Author's Note: I had hoped to have this story finished by the end of the year, but of course, various Real Life issues (like the holidays and pinkeye) had other ideas. Burning, itching, and gunky eyes simply do not mix well with long hours at the computer! But I've managed to squeeze in a bit of writing here and there, and thus now have this third chapter finally ready, on New Year's Eve. If my Muse is cooperative, I may still have the tale done by Twelfth Night. Keeping my fingers crossed for that!

Here at the old year's end, I'd like to thank all my wonderful readers and reviewers for their encouragement and support, especially during the last few months. (My husband, by the bye, is doing very well, now, and has passed his first check for cancer markers with a totally clean slate — and we're both praying it continues that way). God bless all of you, and I wish each and every one of you a spectacular and prosperous and healthy year ahead!

Part Three

When he returned to the waiting room to give the others a chance to visit, Megamind persuaded Minion to let Roxanne go first, suggesting that the warden might appreciate a break rather than handle both of their extreme emotions, one right after the other. Roxanne immediately suspected that her husband wanted time to talk with Minion alone, but she didn't object. She knew that even though he could be calm during crisis situations, the ichthyoid was a very sensitive soul and bit of concrete information about the dying woman's condition might help calm him. If Astrid had been here instead of in another city, she could have provided that steadying influence, but in her absence, she saw nothing wrong with letting Megamind fill that role. She found it both touching and amusing, that the once childish and hyperdramatic former supervillain had finally grown up enough to act as the calm and rational one for a change.

She discovered her misperception on the way home, while the two partners in crimefighting discussed how to take the guts of one of the "death ray" tasers they'd been developing for the police department and turning it into a long term stasis field for Emily Thurmer. The reporter, ever curious, didn't interrupt until they arrived at the Lair and Minion immediately headed to one of the labs to start work on the project.

"Isn't this an exercise in futility?" she asked Megamind as she followed him to the curtained off area with his idea cloud and many of his projects still in the early design phase. "I know Warden Thurmer wanted to give his family time to finish their vacation before he springs the bad news to them, and it's very thoughtful of you to give him a way to do it so that his family can have that and still be here in time to say goodbye to Emily. But I was thinking that maybe it might wind up hurting them even more this way, giving them time to build up false hopes. There really isn't anything the doctors can do to save her. Even if they could, her quality of life would be dreadful."

"There's nothing they can do," the blue genius agreed as he rummaged through the drawers of a cabinet full of his drafting implements and assorted half-finished sketches and notes. As he tossed things onto the nearest flat surface, Roxanne smiled to see that one of the sketches had very little that was technical about it, most of the paper being covered by a drawing of her playing with the brainbots near her car. "That doesn't mean there's nothing that can be done."

The determined tone in his voice tugged Roxanne's attention away from the drawing. A small frown creased her brow. "You didn't promise the warden that you'd heal his wife, did you?"

Her own husband shook his head. "No. I promised myself that I would."

The reporter's blue eyes flew wide with shock. "You did what? Why? I know that Mrs. Thurmer was special to you and Minion, probably the closest thing to a mother the two of you had on this planet, but you can't keep the poor woman in stasis indefinitely, waiting until you have the time to find a way to reverse the damage to her body. Even if you gave up being the city's defender and devoted yourself to this full time, you're not a doctor, it would take years for you to learn everything you need to know, much less figure out a way to do something that right now can't be done...!"

"It won't take years," he declared flatly. "One week. The warden gave me one week to find out if it's possible, and before that time is up, I'm not only going to find out if it is, I'm going to learn how to do it."

He spoke with such absolute conviction, Roxanne felt more than a little stunned by it. "You can't do that — can you?" The first half of that statement was a reflex response, the latter a genuine expression of uncertainty, not a lack of faith in him.

Megamind knew this, even as he felt his own uncertainties. Sighing, he stopped his searching and stood straight to look his wife in the eye. "I know that I can," he said honestly, his own eyes full of mixed emotions. "It's well within the capability of the Natoshi'ana to learn and develop new techniques in what seem like impossibly short amounts of time. But will I do it?" He shrugged, a troubled shadow dimming his face. "I've never tried anything like this before, and every other time I've rushed to do something new, I've messed it up somehow. I didn't tell the Warden that I was planning this because I didn't want to get his hopes up, or have him tell me not to try."

