A huge thank-you to my brilliant beta, HaydenXCharm. Any remaining errors are my own!

The Big Red Button

It was a slow news day in Metro City. Minion had emailed KMCP from the Mayor's office, announcing a change to the city seal. It would no longer display Metro Man's heroic muscled visage, but rather Megamind's iconic blue-on-black lightning bolt.

Roxanne let one of the junior staffers take it. She was... drifting. Most of their coverage was being copied across from the regional office and the national news. The banks were slowly re-opening, but everyone who had applied for jobs in other cities had started to get their interviews. Bit by bit, the station was emptying out.

"Hey, Roxy. We're ordering pizza. You in?" Hal asked with a shrug. "I mean, it might just be you and me here, pulling the late shift. We could go out somewhere?"

Roxanne shook her head. "No thanks, Hal. I'm meeting a friend. I tell you what, though. I think George is still in his office. He might be interested." She began mentally pleading with her computer to shut down quickly.

"George is boring," Hal said, with the whiny exaggeration of a teenager. "He's not fun like you, like you and I are, together."

"Yeah, nice try, Hal. That gets you a two out of a hundred for style. I'm going home." She swung her bag onto her shoulder, and thumbed off her computer screen. Finally, everything was turned off.

He followed her to the lifts, eager. "I could drive you home? The streets aren't safe, here."

Roxanne stabbed at the button for the lift. "I'm going on a date," she said. It wasn't a date. She liked Bernard a lot, but she wasn't sure if he felt the same way about her. He'd always been so sarcastic and irritated before, but lately it seemed like he was warming up to her. "So I don't think that's a good idea. I'll get a cab."

Hal was so shocked that he didn't even try to jump into the lift. She pressed the close doors button, and his face slid out of view.

Smitten. That was a good word for it. She was smitten with Bernard. He was just so much more alive than anyone else she'd met. Her feelings for him had built so fast, and maybe she was being naïve, but she couldn't help it. There were two ideas that were making Roxanne's stomach churn and tingle with excitement: the thought of a bumbling, nervous, clueless Bernard stammering and helpless during their first time together, and the thought of him months afterwards, confident and powerful in his knowledge of her body.

She was a dirty, filthy, old woman, and even if he was the same age as her, Bernard was probably the biggest fainting damsel she'd ever met. She'd have liked to sweep him off his feet, but she was worried that she'd scare him away if she was too forward.

"Crazy lady cougar behind door two!" She bit her lip and headed out the front, where one of the last and most wonderful cab drivers in Metro City was waiting for her.

"Nikhil," she said. He was always around when she needed him.

"Miss Ritchi," he replied. He knew where to drive her, and she knew how much to pay him. It was a good relationship they had.

Roxanne hadn't been this ready for a date in years. She'd showered, shaved, waxed, powdered, and painted. She'd washed her hair, and she'd put on one of her new favourite dresses. She couldn't leave it alone, though. Megamind hadn't acted on anything that she'd seen in the notes, or anything that she'd puzzled out with Bernard. Instead, it was like he was retreating, or worse. The garbage was gone. The money had been returned to the banks. The paintings were back in the gallery.

If she hadn't been there the day that he'd taken over City Hall, if she hadn't seen that bus still embedded in the side of that alley wall, she'd have wondered if he'd given it all up and retired. That's how inactive he was, how out of character. What on earth could be doing? What could he be planning?

"Maybe he's cleaning the city up because he doesn't like smelly garbage," she mused. "No. No, that's not right. He'd have to come out for it to be a problem, and nobody's seen him in weeks."

She picked at the notes. They seemed to be analysing Metro Man and the basic concepts of heroism. There was a lot in there about the difference between the dark and light side, what defined a hero and what made a villain, and how to balance the two. Was it possible that Megamind was bored? Or that, in the absence of someone like Metro Man to challenge him, he was seeking a hero? No, that was... childish. It was too stupid for words, and Megamind wasn't stupid. What kind of dictator or overlord would want to willingly give up their power?

