So this is how I imagine that Lucy's fascination with Gru started. Interestingly enough the idea itself came to me, when I was thinking about how the alternative universe would be like if Gru died as a child, and I've realized that we never explored Lucy pre-DM2. Especially giving that according to additional data, her parents were killed by a villain.

So here's what I think made her fan of Gru in the first place.

There's also a lousy attempt at psychology included.

Please, review.

Her type

„And what about you, Lucy?" Agent Meredith asked during their lunch break.

At first Lucy didn't realize someone was talking to her. She was too preoccupied by the report of her latest assignment to pay any attention to what her coworkers were talking about.

"Lucy?" Meredith asked again, this time a bit louder.

Agent Wilde stopped writing the report and moved her eyes on her… not exactly a friend (because they never particularly liked each other) but a colleague. The other girls and even Joe from accounting were now looking at Lucy as Meredith proceeded:

"What's your type?"

"My type of what?" Lucy asked, confused.

"Your type of a partner." This time it was agent Jillian who replied. "We were just talking about it. For example, I like tender boys who like poetry."

"And I like butch girls who are into metal." Andrea added.

"I'm more of a grunge girl guy myself." Joe butted in.

"So how about you?" Meredith asked again. "What kind of guys… or gals… you like?"

Lucy didn't respond right away. It wasn't like she didn't know what they were talking about. She heard similar conversations in elementary, middle and high school, sometimes even her classmates were asking her this question. And she was often giving one answer.

Just like now.

"Well, I like various types of guys. I like guys who are tender and sensitive, and I like guys who are into hard rock. I'm not very fond of jocks, to be honest, and I dated an academic snob once and it was… well, uncomfortable."

"Yes, but which guys you like the most?" Meredith asked, obviously not satisfied with Lucy's answer. "Give us something more specific."

"I don't see why should I. It's none of your business either way. Now excuse me," Lucy replied and went back to her report. "I have a job to do."

"Okay, okay, no need to be so defensive about it." Meredith backed away.

"It's not like we can't guess it." Andrea added. "Psychological profiling is my specialty, you know."

Lucy rolled her eyes. Andrea loved talking about her psychology major on Harvard and how she got it at the age of nineteen. That's why she became one of the top profilers in the AVL… and major annoyance in the office.

The lunch break was almost over, so everyone went back to their desks… but then director Ramsbottom came out of his office and summoned agent Harold Dennis, who quickly went to their boss, ready to receive orders.

"Come with me, agent Dennis. I need your report on Gru." Ramsbottom said and both men entered his office.

Lucy raised her eyebrow. Gru… She could swear that the name seemed familiar to her somehow. But she decided to not dwell on it for now. She had a report to finish.

As she looked at the document again and was going to write another sentence, she suddenly realized she didn't know how to proceed. All she could think about was the mysterious Gru. The first thought that crossed her mind was GRU as a Russian government agency, both from Soviet and modern era. But no – AVL didn't concern themselves with other agencies, unless they had something about supervillains. Besides Lucy was almost certain it was a person – the way both Harold Dennis and director Ramsbottom were talking about mysterious Gru, brought to mind an individual.

Against her better judgement, Lucy opened a new tab on her browser, entered the AVL database and written "gru" in the search engine. Luckily, she had high enough clearance to access the right files.

While working in Anti-Villain League, Lucy Wilde got to learn about various supervillains. There were those that just seemed silly to her, like the Nelsons. There were those she was uncomfortable with to say the least, like Balthazar Bratt. And there were those she absolutely despised with their lack of regard for human life, like Vicious Six or Scarlett Overkill. When she started to work in the agency, the fact that Lucy's own parents were killed by a supervillain made her think they're all the same bunch. She hated them with burning passion and maybe even some part of her wanted them all to die.

Over time, however, she realized that supervillains have different goals and methods of dealing with collateral damage. Like, there were villains who had rules about civilians not getting into crossfire (either for ethical or pragmatic reasons) or about not using any violence, seeing it as vulgar and totally beneath them. There were also supervillains who weren't into World Domination, revenge or pure sadism, and just wanted to steal things. And just like with D. B. Cooper, the achievements of those supervillains were genuinely impressive.

And well, that fateful day, instead of working on her report, Lucy Wilde discovered one Felonius Gru – a supervillain specializing in daring thefts.