"He probably would've," Roxanne acknowledged, "and I wouldn't blame him. It doesn't seem possible."

The big blue head inclined, confirming it. "For an ordinary person, you're right, it isn't, not even for an ordinary Ayalthan. But I'm not ordinary, Roxanne. That's the whole reason I was the only one of my people to be saved, and why they sent all of their knowledge and culture and everything with me. If I really am as brilliant as they thought and as every competent doctor and analyst here on Earth has been telling me, I have to start living up to my own potential. Not because they think I should, but because I want to. I want to save Mrs. Thurmer, yes, and I want you to be able to brag about being married to the genius who did the impossible — and I want to be proud of myself, for finally having the guts to look my destiny right in the eye and claim it for my own. Either I start living up to actually being 'one of unlimited potential,' or I settle for being a blue alien foundling who landed here and after causing decades' worth of trouble managed to become more socially acceptable and came up with a few neat technical toys that people find useful."

Roxanne caught a corner of her lips between her teeth, hearing the bitterness in the ex-villain's last remark. "You know I don't think of you that way, Mykaal..."

Megamind's nod was brisk. "I know you don't. But I know some other people do, and frankly, some days, I think of myself that way. Not because I found out that my people had high hopes for me, but because I feel like... like something's been building inside of me for years, something bigger than being a supervillain or even a superhero, and if I don't start doing something with it, I'll explode! Not literally or the way I did when I was deliberately causing trouble, but like a bubble that just goes pop and leaves nothing behind. I've had over a year to spend staring at an opportunity without doing much anything with it, and it's time for me to... what's the saying? Step off of the plot?"

"It's 'step up to the plate,' sir," Minion provided as he quietly approached, holding a device he'd gone off to fetch. He'd heard enough of their conversation to know what this was about. "I can't say that I don't have any misgivings about what he wants to do, Mrs. Roxanne, but I also can't stand in his way if he wants to try. All our lives I knew that he was capable of so much more than he was allowed or chose to do, and I hoped that someday, he'd finally get a chance to show the whole world not just what he can do but what he truly is. I don't know if what he wants to do is possible, but I have to let him try."

While he spoke, Roxanne gave the solemn ichthyoid her full attention; when he'd finished, she studied him for a moment more before turning back to her husband. "Which aren't you sure of?" she wondered without any trace of accusation. "Whether or not the medical procedures can be done, or whether or not you can learn all you need to know in a week? Or both?"

Megamind was honest. "I know the medical procedures can be done, I'd already figured out how to do rudimentary forms in a more generalized way when I created the brainbots. I'm positive that the specific information exists and is included in what my planet's educational system sent with me. I'm even reasonably sure that it won't take me very long to track down the exact data gems I need to learn what I'd have to know, the message sphere my parents sent included a kind of index for me to use in finding the areas of knowledge I'm most interested in. What I'm not so sure of is whether or not I can go through the entire course of study in less than a week. But I'm going to try. I already know everything there is to know about the Teacher, how it was made, how it works, how to make duplicates of it, and since there are ways to adjust the rate of transference without impairing retention, I'm pretty sure I can deliberately increase it considerably beyond the ordinary tolerances to compress the minimum time frame even more, so—"

"What?" The sharpness of Roxanne's interruption made Minion wince and even caused Megamind to fall silent with a very startled expression. But she didn't back down. "It's bad enough that you want to get a machine you didn't even build, much less design, to try to cram your brain with the kind of studies that usually take eight or ten years and finish in less than a week, but to do it, you're going to try pushing it beyond its limits? What if you wind up slagging it? What if it winds up slagging you?"

Though her final words seemed flippant, they were anything but. Megamind looked away, toying with the papers on the drafting table without really seeing them. "It won't slag me," he replied, though he sounded less than positive.

Which did not go unnoticed. "But it might. You can't tell me for absolute certain that trying to push the Teacher beyond its design limits won't damage it, or more importantly you! People build things with tolerances and regulators for damn good reasons, Mykaal, and you know it! How many times did you try pushing things you'd invented too far, only to have them blow up in your face? How many times did you get hurt because of it — almost killed?"