Okay, Megamind wasn't stupid in the way that other people were. His stupidity was complex, and it involved getting too excited about his plans much too early. He would be so eager to flaunt his newest brilliance that he would rush into things without testing them properly. He would brag and make everything so complicated that there were too many ways for something to fail. There had to be something more to it than black and white morality. Megamind never did anything without a reason. It wasn't like he was some despicable monster who was capable of the coldheartedness it took to rape or torture someone. It was almost like Megamind just loved to play and put on a show for people. He loved for people to see him and fear his intelligence, but he didn't want everyone to give up on fighting him. Had things grown too easy for him now that Metro Man was dead?

Roxanne pinched a newspaper clipping between her thumb and forefinger. She'd simply printed out the image from the picture she'd taken in his Evil Lair. She hadn't paid much attention to it. It was just another story from their childhood, one of the first reports in which Metro Man had been applauded for his heroism. He'd been ten years old, and at the time, he'd been known to everyone as Wayne Scott, heir to a city.

Aha! There it was, the scent of a trail. She'd got a bit of material on the Scott Empire in her drawer, at work. That had been back from her early days, when she'd been an idealistic young woman, and she could already guess part of it. There was a reason, aside from the obvious, that half the businesses and landmarks in the city were named Metro. The Scott family invested big, and they owned nearly everything. Well, not everything, but they certainly made a lot more from the city, than the city made from them. It had sparked class outrage in Roxanne's young heart.

She'd nearly lost her job in the first month when she'd tried to write her exposé. As an older and wiser woman, she knew exactly why, too. If you took the Scott family out of Metro City, Metro City crumbled. They donated to as many charities as they purchased interests in companies. Basically, what could you do? There's no law against having money. It left a sour taste in Roxanne's mouth, but there were greater injustices in the Man, previously Metro Dude, previously Wayne Scott, was not a bad guy.

Still, she needed to know just what it was that was driving Megamind. He'd been quiet for almost a month. If there was anything Roxanne had learned over the decade and a half of kidnappings she'd been subjected to, it was this: Evil doesn't take a he hadn't done anything, it only stood to reason that he had, and she just wasn't seeing it. Oh, was up to something, she was sure of it, and without Metro Man to stop him, there was no telling how destructive it would be.

She had an hour till she met Bernard. She'd make that hour count.

She hadn't wanted to lose time changing, so she'd belted her coat around her waist and slipped her heels into her handbag, wearing her everyday flats. She knew where to go, she knew how to sneak around, and she was lucky. As she was sneaking in, Minion and Megamind were having an argument.

An argument! She couldn't have timed it better! She slipped through the cover of darkness, and crowded up close to the cloud of paper and strings against the wall. It... hadn't changed much. It really hadn't changed at all, to her surprise.

What was going on? It was like Megamind hadn't been in his Evil Lair since she'd last been there. It was ludicrous!Since when did evil take a holiday? What on earth was he doing with his free time?

"Roxanne?"

She froze, confused and surprised. "Bernard?"

When she turned around, the factory floor was empty and silent. The invisible car was still completely visible, and Bernard was standing beside a broken mirror, looking as pale as a ghost. Had that always been broken, or had it been smashed in the fight? When had Megamind and Minion left? She hadn't noticed exactly when their argument had ended, and now it was eerily silent.

"Bernard! Great minds think alike. Look! He hasn't touched a thing. Nothing's changed!" Roxanne swept a hand out to indicate the notes.

"You don't say," he said. "Look, oh wow! I've found the keys! To the car! Hey, that's exciting. We could drive the car to dinner, and talk about it on the way there, what do you say?"

There was an edge to Bernard's voice that Roxanne didn't like. He sounded manic. Not excited, but genuinely manic. She was getting a gut feeling about this situation, and it wasn't anything good. She held her hands up. "Maybe. Okay. Maybe." She backed away from the papers and strings, back towards the 'Secrit Entrance'.

