No One Is Coming

by joanhello

The year is 1924. Megamind, criminal mastermind of the Prohibition era and secretly wealthy inventor, plans to overthrow the Scotts, hereditary rulers of Metro City. For that purpose, he kidnaps Roxanne Ritchi, whom the Scotts' son, hero of the city, depends on for intelligence. When she tells him the hero isn't coming, how is he going to react?

Summary: The year is 1924. Megamind, criminal mastermind of the Prohibition era and secretly wealthy inventor, plans to overthrow the Scotts, hereditary rulers of Metro City. For that purpose, he kidnaps Roxanne Ritchi, whom the Scotts' son, hero of the city, depends on for intelligence. When she tells him the hero isn't coming, how is he going to react?

Beginning notes: It started with a prompt from writing-prompt-s on Tumblr:

"You are a villain who kidnapped the smart guy on your nemesis team, they tell you that nobody will come for them and that the hero doesn't care. You didn't believe them at first but it been a month and nobody shows up and after once again hearing them cry at night you had enough."

I kept trying to fit Megamind, Roxanne, and Metro Man into this one, but it didn't quite go. Roxanne is a public figure. When she disappears, people will notice. Metro Man will have to rescue her just out of embarrassment.

So I set it in 1924. Roxanne is a print reporter and therefore her face is not famous. Better still, she's a cub reporter, so even her name isn't well known yet.

Then I decided that, as long as I was going AU, I might as well go all out with the alternate history. So in this story the American Revolution never happened. The faction in power in London in the 1770s, which wanted to imposed a hereditary aristocracy on Britain's New World colonies, actually did. Lord and Lady Scott, Metro Man's adoptive parents, are members of that aristocracy. They don't own any corporations. Their wealth arises from their hereditary right of taxation. All of British North America is one country, known as America, with a weak federal government seated at Philadelphia that still owes nominal allegiance to the British royal family. The legislature is modeled on England's Parliament, with a House of Lords, of which Lord Scott is a member.

Because of the importance of superpowered heroes, cities are much more important and powerful than counties/states/provinces/departements or countries, more like the Classical Greek city-states. Each city prints its own money. Most people identify more with their city than with any greater political affiliation. In the Old World, the dialect of each city is regarded as its own language, so the citizens of Genoa, Italy, for instance, speak Genoese, only using official Italian for dealing with outsiders or larger units of government.

It's assumed that young people with significant powers who aren't born into the aristocracy will end up there one way or another. There's a tradition of elite families adopting them, both to concentrate any hereditary powers in their own line and to reduce the likelihood that they will become villains/revolutionaries.

As for the rest of the prompt, there's no way Megamind would wait a month, or even a full 24 hours.

###

Whatever else Megamind thought of the aristocracy in general and the current Lord Scott in particular, he had to admit that the man had a talent for finding talent and putting it to use.

First, His Lordship had chosen to follow the tradition of adopting a powerful young person and designating that person as his heir. Of course, the adoption usually took place when the young person was an adolescent, but Wayne's gifts were already so obvious in his infancy that the family's excuse for never revealing his origin – that he was too much for a common family to handle but the family was ashamed of having to give him up and so had requested that the truth be hidden forever – was entirely believable to everyone except Megamind and Minion, who had unique knowledge.

When Lord Scott had been Defender, it was as a general rather than a hero. Without any powers himself, he had armed and led the city's militia and had come to understand the vital importance of intelligence. He had maintained an espionage network which was still in operation, but he knew that Wayne, working as a hero, would need a different sort of intelligence, more focused on evildoers within the city. It was through the newspapers controlled by the family that he had found the trio of exceptional commoners who formed the hero's team. The first was Hal Steward, employed as a photographer with the Metro City Sentinel but also very gifted when it came to the latest in hidden cameras. The second was Roxanne Ritchi, a fearless and brilliant cub reporter with a particular talent for deductive reasoning. Because they were both, like the hero, young people not long out of school, His Lordship had selected a senior editor with military officer experience, Frank Bonin, as the adult supervision.

