"I don't dare be seen buying a white dress. I'm liable to be recognized."
"Oh, but you don't have to. Look." Megamind gave his watch a twist. It produced a faint ray of blue light, too faint to notice if she hadn't been looking for it, that passed over her body, head to foot. "There. You're scanned in. Now we send the image to the main computer." He did something to a button on the watch, then dashed around to the control center. He worked at one of the keyboards for a moment and one of the screens changed from a view of the sidewalk outside the lair to an image of Roxanne in the same clothes she was wearing. "Now all we need to do is change the head." More keys clicked and a second screen switched from a security camera image, this time showing a grid of a dozen feminine heads. The one in the upper right had a green background, the others blue. "I think this one." The greenness of the background was apparently the cursor. It shifted two squares to the right and two down, calling attention to a face with long wavy black hair, strong features and too much eye makeup. A few more clicks and the onscreen figure of Roxanne suddenly had this new head.
"Match the nail color to the lipstick, Sir," suggested Minion.
"Oh, right." Click, and the nails on the image turned from the tasteful pink Roxanne wore for the cameras to a bright, showy red. "Now we add one of those generic female voices we got from the radio, save, upload and voilĂ !" He twisted the watch again and transformed before her eyes into the woman he'd just constructed on screen. He spoke in the new feminine voice as he turned around. "I'm all ready to - what's so funny?"
Roxanne was laughing so hard, she couldn't answer for a moment. Finally she got enough breath to say "It's so not you!" before surrendering to hilarity again.
"Oh? You think I'm not enough of an actor to pull it off?" He stood with his head so far up and his chest so far out that his disguise's breasts were practically thrusting themselves at her. "I am a master of disguise, Roxanne." Then he looked up and said "Mirror," in a tone of command.
A brainbot descended and hovered just above the keyboard. The screen behind it lit up with the image from its lens: the disguised Megamind, herself and Minion. Megamind turned and stepped over to it so that the disguise face took up most of the screen. He began to look at himself from various angles, exactly like a woman checking her reflection to see if her hair or makeup needs repair. He looked at Roxanne over his shoulder with a little flirtatious smile and batted his eyelashes.
"Not bad," she said. "Your eyes are still the same green, though."
"Yes, it disguises Minion's eyes perfectly, but for some reason we haven't yet figured out, it always leaves mine unchanged." He turned. "Minion, what about your disguise?"
"I think I should be your mom. That's who would come with a woman to help her pick out a wedding dress, right, Ms. Ritchi?"
"Right, or her sister, or her best friend," said Roxanne.
"I'm gonna go with her mom. I can take the same disguise and just age it and change the clothes and hair. And then we won't have to remember our character names. We can just call each other Mom and Honey." The fish stepped up to the main keyboard.
"Now, Roxanne," Megamind began in the feminine voice.
She interrupted him. "The accent! You sound like a woman doing a Megamind imitation."
Megamind looked shocked for a moment, then composed himself. When he spoke again, it was in the local accent, more or less like hers. "Let's try this again. Roxanne, where would you go for a wedding dress?"
"Macy's. They've got a big selection. Actually, we can go on their website and pick one out." He led her to a second keyboard.
They spent a pleasant fifteen minutes considering the selections, finding that their tastes diverged a bit. ("Look, Roxanne! That one has chrome studs on the shoulders!" "That's beadwork. Kinda klutzy beadwork, too." "It can be studs by the time Minion gets done with it. Or even spikes!" "Hey, what's the point of being in disguise if you're just going to buy something that reminds everybody of you? Let's look at this one with the sweetheart neckline.") Having made a first, second and third choice and phoned the store to make sure it had all three in her size, she clicked over to the shoe page and made sure he knew what kind of shoes to get.
"Now, what about rings?" she asked.
"If we were having a long engagement, I would make them. As it is, I suggest that we get a pair of plain gold bands, which we can rework later. What about the bou-kway?"
She smiled and decided that she'd imposed her will long enough. "Use your own judgment."
She had them drop her off at her apartment so she could get dressed for work. She also packed an overnight bag in which she included her birth certificate and a necklace that had been her grandmother's. On her way to the station, she slipped into Macy's herself and bought one item: blue panties with a little pink bow on the front. At work, she stealthily made a hole in her pantyhose ten minutes before air time, giving her an excuse to borrow the pair that her colleague, Peggy, kept in her desk. Fully accoutered, she rolled into the Lair at the end of her workday. She could smell another venison meal on the stove, a stew this time. Her stomach growled a little, but then she was distracted by the sight of her blue fiancé dashing up to her.
"There you are. Come-" He took her hand and started to pull her away, but she released the suitcase, flung her other arm around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss. He calmed and relaxed over the course of the kiss until, by the time it ended, he wasn't in any rush at all. "Mmm. You temptress. You've totally derailed my train of thought."
"Good." Another kiss was about to ensue when Minion appeared.
"Hey, boss, what's taki- Oh. Sorry." The fish looked at the floor, embarrassed, but he didn't leave.
"And now it's back on track again, I'm afraid. Roxanne, the store closes in fourteen minutes. We need you to look at everything and try it on, in case we need to exchange something." As he spoke, Minion picked up her suitcase and led the way to a little curtained-off area surrounded by a sewing machine, a long mirror, and other tailoring gear. She noticed that the curtain was not permanently hung. It was just being held up by brainbots. The fish opened the curtain, set her suitcase inside and held it for her, smiling. The gown was already inside on a dress form.
One thing about a modern wedding dress: the bride doesn't need any help getting in and out of it. Both the dress and the shoes fit perfectly. In only a couple of minutes, she stepped out, fully dressed, and turned to the mirror. At that moment, when she saw herself dressed to be married, the full emotional implications of what she was doing hit her.