He looked tense. He looked angry. She wasn't sure what had happened or where he'd come from. Had he been following her? Oh, something about this wasn't right. Megamind and Minion had been screaming at each other only seconds beforehand. Bernard couldn't have gotten in and ended up standing where he was without being seen by those two. "Bernard. Where are they?"

She'd seen Megamind kill Metro Man. She'd have sworn she'd never see that happen, not in a million years, even as she watched the Death Ray hit the observatory. She'd have sworn that Bernard didn't have a violent bone in his skinny body, but she also wasn't a and Minion, two of the most dramatic personalities Roxanne knew – and being in television, that said something – had disappeared into thin air. In their own home, with two intruders in it. That just didn't happen.

"Roxanne? I don't know. When I, ah, got here, they were already..."

He took a step towards her, and Roxanne took another backwards, desperately trying to put some distance between them. Was Bernard the reason those two were suddenly gone? What could he have done to them? She bumped into something, and put her hands out to balance herself. She felt a large plastic button depress beneath her left hand. Bernard's eyes went wide and round. His hands reached out towards her, fingers shaking. "No, Roxanne!"

"Bernard?" she asked. Slowly, she turned her head. Beneath her hand, was a big red button. A post-it note was stuck on below it, and in Minion's messy handwriting, she could see the word RESET. That she recognised his handwriting at all, spoke volumes on her depressing lack of a social life.

She turned back to see her own horror reflected in Bernard's eyes, and she managed to say, "He made one?! I thought you said they were impossible!"

As if a light switch had been flicked, everything went dark.

When Roxanne woke up, she felt so strange. As she looked around, she was back in her apartment, in bed. Still remembering everything that had just occurred in Megamind's lair, she thought, 'Didn't Bernard say the physics were impossible?!'

Her alarm was going off, except that wasn't her alarm. She hadn't had a digital clock radio since the 90s. Come to think of it, she hadn't slept in flannelette sheets since the 90s either. A sick, horrified feeling washed over her. Her toes tingled and her palms began sweating. She raised her hands, and did the only think she could think of. It would be a sure measure of the passage of time. She groped her breasts, and then her ass.

Yep. Smaller. Firmer. Her wrists were skinnier. Her skin was tighter. It was everything she'd have said she'd wanted, if it came in a bottle, but it didn't feel good. She hadn't known how at home she'd felt in her own skin as an adult, until she'd been catapulted back into the eternal discomfort of puberty.

She reached a shaking hand up to tuck slightly too-long hair behind her ear, feeling a pimple on her face. Well, drat. As Metro Man would have said before his untimely death, crab nuggets. It had worked. She had saved herself and Bernard from Megamind's clutches by re-setting the clock and sending herself back to high school. Or had she saved herself from Bernard? It was all a bit muddled in her head. Time travel was a bit of a head trip. She laughed out loud.

She was in the nineties, alone, underage, with no driver's licence, years before she'd even met Bernard, before she'd learned how to find hope in a world of darkness.

But, wait, no! It was years before she'd lost hope in the first place, years before Metro Man had died, years before he had even been known as anything other than Metro Dude.

She pressed her hands to her mouth. She could fix it. Everything. She could save Metro Man from years of pointless struggle, and his inevitable death.

There was more. There was Bernard, and an opportunity to save more than one person. She could wipe that broken wistful smile off of his future face. She could change the world. The Reset button was the best thing she'd ever touched in her life! Thank God she'd retained all of her future knowledge.

"Roxanne, you're going to be late!"

On the other hand, she was still in high school. One time had been more than enough, and here she was again in Hell on earth. Oh, she was so, so screwed.