The first Megamind learned of this team was when Metro Man apprehended The Conductor in the very act of shaking down a retired banker and his wife. The Conductor was a human with a very slight degree of power over electricity who pretended to have much greater power. His usual modus operandi was to approach those among the second rank of the city, not the true elite who were too dangerous to prey on but the upper middle, who lived in the big houses in Commerce Heights. He would drop in unexpectedly, after dark, wearing a tuxedo and holding what looked like an orchestra conductor's baton but was actually an extremely thin electric shock prod without a battery, which allowed him to use his power to give people painful shocks without putting his hands directly on them. In dim light he could also make tiny lightning dance along the rod. (Megamind had built this little prop for him in exchange for a cut of every take.) He would threaten to cause lightning to strike the house and demand protection money. It was the sort of thing that the police had ignored as long as it didn't happen too often, but then Roxanne Ritchi had interviewed several of his victims, written a series of reports on his predations that made the public aware of him, and then somehow one evening Metro Man was there to pinch him. There was a thrilling moment when the hero took the prod away only to have it explode with a bright flash and quite a lot of smoke. (This was another feature Megamind had built in. The prod had a shut-down sequence that The Conductor had to follow when he let go of it. If it left his hand without the sequence being followed, the built in flashbang-smoke bomb combination would automatically detonate.) If he'd been copped by humans, this would have given him a good chance to lamm off, but Metro Man held onto him easily. Roxanne and Hal just happened to be present at police headquarters when the hero brought him in and got their paper a nice scoop. It was so neat and convenient that the degree of collaboration was obvious. By putting the two young newshawks under brainbot surveillance, he was soon able to pinpoint and bug the room in the Metro City Sentinel editorial offices where the four usually met. (Occasionally they met in one of the guest parlors at Scott Manor, but those he already had bugged.) Over the course of the next several months of listening in, it became clear to him that the real brains of the operation was Miss Ritchi. It also became clear that she was learning more and more about Megamind, beginning to notice him, bringing him to the attention of the hero and the press.

It was only a matter of time before they targeted him. Not that he hadn't spent time in the cooler occasionally, but she might very well figure out his plan, not merely to make himself Master of All Villainy, but from there to overthrow the Scotts and become Overlord of all Metrocity. And that was a plan that must not become known before it could be put into effect.

Therefore he decided to use the strategy so ably presented by Edgar Allen Poe in "The Purloined Letter" and present himself as an incompetent villain, showy and frightening but no match for the hero. He set up a temporary base of operation in a warehouse he secretly owned in a mostly derelict and unoccupied part of the city, sending out brainbots to find and remove its few occupants. There he established a decoy base with an overhead web of steel cables in the center of which waited the Spider Bot, which he had designed with breakaway legs and an easily shattered exterior housing to make it easily "destroyed" in a way that left it easily repairable. (He had also programmed it to play dead after a single blow.) There were a couple of laser cannons and a flamethrower. In the center of it all was a cage for his hostage, made of cheap iron bars.

He sent Minion out to snatch Miss Ritchi on her way home from work while he wrote the ransom note to the hero, letting him know that he had her and demanding… hmm. What should he demand? Just go all the way and demand the city? No. Best to start small. Demand the release of The Conductor. It would show the criminal underworld that he made an effort to stand by his underlings.

When Minion came in with her unconscious over his shoulder, her fashionable little cloche hat in his other hand and her rather unfashionably large purse dangling from its shoulder strap, the first flaw in the plan became evident. There was no furniture in the cage to put her on, and the thought of laying her on the floor in her office clothes just seemed horribly undignified. He finally got some rope and created another web inside the cage, suspending her with her purse in the center of it. The web included a slight recline so that her head was supported. Minion removed the bag and pushed the hat onto her bob while Megamind summoned one of the stealthier brainbots, with a dull, mottled grey-brown carapace, and sent it off with the ransom note.

A few minutes later she woke up and looked around her. She seemed anxious, apprehensive, but not overcome with terror, which was disappointing.

"Miss Ritchie," he intoned as he turned his great black swivel chair toward her. "At last we meet."

"Megamind," she said. Obviously recognized him from news photos. "Why?"

"For a prisoner exchange. Lord Scott frees The Conductor and I free you."

"He won't do it."

"Oh? You think he'll send his flyboy son to rescue you? Well, I am ready for him. Look up, Miss Ritchi." He made a dramatic gesture at the ceiling. Spider Bot, recognizing its cue, moved a little in a menacing way. She caught her breath with what he hoped was fear but then realized from her expression was excitement. He was unable to suppress a grin at having impressed her.

"Is that a giant mechanical spider that really moves?"

"It doesn't just move. It fights, as you shall see when Wayne arrives." At the mention of the city's hero, her face fell.

"He isn't coming. Lord Scott made that clear the day he recruited me. I'm expendable."

"What?" It was the one thing he hadn't planned on. "Why would the city's hero would be so… unchivalrous?"

When she spoke again, it was in Genoese. "This is why. My father changed the spelling of our name so we could blend in, but Lady Scott investigated my background and found out the truth. The Scotts don't want me publicly associated with them, and especially not with their son. They'll let me die. They might even have someone make sure that I die."

"I can't believe it," he replied, also in Genoese. "Even if Wayne has to do it in secret, deceiving his family, I can't believe he'll just leave you in my hands." He switched back to English. "He'll have the letter by now. We wait."

Twenty minutes of conversation about the mechanical spider later, the brainbot he'd sent with the ransom note flew in. Roxanne gasped and stared.

"So it's not a rumor. Those little flying mechanical things are real and… did you invent them?"