The reformed villain grimaced in frustration, largely because he knew she was speaking the truth. "I know, I know! I've made a lot of mistakes, nobody knows it better than I do! But if the only thing I keep believing in is my past, how can I ever deserve being called a superhero? The only thing I have that can be called 'super' is this brain of mine, and even before I was born, my entire planet believed it was 'super' enough to make me the only one of my people worth saving! Yes, I want to live up to their expectations, and I want to live up to my expectations! But I'm never going to do that until I take the risk of doing something everyone else says is impossible but my heart tells me isn't. And not something to glorify myself, but to save the life of someone who could've totally ignored the fact that I even existed, but didn't!"

He continued to play with the ragged edge of one bit of paper before abruptly looking up, green eyes bright with a strange, determined fire. "What would you do if you were me, Roxanne? What did you do when it looked like nothing could stop that maniac Hal, and I just wanted to walk away and give up because I'd decided that defeating him was impossible?"

Taken aback by the question, the reporter blinked at her husband for several very long moments. "I — I told you not to give up, convinced you that it wasn't impossible," she said softly, shocked by the strange yet convoluted similarity of the situation. A faint snort escaped her. "Guess I can't tell you not to do this now without sounding like a bloody hypocrite, huh?"

The expression on Megamind's face softened, though the fire remained in his eyes. "I'm not saying that," he insisted. "I'm not trying to make you feel bad for caring about me — I'm glad you do, otherwise I might keep trying stupid things just to impress you and the rest of the world. It's you and Minion who give me a reason not to be such a self-centered, foolish jerk. But this is something I have to try. If I understand how the Teacher works, even if this doesn't turn out the way I want, all that should happen is that I won't learn the lessons properly and I'll have gaps in my knowledge. I promise, I'll test that before I try to do anything with it. The last thing I want is to start something to help Mrs. Thurmer and then find out halfway into the procedure that I don't know what to do next, or I didn't complete some necessary step along the way. I can't guarantee that exceeding the Teacher's preset tolerances won't have any negative effects on me, but..."

He didn't know what more he could say; his shoulders sagged even as his eyes pleaded with his wife for understanding.

Roxanne remained silent and still for only a moment or two before stepping forward to wrap her arms around him. "I understand," she promised, her voice little more than a whisper, and strangely shaky even to her own ears. "I don't entirely like it, but I do understand. I hate to admit it, but deep down, I think I've been dreading this."

Megamind's black eyebrows pulled together in such a tight frown, they almost drew a single line. "Dreading it?" he echoed, totally confused. "Why?"

The reporter stepped back just enough so that he could see her face as she answered. "Not because I don't think Emily deserves the help, so don't even start thinking that. But ever since you found those teaching things in your old escape pod, I've been afraid that maybe someday, something serious would happen, you'd use them to solve whatever awful problem needed solving, and... everything would change."

He thought about this for a second or three before he saw what she meant. "Are you afraid of the same thing I was? That if I start learning significantly new and different things, I won't be me anymore?"

She hesitated briefly, then nodded. "I guess so. I know I have to share you with the world, sweetie, it's always been that way and I don't really want it to change. I'm just scared that if you do pull this off, the world's going to try to take the lion's share of you, that the Mykaal I know and love will have to take a backseat to Megamind the Hero, and eventually he'll get tossed out of the car and me along with him. It's selfish, I know..."

The genius's green eyes flicked toward Minion and saw a similarly concerned expression on the piscine's face. He then looked back to Roxanne, and a fondly broad and crooked smile lit his long face. "Oh, the two of you!" he teased. "Here I've been spending most of the last year worrying about turning into a walking computer at the beak and cool of the whole world, and just when I finally start getting that out of my head, you decide to pick it up instead!"

"Sir, it's—"

Megamind waved one arm to curtail the correction, his other arm wrapping around Roxanne in a tight, reassuring hug. "Yes, yes, I know, I got it wrong again, whatever! My point, you foolish, fantastic fish, is that you both picked a totally ludicrous time to start worrying over something I finally made a decision about just this morning!"

