Fic: Cold Fusion: Hallows' Eve, Chapter 2
I still don't own Megamind. I really need to get on that.
Chapter 2
Roxanne sighs. "She's better, thanks. The doctors said that the surgery went really well, but I'll probably head down for a visit later this month. I haven't been down to visit in years, and I feel bad. Maybe for Thanksgiving."
Megamind hesitates. "I should…probably stay here, I think, for that," he says, but he lifts his voice at the end and turns it into a question.
Roxanne groans and wrinkles her nose the way she does when she doesn't want to agree with something but knows she should anyway. "That might be a good idea," she admits. "I don't want to send the wrong signals-I mean, you're family to me, but…"
"No, no, I understand," Megamind assures her quickly. "I don't want to risk anyone finding out about us sooner than we'd planned. I know that's not what you meant," he adds, "but that's my rationale." It's a valid point and they both know it. Megamind is getting better about handling himself in social situations but extended day-to-day exposure to Roxanne's family might be something he couldn't pull off and keep up the charade as Pavel. Not at this point, anyway. Megamind is a fast learner; the social graces don't come as easily to him as science and language do but he's still picking up on them fairly quickly.
"Mine is that my family is kind of old-fashioned and I think it would be awkward for my mother and brother if I brought New Boyfriend to stay when they haven't had me to themselves in a while." Roxanne sighs again, then visibly brightens. "Tell you what, though, I'll see about bringing you home for Christmas. Mom might actually be okay with both of us coming to stay for a few days then. And even if she isn't," she adds with a laugh, "I know Drew definitely will be. He's just dying to meet you."
Megamind chuckles. "That's one encounter I am actually looking forward to."
Megamind and Drew have started emailing back and forth with startling enthusiasm, but they haven't actually spoken yet; both of them seem to regard the phone as off-limits. "That would make it too easy," Drew had complained when Roxanne had asked him about it, and Megamind doesn't really care for phones anyway.
"Well, they're both still wildly curious about my mysterious nuclear particle whatever physics boyfriend," Roxanne tells him. "So far Mom's guessed all of the science professors at Metro University. I finally had to tell her you weren't a teacher. She sounded relieved."
"Something wrong with professors?"
Roxanne makes a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat. "She seems to have gotten it into her head that they don't make enough money."
Megamind blinks at her. "What? Where did she get that impression?"
"Don't ask me," Roxanne says with a shrug. "I have no idea. I'd have to be really, really high-maintenance for that to be true."
Megamind just shakes his head. Roxanne doesn't seem to require 'maintenance' at all that he's noticed yet, and it's been months. A couple of times he's wondered - worried - that he's missed something, some special cue that should tell him he isn't doing enough for her, but he knows that Roxanne would say something if that were the case.
"Out of curiosity…" Roxanne begins, then bites her lip and shakes her head. "Never mind."
"What?"
"No," she says, "it's not the sort of question I should ask. One of those relationship faux pas."
"Okay, now I'm curious," Megamind says, amusement creeping into his voice. "And you know I probably wouldn't notice a social misstep on your part. What is it?"
Roxanne takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment, then blurts, "Where do you get money?"
Whatever question Megamind had been expecting, it hadn't been that one, and he does a bit of a double-take. Roxanne laughs at his expression. "I'm serious!" she exclaims. "I've been trying to figure it out for ages. I've seen some of the figures you're tossing around to repair the city, and they aren't small. But you returned most of your ill-gotten gains. At least, I thought you had."
Megamind snorts and waves a hand at her. "No, you're right, I did. Well, most of it, but the city's repairs were all done legally - I liquidated some of my assets to get the funds. Sold a few paintings here and there, the deed to some mineral rights in the Appalachian Mountains that I didn't need, a few old books. That sort of thing."
"Where do you get old paintings?" Roxanne asks, baffled. "A few old books? What old books?"
"Would you like a list?" Megamind grins. "I'm pretty sure I can remember everything."
She gives his arm a playful slap. "I would love a list," she tells him. "I am wildly curious."
Still grinning, he nods. "De Rechtvaardige Rechters, a fifteenth century Van Eyck stolen in 1911. A Rembrandt landscape. There was a five million dollar reward offered for information leading to the return of thirteen pieces to a Boston museum-I got the reward in September, when I stole the pieces back from the thieves. Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester, Ptolemy's Geographia, and the Capture of Oechalia - and let me tell you what, that last one was a pain in the butt to track down, I've been sitting on it for years. A Faberge egg. And a Strad-ee-various."
Roxanne blinks. "Stradivarius? A violin? A violin can't possibly be worth that much money."
Megamind's grin turns wicked. "Oh, I think you'll find that it can, if it was made in 1683. It can, in fact be sold for one and a half million dollars if you find the right buyer. I shipped it off last week."
Roxanne stares at him, now totally boggled. "Where did you find this stuff?"
"I've gotten very good at locating lost treasures over the years. For a while I was convinced I could become some kind of famous collector - I gave that up after spending nearly ten years searching for the Capture of Oechalia. And I have a lot of…" He hesitates, searching for the best way to put this, and decides to try hedging a little. "…Savings, shall we say?"
Roxanne looks at him curiously and he sighs. "A few years back, Minion and I were testing a new maritime submarine, just seeing how it held up under Pacific conditions, and we…went looking for a shipwreck while we were out there. Minion knows how currents work, and I know how physics work, and…we found some pretty valuable stuff. Stuff that, in all honesty, I probably shouldn't keep, but the ship went down in 1945, so finders-keepers, as far as I'm concerned."
Roxanne's eyes narrow a little and she starts to smile. "Wait, is that why you were grinning through that special about wreck diving?" When Megamind just laughs a little bit and glances away, her mouth falls open. "It is! What ship? C'mon, you can't just leave me hanging now."
Megamind can feel his ears turning pink. He ducks his head and looks away, still laughing, and mumbles something under his breath because how do you say something like this without sounding boastful?
"What?"
He takes a breath, lets it out. "The…okay. We may have found the Awa Maru."
Roxanne pauses, frowning. "That's…the German one?"
"No," Megamind says. "Japanese."
Roxanne thinks for a moment. "Wasn't that the one with the five million dollars in gold and silver and stuff?"
"Billion," he says without thinking, and quickly adds, "But it ended up being only four and a half. Not five."
Her jaw drops and she goggles at him. "Megamind!"
"Shhh!" He looks around frantically, but no one seems to have heard. "Not so loud!"
"Five billion?" Roxanne squeaks.
"Four and a half," he insists. He's never seen Roxanne's eyebrows go so far up her forehead before. But he doesn't want her to fixate on that so he bulls ahead and continues, "But I'm not just living off my savings; I do have an income. Most of that comes from the mineral rights to a few thousand square kilometers or so of oil fields."
Roxanne swallows and recovers herself a little bit, but she still looks completely thrown. "Like, four or five thousand?"
"Well…" Megamind shrugs, makes a vague head-bobbing gesture. "You know. Five or…fifty…ish. You know."
Roxanne staggers. Physically staggers. "What?"
"Before you ask, yes, the rights are legally mine." He knows Roxanne hadn't been going to ask. Megamind has noticed that she never asks how he acquires things. It's a sign of trust, he supposes, but saying nothing about it feels like lying by omission. "They were signed over to me under…duress, shall we say, but they are mine. Everything is quite legal." He smiles, looking almost nostalgic and ignoring the fact that Roxanne's eyebrows have disappeared under her hair. "I may have never had a conventional job, but you can tell your mother not to worry. I can take care of both of us perfectly well. Money," he says, and his smile widens, "is not something we will have to worry about." He glances at Roxanne and decides to throw her a line, volunteer some more information. As long as he's going to be talking about his finances, he might as well brag a little bit, right? He is proud of himself for doing so well so early in life. "I do feel a little bad about Enron, though…"
Roxanne takes the bait more enthusiastically than Megamind had expected. She was already shocked, and this is the icing on the cake. "Enron?" she gasps. "What - wait, you can't possibly have - Enron?"
Megamind's eyes are dancing. "Well, the executives were selling their shares and I'd actually been reading the 10-Ks they had been sending out and I know bullshit when it's fed to me - no company that was doing what they were doing can possibly make the kinds of returns they were reporting - and they were telling shareholders to buy more, buy more. And I said to myself, 'Megamind,' I said, 'that's fishy,' so I sold when prices hit eighty-seven." He shrugs helplessly.
"But," Roxanne says, still staring, "but Enron. Enron."
"Yes," Megamind says, speaking as if to a very small child, "Enron. I made almost sixteen and a half million dollars off of Enron in 2000, then turned around and used that money to make some more healthy investments. And the submarine!"
Roxanne takes a deep breath, opens her mouth, closes it again, and then says weakly, "I think I need to sit down."
One of the few homes on the street that is devoid of Halloween decorations also has a few newspapers sitting on the front porch, so Megamind leads Roxanne over and they sit in two of the white wicker chairs. Megamind is grinning and Roxanne is still staring into space, totally bewildered and amazed. He had taken her totally by surprise with that one. He feels a little bit smug about it because Roxanne is not as easily surprised anymore, so he doesn't interrupt her while she thinks and instead takes the opportunity to look around a little bit.
The house is the last on the row, and although the neighbor's side sports a minimum of porch furniture and yard decoration, whoever owns the porch he's sitting on obviously cares about their gardens despite the lack of space. Fall-blooming flowers are everywhere, there's not a weed in sight. It's rather pretty, though entirely too organized for Megamind's taste - organization is for papers and experiments, not flowers. The sprawling jumble of tall stalks and shrubs on either side of the porch across the street is much more appealing. He glances around restlessly while Roxanne stares and his gaze falls on the newspapers scattered over the porch. They're still in their plastic bags, and he frowns and scooches them under a wicker chair with his toe - he of all people knows that leaving multiple newspapers on a doorstep is a great way to get your home robbed.
"How," Roxanne says, breaking the silence and making him jump, "in the name of all that is good and green on this earth did you buy enough shares in Enron to make sixteen million dollars off of them."
