With my Freeze Ray I will Stop
A/N: That’s right! Tentacles Megamind is secretly Thor. I’m trying something different with the style. I don’t know if I like it or not. Tell me if you notice any difference and if you do, whether it is a good one.
Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten or abandoned Cold Fusion, but I needed to get this one out of the pipeline and into the world. It’s completely written, only 4 short chapters, updating daily.
Also, okay wow, this is more of an AU than I thought. In this ‘verse, Megamind and Roxanne continue to have sexual encounters after the events in I Want to Know You. Friends-with-benefits sort of arrangement. Trouble is, only in the AUs where Megamind is not carrying a torch would a true friends-with-benefits relationship work out. That’s the whole problem. Neither party can be carrying a torch for it to work unless midway through the relationship they decide they aren’t actually interested at all and drop the torch.
But that’s another story.
MassivelyMinute, this one is for you.
With my Freeze Ray I will Stop
“I am actually serious this time,” Roxanne says as soon as she sees daylight. “That bag? Has got to go.”
“Oh ho, you wouldn’t say that if you knew what our other bags-just what is your problem with the bag, anyway?” For a moment, Megamind drops the act. Maybe he caught the glint in Roxanne’s eye that says she isn’t playing the game today, so he’s decided to be difficult right back. Maybe he’s just having a bad day.
He’s been having a lot of bad days recently.
“It reeks.” She wrinkles her nose, but it isn’t a cute wrinkle, it’s a disgusted one. “It smells like-I don’t know, boiled frog skins and cat vomit. At least wash the stupid thing.” She huffs a sigh and looks at him. “Must we do this today?”
He laughs uproariously. “Miss Ritchi, what could possibly be more important than taking one for the team and helping me to further the greater good of bad?”
“I was going to have a lunch date.”
Again, he drops the act and stares at her. “At Sam’s Sausage Shack? Seriously? I thought you were there to do some kind of story; nobody intelligent would dine there voluntarily."
“Look, it wasn’t my choice,” she protests. “He said the food was better than it looked. And smelled.”
“It would have to be,” Megamind mutters. His companion doesn’t ask how he has become so familiar with the place, and that’s something. He’s glad of that. “He told you he wanted to take you to the stinky hole of meaty horrors and you didn’t turn and run?” He recoils, eying his captive with definite suspicion. “I may have to reevaluate my opinions regarding your intellect. Though if you’re that desperate for sex, you could come to me. You know that.”
She scoffs and pointedly doesn’t comment on the last bit, which…okay, actually sort of stings. “For your information, he’s really nice! He’s not evil, he hasn’t got shipments of tesla coils coming in from Romania every other day, he’s-” She pauses. A mistake. She shouldn’t pause when baiting Megamind.
“Boring,” he supplies cheerfully. “The word you want is ‘boring.’”
“And how is this not a house of horrors?” She scowls, then smirks when his expressive face twists. “You can’t decide whether to be flattered or offended, can you?”
He grimaces. “Yes.”
“I was insulting you.”
He sits up straight in his chair, flutters his eyes closed, presses a hand to his chest. “In that case, dear woman, you have cut me to the quick.” Then he opens his eyes and flashes a wicked grin at her. “In all honesty though, you should practice more. If I can’t tell when I’m being insulted then you’re doing it wrong.” He winks and continues without pausing for her to respond. “Now, we’re wasting time. The sooner you play along, the sooner you can be on your way. Assuming, of course, that you want to be on your way. You could stay.” It’s a heavier hint than he usually drops, but it slips out before he can stop it. “It’s been a while.”
Roxanne keeps her expression carefully neutral. “So, what’s today’s surprise? It’s been, what, a month since you last kidnapped me? More than that.”
“And even longer since…oh, fine, have it your way. You’re killing me over here.” He glares at her for a moment, then switches the act back on and beams. “You’re gonna love this!” He launches himself forward and grabs the back of her chair, then spins it around on one back leg before slamming it down facing the other way and vaulting over her and into the shadows.
Roxanne has to force herself to relax by degrees; usually he doesn’t come that close when they haven’t called a time-out, but at least he’s not hinting anymore. Hinting is as close as he ever comes to asking-they call time-outs on her terms, since she’s the captive-but he’d been setting her teeth on edge. It’s getting harder and harder to act casual, these days.