Roxanne's mouth fell open as she blinked back. "You did? Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because I didn't really decide anything until after my session with Phil, and when I got home, there was more important news waiting."

"So you and Phil talked about whether or not you should turn into a walking supercomputer?"

He laughed. "That did come up, but it wasn't all we discussed. What we talked about was me making a decision about whether or not I'm ever going to tell the rest of the world about the Teacher and everything I've been learning, stuff like that. He thought I should at least be honest about it and volunteer the basic truth, if not all the details, to the public before I wind up in Wayne's situation, trapped between a rock and a hard place. I don't want to be accused of hiding things and lying, never again!"

"That sure did get you into trouble, sir," Minion couldn't help but agree. "I know you wanted to try to do more with the things you've been learning, to help Mrs. Thurmer, and you told me you wanted to rush it, but you didn't say anything about going public with it."

His ward gestured extravagantly. "Well, I'll only do that if this actually works. Going public with another failure, and one so tragic...!" He shook his head, not wanting to start down that bleak and discouraging path.

Roxanne swallowed thickly. "If it doesn't work, this could wind up being more than one kind of tragedy," she pointed out, grimly.

Megamind got the point. "I know, you're worried that pushing too hard too fast will hurt me. I don't want that to happen, either, and I'm reasonably sure it won't — but if I don't try pushing myself, how will I ever find out what my limits are? The people who built the Teacher for me didn't know, they couldn't. There hadn't been a Great One born among them for almost a thousand years, and they didn't know how to test for that kind of capacity on an infant, with the brain and body decades away from maturity. Eight days just wasn't enough time for them to try to measure changes and detect developmental patterns. The Teacher was built to work as fast as it can for an ordinary prodigy of my people, and even with the exchange regulators, I still complete the sessions faster than its specs say should be possible. It hasn't hurt me yet; why are you afraid it will now?"

She chewed on her lip and the question for several long moments before answering it. When she did, it began with a long, whistling sigh through her teeth. "Honestly? Because of past history. I know," she said most emphatically, "you are not the person you used to be, constantly losing because you rush into things or don't think them through or let wishful thinking of what you hope will happen take the place of sound, calm reasoning. I know that, sweetie, really, I do. But I just have this sinking feeling that despite the fact that you've been doing so much better, succeeding so well for the last four years, when something goes wrong and you do fail — and let's not kid ourselves, it will happen, nobody's perfect — it's going to happen when so very, very much is on the line. Even if it doesn't hurt you physically, I don't want your heart to be crushed if you give this your all and it still doesn't work. That's what I'm afraid of. I don't want failure to come crashing back in a way that will break your heart — or worse, your spirit."

The ex-villain could only stare at her, frozen, mouth open, for what felt like an eternity or two. At length, when he could breathe and move again, he glanced from his wife to his partner, and saw in Minion's eyes the same worry, even though he had come to terms with how much Megamind needed to at least make the attempt. Finally, his stunned expression dissolved into a soft, faint smile. "If you want to know the truth, I'm afraid of that, too," he confessed, a mite sheepishly. "I don't even like to think that failure might be possible because I want this to succeed so badly. But I think that's part of why I have to try. I can't stand by and do nothing when I know there's something I can at least take a shot at. I'll probably be a basket case and need to take off a few months for intensive therapy if I mess up, but if that's how things go..."

He shrugged. "One way or another, I have to start being upfront with people about this, about what I can do and what I want to do. If I don't, I'll either give them a reason to start calling me a monster if does accidentally get out, or I'll think of myself as a monster for the times I stood and did nothing when I could've at least tried."

Though she wanted to argue that he wasn't making a fair assessment of things, as a seasoned reporter and investigator, Roxanne knew he'd hit the nail right on the head and driven it home. She started to say something, stopped, then took a deep breath and nodded. "Okay. Do whatever you have to; it's the right thing to do, whether I like it or not. And everything that's worth doing has some element of risk to it, I can't argue with that. But if you don't keep me and Minion completely in the loop, if you try to weasel your way around telling us something just once..." Her scowl alone was a deadly threat.