Megamind puts his elbows on the arms of the chair, steepling his fingers in front of him out of habit. "It was actually one of the first major investments I ever made, and I kept closer track of them than I did most of my other shares." He's kind of enjoying the shocked expression on Roxanne's face. He had known she expected he had money, but he had never bothered to tell her how much. He's proud of himself, oh yes, but he had known it would sound too much like bragging if he said anything - and he brags a lot, but only about stuff that doesn't actually matter. This is something he's really proud of, something useful, and he shrugs and slouches down in his chair, grinning at her over the tips of his fingers. "I mean, so would you if you spent a million bucks on stocks in one company that was just starting out. In retrospect, that wasn't very smart. It worked out well for me, but it was kind of a stupid move."
"But where did you get a million dollars to start off with? This is before you found that ship, right?"
Megamind shifts a little bit. "Ah," he says. He's starting to smirk. "Yes. I was…there was monetary compensation from the PHED. It wasn't that much, it was less than a quarter of that, actually, but I'm a crack hand at counting cards, so…" He does his best to arrange his features into a sheepish expression, but 'sheepish' isn't something Megamind is good at and he only manages to look diabolical. "I can't help it. It's just something that happens, you know?"
"The FED?" Roxanne's brow furrows. "Why would they give you money?"
Megamind snorts. "No, not the FED, the PHED. Paranormal, Holistic, and Extraterrestrial Department. In exchange for, quote-unquote, services rendered. Which is a bigger load of crap than the Enron debacle, if you can believe it." He shakes his head, looking disgusted. "Services rendered," he mutters. "As if it were remotely voluntary."
"Oh!" Roxanne looks for a moment as if she's going to ask a question, then says, "Sorry. Right." Then she frowns. "Holistic?"
"Yes, I asked about that, too," he says with a thoughtful frown. Then his eyebrows shoot up and his tone turns cheerful. "Near as anyone can make out, it was the founder's idea of a joke and it stuck."
"Huh," Roxanne says. Megamind doesn't say anything to that, although sometimes it bothers him when she obviously wants to say something but doesn't. "Right, so. Go on."
"There's not much else to say," Megamind admits. "I got lucky, that's all, and I've made some good decisions since then. You-"
The door to the other half of the duplex swings open, and he stops talking. Despite the fact that it's mid-afternoon and the sun is low in the sky, the man who steps out and reaches for his afternoon newspaper is clad in a bathrobe and slippers and his dark blonde hair is tangled. There are shadows under his eyes, lines at the corners of his mouth, and a surprised expression on his face that lapses quickly into one of carefully-schooled boredom.
"Roxanne Ritchi," he says, and he sounds utterly unsurprised even though he's still blinking in astonishment. "I didn't think I gave you my address."
Roxanne gapes at him for a moment before she recovers. "I was - we were just sitting." Her tone is over-bright. Too bright to be normal. "Came around to see the decorations and got tired." Her attempt at small talk falls flat on its face. It's amazing, Megamind realizes, how very awkward some silences can be. There ought to be a system of measurement. Awkward units. This would be a ten. Roxanne tries again, almost wincing as she does so. "…How goes the, ah, the job hunt?"
Bernard's expression sours. "Still nothing," he says, and sighs loudly. "I'm not exactly the most employable person in the world." Then his bored gaze flicks to the dark-haired young man sitting by Roxanne, and he stiffens. The transformation is immediate and remarkable - Bernard goes from irritated lethargy to knife-sharp hatred in half a heartbeat. "You," he hisses. "Get off my porch."
Roxanne blinks, fumbles. "Bernard, I think you're confused - this is my boyfriend, Pavel -"
"No," Megamind says quietly, without looking away from Bernard's angry face, and stands up. He isn't really surprised that Bernard wasn't taken in by the disguise. "No, it's all right, he knows."
"Boyfriend, huh?" Bernard's lip curls. His face is hard, his jaw set. His hackles are up; if he were anything but human, he would be snarling. "You're a lucky man."
"I am," Megamind agrees. He keeps his tone neutral, but under the disguise, he's sweating. How is he supposed to act? What is he supposed to say? Social situations are not his forte, interpersonal conflicts even less so, and he wants desperately to be somewhere, anywhere, else. He thinks longingly of jail. The nice thing about jail was that nobody could bother him there.
Bernard's eyes narrow to furious slits. His voice is low and cold. "I think she can do better."
"So do I." The unspoken But she doesn't seem to think so is audible to everyone present, and it makes the silence that follows about twice as awkward as the last one.
For a moment, they simply stand and stare at each other. Something dark and ugly flickers behind Bernard's eyes. Megamind looks every bit as uncomfortable as he feels. "I hate you," Bernard finally whispers, and Megamind exhales.
"I know," he replies heavily. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."
"It's not worth much," Bernard snaps. His chest is beginning to heave but he has too much self-control to allow himself to raise his voice. He stays where he is, fists clenched, breathing hard, eyes snapping sparks. Megamind has never seen anyone stand so energetically still - Bernard hasn't moved from where he's standing, but somehow Megamind is reminded of a whirling bola: twirling and twirling and at any moment it will fly out and tear his legs out from under him. "You ruined my life. I lost my job. You've blown all of my theories on you out of the water by switching sides, you know that? Nobody wants to hire someone who's been wrong on all counts for the majority of his career." He snatches a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his bathrobe, brandishes it like a gun. Megamind flinches reflexively away. "And on top of that, I'm being evicted! My credit score is ruined, I can't get any loans, I can't pay my bills. If I don't pay my rent in two weeks, I'm homeless. And I owe it all to you." His nostrils flare. Ordinarily he wouldn't be saying half of this, but he's been thinking it for ages and he's been alone with his thoughts and now, self-control or no, everything is pouring out. And he can't stop it. And he hates it.
Megamind doesn't know what to say, but he has to say something, he can't just stand there like a lump, so he says the first thing that pops into his head. "Bernard, I - I'll pay your rent. It's the least I can do -"
Bernard's head comes up like an angry wolf's and Megamind has to remind himself not to back away. He registers dimly that he's standing like a stick again, feet together, elbows and arms clamped against his sides, back straight. "Damn straight it's the least you can do. It's a temporary fix at best." When he's calm, which is pretty much always, Bernard is lethargic, condescending. He rarely opens his eyes all the way, and he rarely raises his voice. Angry Bernard is something else entirely - his shoulders are squared and his movements are small and sharp, like those of a wind-up toy soldier, but his voice is still low and his eyes are still at half-mast and that makes it worse than if he shouted. "Can you find me a job? Can you get me off of the Chairmen's list?" He shakes his head. Megamind is surprised he doesn't spit; he certainly looks like he wants to. "Keep your charity."
Megamind blinks. "The chairmen?"
Bernard bares his teeth in a silent growl. "Do you have any idea what kind of people I've had to go to, just to get enough money to live on? The kind of things I've had to agree to do?" He shoves a hand through his hair, making it stand on end more than usual. It looks like he hasn't washed it in a while.
Megamind decides to steer the conversation into safer waters. "I don't know about any chairmen," he says, "but I can get you a job with the PHED."
Bernard chokes on a harsh laugh. "Are you kidding? I already called them. They wanted nothing to do with me."
But Megamind isn't finished. Bernard will stand and tear him apart piece by piece if Megamind doesn't do something. What Megamind is doing doesn't feel like the right way to deal with this situation, but he can't think of a better way. "Who did you talk to? Give me a name."
"Mortacci," Bernard snaps, and Megamind grins.
"I'm not surprised," he says. "She's had it in for me from day one - as far as she's concerned, you're a plague rat for even associating with me. Anyone else in the department would have hired you straightaway. Listen," he says, and takes a card from his pocket, flips it over, scribbles a name, a number, an email address. Hands the card to Bernard. "Send your résumé to him. Tell him I referred you."
Bernard glances at the card. "This is a D.C. area code."
"That's where headquarters is located," Megamind agrees.
"Do you know how expensive it is to live in Washington?" Bernard rolls his eyes, sneering. "Let alone move there with nothing. With less than nothing. Thank you for that, by the way."
Megamind takes a step forward. The conversation is still horrible, but it's a conversation, and he's beginning to be able to think again. And, as usual, his brain dances six or seven steps ahead of what's actually going on, and begins to weave a brittle plan. "Bernard," he says seriously, "I owe you three ways. For your body, for your name, and for your time." Bernard's eyes narrow, but he says nothing. Encouraged, Megamind continues, "I will repay you three ways. First, your rent. And your other debts. I'll take care of them. And I'll fix your credit score, return it to what it was before all of this."
Bernard looks like he wants to sneer again, but can't quite manage it. It's obvious he still hates Megamind, but there's a glimmer of suspicious hope trying to creep into his eyes and he knows better than to turn down help freely offered. A certain saying about beggars and choosers comes to mind. He settles for a scathing, "Good luck. It was perfect. I never defaulted on a single payment and I paid everything in full. And if you want to take care of my debts, fine, but I warn you, I've got student loans I'm still paying off."
Megamind is unfazed. "Second," he says, "I will pay your way to Washington or wherever else you choose to go until you receive your first paycheck. Within reason," he adds. "I won't pay for you to sit around at home and loaf."
Bernard returns the nod, looking as if he expected that last part. "And your third offer?"
"Thrice pays all, as they say," Megamind tells him, even though he's pretty sure that 'they' have never said any such thing. "A favor."
Bernard's face turns hungry. "What are the terms?"
"I'd prefer it to be at least marginally legal," Megamind admits. "But if it isn't, I'll still see what I can do. I don't want to kill anyone, and I don't want to ruin anyone else's life." He stops talking and waits. Bernard is considering.
When the other man sucks his upper lip between his teeth and bites it, Megamind knows he's reached a conclusion.
"Will this be enough to repay my debt to you?" Megamind asks. He's being hideously formal, here, which he doesn't enjoy - the speech patterns really aren't his. But Bernard is hideously old-fashioned; the 'three times owed, three times paid' seems to have appeased him somewhat. Bernard is nothing if not precise and factual. A man of numbers and old, antiquated literature.
Bernard nods once, curtly, but says, "That depends on the favor. I-"
"You can take as much time as you need to consider it."
Bernard shakes his head. "That won't be necessary. Wait here." He doesn't hang around for a response, just turns on his heel and slams the door behind him.
Megamind lets out his breath in a rush, sinks back into his chair, jams his hands into the pockets of his coat to keep them from shaking. "That went well," he murmurs, and even he isn't sure if that's meant to be sarcastic or not. "Much better than I'd expected it to." He heaves a sigh and leans back, throws one leg over the other and frowns. "Much as I hate to just throw money at problems until they go away, I can't deny that it's effective." The sides of his mouth turn up in a thin, humorless smile, and for a split second Roxanne is looking at someone very different from the Megamind she knows. "Everyone can be bought."