He nodded. "I call them brainbots." He hummed a few notes too high pitched for human ears that told the brainbots he was addressing them. Roxanne, of course, didn't notice it. "Come to Daddy." It flew to his hand, then settled onto his lap, where he petted it as the conversation continued.

"Brain… bots?"

"Yes. Bots as in robots. You are familiar with the term 'robot', are you not? Your paper printed a review of the play that introduced it."

"R. U. R. Yeah, I wished I could have gone to Chicago to see it. But isn't a robot supposed to be shaped like a human?"

"The playwright made his robots humanoid for dramatic purposes, but there's no reason for a robot's form to follow anything but function. The purpose of a brainbot is to be an extension of my brain, to observe, to transport, and to either pass unnoticed, like this one, or to impress. Like my giant spider, which by the way I call Spiderbot, they have has lenses for seeing, microphones for hearing, and enough neural function to navigate in three dimensions and to obey simple commands, plus formidable jaws to defend themselves. Most of them also have claws that can grasp and carry." He hummed the brainbot signal again. "Rise to my eye level for a moment, snap your jaws and flex your claws." The brainbot obeyed, then settled back into his lap. "I realized that if I made them small, I could give them the power of almost silent flight, which would greatly expand their capabilities. This one is just back from a task I set it when Minion brought you in: to take the ransom note I wrote about you to a member of the staff of Scott Mansion with instructions to give it to the hero, and then to film the hero's reaction. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch the film." He signaled it again. "Go plug into the film viewer," he commanded. The brainbot flew over to his desk, settled into the docking bay behind the viewer, and attached itself.

"Film viewer? Is that something else you invented?"

"No, no. These are commonly used by filmmakers to watch short lengths of film without a projector or a screen." He put his eyes to the ports and watched the recording of the brainbot handing the note to one of the plants he had inside Scott Mansion, then the plant (an under-butler) taking the note to Wayne, saying that it had just come by courier. Wayne read the note, frowned, and flew off to find Lord Scott. Who was out shooting grouse in the hunting park, dammit! It was the one area he was unable to keep bugged. It was just too big, and there were species of wildlife that liked to collect his wireless microphones. If he left them shiny, the corvids got them. If he darkened them for camouflage, squirrels would mistake them for nuts and bury them. It was really unfair. "Looks like he definitely got the note and read it. So he should be here shortly."

He wasn't.

Megamind found himself bringing out some of his more impressive creations, such as the brainbots with plasma ball domes, and explaining a few things about how they functioned. It was an enjoyable interlude.

At dinner time, Minion brought her a sandwich. He started out to free one of her arms so she could eat it, but when she asked to wash her hands, he understood the euphemism and passed the request on to his boss. They ended up taking the rope bindings down entirely. Minion escorted her to the bathroom (which she examined closely and was frustrated to see no way of escape from) and then back to the cage, where instead of the rope there was now a plain wooden chair. She ate her sandwich, then got out her reporter's notebook and pencil and spent the evening writing up her experience. The first time she needed to sharpen the pencil with her pen knife, she asked for a wastebasket, and Megamind had one of the pretty brainbots with the plasma domes bring one and set it just outside the cage so she could put her hands through the bars to use it.

As her usual bedtime arrived, she tried to make herself comfortable in the chair. Megamind, who usually slept in his chair, which had upholstery and wings for that very purpose, didn't have bedding on hand, but he just couldn't bear to see her like that. He ordered Minion to go to Evil Lair and bring her his raccoon coat, which was cut wide so that he could wear multiple layers under it. Minion also brought some vanishing cream and a washcloth so she could remove her make-up for the night, and a coffee urn with supplies. The two villains rewove the web into a kind of hammock slung from the tops of the bars, with the coat laid in the middle of it. By rolling the collar down a little to form a pillow, she was able to curl up in it and get a decent night's sleep. Minion made a batch of coffee before standing against the wall, squeezing himself into an underwater frame decorated like a castle in a children's book, and sinking out of sight. Megamind remained awake, drinking coffee, expecting the hero at any moment. After a little while he began to review footage from the various hidden cameras he had in Scott Mansion, police headquarters, and other facilities of interest. He noticed that she wept a bit in the night. It made him angry at the hero, who should have come for her by now.

At dawn, he was still waiting.

Minion emerged from the depths of his mechanical gorilla body the same way he'd gone down. He cleaned the percolator and started fresh coffee. He walked her to the bathroom again, where she reapplied her make-up, then asked her how she liked her coffee and whether she wanted anything from the bake shop. She asked for cornutos and both the Sentinel and the Genoese language paper. He brought her first cup before he went out. He only said three words to Megamind. "Your usual, Sir?" and received a nod in reply. Then she was alone with the blue villain, both of them sipping their coffee.

"I told you he wasn't coming," she said.