Both blue hands flew up in immediate surrender. "I'm not even thinking of it, I swear," was his earnest promise, offered to both his wife and his partner. "I'll be as careful as I can, but I want both of you keeping an eye out, too, to look for anything I might miss, even if it seems unimportant. I can't afford to screw up this time. I can't."

He said it with such determined desperation, neither his wife nor his partner remained unmoved. Roxanne drew him back into her embrace even as Minion stepped nearer to lay a sympathetic hand on his friend's shoulder. "You won't, sir," the ichthyoid said with his own quiet conviction. "If you let us talk you out of trying, that would be a screw up, and not really your fault."

"That's right," Roxanne agreed, giving her blue hero a final squeeze before reluctantly releasing him. "You've made your decision, and we're behind you, come what may. You've got what's probably going to be a pretty tight deadline, so let's quit talking and start doing."

And so they did. With all the equipment and schematics in hand, it took only a few hours for the stasis field to be constructed. While Minion and a group of brainbot assistants went to the hospital to install it and get it up and running — fortunately before Mrs. Thurmer's condition deteriorated more severely — Roxanne got Madeleine and her kitchen bots going on some kind of simple dinner while Megamind sat down to the potentially long project of sifting through the case full of data gems to find the ones with the information he so desperately needed.

Had he been given no other system than the touch index — the coding that gave him information on the general contents of each stone when he directly touched it — the search alone could have taken him days, as there were almost thirty thousand of the tiny data storage crystals in the case. But the record sphere that his parents had sent to allow them to give messages to their son long after they were gone was also able to act as a means of guiding him through the gems, as a general index in a library can guide a patron to the specific materials they need, with a little effort on their part.

Minion and the brainbots returned about two hours after they'd left, the installation of the stasis field having gone smoothly and successfully. Roxanne had left Madeleine and her crew to handle the supper preparations while she went to give Megamind an assist by researching the kinds of coursework that were generally needed to become a neurosurgeon, to provide him with a better idea of the specific things he might want to look for. It went surprisingly quickly, and by the time Minion was home and supper was ready, the blue genius had finished his first sifting through the data stones. Though he intended to repeat the process to make absolutely certain he'd missed nothing, he sat down to eat, at Roxanne's stern insistence, with a better idea of the challenge he was facing.

"Eighty-three," he told her and Minion as they settled down to the meal Madeleine had prepared. "I may actually be over-compensating, including a few areas that aren't really essential, but to learn everything I'll need to know to help Mrs. Thurmer, I'll have to go through eighty-three different 'lessons.'"

Both reporter and partner frowned a bit as they tried to do the math in their heads. Roxanne managed to reach an estimate first. "That's almost two weeks, at the usual rate you work with the Teacher," she observed, not needing to point out that this was well beyond the deadline Megamind had set for himself.

"Though that's with a regulated rate of input," Minion pointed out. "Do you have any idea how much you can change that, sir?"

The reformed villain let loose a sigh. "I could adapt the system to output each stone's data in a single ten second burst, but it would be useless. Aside from the fact that that would have the possibility of causing synaptic damage, it would be like trying to hold water by pouring it into a sieve. Part of learning is retention, and if the information is given faster than the brain can absorb it, only fragments are retained, at best. I checked the data I have from the tests I made on the neural activity monitor when I redesigned it for the prison last year, using myself as the subject. Based on that, I'm certain I could cut the usual time of my 'lessons' in half, though to be completely safe, I'd fix the rate to a two hour cycle rather than an hour-fifty. An extra ten minutes might not seem like a huge buffer, but it would pretty much guarantee a successful transfer."

While he spoke, Roxanne worked on the math. "That's just barely under a week," she finally concluded, confirmed by a nod from Megamind as he chewed on a mouthful of his sandwich. None of them were really hungry, but given what they were facing in the week ahead, they knew they would need to keep up their strength as much as possible. "And that's without leaving any time for you to switch one data stone for the next."

"That's why I won't be doing it myself. I plan to program one of the brainbots to handle the changes for me — probably Alfred, he's the newest brainbot, and was designed to be exceptionally attentive and dextrous. He doesn't need to eat or sleep as we do, so he can standby ready to perform the exchanges as soon as each cycle's complete, quickly and efficiently. Though I'd want one of you two present as much as possible, just in case. I think we'd all feel better, that way."