Bernard's door slams open again and he storms back out onto the porch. He looks, if it's possible, even more wildly rumpled than before and he's clutching a manila folder in one white-knuckled hand. "There's a girl," he says without preamble, and thrusts the folder at Megamind, who half-rises and leans forward to take it. "In North Korea. I want you to get her out. They've stepped up security, there's been a scare of some kind."
Megamind opens the folder, then takes a pair of old-looking wire-rimmed spectacles from his jacket pocket and slips them on.
Bernard cannot resist. "You wear glasses?"
"No," Megamind says distractedly as he thumbs through the papers. "Pavel does. Got Lasik back in '05, now he just uses them for reading. Or so the story goes. Oh, now this is interesting," he adds, removing one sheet of paper from the rest and holding it up to the light. He squints at it for a moment, then looks over the tops of his spectacles at Bernard. "She has mob connections?"
Bernard nods. "Sicilian. She's been denied entry to the United States several times. We think she has relatives here."
Megamind purses his lips. "Let me guess, she's illegitimate."
Bernard merely looks grim. "Can you do it?" All traces of animosity towards Megamind have vanished and have been replaced with a sort of desperate, clutching hope. It's the dangerous kind of hope - the kind that leads desperate men to deal with demons.
Megamind looks at him, looks back at the papers in his lap. "I think I can," he says after a moment, then nods decisively. "Certainly I can. Yes."
Bernard takes a deep breath, and the color leaves his cheeks and then comes flooding back. It's an expression Megamind knows well. Bernard would spend the rest of his life dehydrated on a shelf if it meant getting this woman safely into the US.
Then he composes himself, returns Megamind's nod. "Good," he says flatly. "Do that, and I'll consider your debt paid. And I'm not going to Washington," he adds, and he sounds very sure of himself. Too sure. Megamind blinks and his attention sharpens - not only does Bernard look and sound completely decisive, he didn't take any time to think about his decision. There's something else going on here.
"Where, then?"
Bernard doesn't miss a beat. "Wyoming."
"Wyoming?" Roxanne repeats, incredulous. Bernard doesn't look at her.
Megamind only says, "Why?"
This brings the quirk of a sardonic smile. "Can't tell you," he says. The smile disappears, and he glances at the folder. "How soon can you get her?"
Can't, Megamind thinks. Can't tell me, not won't tell me. Interesting choice of words. But he's careful not to show his interest - he blinks, shrugs. "Couple of months, maybe?"
Bernard's face hardens. "How soon?"
Megamind considers. Thinks of names, of plans, of backup plans, of backup plans to backup plans, of more names, of account numbers and minimum deposits and rush order fees, of favors owed and uncollected debts… "January," he says at last. "Late January. Maybe early February."
Bernard nods again, but it's jerky, and his aura of whirling motion has only increased. Megamind's eyes narrow. Bernard looks like a man who is trying to appear calm but can't remember how to breathe normally. "Skip the student loans, get her here faster. As fast as you can. Whatever it takes."
Megamind is startled, but he doesn't show it and he doesn't ask any other questions. Reasons were not part of the deal. If he isn't allowed to know why, then he won't know why. It's as simple as that. He rises, sticks out his hand. "A pleasure doing business with you, Bernard. I'll be in touch."
"I'm leaving town for good tomorrow morning," Bernard says flatly, ignoring the proffered hand, then turns and goes back inside his house without saying anything else.
Roxanne's stares from the closed door to Megamind's thoughtful features. "What was that all about?"
Megamind lowers his hand. "I'm not sure. I expect we'll find out in February." He glances at Roxanne, wishing he could explain the irrational nervousness that has struck so abruptly. He almost wishes he hadn't taken his afternoon caffeine already; Bernard had been sending off some very weird vibes and Megamind suspects it would have been good to be able to read them.
"Are you okay?" Roxanne asks as they walk back to the street. "You look…upset."
"Not upset. Confused." Megamind shakes his head. "Did he seem off, to you?"
Roxanne shrugs. "He seemed like he was pissed at you. Which is how he usually seems."
There's more to it than that, there has to be. Bernard had been on edge - he'd definitely implied that there was a deadline of some kind. February, something about February. The way he'd been acting, it had seemed like that was too late for something. But for what?
But it isn't any of his business, it really isn't. So he says, "You're probably right. I'm probably just seeing fire where there isn't any smoke," and they leave it at that. He'll look into it further when he gets back to the Lair - for now, he puts the problem firmly out of his mind. He's taking a day off. He's not going to think about it right now.
Roxanne's voice startles him out of his reverie. "Do you want to head back now, or wait until after dark?"
Megamind looks over at her. Roxanne is actually slightly taller than he is, or she would be if his head weren't so disproportionately large. "Why?" he asks, and focuses determinedly on this new vein of conversation. "Does something particularly special happen after dark?"
Roxanne shrugs. "Well, there's the trick-or-treating," she says. "I wouldn't mind seeing which costumes are popular this year. If we were further south it wouldn't be half as interesting, but north of town like this, the outfits are mostly handmade."
"What's the difference?"
She looks at him, surprised. "Creativity, I guess," she says slowly. "Store-bought costumes are all well and good, but you get a lot of repetition. I don't know, I just like seeing what kids come up with." She grins. "I had longer hair when I was little, and one year I decided I wanted to be a bat. Mom spent two hours with me in the bathroom, taping my hair into two cones on either side of my head for ears. We tore up about fifteen pairs of black nylons to do it, and they didn't look anything like ears, but nobody else had the same costume."
Megamind tries to picture child-Roxanne in a bat costume and fails. "That sounds. Um. Fun?"
"It was. It was loads of fun. Halloween's always been one of my favorite holidays."
Megamind is never sure what he's supposed to say when Roxanne tells him a story about when she was little or what her family used to do on vacations. He suspects that, if he were a normal, human boyfriend, he would respond with a similar story. He gives it a try. "I went trick-or-treating, once, with one of the other kids, Maian. It was Henny's idea. She took us around the office upstairs. Maian went as Godzilla and I dressed up as a Zeta Reticulan - we used up a lot of grey face paint and even then I was still sort of bluish, but it was fun, you know, to get candy for a change instead of cigarettes."
Roxanne starts to say something, then stops, looking uncertain.
"What?"
She hesitates. "Why did you get candy instead of cigarettes?"
Megamind blinks, then laughs. He really hadn't offered any backstory or explanation for that particular anecdote. "Oh, well, going around the jail, you know how it is…grown men don't eat a lot of candy. Well, except for TB, but Uncle Mitch kept me away from him until I was a lot older. TB had a thing for kids."
Roxanne decides privately that she likes Uncle Mitch and risks another question. "So this year was special because you got candy. And you went around an office?"
Ohhh. Megamind sees what the problem is. Timeline. "This was in Washington," he explains, and then, when Roxanne blinks and blushes and blurts something incoherent, has to try to keep from laughing. "Oh for crying out loud." He rolls his eyes heavenward. "I look forward to the day when you and I no longer dance circles around each other. This is ridiculous. Look, I may be insecure and I may be slightly cracked, but if I volunteer a story, it's safe to assume that talking about it isn't going to trigger some sort of mental break."
Roxanne laughs at that, but it's a little shaky. "We're quite a pair, aren't we? You're still worried you'll frighten me off, and I'm afraid of asking the wrong questions."
"At least we're making headway," Megamind points out cheerfully, linking his arm through hers. "In the future, don't worry about it. The way I see it, if you say something that makes me go a little funny, well, so much the better for me because then I know what to work on. Right?"
"I suppose so," Roxanne says, but she sounds dubious, and Megamind rolls his eyes again.
"Look," he says. "If we bungle something up, oh well, we'll work it out." His sudden grin is sharp and reassuring. "We seem to be good at that."
And that's the last word. He won't have this turn into some major, heavy discussion. They've reached their quota for the day already. He tugs on Roxanne's arm and they set off down the sidewalk once again.
"Okay," Roxanne says. "So who was Maian?"
Megamind smiles. "Maian was cool. She was my age, quiet. We didn't talk much," he says, and chuckles at some hidden joke or memory, "but we clicked pretty well and we ate together when we were allowed to. We covered for each other a few times. She was transferred a few months before I was allowed to leave, I never did find out what happened to her."
"Really?" Roxanne frowns. "I would have thought you'd track her down as soon as you could."
"Well of course I'm curious," Megamind admits, "but she told me she was going to be moved, and as good as told me not to look for her. That stung, a bit, but I'd learned not to argue with her by that point. Maian knows things."
"Like ESP?"
"Like the gift of tongues." Megamind shakes his head. "I'm multilingual, but I had to learn those languages. Maian doesn't learn languages, she knows them. She understood every word that was spoken - sometimes she understood more than what was said. And she could tell when people were lying or had hidden motives. I learned a lot from her. Mostly how to lie convincingly."
Roxanne laughs. "Honey, you can't lie worth beans."
"Not to you," he says, and then, because that isn't entirely true, adds, "Not about important things, anyway. Not that I would." And that still isn't really the truth either. "Except, maybe, as an experiment. Wow, I really need to shut up." He's blushing again, he can feel it.
"Keep digging, I can still see you," Roxanne says with a grin. "But you know, you never did answer my question about the bomb you supposedly planted."
Megamind opens his mouth, then pauses. "Which one?"
"Which one?" Roxanne stares at him. He's grinning. "Are you serious?"
Megamind's grin widens. "Maybe."
Roxanne scowls. "You're obnoxious," she grouses.
"Roxanne, I have made a long and brilliant career out of being obnoxious. Don't think I'm going to stop now," Megamind says, and musters up his very best evil laugh. Along the street, heads turn. Roxanne has to lean on Megamind to keep from falling over laughing; Megamind's over-the-top expression would have looked perfectly natural on his face, but he isn't wearing his face. On Pavel, the expression makes him look like he's going to be suddenly and violently ill.
It's nothing like a normal relationship, and it's everything like a normal relationship. And it's anything but boring.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
"We ought to play some sort of game," Megamind says after a while, eyeing a walking pile of balloons with deep suspicion. The pile is carrying a jack-o-lantern bucket half full of candy. "'Guess That Costume.' What wasthat?"