"Let's not jump to conclusions," he replied, still staring off into the middle distance. "He might not believe I've got you until you fail to turn up for work." He was much calmer than yesterday, less energetic. Not quite all there.

Roxanne had a million questions. It took her a moment to choose one. "Does your minion have a name?" He blinked and then focused on her.

"Not that humans can pronounce. You must understand, Miss Ritchi, that there are a number of people in the world who would very much like to keep someone like him confined in a tank, on display, as a unique specimen. Therefore he wishes to be obscure, to be known only as my Minion, and to trust in me to ensure his ongoing freedom."

"That's understandable. So what should I call him?"

"You may call him Minion. Everyone does. It's what he prefers."

"I'll remember that."

He looked at her appraisingly for a moment. "You're not afraid of him."

"Well, I can tell he's a real bruno. I wouldn't want to get on his bad side, but he doesn't seem like he really wants to hurt people, or like he's not careful with his strength."

"But most humans are put off by his personal appearance."

"My mama taught me not to judge a book by its cover. He's not mean. That's what counts."

"Remarkable." He took a sip of coffee. "Does that mean you aren't at all afraid of the city's hero?"

She gave a silent 'ha'. "Wayne's a softie, and he's a chump where his father's concerned. His Lordship, now, that's a high hat I'm scared of. When he told me I was expendable, I could tell that he'd croak me himself if it gained him some kind of advantage."

"That is entirely consistent with everything I've heard about the man." Megamind began thinking about how he might fake His Lordship's voice in a phone call to trick the hero into doing his bidding.

"About Minion," Roxanne continued, "if I can ask-"

"You can ask anything you like but I don't promise an answer. Especially if it's a question about how I do, well, anything that humans can't do. That kind of answer could give away a weakness."

"Yeah, I understand. I'm trying to steer away from those questions even though, oh, I want to know everything!" She sighed. "But this just seems like it might be too personal. Is there a whole species of fish like him or is he one of a kind?"

"Ah. You've lived a sheltered life, so you haven't heard our story, which is common knowledge among the criminal element. Minion, when he was hatched, was a member of an intelligent aquatic species, not a true fish as he has no gills, widespread on our home planet. Shortly thereafter, I was born into an equally widespread humanoid species. And shortly after that, we were sent away together in a very small space ship, the only sort our parents could slap together out of whatever parts were handy, because they had only a very short time before our star and all its planets were destroyed. The two of us are, so far as we know, the only individuals of our respective species who still live."

"Destroyed? That's terrible! What could destroy a whole solar system?"

"No term exists yet in English because your physics has almost, but not quite, advanced to the point of understanding that such things are possible. It's implicit in Einstein's general theory of relativity, but no human has publicly carried that theory to its logical conclusions. Simply put, when a very large star, at least twice the mass of your Sun, burns up the last of its fuel and collapses, it can form a heavenly body so massive that not even light can escape its gravitational field. I intend to suggest the term 'black hole' as a direct translation of my people's name for the phenomenon. There is one at the center of each galaxy, with everything else in the galaxy orbiting around it. But there are also rogues that wander, sucking in and destroying everything they encounter. For obvious reasons they are impossible to observe directly. They can only be detected by their effects. One of them found us."

Roxanne drew in a long breath. "I need to think about this," she said, and sat for a moment with her hand over her mouth while he finished his coffee and got himself another cup. Finally, she finished hers in one long chug and looked up at him. "God. That is the most horrible thing I have ever heard. I am so, so sorry for your loss."

"It is so rare," he replied, "for a human to understand."

They gazed into each other's eyes for a long moment. Then they heard the steel door bang in the next room as the brainbots opened it for the car.

Minion brought donuts, cornutos, and her newspapers on his first trip. On his second, he brought a wooden milk crate containing a device with a loudspeaker on one side and reels of tape.

"Ooh. Are we going to see a movie?" she asked, although she could see that the reels were much smaller than the reels used for movies.

"This is for sound only," he said as he set up the device. "I will answer questions about it because it is about to be released to the public. I call it a tape recorder although it plays sound, like a phonograph, as well as recording."

"The tape part I can see. It looks just like dressmaker's bias tape except it's smooth and shiny. But how does it record sound?"

"The tape is a simple plastic film with particles of iron oxide attached to one side with a flexible glue…" He explained the technical process of making the tape and using it to record and play back sound while they ate their breakfast and Minion brought more equipment and set things up. Then he said he had to get to work listening to it, so she settled down to read her papers.

She didn't get very far before she noticed what was coming out of the speaker of Megamind's tape recorder. It was a conversation between the chief of police and an unfamiliar man whom the chief addressed as "Carl." She didn't have enough background to understand what they were talking about, but she quickly realized that this was an illegal recording from either a telephone wiretap or a hidden microphone. That conversation was followed by several others, all between the chief and one other person, so this was very likely a wiretap on his phone. She got out her notebook and pencil again and began taking notes.