His first ever crime was already something spectacular: he froze Scarlett and Hub Overkills and, just like that, took British crown jewels from Scarlett. All of it as merely a school child! Now, Scarlett took over the United Kingdom and needed the crown to become a queen, but young Gru didn't care about being a ruler – he came, he took the jewels and left on his fancy motorbike, followed by little yellow critters. Sometime after the crown jewels were found on the black market and were returned to the British, as if nothing happened.

According to the report written by director Silas Ramsbottom back when he was a field agent, young Gru was also involved in a fight between Wild Knuckles and the rest of Vicious Six during a Chinese New Year. More importantly – he was first tied up to the clock arms by Belle Bottom, who wanted to punish him for stealing from the Six. If later testimony of the kid was to be believed, he stole the Zodiac Stone to impress his idols, but once he saw how they treated Wild Knuckles (director Ramsbottom took a note in the report's appendix that Gru seemed to admire the older villain, and Wild Knuckles in turn was very protective of the boy), he turned on them. In fact, he stroke the final blow to the Six, by using the Stone to turn them into rats. So in a weird twist of fate, the wannabe bad guy became a hero.

From this point on, the file on Felonius Gru followed his bright career as a supervillain. Lucy read on how a little boy stealing crown jewels in England and fighting with Vicious Six in San Francisco, was growing up with straight As and school records of behavior that wasn't so much as disturbing as it was mischievous. Also from a pudgy child with bird-like physique, he grow into awkward teen and a tall adult. As many supervillains, he developed his own style, but this style was a little different than styles of his colleagues – while they were more colorful or flamboyant, sometimes even over the top, Gru was always wearing simple, black clothes with a striped scarf. His machines also had this Atomic Era feel to it, and even though they probably weren't very ecofriendly, Lucy couldn't help but appreciate the overall vintage aesthetic.

In all the footage she saw of him, Gru's movements were very dignified, at the same time he let himself sport a wide and sinister grin that many found creepy, but, strangely enough, Lucy didn't. In fact, the more she was watching him, the more interesting he seemed to be. He was a classy, old-school villain, who didn't seem like he was trying so hard. It was obvious that he did most of his crimes for a thrill of the heist and was actually never captured by AVL or any other agency.

But the most interesting part that caught Lucy's attention, was the way Felonius Gru was treating his Minions: when they were in danger, he was saving them, often calling them by their names. Most of the supervillains she knew about didn't care all that much about their workforce and yet Gru seemed to treat them like friends or family. He was a good boss.

And before Lucy noticed, she started to wonder what the official AVL reports weren't talking about. She started to wonder what kind of person Felonius Gru really was. How his lair looked like, what were his hobbies and dreams, what was his favorite shows, music or time of the day? He had to be a really fascinating person… and she could sleep in those broad arms for days…

But the door to director Ramsbottom's office opened and brought Lucy back to the reality. She quickly closed the tab with AVL database and went back to her report.

For the next two weeks Lucy was trying to learn as much about Felonius Gru as possible… that is, if she wasn't tasked with any missions. She was looking through the files in the database, she was making trips to the archives, she even asked few older agents, prone to talking about good ol' days about what was like fighting with Gru. The more she was learning about him, the more fascinating he was to her. He was classy, he was mysterious, he had a style and his crimes were always done with certain level of finesse the younger generation of villains simply lacked.

However, her fascination with Gru didn't go unnoticed. Andrea saw Lucy going through the villain's file for the umpth time in a past week, and decided to intervene.

"You know, I once made a psychological profile for this guy." She said, making Lucy close the file abruptly.

But then agent Wilde looked at her colleague with interest.

"Yeah, and what did you come up with?"

"Well, first of all," Andrea began. "he seems to be compensating for something."

"Haha, very funny." Lucy replied sarcastically.

Andrea only raised her eyebrows at Lucy's reaction and went on:

"What I wanted to say is that he's a son of a single mother. And according to the reports of school psychologists, a very emotionally distant mother who never shown pride in any of his academic achievements. Therefore many of his actions can be linked to the desire to impress her. Another thing: he grew without a father so he found a father figure in Wild Knuckles who he idolized deeply. Wild Knuckles himself specialized in high profile thefts, so he probably saw Gru as his heir. They even pulled a lot of heists together as Gru was getting older."