"I haven't the faintest idea. Multicolored bunch of grapes?" Roxanne nods at what looks like a pencil made of posterboard. "We could make Halloween Bingo, or something. The wild spot in the middle would be any costume you and I can't figure out. Oh, now that's fun."
Megamind looks where she's pointing and snorts. "Not a lot of effort in that outfit. Suit, tie, big sign pinned to chest with 'IRS AUDIT TEAM' on it? Easy peasy." He sniffs haughtily. "I am unimpressed."
"Yeah, well, you have to admit it's scary," Roxanne points out. "That's one person you don't ever want ringing your doorbell. Besides," she adds slyly, "we can't all have aquatic tailors to design us brilliantly complex costumes." When that comment fails to produce a response, Roxanne turns to look at her boyfriend. He is staring openmouthed down the street. Roxanne follows the direction of his gaze and blinks.
Two boys, too old for trick-or-treating, are circling each other slowly on the corner. They're probably in high school and Roxanne thinks at first that they might be on the football team; they're broad and well-muscled - that much is obvious from their skin-tight costumes, both of which are instantly recognizable.
Metro Man and Titan. They've even managed to make their hair cooperate.
Titan lunges, keeping his weight low, his movements deliberate and crushing. Wrestling team, maybe. Metro Man has definitely had some training in an Eastern martial art. Roxanne wishes briefly that Jo were seeing this; Jo would know what technique it is. Whatever the case, they both know enough to put on a pretty good show, despite the fact that the battle is probably rehearsed and the fighting styles don't match.
Roxanne watches for a minute or so before she realizes that Megamind has moved away from her and is standing with his arms folded over his chest on the opposite side of the street, slouching in all his blue-skinned, leather-clad glory. It's dark out, and nobody but Roxanne has noticed him yet; everyone else's attention is fixed on the battling superheroes at the end of the block. He's grinning hugely. Roxanne wonders how on earth he found the time to change into his leathers - usually it takes him a while to get everything in place. It has to be some sort of trick. She shakes her head and turns back to the fight.
They're well-matched, and when Titan finally goes down - thanks to a beautifully-executed but totally impractical combination double-punch and helicopter kick from Metro Man - both boys are breathing hard. They hold their poses for a moment, and then Metro Man bends down and hauls Titan to his feet to spatters of applause.
Megamind claps just a touch slower than everybody else, and for just a touch longer. Titan sees him first, and elbows his companion.
"That was fantastic!" Megamind exclaims, taking his cue. "Good show, boys, good show. Wow. Two thumbs up. Two really big thumbs up." He walks towards them, his movements quick and sharp and almost skipping, a sure sign that he's genuinely excited. If he's aware that people are pointing and staring, he doesn't show it. "That's probably the coolest thing I've ever seen, ever. Internet videos notwithstanding, that was the coolest thing I've actually seen." They're both taller than he is, but Megamind's presence is by far the more commanding. Megamind looks at Titan and blinks once. "You, I remember you, you were in the paper two months ago. Joey Metcalf. How did the tournament go? Did you place?"
Joey Metcalf stares, then recovers himself with an effort. "I…what? Yes, I mean, yes. Fourth."
Megamind raises an eyebrow. "Out of?"
"Fifty."
Up goes the other eyebrow, and Megamind makes an impressed humming noise. "Not bad."
Joey shrugs. "Not my best," he mumbles, and Megamind sends him a conspiratorial smile.
"It's never our 'best,'" he says in an undertone. Then he turns to Metro Man, frowning a little. "I don't think I recognize you. Are you from around here?"
"I'm…no. Visiting." The boy shakes his head, staring. Then he blinks a few times as if to try to clear his head. "I'm his cousin. Nick. Is my name."
Megamind sticks out his hand, and, looking shell-shocked, Nick shakes it. "Megamind," says Megamind, as if he could possibly be anybody else. "That spinning kick at the end, there. How did you do that?"
Nick stammers a little bit. Megamind has taken both boys by surprise with his sudden appearance but he's acting normally enough, and Nick finally seems to come to the conclusion that as long as the blue man is behaving like this is all business as usual, so will he. "It-was just a regular helicopter kick."
Megamind nods. "Yes, I saw that. But how did you do it?"
At Megamind's insistence, Nick performs another kick, then another. Megamind taps his thumb against his lips, then drags it down over his goatee a couple of times, frowning. "I don't think I'd be able to do that." Nick blinks at him. "Counterweight," he explains. "My balance would be off."
Nick raises and lowers one shoulder. "Give it a try?" His face and his posture are all screaming this-is-weird-this-is-weird-this-is-weird, but his voice sounds studiously calm.
Megamind pulls a face. "No point," he says. "I'm not built for it."
"Oh c'mon," Joey says suddenly, surprising the other two. "I've seen you on TV. You're all over the place."
Megamind blinks at him, his expression dubious. He takes a few steps back, then step-step-jumps-
And catches himself heavily on his hands and knees on the pavement. He picks himself up, dusting his hands together with a rueful shrug. "You see?" he says. "Case in point. It just won't happen."
"Your head's too big," Nick replies. Megamind chuckles.
"Is it? I hadn't noticed."
Nick turns red. "No, I meant - I just mean to say that -"
Megamind waves his apologies away. "It's all right, I know what you meant. You're right. That's what I meant when I said my balance would be off." He half-smiles. "There are things I'm just not physically capable of. Guess that's one of them."
"Well, and you're not warmed up," Nick reminds him over a squeal of tires from the road behind them. He's trying to offer Megamind an out, some way to brush off the embarrassment of having just failed in front of a group of people.
And villain-Megamind would have been embarrassed. It would have killed his image. But recently he's been trying to show that he's nothing special, really, and he figures it's good for people to see him fall a little bit so he says, in a conversational sort of voice, "I am warmed up, actually. Side effect of the whole 'alien physiology' thing. Always ready to jump at a moment's notice. But, anyway, thank you. Good luck with the wrestling, Joey," he adds, shaking their hands again. He waves over his shoulder as he jogs away.
He ducks between two houses and resets his disguise, cuts across a few backyards, and pops out from behind an arborvitae in time to make Roxanne jump. "So that was exciting," he says brightly. "Social interaction! Success! Yay me!"
Roxanne shakes her head, laughing. "Well done, you. What was that all about?"
"Their performance was good. As a performer," he says, speaking as if this is the most natural thing in the world, "I wanted to say hello." Then he glances at his watch. "It's getting late. We should start heading back."
Roxanne nods. "Trick-or-treating's over soon anyway."
The small crowd that had gathered has now dissipated, and the October night has gone from chilly to cold. The brightest stars pick themselves out of the sky, but most are obscured by the lights from the city.
"Maxence?"
Megamind isn't really sure why the woman's voice catches his attention like it does, but Roxanne's head turns as well. A slip of a woman in a long coat and gloves is standing on her front porch-probably just returned from taking her children door-to-door-and staring up and down the street, peering around the tiny yard. A small girl with her thumb in her mouth grabs onto her mother's leg with her free hand. Megamind takes Roxanne's hand and they turn to leave, and then the woman calls out again, and this time her voice has the frantic undertone of rising panic.
"Max! Maxence!"
Megamind turns without thinking, dances up the porch stairs. "Is everything all right? How can we help?"
The woman gapes at him for a moment - she's not American; her cheekbones are too wide, her build too narrow, and Megamind wonders if maybe he should have spoken more slowly. Then she recovers. "No, is, my son-Maxence, he is here and now he is not here, I cannot see him-" She cranes her head a little to the side, long neck bending so that she can see over Megamind's shoulder, and scans the street again.
"He's missing?" Megamind asks, then decides to take a gamble on the woman's accent. "Est-il disparu?"
She looks at him unhappily. "Je ne sais pas. Peut-être." She's quickly becoming frantic; she presses her lips together and blinks hard, then calls out again, "Maxence!"
Roxanne comes up the stairs as Megamind puts a reassuring hand on the woman's shoulder. He glances back at Roxanne. "Her son's disappeared. Apparently he was here just a minute ago. We're going to help her look."
Roxanne takes a breath. "Oh, that poor woman. What can I do?"
"You," Megamind begins, then stops, remembering the screech of tires when he'd been talking to Nick and Joey. He's off the porch like lightning, sprinting up the street. It hasn't been more than a minute, maybe two-they can't have gone far. He sees the two broad shapes ahead and slows. "Nick!" he shouts. "Joey! Hey, hold up!"
Confused, the two teens stop and turn around. Megamind jogs up to them. "Sorry, just a moment of your time," he says, panting a little. "When we were talking earlier, did either of you see anything? There was a car that sounded like it was spinning out, did you notice anything?"
Both boys stare at him blankly. "We?" Nick finally asks.
Megamind blinks at him, then curses inwardly-he's wearing Pavel again. He flaps his hands. "No, sorry, forget that-" He grimaces, then repeats his question. "Look, just, did either of you see anything? A car, or a guy running, anything? A kid's gone missing," he says finally, and Joey's eyebrows go up.
"Yeah," he says excitedly, "yeah, man, there was a car. I remember I sorta wondered what he was doing, pulling away like that. It pulled over for, I dunno, a couple seconds, maybe? Over there." He points towards where Roxanne is still standing with the French woman, five or six doors down the block. "And then it drove away. Guy was hauling."
"Did you see anyone get out of the car?"
Joey shakes his head. "Nah man, it was dark. And I wasn't really paying attention. Just thought it was weird that he was driving so crazy, that's all."
Megamind nods, swallows, twirls his wrist in front of his chest a couple of times and tilts forward at the waist in an approximation of a breathless bow. "Thanks," he gasps, then whirls on his heel and dashes away again, narrowly avoiding running over a small boy and his father. He only misses them by leaping wildly to one side, arms akimbo.
Nick stares after him in total bewilderment. "The heck was that?" he wonders aloud.
Joey is starting to grin. "That," he says, "was Megamind."
Nick laughs shortly. "Yeah right," he says, but he sounds more certain than he looks. "Get outta here."
"Nah man," Joey says again, really grinning now. "You remember this summer? When he and Titan were going at it, and he bluffed everybody into thinking he was really Metro Man, and his fish was really him?" He looks back after the black-haired figure, which is little more than a dim silhouette at this point but still unmistakably in the process of vaulting up the porch stairs. "Guy can do wicked disguises, man," he says, and grins so hard it's a wonder his smile doesn't jump off his face, then lets out a whoop and punches the air. "I love living here!"