In the middle of a conversation between the chief and his wife, a light flashed on one of the other boxes. Megamind flipped a few switches and suddenly they were listening to her boss' voice.

"Metro Man, this is Frank Bonin. Roxanne Ritchi didn't show up for work today, which isn't like her. I sent the office boy down to her boarding house and the landlady said she didn't come home last night. I'm worried about her."

"Well, that's inconvenient. Thoughtless of her."

Megamind hissed through Frank's response. "He's read the ransom note. I know he has."

"She probably met somebody," the hero continued. "You know how these Italian girls are."

Roxanne gasped. "You bastard!" she all but shouted. Then she put her head down and held the bridge of her nose with her finger and thumb. As Frank acquiesced and he and Wayne said their polite goodbyes, she shuddered a bit. Megamind realized that she was trying not to cry. He was surprised at how much the sight disturbed him.

"Miss Ritchi, I –" he began and then broke off, having no idea what to say.

Minion stepped up to the bars and reached through, a clean white handkerchief held in his steel fingertips. She smiled a terrible, painful smile of thanks at him as she took it, then broke down in tears as she raised it to her face.

Megamind stepped up to Minion's side, opened a compartment in it, and pulled out the key to the cage. Then he went around to the far side, where the lock was. One of the short walls of the rectangular cage was the door, so when he opened it, the whole side swung away. He was thinking that, if he wanted the Scotts to underestimate him, it wouldn't be a bad thing to simply release his hostage when his attempt to use her failed. He also couldn't bear to imprison her like this any longer.

"You are free to go," he said.

She only wept harder.

Then, with a visible act of will, she got control of herself enough to look at him and speak in a rough, tear-soaked voice. "You know I'm ruined, right?"

For one irrational moment, he thought she was referring to the state of her make-up, which was now badly smeared. It seemed as if half of it was on the handkerchief. Then he remembered the strict rules that traditional Italian society imposed on its women. Even a single night unaccounted for would end her membership in respectable society. Her family would shun her and she would probably be evicted from her boarding house. (Being fired from her job was a given now that Bonin could see that she'd fallen out of favor with the Scotts.) And this was not the sort of misbehavior that she could apologize for and expect to be forgiven. This was permanent. She saw his eyes widen with the realization.

Then his face calmed as his great brain engaged with the issue.

"One thing I have observed about these human notions of feminine honor is that they are not so rigid as they are made out to be. Enough worldly success, especially in a prestigious way, plus the passage of a necessary number of years, can restore acceptance to a woman who had previously lost it. I feel that I should atone for my failure to accurately judge the character of my opponent. Therefore, Miss Ritchi, I am prepared to offer you an opportunity."

"Gonna introduce me to some eligible rich guy?"

"No, no. That is exactly not the sort of success that can restore acceptance. What I propose instead is that you become the first human member of my inner circle. When I rise to power, so shall you. Furthermore, there will be no, shall we say, carnal expectations. You shall remain free to conduct your love life, or to refrain from any sort of love life, as you see fit. You can spend your career working toward the revange which the Scotts so richly deserve for throwing you aside. What do you say?"

By this time she had calmed her breathing. "That's… very tempting. Give me some time to think it over?"

"Of course. There's no hurry. In the meantime, since there's no possibility of your going back to your old life, I offer you this building as your personal residence. It isn't zoned for it, but I have arrangements with nearly all the building inspectors. No one will interfere with you."

"Um… Can it have furniture?"

"It can have furniture within the hour. Your key, please."

"What?"

"I'm going to send brainbots to fetch your things from your boarding house. If they don't have your key, they will have to break in. It wouldn't be very nice for your landlady."

Roxanne mulled over her options for a moment and saw a way that this could be turned to her advantage. "You should write her a note. Tell her you've got me and why. She'll go to Lord Scott the next time he holds open court."

"You are absolutely right, Miss Ritchi." He all but dashed out of the cage and sat down at his desk. Roxanne wandered out after him. He pulled out paper and a fountain pen and wrote out the note. He addressed the envelope from memory while she got the key off her keyring. When he inserted the letter, he tucked in a C note that looked fresh from the mint. Roxanne's eyes bulged a little. It was the first time she'd ever seen a man just casually pull a hundred metroneros out of his wallet. (The Scotts could have done that kind of thing, of course, but it was regarded as crass. They had staff to handle the money.) Then he whistled and a swarm of brainbots gathered around. He selected one by pointing and saying "You," gave it the letter and ordered it delivered to Mrs. Bianco "personally" at the address of the boarding house. "Key," he ordered, holding out his hand for it without looking at her. She put it in the palm of his glove. "You," he said again, pointing to another one. He gave it the key and ordered it to fly to the boarding house, unlock and open the door to her room, and give the key to Mrs. Bianco. The rest of them were ordered to go to the boarding house, bring everything from her room, and set it "over there" (pointing to a bare area near the bathroom) just as they'd found it.

