, as equals, and some were close friends, but if one of them acted as a protector to one of my people, it was a freely made choice, never an assignment or an obligation."
"Hmm." The reporter hardly seemed convinced. "So why I have I heard you call Minion a 'dimwitted creation of science' when you lose your temper with him?"
The mortified blush that suddenly rushed through Megamind's entire head and neck turned his skin a violent purple-red. "Ahh... Well, I, uh... I was referring to his robot body, not him. Really. And if that was an insult, I guess I included myself in it, since I was the dimwit who created it. I've treated him badly, I admit it, but Minion has always been my friend, sometimes even my caretaker, but never my slave or my forced servant. He may not have been old enough to choose to be my guardian, but he was sent with me because of a choice made by his parents..."
To be continued...