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Chapter 2
Roxanne sighs. "She's better, thanks. The doctors said that the surgery went really well, but I'll probably head down for a visit later this month. I haven't been down to visit in years, and I feel bad. Maybe for Thanksgiving."
Megamind hesitates. "I should…probably stay here, I think, for that," he says, but he lifts his voice at the end and turns it into a question.
Roxanne groans and wrinkles her nose the way she does when she doesn't want to agree with something but knows she should anyway. "That might be a good idea," she admits. "I don't want to send the wrong signals-I mean, you're family to me, but…"
"No, no, I understand," Megamind assures her quickly. "I don't want to risk anyone finding out about us sooner than we'd planned. I know that's not what you meant," he adds, "but that's my rationale." It's a valid point and they both know it. Megamind is getting better about handling himself in social situations but extended day-to-day exposure to Roxanne's family might be something he couldn't pull off and keep up the charade as Pavel. Not at this point, anyway. Megamind is a fast learner; the social graces don't come as easily to him as science and language do but he's still picking up on them fairly quickly.
"Mine is that my family is kind of old-fashioned and I think it would be awkward for my mother and brother if I brought New Boyfriend to stay when they haven't had me to themselves in a while." Roxanne sighs again, then visibly brightens. "Tell you what, though, I'll see about bringing you home for Christmas. Mom might actually be okay with both of us coming to stay for a few days then. And even if she isn't," she adds with a laugh, "I know Drew definitely will be. He's just dying to meet you."
Megamind chuckles. "That's one encounter I am actually looking forward to."
Megamind and Drew have started emailing back and forth with startling enthusiasm, but they haven't actually spoken yet; both of them seem to regard the phone as off-limits. "That would make it too easy," Drew had complained when Roxanne had asked him about it, and Megamind doesn't really care for phones anyway.
"Well, they're both still wildly curious about my mysterious nuclear particle whatever physics boyfriend," Roxanne tells him. "So far Mom's guessed all of the science professors at Metro University. I finally had to tell her you weren't a teacher. She sounded relieved."
"Something wrong with professors?"
Roxanne makes a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat. "She seems to have gotten it into her head that they don't make enough money."
Megamind blinks at her. "What? Where did she get that impression?"
"Don't ask me," Roxanne says with a shrug. "I have no idea. I'd have to be really, really high-maintenance for that to be true."
Megamind just shakes his head. Roxanne doesn't seem to require 'maintenance' at all that he's noticed yet, and it's been months. A couple of times he's wondered - worried - that he's missed something, some special cue that should tell him he isn't doing enough for her, but he knows that Roxanne would say something if that were the case.
"Out of curiosity…" Roxanne begins, then bites her lip and shakes her head. "Never mind."
"What?"
"No," she says, "it's not the sort of question I should ask. One of those relationship faux pas."
"Okay, now I'm curious," Megamind says, amusement creeping into his voice. "And you know I probably wouldn't notice a social misstep on your part. What is it?"
Roxanne takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment, then blurts, "Where do you get money?"
Whatever question Megamind had been expecting, it hadn't been that one, and he does a bit of a double-take. Roxanne laughs at his expression. "I'm serious!" she exclaims. "I've been trying to figure it out for ages. I've seen some of the figures you're tossing around to repair the city, and they aren't small. But you returned most of your ill-gotten gains. At least, I thought you had."
Megamind snorts and waves a hand at her. "No, you're right, I did. Well, most of it, but the city's repairs were all done legally - I liquidated some of my assets to get the funds. Sold a few paintings here and there, the deed to some mineral rights in the Appalachian Mountains that I didn't need, a few old books. That sort of thing."
"Where do you get old paintings?" Roxanne asks, baffled. "A few old books? What old books?"
"Would you like a list?" Megamind grins. "I'm pretty sure I can remember everything."
She gives his arm a playful slap. "I would love a list," she tells him. "I am wildly curious."
Still grinning, he nods. "De Rechtvaardige Rechters, a fifteenth century Van Eyck stolen in 1911. A Rembrandt landscape. There was a five million dollar reward offered for information leading to the return of thirteen pieces to a Boston museum-I got the reward in September, when I stole the pieces back from the thieves. Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester, Ptolemy's Geographia, and the Capture of Oechalia - and let me tell you what, that last one was a pain in the butt to track down, I've been sitting on it for years. A Faberge egg. And a Strad-ee-various."
Roxanne blinks. "Stradivarius? A violin? A violin can't possibly be worth that much money."
Megamind's grin turns wicked. "Oh, I think you'll find that it can, if it was made in 1683. It can, in fact be sold for one and a half million dollars if you find the right buyer. I shipped it off last week."
Roxanne stares at him, now totally boggled. "Where did you find this stuff?"
"I've gotten very good at locating lost treasures over the years. For a while I was convinced I could become some kind of famous collector - I gave that up after spending nearly ten years searching for the Capture of Oechalia. And I have a lot of…" He hesitates, searching for the best way to put this, and decides to try hedging a little. "…Savings, shall we say?"
Roxanne looks at him curiously and he sighs. "A few years back, Minion and I were testing a new maritime submarine, just seeing how it held up under Pacific conditions, and we…went looking for a shipwreck while we were out there. Minion knows how currents work, and I know how physics work, and…we found some pretty valuable stuff. Stuff that, in all honesty, I probably shouldn't keep, but the ship went down in 1945, so finders-keepers, as far as I'm concerned."
Roxanne's eyes narrow a little and she starts to smile. "Wait, is that why you were grinning through that special about wreck diving?" When Megamind just laughs a little bit and glances away, her mouth falls open. "It is! What ship? C'mon, you can't just leave me hanging now."
Megamind can feel his ears turning pink. He ducks his head and looks away, still laughing, and mumbles something under his breath because how do you say something like this without sounding boastful?
"What?"
He takes a breath, lets it out. "The…okay. We may have found the Awa Maru."
Roxanne pauses, frowning. "That's…the German one?"
"No," Megamind says. "Japanese."
Roxanne thinks for a moment. "Wasn't that the one with the five million dollars in gold and silver and stuff?"
"Billion," he says without thinking, and quickly adds, "But it ended up being only four and a half. Not five."
Her jaw drops and she goggles at him. "Megamind!"
"Shhh!" He looks around frantically, but no one seems to have heard. "Not so loud!"
"Five billion?" Roxanne squeaks.
"Four and a half," he insists. He's never seen Roxanne's eyebrows go so far up her forehead before. But he doesn't want her to fixate on that so he bulls ahead and continues, "But I'm not just living off my savings; I do have an income. Most of that comes from the mineral rights to a few thousand square kilometers or so of oil fields."
Roxanne swallows and recovers herself a little bit, but she still looks completely thrown. "Like, four or five thousand?"
"Well…" Megamind shrugs, makes a vague head-bobbing gesture. "You know. Five or…fifty…ish. You know."
Roxanne staggers. Physically staggers. "What?"
"Before you ask, yes, the rights are legally mine." He knows Roxanne hadn't been going to ask. Megamind has noticed that she never asks how he acquires things. It's a sign of trust, he supposes, but saying nothing about it feels like lying by omission. "They were signed over to me under…duress, shall we say, but they are mine. Everything is quite legal." He smiles, looking almost nostalgic and ignoring the fact that Roxanne's eyebrows have disappeared under her hair. "I may have never had a conventional job, but you can tell your mother not to worry. I can take care of both of us perfectly well. Money," he says, and his smile widens, "is not something we will have to worry about." He glances at Roxanne and decides to throw her a line, volunteer some more information. As long as he's going to be talking about his finances, he might as well brag a little bit, right? He is proud of himself for doing so well so early in life. "I do feel a little bad about Enron, though…"
Roxanne takes the bait more enthusiastically than Megamind had expected. She was already shocked, and this is the icing on the cake. "Enron?" she gasps. "What - wait, you can't possibly have - Enron?"
Megamind's eyes are dancing. "Well, the executives were selling their shares and I'd actually been reading the 10-Ks they had been sending out and I know bullshit when it's fed to me - no company that was doing what they were doing can possibly make the kinds of returns they were reporting - and they were telling shareholders to buy more, buy more. And I said to myself, 'Megamind,' I said, 'that's fishy,' so I sold when prices hit eighty-seven." He shrugs helplessly.
"But," Roxanne says, still staring, "but Enron. Enron."
"Yes," Megamind says, speaking as if to a very small child, "Enron. I made almost sixteen and a half million dollars off of Enron in 2000, then turned around and used that money to make some more healthy investments. And the submarine!"
Roxanne takes a deep breath, opens her mouth, closes it again, and then says weakly, "I think I need to sit down."
One of the few homes on the street that is devoid of Halloween decorations also has a few newspapers sitting on the front porch, so Megamind leads Roxanne over and they sit in two of the white wicker chairs. Megamind is grinning and Roxanne is still staring into space, totally bewildered and amazed. He had taken her totally by surprise with that one. He feels a little bit smug about it because Roxanne is not as easily surprised anymore, so he doesn't interrupt her while she thinks and instead takes the opportunity to look around a little bit.
The house is the last on the row, and although the neighbor's side sports a minimum of porch furniture and yard decoration, whoever owns the porch he's sitting on obviously cares about their gardens despite the lack of space. Fall-blooming flowers are everywhere, there's not a weed in sight. It's rather pretty, though entirely too organized for Megamind's taste - organization is for papers and experiments, not flowers. The sprawling jumble of tall stalks and shrubs on either side of the porch across the street is much more appealing. He glances around restlessly while Roxanne stares and his gaze falls on the newspapers scattered over the porch. They're still in their plastic bags, and he frowns and scooches them under a wicker chair with his toe - he of all people knows that leaving multiple newspapers on a doorstep is a great way to get your home robbed.
"How," Roxanne says, breaking the silence and making him jump, "in the name of all that is good and green on this earth did you buy enough shares in Enron to make sixteen million dollars off of them."
Megamind puts his elbows on the arms of the chair, steepling his fingers in front of him out of habit. "It was actually one of the first major investments I ever made, and I kept closer track of them than I did most of my other shares." He's kind of enjoying the shocked expression on Roxanne's face. He had known she expected he had money, but he had never bothered to tell her how much. He's proud of himself, oh yes, but he had known it would sound too much like bragging if he said anything - and he brags a lot, but only about stuff that doesn't actually matter. This is something he's really proud of, something useful, and he shrugs and slouches down in his chair, grinning at her over the tips of his fingers. "I mean, so would you if you spent a million bucks on stocks in one company that was just starting out. In retrospect, that wasn't very smart. It worked out well for me, but it was kind of a stupid move."