"You look ravishing," Megamind said, but then he saw her face fall. "What's wrong? It's the dress, isn't it? Take it off right now and I can take -"
"It's not the dress," she said. "Or the shoes, or any of it. I just, well, I'm just feeling, I don't know, something..." She waved her hands vaguely, searching for the right word.
"Jitters?" suggested Minion.
"Well, kind of. Maybe. Not exactly. Give me a minute." She turned away from the mirror, taking a deep breath. "When my dad died, my parents were in divorce proceedings. It was really ugly and painful. I was twelve, and I decided that I was never going to risk going through a divorce because I was never going to get married. When I got older, I modified that. I decided I'd only get married if there was a solid, practical reason for it. I was actually more comfortable with the idea of a marriage of convenience than with a marriage for love. When you said you would take me along, the practical reasons were the first that occurred to me. I wanted to make our relationship more formal and solid in the hope that it would encourage your people to accept me." She smiled cynically for a moment. "I also wanted to put a big Private Property sign on you, to discourage all those blue women. And I actually was thinking that, since the decision to go with you was going to be the biggest change in my life and getting married was a strategy for making that go well, the marriage itself wasn't any big deal. Then I saw myself just now in the dress and it was like I was seeing my mom's wedding photo - we look a lot alike - and I saw myself as doing just what she did: eloping with a guy I hardly know just because he's cool. Do you understand?"
"Not entirely, but I'm very flattered and, well, happy at the idea of being your private property. It makes me feel like a stray dog that finally found a human to take him in." One blue hand took hers. "And since you're afraid that you don't know me well enough, I can at least make you this promise: you can ask me any questions about myself, any at all, and I will answer truthfully and completely. Will that help to ease your mind?"
"That's... it's good. I think it'll help, but I'm not sure. I told my great-aunt about all this and she told me to make you teach me how to drive the starship, so if things go wrong I can just come back. I don't want that to happen. I want to stay in love with you, but I'm afraid. I'm afraid that my intentions, and yours, really don't count for that much, like something bigger is at work here and neither of us can do anything about it. Like as soon as I put on that ring for real, the universe is going to declare open season on my happiness and I'm going to end up just as miserable as my mom."
"Oh, now I see. You're talking about destiny. On Earth, I was clearly destined to be a supervillain, but on Harolup I won't be because there's no superhero for me to fight. When we leave Earth, our earthly destiny gets left behind. We may have a new destiny on our new planet, but our previous destiny doesn't follow us. It's a clean plate!"
"I think you mean 'slate', sir."
"Oh, whatever, Minion. It's all metaphors, anyway. What I'm saying is -" He was interrupted by a loud rumble from his stomach.
"I think that slip might have been your subconscious telling you that plates are what we need to sit down in front of," Roxanne chimed in.
"Fifteen minutes while I put the biscuits in," said Minion, heading for the kitchen.
Over dinner, the three told each other their life stories. Roxanne had her notions of prison life radically revised. The two aliens were fascinated by the look into middle-class life that she unfolded, and Megamind even learned a few things about Minion's life alone during his incarcerations. After dinner, they left the brainbots to clean up. Roxanne, who had changed into a tee shirt and jeans before dinner, tucked the dress, pantyhose and white shoes back into the Macy's bag and put on her windbreaker. There was an underground tunnel leading from the lair's basement to a hidden boathouse, closed off from the outdoors and lit only by artificial lights. Part of the lake seemed to be enclosed with it; the boathouse roof covered a short dock with the jetboat tied up on one side and what appeared to be a small submarine on the other. The Evil Jetboat was a go-fast, the modern smuggler's favorite, black and tricked out with Megamind's usual array of spikes. Shark fangs were painted on the front. Roxanne was surprised to see the brainbots loading, in addition to her luggage, an electric guitar and a small amp. She asked about it.
"I thought we'd go to a place called Bessie's Blues Joint to celebrate," Megamind explained. "It's got good reviews as a dance club, with a live band every night, and Minion is hoping to sit in. I hope that meets with your approval."
"Sounds great."
They climbed aboard and the fish cast off. As Roxanne and Megamind settled down in the passenger seats, Minion in the driver's seat, a brainbot grasped the spike that protruded, bowsprit-like, from the prow. Two other brainbots took hold of the spikes that stood up on either side of the windshield and the three towed it away from the dock, into a little enclosed space at the far side of the boathouse. Once the boat was in place, they floated back to the dock and a wall rose from the water, sealing them off from everything else. For a moment, the only lights were those of the boat's dashboard. Then the roof slid back, revealing the underside of a larger dock, lit by reflected light from street lamps and the stars. Minion pushed a button and a folded roof, like a convertible roof, rose from the stern and settled in over their heads. Windows rose from the sides of the cabin to meet it so that they were completely sealed in. At the same time, the boat itself rose. The little compartment was a lock and it was filling. Minion flipped a switch labeled "Stealth Mode".
"Are we invisible?" Roxanne asked.
"Mmm-hmm," responded Megamind. "Make sure you're settled into a comfortable position. As soon as we're in open water, there is going to be some serious acceleration." The rising water brought them up to the surface of the lake under one of the big marina docks. The engines rumbled to life and the boat moved gently forward, out from under the dock, where it had barely fit. When they had plenty of space on all sides, it began to pick up speed, headed for the horizon, while the fish switched on the stereo, filling the little cabin with the sounds of Ozzy Ozbourne. Suddenly, Minion opened the throttle all the way up and turned the wheel to take them south.