If "everything" included the furniture and linens, that explained the money, although it was still a lot. With a C note, Mrs. Bianco could replace it all two or three times over.

After the flock took off, he led her over to the area where he'd told the brainbots to put her things and began asking about her preferences regarding her living space and her office. During their discussion, Minion came, pushing a rolling garment rack with several items already hanging on it including the raccoon coat. Then he began bringing folding room screens, a random assortment ranging from plain thin sheets of pale wood in steel frames to silk framed in Chinese lacquer to a couple with arched tops that looked like antiques from the Victorian age. He stood them against a nearby wall. In another few minutes, the brainbots began to return. They did bring the furniture and linens. They set everything down just as it had been at Mrs. Bianco's, hanging her clothes on the clothes rack. Minion immediately began to set up the screens around it all to create something like a private room while Megamind praised the brainbots extravagantly, like dogs that had done a clever trick. Roxanne marveled at the amount of affection she felt for her familiar things, probably because she hadn't been sure she would ever see them again. Her portable typewriter, the most expensive thing she owned, seemed like a long-lost friend.

She got it out of its case and set it up on her desk. She knew she should write to her family, telling them what had happened to her, but instead she found herself just sitting and wondering at the turn her life had taken. Megamind seemed to think that kidnapping was as good as recruitment and that she would happily join in his plot to take over the city.

With the clanking sounds of the cage being taken apart in the background, she started on the letters to those few members of her family that she hoped might not completely reject her. She typed in Genoese on the English keyboard, then wrote in the diacritical marks by hand. The first letter was to her uncle who had given her the typewriter and had always encouraged her writing. The second was to her parents. Maybe that wasn't the correct order in terms of a girl's proper loyalties, but nobody would ever know, and the words had flowed more easily to Barba Federico than to Mama and Papa. The last one was to her oldest brother, the only other one of her siblings who had move out of their parents' house, and his wife, whom she didn't know all that well but had no reason to distrust.

While she was tucking the last one into its envelope, Minion stuck his head in. His head? The water tank in the head position of his gorilla-styled mechanical body. It was a little sideways but the fish himself was in a normal vertical position.

"I'm getting lunch from the kosher deli, Miss Ritchi. What would you like?"

She told him her order and asked him to mail the letters for her. He agreed and waited for her to stamp and address the envelopes. He reminded her that she might want to repair her make-up.

###

"So, if I become a member of your inner circle, what kinds of things will you want me to do?" she asked Megamind. They were seated opposite each other at a card table set out where the cage had been, eating their deli lunch. Minion was crouched at a third side of the table, the awkward-looking position apparently not at all uncomfortable for his mechanical body, dropping little chunks of lox through the open hatch on top of his tank with chopsticks and gulping them whole.

"I was thinking of starting an opposition newspaper. It's a normal part of the process when plotting to overthrow a city's overlord, right? And if you're at the head of it, people will just assume that you're motivated by a personal grudge, so they won't connect it with me."

"You can just do that?"

"Miss Ritchi, the tape recorder is just the latest in a long line of inventions that I have placed on the market through fronts and shell companies and so forth. They have brought in a very great deal of money. I am the second-wealthiest individual in the city, behind only Lord Scott, and with this new one I expect to surpass him. So, yes, I can simply start a newspaper. I intend to call it the Metro City Picayune."

"Picayune as in small time, humble, not putting its head up?"

"Picayune as in five cents. The intended audience is the common people, the workers and small business people. We will emphasize that by only charging half of what the Sentinel costs. Other than that, I'll give you complete control. Content, layout, the quantity of our first print run, everything."

Roxanne caught her breath. That had been a childhood dream of hers. She still had the school notebook with the layout she imagined for the first few pages, with the names of famous real reporters and editors on the masthead under her own, drawn in pencil. The Metro City Star, she had named it. Megamind's offer seemed too good to be true, and that made her suspicious.

"Why," she asked, "are you trusting me this much so soon after you met me?"

"This may be our first face-to-face meeting, Miss Ritchi, but I have researched you thoroughly. You will be valuable wherever you go. I expect that the hero will begin to miss you very soon."

"Thank you." She took another bite, chewed and swallowed. "And another thing. I won't print lies no matter how much they advance your cause. I won't even print things that might be lies, not as news. Journalistic integrity is important to me."

"As it should be. I do not in any way expect you to produce base propaganda. You shouldn't need to, not with all the accurate dirt I've got on, well, pretty much anyone who is anyone."

"And nothing that will harm the city."

"Of course not. I intend that, when I take it over, it will be intact."

"I won't vamp anybody, not to get stories, not to help you blackmail them, not for any reason."

"Agreed. I have professional harlots for that. On the other hand, may I insert you into a situation for espionage purposes, for instance in the guise of a waitress or a maid?"