"But where did you get a million dollars to start off with? This is before you found that ship, right?"
Megamind shifts a little bit. "Ah," he says. He's starting to smirk. "Yes. I was…there was monetary compensation from the PHED. It wasn't that much, it was less than a quarter of that, actually, but I'm a crack hand at counting cards, so…" He does his best to arrange his features into a sheepish expression, but 'sheepish' isn't something Megamind is good at and he only manages to look diabolical. "I can't help it. It's just something that happens, you know?"
"The FED?" Roxanne's brow furrows. "Why would they give you money?"
Megamind snorts. "No, not the FED, the PHED. Paranormal, Holistic, and Extraterrestrial Department. In exchange for, quote-unquote, services rendered. Which is a bigger load of crap than the Enron debacle, if you can believe it." He shakes his head, looking disgusted. "Services rendered," he mutters. "As if it were remotely voluntary."
"Oh!" Roxanne looks for a moment as if she's going to ask a question, then says, "Sorry. Right." Then she frowns. "Holistic?"
"Yes, I asked about that, too," he says with a thoughtful frown. Then his eyebrows shoot up and his tone turns cheerful. "Near as anyone can make out, it was the founder's idea of a joke and it stuck."
"Huh," Roxanne says. Megamind doesn't say anything to that, although sometimes it bothers him when she obviously wants to say something but doesn't. "Right, so. Go on."
"There's not much else to say," Megamind admits. "I got lucky, that's all, and I've made some good decisions since then. You-"
The door to the other half of the duplex swings open, and he stops talking. Despite the fact that it's mid-afternoon and the sun is low in the sky, the man who steps out and reaches for his afternoon newspaper is clad in a bathrobe and slippers and his dark blonde hair is tangled. There are shadows under his eyes, lines at the corners of his mouth, and a surprised expression on his face that lapses quickly into one of carefully-schooled boredom.
"Roxanne Ritchi," he says, and he sounds utterly unsurprised even though he's still blinking in astonishment. "I didn't think I gave you my address."
Roxanne gapes at him for a moment before she recovers. "I was - we were just sitting." Her tone is over-bright. Too bright to be normal. "Came around to see the decorations and got tired." Her attempt at small talk falls flat on its face. It's amazing, Megamind realizes, how very awkward some silences can be. There ought to be a system of measurement. Awkward units. This would be a ten. Roxanne tries again, almost wincing as she does so. "…How goes the, ah, the job hunt?"
Bernard's expression sours. "Still nothing," he says, and sighs loudly. "I'm not exactly the most employable person in the world." Then his bored gaze flicks to the dark-haired young man sitting by Roxanne, and he stiffens. The transformation is immediate and remarkable - Bernard goes from irritated lethargy to knife-sharp hatred in half a heartbeat. "You," he hisses. "Get off my porch."
Roxanne blinks, fumbles. "Bernard, I think you're confused - this is my boyfriend, Pavel -"
"No," Megamind says quietly, without looking away from Bernard's angry face, and stands up. He isn't really surprised that Bernard wasn't taken in by the disguise. "No, it's all right, he knows."
"Boyfriend, huh?" Bernard's lip curls. His face is hard, his jaw set. His hackles are up; if he were anything but human, he would be snarling. "You're a lucky man."
"I am," Megamind agrees. He keeps his tone neutral, but under the disguise, he's sweating. How is he supposed to act? What is he supposed to say? Social situations are not his forte, interpersonal conflicts even less so, and he wants desperately to be somewhere, anywhere, else. He thinks longingly of jail. The nice thing about jail was that nobody could bother him there.
Bernard's eyes narrow to furious slits. His voice is low and cold. "I think she can do better."
"So do I." The unspoken But she doesn't seem to think so is audible to everyone present, and it makes the silence that follows about twice as awkward as the last one.
For a moment, they simply stand and stare at each other. Something dark and ugly flickers behind Bernard's eyes. Megamind looks every bit as uncomfortable as he feels. "I hate you," Bernard finally whispers, and Megamind exhales.
"I know," he replies heavily. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."
"It's not worth much," Bernard snaps. His chest is beginning to heave but he has too much self-control to allow himself to raise his voice. He stays where he is, fists clenched, breathing hard, eyes snapping sparks. Megamind has never seen anyone stand so energetically still - Bernard hasn't moved from where he's standing, but somehow Megamind is reminded of a whirling bola: twirling and twirling and at any moment it will fly out and tear his legs out from under him. "You ruined my life. I lost my job. You've blown all of my theories on you out of the water by switching sides, you know that? Nobody wants to hire someone who's been wrong on all counts for the majority of his career." He snatches a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his bathrobe, brandishes it like a gun. Megamind flinches reflexively away. "And on top of that, I'm being evicted! My credit score is ruined, I can't get any loans, I can't pay my bills. If I don't pay my rent in two weeks, I'm homeless. And I owe it all to you." His nostrils flare. Ordinarily he wouldn't be saying half of this, but he's been thinking it for ages and he's been alone with his thoughts and now, self-control or no, everything is pouring out. And he can't stop it. And he hates it.
Megamind doesn't know what to say, but he has to say something, he can't just stand there like a lump, so he says the first thing that pops into his head. "Bernard, I - I'll pay your rent. It's the least I can do -"
Bernard's head comes up like an angry wolf's and Megamind has to remind himself not to back away. He registers dimly that he's standing like a stick again, feet together, elbows and arms clamped against his sides, back straight. "Damn straight it's the least you can do. It's a temporary fix at best." When he's calm, which is pretty much always, Bernard is lethargic, condescending. He rarely opens his eyes all the way, and he rarely raises his voice. Angry Bernard is something else entirely - his shoulders are squared and his movements are small and sharp, like those of a wind-up toy soldier, but his voice is still low and his eyes are still at half-mast and that makes it worse than if he shouted. "Can you find me a job? Can you get me off of the Chairmen's list?" He shakes his head. Megamind is surprised he doesn't spit; he certainly looks like he wants to. "Keep your charity."
Megamind blinks. "The chairmen?"
Bernard bares his teeth in a silent growl. "Do you have any idea what kind of people I've had to go to, just to get enough money to live on? The kind of things I've had to agree to do?" He shoves a hand through his hair, making it stand on end more than usual. It looks like he hasn't washed it in a while.
Megamind decides to steer the conversation into safer waters. "I don't know about any chairmen," he says, "but I can get you a job with the PHED."
Bernard chokes on a harsh laugh. "Are you kidding? I already called them. They wanted nothing to do with me."
But Megamind isn't finished. Bernard will stand and tear him apart piece by piece if Megamind doesn't do something. What Megamind is doing doesn't feel like the right way to deal with this situation, but he can't think of a better way. "Who did you talk to? Give me a name."
"Mortacci," Bernard snaps, and Megamind grins.
"I'm not surprised," he says. "She's had it in for me from day one - as far as she's concerned, you're a plague rat for even associating with me. Anyone else in the department would have hired you straightaway. Listen," he says, and takes a card from his pocket, flips it over, scribbles a name, a number, an email address. Hands the card to Bernard. "Send your résumé to him. Tell him I referred you."
Bernard glances at the card. "This is a D.C. area code."
"That's where headquarters is located," Megamind agrees.
"Do you know how expensive it is to live in Washington?" Bernard rolls his eyes, sneering. "Let alone move there with nothing. With less than nothing. Thank you for that, by the way."
Megamind takes a step forward. The conversation is still horrible, but it's a conversation, and he's beginning to be able to think again. And, as usual, his brain dances six or seven steps ahead of what's actually going on, and begins to weave a brittle plan. "Bernard," he says seriously, "I owe you three ways. For your body, for your name, and for your time." Bernard's eyes narrow, but he says nothing. Encouraged, Megamind continues, "I will repay you three ways. First, your rent. And your other debts. I'll take care of them. And I'll fix your credit score, return it to what it was before all of this."
Bernard looks like he wants to sneer again, but can't quite manage it. It's obvious he still hates Megamind, but there's a glimmer of suspicious hope trying to creep into his eyes and he knows better than to turn down help freely offered. A certain saying about beggars and choosers comes to mind. He settles for a scathing, "Good luck. It was perfect. I never defaulted on a single payment and I paid everything in full. And if you want to take care of my debts, fine, but I warn you, I've got student loans I'm still paying off."
Megamind is unfazed. "Second," he says, "I will pay your way to Washington or wherever else you choose to go until you receive your first paycheck. Within reason," he adds. "I won't pay for you to sit around at home and loaf."
Bernard returns the nod, looking as if he expected that last part. "And your third offer?"
"Thrice pays all, as they say," Megamind tells him, even though he's pretty sure that 'they' have never said any such thing. "A favor."
Bernard's face turns hungry. "What are the terms?"
"I'd prefer it to be at least marginally legal," Megamind admits. "But if it isn't, I'll still see what I can do. I don't want to kill anyone, and I don't want to ruin anyone else's life." He stops talking and waits. Bernard is considering.
When the other man sucks his upper lip between his teeth and bites it, Megamind knows he's reached a conclusion.
"Will this be enough to repay my debt to you?" Megamind asks. He's being hideously formal, here, which he doesn't enjoy - the speech patterns really aren't his. But Bernard is hideously old-fashioned; the 'three times owed, three times paid' seems to have appeased him somewhat. Bernard is nothing if not precise and factual. A man of numbers and old, antiquated literature.
Bernard nods once, curtly, but says, "That depends on the favor. I-"
"You can take as much time as you need to consider it."
Bernard shakes his head. "That won't be necessary. Wait here." He doesn't hang around for a response, just turns on his heel and slams the door behind him.
Megamind lets out his breath in a rush, sinks back into his chair, jams his hands into the pockets of his coat to keep them from shaking. "That went well," he murmurs, and even he isn't sure if that's meant to be sarcastic or not. "Much better than I'd expected it to." He heaves a sigh and leans back, throws one leg over the other and frowns. "Much as I hate to just throw money at problems until they go away, I can't deny that it's effective." The sides of his mouth turn up in a thin, humorless smile, and for a split second Roxanne is looking at someone very different from the Megamind she knows. "Everyone can be bought."