Since that business after the botched kidnapping spray, the two of them have become close. Too close for comfort; Roxanne has been withdrawing. She hadn’t expected they would have so much in common when she had first suggested their arrangement, and she feels bad for leaving him hanging like this, frustrated and tense, but-it’s the way he moves, the way he looks at her. The way he’s so easy to talk to when they’re alone. The way he makes her heart twist with his slow smile, the one that starts in his eyes and works its way down his face like the sun coming out on a cloudy day.
She has to keep her distance or she risks losing everything. Friends have to care, she told him. Lately, she’s found herself caring far too much.
Squeaking nearby makes her squint and peer into the gloom, but luckily, she doesn’t have to peer for long. Megamind lunges against a large, wheeled contraption covered with a heavy black cloth, shoving it forward into the light. He gets it into position, then springs away, whisking the cloth to the floor with a flourish.
“Voila!” he exclaims, beaming at her expectantly.
Roxanne eyes the barrel aimed at her head. “What…is it?”
He glances at the oversized gun, his smile slipping a notch at her obvious lack of comprehension. “It’s a Freeze Ray!”
She frowns. “Wait, didn’t what’s-his-face in LA already make one of those? Dr. Awful or something?”
“If you’re referring to Dr. Horrible, no, this is not his freeze ray. He went messing around with the flow of time around an irregular object in three-dimensional space. I simply…freeze things.”
Her eyes narrow. “So it’s an ice beam.”
Megamind heaves a sigh and rolls his eyes. “No.” He draws it out, pronounces it nyewww. “‘Ice’ would imply that it uses water to function. This has nothing to do with ice. It freezes things.”
“Okay, tell me how.”
“By instantly lowering the temperature of whatever it hits to 77 degrees Kelvin.”
Roxanne sighs loudly.
“Minus 196 degrees Celsius.” He glares at her and slumps theatrically. “What is it going to take to impress you?”
“Is that what this is about?” She cocks an eyebrow and he pulls himself back up, color flooding across his cheekbones.
“No! Of course not!” She raises her other eyebrow and the color reaches his ears. “Okay-maybe a little.”
She grins. And very seriously does not think about how adorable he is when he’s blushing. “I’ll be impressed if it actually works.”
And, honestly, truly, Megamind is not sure what happens next. He had intended to toss off an evil grin, maybe a dark laugh or two, and then stride over to the controls to start the cameras rolling and call Metro Man. That’s all. Really.
But he only gets through about half of that, the grin and a laugh and few strides, and then suddenly there’s a noise like buZAP and a flash of white light. It’s like a camera flashbulb going off and it makes him stagger and rub at his eyes.
What he sees when he opens them nearly makes his heart stop in his chest. Roxanne is blue. Not the good kind of blue, either, not the kind of blue he's comfortable with-this is a terrible, ice-pale blue, and all the more horrifying because it’s on her. She’s blue and perfectly still and frozen solid and that is very, very not okay. She’s frozen.
I’ll be impressed if it works. Famous last words, and the thought that they might indeed be her last words is enough to make him feel faint and sick-enough to make his blood pound in his ears, to send his mind freewheeling into a tailspin.
He whirls and screams for Minion.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Minion is on his way up with the remote for the freeze ray when he hears Megamind shout for him, and what scares him is that this is not a just-for-show yell or even one of his rare I’m-worried cries of alarm. No. This is a rising, train-whistle shriek of his name. He drops the remote without a second thought and breaks into a run, dropping to all fours and using his knuckles to swing his top-heavy body down the corridor to the lift. He doesn’t bother with the elevator; the gorilla suit makes quick work of the cables.
“Sir!” he cries, vaulting onto the upper level. “Sir, what’s-oh.” He stops so fast he overbalances and crashes onto his side.
Megamind turns toward him, his eyes wider than they’ve ever been, nearly as pale as the motionless reporter. “I d-don’t-I don’t know what happened-”
Minion gulps and rights himself. He slams both metal fists into the cement floor in a vain attempt to jar his nerves back to normal. “Never mind what happened, what do we do?”
“I don’t know!” Megamind hisses. “I don’t-I don’t know-”
“We’ll call Metro Man,” Minion decides, and he doesn’t even feel bad about suggesting it. “He can use his heat vision to-”
“She’ll shatter if we raise her temperature too quickly-oh, oh no. Oh no.” Eyes wild, he leaps for the machine and blasts the reporter’s still form with another pulse to keep her from thawing-like superheated glass does when its temperature falls, supercooled organic material cracks and breaks when it warms unevenly. “The freezer. We have to keep her temperature down until we’re ready to bring it back up. BRAINBOTS!”