She felt like a PTSD victim recalling a war zone. Everything was coming back to her now, all the little things she'd stopped thinking about as an adult, because people usually weren't that openly petty or cruel. She had to think about dressing well, not just for the day, but dressing well for this week. She had to wear her hair right and have all her homework done. She had to avoid saying the wrong things to the wrong people. Her first time around, Roxanne had thought she was above all of that, but honestly, even walking your own path, you felt the eyes of the people around you. It was impossible to escape the judgement of her peers.

"Oh come on," she gave herself a pep-talk in the bathroom mirror. "With Big, Blue and Bulbous to look at, nobody's going to spare a second glance for Roxanne Ritchi's pimples."

Luckily she'd kept a copy of her schedule, which was good, because she'd never have been able to remember which classes she'd took in whatever year of her schooling this was. That day in class, she immediately spotted Bernard's younger self. She felt a pang of guilt when she remembered their conversation in the park. She'd had no idea he'd been at her school. That must have really hurt him.

She'd thought she'd have to look around a bit, try the private schools. Instead, he was just... different, enough that she'd never have picked him as the same person she'd come to know. She'd never have recognised him in a crowd. He slumped, he slouched. He ignored everybody. He was just, somehow... generic. Nothing about him appealed to her. That spark of intelligence and enthusiasm just didn't shine through like it had when he'd grown up.

It was like he was already so disconnected from the world, that he was dying inside, too closed off for her to feel anything for him. She was glad, so glad, that they had met that night at the museum, that she had the chance to know what he was truly capable of, the man he could become. Roxanne took a moment to find her old desk, and as she sat down, she was already planning what to do next.

She took a gentle approach. He was a shy, awkward teenager after all, and he always been sour and rude to her before they'd gotten to know each other. She smiled at Metro Dude, and glared at Megamind, who was giving her the strangest, most open-eyed look she'd ever seen on his blue face, but she ignored him and set her lunch tray down beside Bernard like she'd been sitting next to him every day.

"Hi, mind if I sit here?"

He sighed, and groaned, like it was a huge effort to turn around to face her. "Fine," he said bluntly, like he could hardly stand even being near her.

He had a way of making everyone feel like they were idiot pieces of shit, and he had put his foot down and found you under his sneaker, oozing and stinking.

Roxanne wanted to ooze right off to a table with her real friends at it, but she tried to remind herself that Bernard would warm up to her again if given time. Bernard cared about people and had a brilliant mind. He just also had a lot of barriers.

"Great," she said, hoping she wasn't being too perky or forward. She didn't want to come across as an airhead to him. She was teenage Roxanne, and she could become an awkward quiet Roxanne who was ready to open up to a shy boy with a heart of gold. It wasn't really her, but she'd do anything to make herself more accessible to Bernard, to get under his skin and see the man she knew he would become.

Lunch passed in relative silence. Bernard glared at her as he got up and left, but Roxanne felt a warm hope open up in her chest. He'd get used to her. She'd show him that someone was there for him. She'd change his world.

It was easy enough to find Metro Dude after class. She grabbed him by the upper arm, and rolled her eyes at the winks and leers from his friends. She dragged him aside and around the corner of the schoolyard. She leaned up against the brick wall and crossed her arms.

"So, I'm going to be up-front with you. You can fly. You're probably one of the only people in the world I can talk to about this."

He grinned. "Oh? Can you fly too, Roxie?"

"Roxanne," she corrected him. "No, of course not, but I'm here to warn you. I... I got thrown back in time, and I'm not quite sure how."

He frowned. "So are you from like, last week? I've got to say, I did that once. Super speed. Ran home and got there last Tuesday. Mom was pretty angry, cos it meant I had a pair of paradox jocks."

"Paradox... jocks?"

He shrugged. "Dirty and clean at the same time."

"Riiiiiiight." Roxanne was not even going to go there. "No. A little further than that."

He crossed his arms and kicked back into the air, reclined on absolutely nothing. It had seemed clever when she'd been a kid, but as a grown woman, she could see it for what it was. He was just another teenage boy trying to show off, and it had long since lost its appeal.