Bernard's door slams open again and he storms back out onto the porch. He looks, if it's possible, even more wildly rumpled than before and he's clutching a manila folder in one white-knuckled hand. "There's a girl," he says without preamble, and thrusts the folder at Megamind, who half-rises and leans forward to take it. "In North Korea. I want you to get her out. They've stepped up security, there's been a scare of some kind."
Megamind opens the folder, then takes a pair of old-looking wire-rimmed spectacles from his jacket pocket and slips them on.
Bernard cannot resist. "You wear glasses?"
"No," Megamind says distractedly as he thumbs through the papers. "Pavel does. Got Lasik back in '05, now he just uses them for reading. Or so the story goes. Oh, now this is interesting," he adds, removing one sheet of paper from the rest and holding it up to the light. He squints at it for a moment, then looks over the tops of his spectacles at Bernard. "She has mob connections?"
Bernard nods. "Sicilian. She's been denied entry to the United States several times. We think she has relatives here."
Megamind purses his lips. "Let me guess, she's illegitimate."
Bernard merely looks grim. "Can you do it?" All traces of animosity towards Megamind have vanished and have been replaced with a sort of desperate, clutching hope. It's the dangerous kind of hope - the kind that leads desperate men to deal with demons.
Megamind looks at him, looks back at the papers in his lap. "I think I can," he says after a moment, then nods decisively. "Certainly I can. Yes."
Bernard takes a deep breath, and the color leaves his cheeks and then comes flooding back. It's an expression Megamind knows well. Bernard would spend the rest of his life dehydrated on a shelf if it meant getting this woman safely into the US.
Then he composes himself, returns Megamind's nod. "Good," he says flatly. "Do that, and I'll consider your debt paid. And I'm not going to Washington," he adds, and he sounds very sure of himself. Too sure. Megamind blinks and his attention sharpens - not only does Bernard look and sound completely decisive, he didn't take any time to think about his decision. There's something else going on here.
"Where, then?"
Bernard doesn't miss a beat. "Wyoming."
"Wyoming?" Roxanne repeats, incredulous. Bernard doesn't look at her.
Megamind only says, "Why?"
This brings the quirk of a sardonic smile. "Can't tell you," he says. The smile disappears, and he glances at the folder. "How soon can you get her?"
Can't, Megamind thinks. Can't tell me, not won't tell me. Interesting choice of words. But he's careful not to show his interest - he blinks, shrugs. "Couple of months, maybe?"
Bernard's face hardens. "How soon?"
Megamind considers. Thinks of names, of plans, of backup plans, of backup plans to backup plans, of more names, of account numbers and minimum deposits and rush order fees, of favors owed and uncollected debts… "January," he says at last. "Late January. Maybe early February."
Bernard nods again, but it's jerky, and his aura of whirling motion has only increased. Megamind's eyes narrow. Bernard looks like a man who is trying to appear calm but can't remember how to breathe normally. "Skip the student loans, get her here faster. As fast as you can. Whatever it takes."
Megamind is startled, but he doesn't show it and he doesn't ask any other questions. Reasons were not part of the deal. If he isn't allowed to know why, then he won't know why. It's as simple as that. He rises, sticks out his hand. "A pleasure doing business with you, Bernard. I'll be in touch."
"I'm leaving town for good tomorrow morning," Bernard says flatly, ignoring the proffered hand, then turns and goes back inside his house without saying anything else.
Roxanne's stares from the closed door to Megamind's thoughtful features. "What was that all about?"
Megamind lowers his hand. "I'm not sure. I expect we'll find out in February." He glances at Roxanne, wishing he could explain the irrational nervousness that has struck so abruptly. He almost wishes he hadn't taken his afternoon caffeine already; Bernard had been sending off some very weird vibes and Megamind suspects it would have been good to be able to read them.
"Are you okay?" Roxanne asks as they walk back to the street. "You look…upset."
"Not upset. Confused." Megamind shakes his head. "Did he seem off, to you?"
Roxanne shrugs. "He seemed like he was pissed at you. Which is how he usually seems."
There's more to it than that, there has to be. Bernard had been on edge - he'd definitely implied that there was a deadline of some kind. February, something about February. The way he'd been acting, it had seemed like that was too late for something. But for what?
But it isn't any of his business, it really isn't. So he says, "You're probably right. I'm probably just seeing fire where there isn't any smoke," and they leave it at that. He'll look into it further when he gets back to the Lair - for now, he puts the problem firmly out of his mind. He's taking a day off. He's not going to think about it right now.
Roxanne's voice startles him out of his reverie. "Do you want to head back now, or wait until after dark?"
Megamind looks over at her. Roxanne is actually slightly taller than he is, or she would be if his head weren't so disproportionately large. "Why?" he asks, and focuses determinedly on this new vein of conversation. "Does something particularly special happen after dark?"
Roxanne shrugs. "Well, there's the trick-or-treating," she says. "I wouldn't mind seeing which costumes are popular this year. If we were further south it wouldn't be half as interesting, but north of town like this, the outfits are mostly handmade."
"What's the difference?"
She looks at him, surprised. "Creativity, I guess," she says slowly. "Store-bought costumes are all well and good, but you get a lot of repetition. I don't know, I just like seeing what kids come up with." She grins. "I had longer hair when I was little, and one year I decided I wanted to be a bat. Mom spent two hours with me in the bathroom, taping my hair into two cones on either side of my head for ears. We tore up about fifteen pairs of black nylons to do it, and they didn't look anything like ears, but nobody else had the same costume."
Megamind tries to picture child-Roxanne in a bat costume and fails. "That sounds. Um. Fun?"
"It was. It was loads of fun. Halloween's always been one of my favorite holidays."
Megamind is never sure what he's supposed to say when Roxanne tells him a story about when she was little or what her family used to do on vacations. He suspects that, if he were a normal, human boyfriend, he would respond with a similar story. He gives it a try. "I went trick-or-treating, once, with one of the other kids, Maian. It was Henny's idea. She took us around the office upstairs. Maian went as Godzilla and I dressed up as a Zeta Reticulan - we used up a lot of grey face paint and even then I was still sort of bluish, but it was fun, you know, to get candy for a change instead of cigarettes."
Roxanne starts to say something, then stops, looking uncertain.
"What?"
She hesitates. "Why did you get candy instead of cigarettes?"
Megamind blinks, then laughs. He really hadn't offered any backstory or explanation for that particular anecdote. "Oh, well, going around the jail, you know how it is…grown men don't eat a lot of candy. Well, except for TB, but Uncle Mitch kept me away from him until I was a lot older. TB had a thing for kids."
Roxanne decides privately that she likes Uncle Mitch and risks another question. "So this year was special because you got candy. And you went around an office?"
Ohhh. Megamind sees what the problem is. Timeline. "This was in Washington," he explains, and then, when Roxanne blinks and blushes and blurts something incoherent, has to try to keep from laughing. "Oh for crying out loud." He rolls his eyes heavenward. "I look forward to the day when you and I no longer dance circles around each other. This is ridiculous. Look, I may be insecure and I may be slightly cracked, but if I volunteer a story, it's safe to assume that talking about it isn't going to trigger some sort of mental break."
Roxanne laughs at that, but it's a little shaky. "We're quite a pair, aren't we? You're still worried you'll frighten me off, and I'm afraid of asking the wrong questions."
"At least we're making headway," Megamind points out cheerfully, linking his arm through hers. "In the future, don't worry about it. The way I see it, if you say something that makes me go a little funny, well, so much the better for me because then I know what to work on. Right?"
"I suppose so," Roxanne says, but she sounds dubious, and Megamind rolls his eyes again.
"Look," he says. "If we bungle something up, oh well, we'll work it out." His sudden grin is sharp and reassuring. "We seem to be good at that."
And that's the last word. He won't have this turn into some major, heavy discussion. They've reached their quota for the day already. He tugs on Roxanne's arm and they set off down the sidewalk once again.
"Okay," Roxanne says. "So who was Maian?"
Megamind smiles. "Maian was cool. She was my age, quiet. We didn't talk much," he says, and chuckles at some hidden joke or memory, "but we clicked pretty well and we ate together when we were allowed to. We covered for each other a few times. She was transferred a few months before I was allowed to leave, I never did find out what happened to her."
"Really?" Roxanne frowns. "I would have thought you'd track her down as soon as you could."
"Well of course I'm curious," Megamind admits, "but she told me she was going to be moved, and as good as told me not to look for her. That stung, a bit, but I'd learned not to argue with her by that point. Maian knows things."
"Like ESP?"
"Like the gift of tongues." Megamind shakes his head. "I'm multilingual, but I had to learn those languages. Maian doesn't learn languages, she knows them. She understood every word that was spoken - sometimes she understood more than what was said. And she could tell when people were lying or had hidden motives. I learned a lot from her. Mostly how to lie convincingly."
Roxanne laughs. "Honey, you can't lie worth beans."
"Not to you," he says, and then, because that isn't entirely true, adds, "Not about important things, anyway. Not that I would." And that still isn't really the truth either. "Except, maybe, as an experiment. Wow, I really need to shut up." He's blushing again, he can feel it.
"Keep digging, I can still see you," Roxanne says with a grin. "But you know, you never did answer my question about the bomb you supposedly planted."
Megamind opens his mouth, then pauses. "Which one?"
"Which one?" Roxanne stares at him. He's grinning. "Are you serious?"
Megamind's grin widens. "Maybe."
Roxanne scowls. "You're obnoxious," she grouses.
"Roxanne, I have made a long and brilliant career out of being obnoxious. Don't think I'm going to stop now," Megamind says, and musters up his very best evil laugh. Along the street, heads turn. Roxanne has to lean on Megamind to keep from falling over laughing; Megamind's over-the-top expression would have looked perfectly natural on his face, but he isn't wearing his face. On Pavel, the expression makes him look like he's going to be suddenly and violently ill.
It's nothing like a normal relationship, and it's everything like a normal relationship. And it's anything but boring.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
"We ought to play some sort of game," Megamind says after a while, eyeing a walking pile of balloons with deep suspicion. The pile is carrying a jack-o-lantern bucket half full of candy. "'Guess That Costume.' What wasthat?"