“They can’t move her!” Minion cries. Megamind faces him, demanding explanation. “Their claws are too warm for her. If you’re right-we have to do this here. Can you dehydrate her?”
“Can’t risk it.” He presses both fists against his forehead and spins in a small, tight circle. “Come on, think!”
“How is this different than cryogenics?” Has he even looked into those? Minion wonders wildly. They’re not quite his field…
Megamind looks at him. He’s just barely keeping himself under control; his chest is heaving with uneven gasps. “This goes beyond cryopreservation; this is unprotected vitrification. This-at least there was no time for extracellular ice to form. Or intracellular. But when she thaws is another story.” He swallows hard. “I need to bring her temperature up instantly and evenly throughout her body or she’ll explode. Literally. She’ll sh-shatter all over the floor.” He pulls his lips back from his teeth and lets out an animal snarl. “C’mon, c’mon, must be a way, there must be a way-please-”
Minion looks at Roxanne. “What makes this a problem?” Besides the fact that she’s frozen solid, he doesn’t add, because all he can do is help Megamind work through it. Right now, that magnificent brain is spinning and fizzing like crazy; all Minion can think is that maybe his friend could organize his whirling thoughts if he talked them out.
Unfortunately, language itself is incapable of keeping up with the way Megamind’s brain is now racing. “-Find a way-raise temperature-ice crystals, rupture cells, render reanimation impossible-can’t.”
“Reanimate?”
Megamind looks up, teeth bared, and briefly returns to coherency. “Her heart is not beating. There is no brain activity. She is dead, and unless we move fast she will continue to be dead and I will not stand for that. I refuse to accept-OH!” He jumps a full two feet in the air and lands in a crouch, eyes wide, and leaves coherency gasping in the dust. “Not cryopreservation, cryostasis! We use hydrostatic pressure, force the formation of carbon dioxide clathrate hydrates into hexagonal truncated trapezohedrons and abbreviate the resulting Weaire-Phelan structures in her cells, YES!”
Minion blinks a few times. He had only understood about half that; Megamind was speaking extremely quickly. “Wait, isn’t that the basis for the de-gun?”
Megamind doesn’t reply-he pulls the gun from his belt and fires at Roxanne without a second thought, snatches the cube out of the air and takes off running like a bat out of hell. The brainbots swarm after him en mass as he flees deep into the bowels of the Lair, far under the lake, running like he’s never run before, running as though his feet had wings.
When Minion catches up, he's climbing all over one of their spare decompression chambers, sealing various tubes to various tanks, muttering to himself. His cape, collar, and gloves are in a heap on the floor, along with three or four small metal spikes. He must have torn one of his gloves in his haste to pull it off.
“What do I do?”
Megamind points without looking. “You pull that chamber over here and set up a three-screen catch-all console over there, then get started routing the biofiltration systems.”
Minion looks at the chamber he’s pointing at. It’s enormous. “Pull?”
“Do it now, Minion.”
He shrugs, walks over, and grabs it with both hands. The hydraulics in his suit pop and hiss in warning; alarmed, he lets go. “It’s too big for me. Brainbots-”
The brainbots’ understanding of verbal commands isn’t extensive enough yet to understand what he wants without a fairly complicated order-issuing the command via computer would be faster but so far there’s no console this far down in the bowels of the Lair.
He blanks for a moment on the input directives, and then all of a sudden Megamind lets out an exasperated hiss and appears at his side. “Connect the half-valves in reverse order, then get the nanites from subsection B, storage unit 12 and add them to the green tank.” Minion glances over. Seven pressurized cylinders stand in a line, all but one of them silver. Three are already connected.
Megamind steps forward. “Brainbots. To me.” He's already warbling on the last word; he hardly even inhales before clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, issuing perfect orders in a complex, rapid-fire language he and Minion both know but only he can speak. It blends with the notes singing in the back of his throat, the old songs, words Minion has not heard since the two of them were very very small. It is faster than English, more precise than Latin, and-as far as he had known until now-utterly incomprehensible to all but the two of them. It is ancient. It is dead. They do not speak it, or of it, even to each other.
Except, apparently, in those rare cases where speed and ease of understanding are more important than pride and memory combined. Minion hadn’t realized the brainbots could understand it. Hearing it nearly knocks him flat and he fumbles the last connection, then recovers and hurries down the hall to SU-12, badly shaken and trying not to think about it.