"Two weeks?" he guessed.

"Try fifteen years. I was an adult. And I'm not super-powered. I didn't choose to come back here. It was an accident."

Metro Dude's eyes narrowed. "Megamind," he said.

Roxanne raised her hands. "Look, nobody's to blame. But we're friends, right? I want you to make me a promise. It's going to be hard for you, but I need you to do it, okay?"

Metro Dude frowned, but nodded. "Anything for a pretty lady," he said.

"Ugh. Were you always this slimy? And I thought Hal was bad."

"Who?" He frowned, brow furrowed.

She pinched her nose. "Forget that! Just, promise me. No matter what happens. In the future, one day, you'll open a museum, and I'll be kidnapped. On that day, I want you to promise. Don't come for me. I don't care what Megamind says. Don't come."

He scratched at his chin. "Huh?"

She closed her eyes. She'd been a bit too generous to him, in memory. He wasn't stupid, but he liked to play it up. Bravado. What an ass. Well, she'd warned him. He had super strength. It wasn't like she'd be able to stop him.

"Well, I've warned you. I'll keep trying to convince you, I guess."

"And I'll keep being the fabulous hero that I am," he agreed.

"I don't even know why I bother. Just write it down? As a favour for me? Think about it?"

He laughed nervously, and scratched his chin. His cheeks... were pink? Oh no. Oh no.

"I don't like you! I have a boyfriend!" she shouted.

"Oooooooh," he said. "But you have a boyfriend after I die from saving your life."

She stared at him, incredulously. "You're actually getting off on that, aren't you?"

He shrugged. "You need me," he said.

"Like hell I do." Her blood was boiling. Of all the patronising, condescending, ass-things to say! Ugh! Why had she wasted her time trying to talk sense to this bonehead? She would've rather tried to talk with snarky teenage-Bernard than listen to Metro Dude try to play his little game. Roxanne marched straight back into the school and to her locker. She needed her things. It was time for library watch.

She'd gathered, from asking around, that Bernard tended to hang out in the library. He was a volunteer, shelving books and scanning things through the circulation desk. Roxanne took out her notes for Calc - which was so many years behind her that it was incomprehensible to her - and watched him slowly and methodically re-magnetise returns while the loans queue built up longer and longer.

"Do you think he does that to annoy people, or because he actually likes it?"

She jumped and turned to see Megamind watching Bernard with a very serious face. "Wha-? Where the heck did you just come from? What are you doing here?"

"I think he just resents it when people don't borrow books until the week before exams," Minion said from her other side.

She looked around sharply. They were flanking her, and immediately her instinct told her to run, even though she knew that they hadn't started kidnapping people this early in life. She let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. "I'll ask again. What the hell are you doing here?"

Megamind grinned, glancing conspicuously at her notes and Calculus book. "Well, I'm certainly not studying Calc, because I'm not going to fail it."

Minion bobbed amicably in his glass bowl. "Just along for the ride," he said.

Roxanne shut her notebook, and clenched her pencil in her hand. She was sorely tempted to be violent. Her heart was fluttering, though, because Bernard was just metres away from her, feeling alone and rejected. She didn't have time for the terrible two. She refused to make an ass of herself in front of Bernard when she was trying to get on his good side again. For the first time. Ugh, time travel!

"What did you have to say to Metro Dude, earlier today?" Megamind asked casually, with an undertone of worry and stress.

"I'll tell you," Roxanne conceded, "If you help me pass Calc."

What the hell, right? It was an admirable cover story that would help make her a fixture in the library without being too much like a creepy stalker. She'd warm Bernard up to her presence in small doses.

Megamind raised an eyebrow. "It's that valuable, huh?"

"No, it's not valuable at all. It's non-information. But I don't do business with self-styled supervillains. Especially supervillains who don't contribute anything to the school paper."