"Sure." She shifted to the heavily accented English of certain older relatives who worked, or had worked, as waitresses and maids. "I can even put on an accent if you like."

"Very good. So you'll do it?"

"I haven't asked all my questions yet."

He nodded for her to go ahead.

"I want to use Moro Brothers as the printer." This was the company that printed the Genoese-language newspaper. "They're going to have questions. How much of the truth can I tell them?"

"About the kidnapping and the Scotts' refusal to rescue you, you can tell the entire truth. About the fact that I am your backer, no. Just say that you have found a backer who is as resentful as you are about their failure to do their duty. There are certainly plenty of people who feel that way." She nodded.

"I want subscriptions to at least two wire services, one American and one foreign, and a stock ticker."

"Agreed."

"I want a staff of six full time reporters, plus maybe a dozen stringers. And a layout man and a copy boy so I don't have to spend all my time in the office."

"Agreed. Do you want your editorial offices to be here or in a separate building?"

"Um. Well… it might not be a bad idea to live where I work, just so nobody knows that."

"I understand. It can be dangerous for a woman to live alone at a known address. We should set you up with a post office box so you don't have to tell anyone where you live. One other thing." He drew the ornate, bizarrely-shaped pistol he wore at his hip. "I want to demonstrate a little bit of technology that is to remain strictly secret." He aimed at their remaining sandwiches, which Minion had insisted on serving on a platter, and pulled the trigger. A bolt of blue light shot from the barrel to the food and suddenly there was nothing there except a little glowing blue cube. Roxanne gave a little gasp.

"It's true," she said.

"Yes, I know that I haven't been able to keep it completely secret, but it must remain no more than rumor in the respectable parts of society. Now, to reverse the process, all that is needed..." He picked up his glass. "... is water." He poured a little onto the cube. It became a platter of sandwiches again. "This is why I call the process dehydration. It works on objects and piles of objects up to the size of a small car, so long as they are not Wayne Scott. Living things are restored to their prior state. Less observant living things will not, at first, know anything has happened. I once dehydrated a talkative man when he was in mid-sentence. When rehydrated, he carried on speaking as though nothing had happened. Only after he finished did he noticed that he was in a puddle on the other side of town. I intend to make you a pistol that dehydrates, but in a style much more like that of an ordinary pistol, and small enough that you can carry it in your purse."

"Before you do that, dehydrate me." She put her food down.

"What?"

"Before I use it on anybody, I need to know what it does, from experience. Dehydrate me and move me a little ways away and then rehydrate me."

Impressed with her fearlessness, he did as she requested. She and the chair she was sitting in became one cube. He got up, holstering the gun, picked up his glass in one hand and the cube in the other, took a few steps toward his desk, then put the cube on the floor and restored her with the water.

"Wow. Okay." She rose as she spoke, turned, and picked up her chair just as he was reaching for it. He considered insisting on carrying it for her but decided that she, being the New Woman sort, would most likely prefer to do it herself. The chair was a folding chair and very light. "That was, just like you said, really smooth, but I think I have an upset stomach."

"That can happen if you've just eaten. It will fade in under a minute." They returned to the table. "As I was saying, I will also provide you with a conventional pistol that looks almost exactly like your dehydration gun, with a case for the two of them. You should go to a range once a week for target practice with the conventional pistol, and let it be known that you do. Most wrong gees are cowards. They will not trouble a woman who has a reputation for being able to take care of herself."

"Can it be the police range? Bumping gums with the bulls is a great way to pick up leads."

"Of course. Not every bull is for sale, believe it or not, but some that won't provide information for money will thoughtlessly provide it for free to a pretty woman. Any other questions?"

"I want Paulie Massey to be my first hire. He's a stringer who covers two beats, transportation and racing. His whole family works on the railroads but he came back from the war with a bum leg and now he can't keep his balance on a moving train. Thing is, he's good, like really good, but Frank won't hire a Negro full time."

"Yes! Paulie also does a bit of work for me from time to time. An excellent man, and his presence will also serve to repel the sorts of individuals we don't want."

"No racialists?"

"It's not just that racialism interferes with people's ability to see what's in front of them and is therefore a liability in a reporter. It's also that people who look down on Negroes are very likely to look up to the aristocracy. They are predisposed to favor the Scotts, so they are the last sort of individuals we want on our staff."

"Hmm. Good point. And having me as the editor will repel men who think women are stupid and anybody who thinks Latins are too passionate and volatile for real responsibility."

"For that last consideration you might want to consider hiring someone who conforms to the stereotype a little more closely. You pass for an Anglo-Saxon very well. As you said, Lady Scott had to investigate you to find out your real origins."

"Thank you. I try."

"So who else do you want to poach from your former employer? Hal Schteward?"

She made a face.

"No? He's quite talented."

"He's also stuck on me. And it's very unrequited."