The others agreed, though something else occurred to Minion. "If you plan to be asleep for an entire week, you won't be in the best of shape when it's over, sir, not after going without food or water the whole time."

"I'd thought of that," Megamind admitted. "There's more than one way to deal with that, but the most convenient would be for me to load up on high density extended term nutrient rations before I start, those ones I developed for the emergency relief agencies a few months back, and then use a simple hydration IV while I'm under. I'll be hungry and thirsty when it's over, but nothing that a decent meal and a quart or two of water wouldn't take care of. And I know you can handle the IV for me, Minion, you've done it before."

The piscine's amber eyes grew sad with the memories that verified that statement. "I'll take care of it," he promised.

Roxanne thought it was a reasonable solution. "And if you don't mind, I'll take care of keeping Warden Thurmer abreast of the situation. I know," she added quickly before Megamind could voice the protest she saw beginning in his green eyes. "You don't want him to get his hopes up until you're ready to tell him yourself, but if we don't contact him at all, he may think things are going badly and simply give up. I won't tell him exactly what you're doing, just that your research is going well or how far along you are. He needs some thread of hope to hang onto, Mykaal, even if it's just the hope that the possibility of helping his wife still exists."

Megamind listened without interrupting, pondered what she'd said for a handful of moments, then acquiesced. "You're right, he should at least have that. Thank you for thinking of that, love, that's why I asked the two of your to keep your eyes open for anything I might miss. I'm sure you'll handle this better than I would."

She smiled wryly. "All bets are off if anything goes wrong — but I'm counting on that not happening. Will you call Wayne and ask him to keep his eye on the city this week?"

"If Minion doesn't mind."

The fish snorted. "Mind? If you hadn't said that, sir, I would've suspected that you'd already done some test that short-circuited your brain!"

With matters settled, they finished their meal. Roxanne then called Wayne to let him know that he'd be on duty for the coming week and why — to which the former superhero offered no objections, even wishing his erstwhile adversary the best of luck — Megamind did a second check to make sure he'd identified all the "lessons" he'd need to learn and their proper order, while Minion worked on drawing up the necessary instructions for Alfred so that the brainbot could handle the changing of the data gems after each learning cycle was completed. The reporter joined her husband after finishing her call and started feeding him the dense slow-release nutritional tablets that would keep him properly nourished during the days ahead.

When all else was ready, the spare bedroom was prepared so that Megamind would at least be comfortable during this long, very important sleep. Minion had initially intended to make the final preparations in the master bedroom, but Roxanne had vetoed that, saying that she didn't want any memories of Mykaal hooked up to even an innocent hydration IV haunting the room where they normally spent their nights — and some very pleasant days — together.

"I'll sleep with you every night and spend as much of the next few days as I can with you," she promised him, "but I just don't want images of you like that, in our bed, giving me nightmares."

Megamind had been mildly amused but even more strongly touched by her reasoning, and had surrendered to her wishes without a word of protest. And when everything was ready, he settled down, let Minion deftly begin the IV, gave Roxanne a long, loving kiss, and with a confident smile laid down a placed the glowing, activated Teacher across his brow. Still smiling, he almost immediately sank into the deep sleep the device induced, and the first lesson began.

For the next six days, everything went like proverbial clockwork. Each data gem exchange was completed by Alfred, swiftly and with perfect precision; Minion monitored the hydration IV to replenish it as needed. Roxanne made arrangements with her boss to handle only research and writing assignments for the week so that she could work from home, setting up her computer in a corner of the room where Megamind was "sleeping." She spelled Minion, kept an eye on the scanners that were monitoring her husband's condition, called Warden Thurmer with a general progress report each morning, and slept beside her personal hero each night, hoping that even in his purposeful slumber, he would know she was there.

Six days, twenty-one hours, and fifty-nine minutes later — precisely on schedule — the last cycle completed, the Teacher deactivated, and Roxanne carefully removed it from her husband's broad brow while Minion and the faithful little Alfred watched, waiting for the blue genius to awaken and report the results of his long, intensive instruction.

More than a day later, they were still waiting.

To be continued...