"Yes, I've read his files. I came back to the same conclusions." Lucy retorted.

"Interestingly enough, he was an anti-social kid, not very liked by his peers. I've seen his school pictures and let me tell ya: I can understand why."

"I don't know, he was kinda cute." Lucy smiled at the memory of little Gru.

"In a Pugsley Addams way, sure." Andrea replied and then added: "But the attitude of others was probably also a good old-fashioned xenophobia."

"Xenophobia?" Agent Wilde asked.

"Haven't you noticed that he has a really thick Eastern European accent? And it was the sixties: Cold War, Red Scare, you know, all those things… The other kids were making fun of him at best and heavy bullying him at worst. The othering of his peers and society as a whole, and the influence of his father figure, probably pushed him into becoming a supervillain."

There was a moment of silence when Lucy thought about what she just heard. Suddenly she felt an immense sorrow. Poor, poor Gru…

"He has everything, huh?" Andrea abruptly broke the silence. Her voice was soft, her lips formed into small, sad smile. "He's a villain breaking rules, so he speaks to your primal instincts… but he has also tragic backstory, so you feel sorry for him. I finally know what's your type: a bad boy with soft center."

"But at least he just settles for heists." Lucy cut her in. "He never kills anybody. He just steals things and leaves. He's not like Scarlett Overkill or Vicious Six."

"He's still a supervillain. Not all bad boys have a soft center, Lucy. Keep that in mind."

Lucy wanted to protest, but deep down, she knew that Andrea had a point. Felonius Gru was still a thief and a prominent member of a villain community. And she was an agent of Anti-Villain League. She shouldn't forget that villains were the bad guys.

She decided that from now on she will keep her fangirling in check.

Few years later something happened. Something that changed almost everything.

First Gru adopted three girls, which seemed like an odd thing for him to do. Soon after that he managed to shrink the Moon and steal it… but then he gave it up to the other villain, Vector. The lack of Moon on the sky caused some understandable commotion and natural anomalies.

However, before AVL intervened, it looked like Gru and his employees did the intervening themselves. The agents soon realized that Vector was holding the older villain's daughters hostage and that's why Gru gave up the Moon. Then, when Vector didn't keep his end of the bargain, Gru came into his hideout, rescued the girls and even put the Moon back on the sky. Everything went back to normal… well, maybe except the fact that the Earth's natural satellite was a bit closer than it should be. But that was something that AVL fixed during next couple of hours.

Lucy's fascination with Gru reignited with a new force. The Moon theft itself was a no small fit – it was one of the greatest heists (if not the greatest heist) in recent history (and it happened sometime after there were tales that Gru is getting old and he won't perform anything impressive anymore… way to prove everybody wrong). But the more interesting thing about the whole debacle was what happened later.

Few days after stealing the Moon, a rumor spread throughout villain community and beyond – a rumor that legendary Felonius Gru is retiring from supervillainy and from now on will be focusing on running a legitimate business. Director Ramsbottom thought it was just a rouse for something, but Lucy knew what was going on: a villain became a father.

There were initiatives to arrest him right there, but for some reason Ramsbottom decided against that. Maybe he wanted to see if the former villain will try to pull something off, or maybe deep down he wanted to believe in this change of heart (Lucy certainly hoped so). Nevertheless, the AVL was observing Gru household and for the next couple of months it seemed like the old villain was dead-set on manufacturing jams and jellies (they tasted terribly but there was no poison in them, so here's that).

And when someone stole dangerous chemicals from top secret research laboratory on Arctic Circle, one of the agents proposed an idea that they could use the knowledge of other villain to catch the thief; a knowledge of a villain that was once a master thief himself. And it just so happened that they had a right person under observation. It took Lucy a lot of effort to convince Ramsbottom to do it, but he finally agreed to it.

"And so that's our plan A." The director said, after explaining it to the agents. "Now, who wants to partner with Felonius Gru and keep an eye on him?"

There was a moment of dead silence, as nobody seemed to be even slightly interested in working with an ex-villain, especially with a long list of felonies and crimes. But all of a sudden someone raised their slender hand. Everybody turned to stare at Lucy with shock, she could feel the piercing gazes of Andrea and Meredith, but she didn't care.

She wasn't going to miss this opportunity to finally meet him in person.