"I haven't the faintest idea. Multicolored bunch of grapes?" Roxanne nods at what looks like a pencil made of posterboard. "We could make Halloween Bingo, or something. The wild spot in the middle would be any costume you and I can't figure out. Oh, now that's fun."
Megamind looks where she's pointing and snorts. "Not a lot of effort in that outfit. Suit, tie, big sign pinned to chest with 'IRS AUDIT TEAM' on it? Easy peasy." He sniffs haughtily. "I am unimpressed."
"Yeah, well, you have to admit it's scary," Roxanne points out. "That's one person you don't ever want ringing your doorbell. Besides," she adds slyly, "we can't all have aquatic tailors to design us brilliantly complex costumes." When that comment fails to produce a response, Roxanne turns to look at her boyfriend. He is staring openmouthed down the street. Roxanne follows the direction of his gaze and blinks.
Two boys, too old for trick-or-treating, are circling each other slowly on the corner. They're probably in high school and Roxanne thinks at first that they might be on the football team; they're broad and well-muscled - that much is obvious from their skin-tight costumes, both of which are instantly recognizable.
Metro Man and Titan. They've even managed to make their hair cooperate.
Titan lunges, keeping his weight low, his movements deliberate and crushing. Wrestling team, maybe. Metro Man has definitely had some training in an Eastern martial art. Roxanne wishes briefly that Jo were seeing this; Jo would know what technique it is. Whatever the case, they both know enough to put on a pretty good show, despite the fact that the battle is probably rehearsed and the fighting styles don't match.
Roxanne watches for a minute or so before she realizes that Megamind has moved away from her and is standing with his arms folded over his chest on the opposite side of the street, slouching in all his blue-skinned, leather-clad glory. It's dark out, and nobody but Roxanne has noticed him yet; everyone else's attention is fixed on the battling superheroes at the end of the block. He's grinning hugely. Roxanne wonders how on earth he found the time to change into his leathers - usually it takes him a while to get everything in place. It has to be some sort of trick. She shakes her head and turns back to the fight.
They're well-matched, and when Titan finally goes down - thanks to a beautifully-executed but totally impractical combination double-punch and helicopter kick from Metro Man - both boys are breathing hard. They hold their poses for a moment, and then Metro Man bends down and hauls Titan to his feet to spatters of applause.
Megamind claps just a touch slower than everybody else, and for just a touch longer. Titan sees him first, and elbows his companion.
"That was fantastic!" Megamind exclaims, taking his cue. "Good show, boys, good show. Wow. Two thumbs up. Two really big thumbs up." He walks towards them, his movements quick and sharp and almost skipping, a sure sign that he's genuinely excited. If he's aware that people are pointing and staring, he doesn't show it. "That's probably the coolest thing I've ever seen, ever. Internet videos notwithstanding, that was the coolest thing I've actually seen." They're both taller than he is, but Megamind's presence is by far the more commanding. Megamind looks at Titan and blinks once. "You, I remember you, you were in the paper two months ago. Joey Metcalf. How did the tournament go? Did you place?"
Joey Metcalf stares, then recovers himself with an effort. "I…what? Yes, I mean, yes. Fourth."
Megamind raises an eyebrow. "Out of?"
"Fifty."
Up goes the other eyebrow, and Megamind makes an impressed humming noise. "Not bad."
Joey shrugs. "Not my best," he mumbles, and Megamind sends him a conspiratorial smile.
"It's never our 'best,'" he says in an undertone. Then he turns to Metro Man, frowning a little. "I don't think I recognize you. Are you from around here?"
"I'm…no. Visiting." The boy shakes his head, staring. Then he blinks a few times as if to try to clear his head. "I'm his cousin. Nick. Is my name."
Megamind sticks out his hand, and, looking shell-shocked, Nick shakes it. "Megamind," says Megamind, as if he could possibly be anybody else. "That spinning kick at the end, there. How did you do that?"
Nick stammers a little bit. Megamind has taken both boys by surprise with his sudden appearance but he's acting normally enough, and Nick finally seems to come to the conclusion that as long as the blue man is behaving like this is all business as usual, so will he. "It-was just a regular helicopter kick."
Megamind nods. "Yes, I saw that. But how did you do it?"
At Megamind's insistence, Nick performs another kick, then another. Megamind taps his thumb against his lips, then drags it down over his goatee a couple of times, frowning. "I don't think I'd be able to do that." Nick blinks at him. "Counterweight," he explains. "My balance would be off."
Nick raises and lowers one shoulder. "Give it a try?" His face and his posture are all screaming this-is-weird-this-is-weird-this-is-weird, but his voice sounds studiously calm.
Megamind pulls a face. "No point," he says. "I'm not built for it."
"Oh c'mon," Joey says suddenly, surprising the other two. "I've seen you on TV. You're all over the place."
Megamind blinks at him, his expression dubious. He takes a few steps back, then step-step-jumps-
And catches himself heavily on his hands and knees on the pavement. He picks himself up, dusting his hands together with a rueful shrug. "You see?" he says. "Case in point. It just won't happen."
"Your head's too big," Nick replies. Megamind chuckles.
"Is it? I hadn't noticed."
Nick turns red. "No, I meant - I just mean to say that -"
Megamind waves his apologies away. "It's all right, I know what you meant. You're right. That's what I meant when I said my balance would be off." He half-smiles. "There are things I'm just not physically capable of. Guess that's one of them."
"Well, and you're not warmed up," Nick reminds him over a squeal of tires from the road behind them. He's trying to offer Megamind an out, some way to brush off the embarrassment of having just failed in front of a group of people.
And villain-Megamind would have been embarrassed. It would have killed his image. But recently he's been trying to show that he's nothing special, really, and he figures it's good for people to see him fall a little bit so he says, in a conversational sort of voice, "I am warmed up, actually. Side effect of the whole 'alien physiology' thing. Always ready to jump at a moment's notice. But, anyway, thank you. Good luck with the wrestling, Joey," he adds, shaking their hands again. He waves over his shoulder as he jogs away.
He ducks between two houses and resets his disguise, cuts across a few backyards, and pops out from behind an arborvitae in time to make Roxanne jump. "So that was exciting," he says brightly. "Social interaction! Success! Yay me!"
Roxanne shakes her head, laughing. "Well done, you. What was that all about?"
"Their performance was good. As a performer," he says, speaking as if this is the most natural thing in the world, "I wanted to say hello." Then he glances at his watch. "It's getting late. We should start heading back."
Roxanne nods. "Trick-or-treating's over soon anyway."
The small crowd that had gathered has now dissipated, and the October night has gone from chilly to cold. The brightest stars pick themselves out of the sky, but most are obscured by the lights from the city.
"Maxence?"
Megamind isn't really sure why the woman's voice catches his attention like it does, but Roxanne's head turns as well. A slip of a woman in a long coat and gloves is standing on her front porch-probably just returned from taking her children door-to-door-and staring up and down the street, peering around the tiny yard. A small girl with her thumb in her mouth grabs onto her mother's leg with her free hand. Megamind takes Roxanne's hand and they turn to leave, and then the woman calls out again, and this time her voice has the frantic undertone of rising panic.
"Max! Maxence!"
Megamind turns without thinking, dances up the porch stairs. "Is everything all right? How can we help?"
The woman gapes at him for a moment - she's not American; her cheekbones are too wide, her build too narrow, and Megamind wonders if maybe he should have spoken more slowly. Then she recovers. "No, is, my son-Maxence, he is here and now he is not here, I cannot see him-" She cranes her head a little to the side, long neck bending so that she can see over Megamind's shoulder, and scans the street again.
"He's missing?" Megamind asks, then decides to take a gamble on the woman's accent. "Est-il disparu?"
She looks at him unhappily. "Je ne sais pas. Peut-être." She's quickly becoming frantic; she presses her lips together and blinks hard, then calls out again, "Maxence!"
Roxanne comes up the stairs as Megamind puts a reassuring hand on the woman's shoulder. He glances back at Roxanne. "Her son's disappeared. Apparently he was here just a minute ago. We're going to help her look."
Roxanne takes a breath. "Oh, that poor woman. What can I do?"
"You," Megamind begins, then stops, remembering the screech of tires when he'd been talking to Nick and Joey. He's off the porch like lightning, sprinting up the street. It hasn't been more than a minute, maybe two-they can't have gone far. He sees the two broad shapes ahead and slows. "Nick!" he shouts. "Joey! Hey, hold up!"
Confused, the two teens stop and turn around. Megamind jogs up to them. "Sorry, just a moment of your time," he says, panting a little. "When we were talking earlier, did either of you see anything? There was a car that sounded like it was spinning out, did you notice anything?"
Both boys stare at him blankly. "We?" Nick finally asks.
Megamind blinks at him, then curses inwardly-he's wearing Pavel again. He flaps his hands. "No, sorry, forget that-" He grimaces, then repeats his question. "Look, just, did either of you see anything? A car, or a guy running, anything? A kid's gone missing," he says finally, and Joey's eyebrows go up.
"Yeah," he says excitedly, "yeah, man, there was a car. I remember I sorta wondered what he was doing, pulling away like that. It pulled over for, I dunno, a couple seconds, maybe? Over there." He points towards where Roxanne is still standing with the French woman, five or six doors down the block. "And then it drove away. Guy was hauling."
"Did you see anyone get out of the car?"
Joey shakes his head. "Nah man, it was dark. And I wasn't really paying attention. Just thought it was weird that he was driving so crazy, that's all."
Megamind nods, swallows, twirls his wrist in front of his chest a couple of times and tilts forward at the waist in an approximation of a breathless bow. "Thanks," he gasps, then whirls on his heel and dashes away again, narrowly avoiding running over a small boy and his father. He only misses them by leaping wildly to one side, arms akimbo.
Nick stares after him in total bewilderment. "The heck was that?" he wonders aloud.
Joey is starting to grin. "That," he says, "was Megamind."
Nick laughs shortly. "Yeah right," he says, but he sounds more certain than he looks. "Get outta here."
"Nah man," Joey says again, really grinning now. "You remember this summer? When he and Titan were going at it, and he bluffed everybody into thinking he was really Metro Man, and his fish was really him?" He looks back after the black-haired figure, which is little more than a dim silhouette at this point but still unmistakably in the process of vaulting up the porch stairs. "Guy can do wicked disguises, man," he says, and grins so hard it's a wonder his smile doesn't jump off his face, then lets out a whoop and punches the air. "I love living here!"
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