"I'll think about it," Megamind said grimly.

Roxanne crossed her legs, feeling the lack of padding between her bones. There were definitely benefits to middle age. Ah well, they were only one point five decades away. Her good old squishy adult thighs, that is.

"Think fast. The longer you wait, the harder it'll be to teach me."

Megamind just gave a low groan, still glaring at Bernard and shaking his head slowly. Bernard had caught on and was staring right back, expression just as sour.

"I can help," Minion offered brightly. "Where should we start, Miss Ritchi?"

Megamind flailed, his hands splaying out over her notes. "I'll do it, fine, okay! No need to get like that, Minion!"

"Like what, Sir?" Minion was kind of cute when he was being evil. Well, not evil evil. Just normal person evil.

Calculus hurt Roxanne's head. It was clear from Megamind's put-upon sighs and Minion's tutting, that she'd forgotten far more about Math than she'd ever known.

"Honestly, I thought you were smarter than this, Miss Ritchi," Megamind said, shaking his head.

Roxanne packed her books up, watching Bernard out of the corner of her eye. "I am. I'm very good at critical analysis. Writing. Holding my own in a fight. I'm just not that into the hard sciences."

Minion gasped, scandalised. He put his hands over his external speakers. Megamind sighed, and looked like he'd given up on the world. "Well, pay up. I'm not asking for the whole story, but I'd like to know if I'm going to get beaten up today, if that's all right to know."

Roxanne started to speak, then stopped. She closed her mouth. No, that still seemed wrong. Metro Dude had never done that… not just for sport, right? He'd only ever done that when Megamind clearly deserved it. Surely, Metro Dude didn't abuse his powers like that, did he?

"He beats you up?"

"Well, usually I'm asking for it," Megamind conceded with a shrug. Roxanne gave an understanding nod of the head, concern fleeing as quickly as it had come.

"I thought so. No, no plans for you. we're friends. We just talked. I asked him a favour. And that's all you're getting out of me, today. One day of helping me study doesn't guarantee that I'll pass."

Megamind looked disappointed, but he put on a cunning smile. "I see, I see." He stroked his chin. It was kind of weird, to see him do that without the goatee there. Come to think of it, she didn't remember him ever doing that until he had grown some facial hair.

Did he even have enough testosterone to grow one at this point? He was still going through puberty, probably, alien puberty. Oh god, would her mind just shut up. She bit her lip viciously to keep herself from smiling. She must not laugh, or Megamind might change his mind about helping her earn a passing grade. "So, tomorrow? Same time?"

He eyed her suspiciously, but held his hand out, pointing at her. "I'll get to the bottom of your do-gooder plan, Miss Ritchi, and I'll spoil it for you."

"Oh, I hope so," she let herself laugh, then. "Don't you have anything better to do with your free time?"

He smirked. "What, like stalking dweeby librarian wannabes?"

She gasped, and glared at him. How the frick did he know?!

For that, she kicked him in the shins, grabbed her books, and ran. She ran past the bus stop, all the way down the block until she was breathless and giggling. She'd never have lashed out at him like that if it was her first time in high school. She'd never laid a hand him, until he'd actually put her life in jeopardy. That first time, she'd punched him right in the jaw and bruised her knuckles for the privilege. Young Megamind had just paid the price for his future crimes, and she felt a giddy rush of something in her gut.

Oh wow. She had not known that. How had she not known that? She was an adrenaline junkie. No wonder Bernard's wide alert eyes and electric personality had appealed to her so much. She held her books to her chest, and her skin felt warm and alive, flushed with energy. She had an excuse to watch Bernard, every day. She had homeroom with him. She would keep sitting with him at lunch. She was, bit by bit, going to nag Metro Dude until he caved in to her demands. She was going to save the world, or die trying. This was their second chance, her second chance to make things right. She really had somehow clicked the rewind button on the remote of her life, and she damn well had learned from her mistakes.