"Oh. I see how that would be awkward, having one of your underlings carrying a torch for you. Anyone else?"

"No. I don't want to start a war with Frank. We're still going to be colleagues, in a way, and I don't want to start right out by making an enemy out of him. Now, do you have anyone in mind for staff?"

"Well… what if Minion or I were to submit a piece or two?" Minion didn't speak but he watched her face carefully.

"I'd hold you to the same standards as everyone else."

Both her lunch companions smiled broadly. "Excellent," said Megamind. "So you'll do it?"

"First we have to talk about advertising, which means we have to talk about business and labor coverage."

"Oh, don't worry about that. I have multiple businesses under my protection to which I can give a bit of ad space. As a perk, you know. As for business and labor coverage, given a readership of mainly ordinary people, coverage of labor issues should be thorough and business news written from an angle emphasizing each item's potential effect on the employment situation. More than that, though, the common people love to read about the lives of the rich, including the employing class. So we shall need some society coverage."

"So you're going to let me write about the Scotts and their friends the way I wanted to but didn't dare when I needed to stay on their good side."

"Emphasis on obscene luxuries, scandals, that sort of thing?"

"That and I want to go into more detail about where things come from and who makes them. I hate it when a society story just says something is imported. Imported from where? Made by who?"

"So, for example, a piece about fishermen pulling sturgeon out of the Black Sea, laboring their whole lives for caviar and never getting to taste it."

"Exactly."

"Anything else?"

"Hmm. Let me think about that. Tell me about what you've got in mind."

"Well, first I want to expand coverage of the common people's arts such as vaudeville and the flickers. Other papers list what's showing but there's no one actually reviewing them. Also, the coverage gives us an excuse to print some photos of attractive men and women wearing skimpy or tight-fitting costumes, which is an important means of generating attention." She gave a cynical smirk but didn't respond. "Also more coverage of sports below the college and professional levels, high school games and neighborhood leagues and so forth. Finally, how would you feel about an affiliated radio station, like the one the Detroit News started up a couple of years ago?"

"Oh, right, you don't have a board of directors to answer to. Frank said he pitched it back then but the board didn't think enough people had receivers to make it a lucrative market."

"It might not be at first, even though I do plan to have certain of the retail businesses under my protection keep a radio playing at all times, once the station is up and running, so that the patrons may hear it and come to value it enough to want it in their homes. But my underlying intention is to lay the groundwork, in terms of licensing and so forth, for when television is ready."

"Remind me what that is?"

"Broadcasting the flickers, essentially, so that anyone with a receiving set can pick them up."

"Oh, wait! I remember! There was some English guy who was trying to make that work."

"He did, in a very limited way. Oh, and by the way, he's a Scotsman. Sent about twelve seconds of moving picture from London to Glasgow over a telephone line. At this point it's still very primitive but I'm thinking in roughly fifteen years we'll have it refined to the point of being worth looking at and, of equal importance, we'll be able to make the sets cheap enough to produce that ordinary people can afford them."

"Wow. Okay, this gives me another idea. I think we should cover the latest in science and technology, but written by somebody who can put it all in plain language."

"Such as myself and Minion. We have had articles in magazines such as Scientific American and Popular Mechanics under various pseudonyms for some years now. We can use the same material, just in slightly more simplified language."

"Can you do medical science? Regular people just eat up health advice."

"We can, and that brings us around to business coverage again. As soon as one knows anything about human biochemistry, it's plain that poverty drives people to eat the cheapest foods on the market, which are also likely to be the least nutritious, so low pay is definitely a factor in health. Add to that the freedom that industry now enjoys to dump its waste products into the water and the air, the use of lead pipes for drinking water, and that dreadful innovation, the tetraethyl lead gasoline additive, all give the titans of industry a vested interest in worsening the health of the populace."

"Oh, my god. So I probably owe my good health partly to being born in a fishing village where cars were so rare that, when we heard one, people would come out of their houses to stare at it going by?"

"Oh, yes. Between the high nutritional value of ocean fish, the lack of the smogs of industry, and the partial protection from tetanus infection created by the iodine in the light coating of salt that sea air deposits on everything, there are few better places to grow up, from the standpoint of physical health. Which reminds me: there's a new tetanus vaccine, just developed by a Frenchman named Discombey."

"Vaccine? Not just a treatment? That's amazing! I want to print his picture, holding up a vial or a beaker and looking at it with a caption that says 'The Beginning of the End of Lockjaw' on page one."

"So you'll take the job?"

She hesitated for a long moment. Then she said, "Who am I kidding? If I don't do this, I'll regret it for the rest of my life."

"Then welcome aboard, Miss Ritchi." He reached a hand across the table. She shook it and then offered the same to Minion. The two aliens glanced at each other. Megamind nodded, and Minion extended his great steel mitt across the table to clasp hers.