(Megamind is many things, but careless is not one of them. Minion doesn’t have to wonder why he had included full comprehension of this particular language in the brainbots’ core processing-he had been preparing for a day when he might need perfect and immediate understanding of complicated orders, making sure his creations would hear him and respond.
It’s a reminder, one for which sometimes even Minion is grateful, that Megamind is a far more serious-minded being than he appears. He hides it well, but the quiet, sober creature he had been as a child is still somewhere deep inside him, and Minion finds comfort in that reassurance.)
His use of this safety measure is an indicator of how strong his ties to the reporter really are. Oh, Minion has noticed that things have changed between his master-friend-brother and the woman he seems to have taken a shine to, but he hadn’t realized how frantic Megamind would become upon endangering her.
The fact is, he’s never heard his friend speak this language willingly before. He’d had nightmares as a child, of course; they both had, but Megamind was the one who would wake with a thousand birdsongs tangled in the death throes of a too-old typewriter in his throat. Minion simply doesn’t have the right equipment for it. In any case, this is the first time he has heard Megamind voluntarily use his native tongue, and that says something. The fact that Minion finds himself wishing he could do a little screaming for Miss Ritchi’s sake says something, too. He isn’t sure what and he isn’t sure if he likes it, but it’s there and it’s real.
As always, best not to think about it.
When he returns, the suit hissing in protest at his extended and heightened use of its functions, Megamind is bending close to the wiring of the outer relay he has hooked to the decompression chamber, blinking furiously, his lower lip bleeding where it’s clenched between his teeth. Minion doesn’t say anything, just adds the nanites to the green-painted pressurized tank before assembling the requested monitor setup. He doesn’t mention that the nanites haven’t been tested.
His companion hurries into the first chamber, places a small blue cube on the floor, and then backs away and closes the door. Seals it. He scrambles to the second, larger chamber and hooks two hoses to the external filters, then connects them to a series of gas cylinders and seals the tank; there’s a hissing sound and clouds of gas billow into the enclosed space. He dashes to the three-monitor control setup Minion has thrown together and starts typing like mad, long blue hands flying over the keyboards.
Tschhhhh, says one of the tanks, and blue-green liquid dumps into the first chamber, which begins to fill at an alarming rate. Minion jumps. “Sir, didn’t you say-”
“Not water. Won’t affect the cube.” He sniffs, flickers his fingers again. “But that will.” There’s a flash of blue light from inside the chamber as another tank hisses into action.
Minion peers nervously at a gauge. “That amount of pressure will kill her, Sir.”
“Yes,” Megamind says shortly, “I know. Internal temperature?” The gas from the second chamber begins to pump into the first, bubbling up like carbonation.
Minion checks the thermometer. “Seventy Kelvin and rising. Pressure levels decreasing and stable.” He peers through the small porthole at Roxanne and risks an opinion. “…She doesn’t look so good. How are we going to get her heart working again?”
Trembling, Megamind backs away from the console. “I’ll be right back. Touch nothing.” He whirls and dashes away.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
He scrubs at his eyes with the back of his hand as he runs. Stupid, stupid, stupid! How could he have let this happen? The chamber is Roxanne’s only chance for survival, but it isn’t a guarantee. It isn't even close.
A freeze ray. What a great idea that had been. What a failure it had turned out to be.
Some small, hated part of his mind whispers, At least it worked. It did exactly what it was supposed to.
He grits his teeth. Yes, but not when it was supposed to do it! Now she’s going to die and it’s all my fault!
He hadn’t even been near the machine. It isn’t fair.
Adding insult to injury is that things had been going so well. Roxanne had just been told, gently, that she wasn’t qualified for a higher-ranking position at the news station due to her regrettable lack of reliability, which was, of course, not her fault at all. Megamind had high-fived her about it and she had actually laughed. And then she had kissed him…
They had laughed. Together. And now she’s frozen in a tank, maybe having her cells slashed to bits by forming ice crystals.
She’s his friend, his only friend other than Minion, and the only human who has ever shown interest in his physical and mental well-being as an adult. Of course he’s fantasized about what she might say if he ever did something insane like-as a random, non-specific example-ask her to dinner outside of a kidnapping. He has wanted to. Sometimes, when she was lying beside or under or on top of him, when she touched his face and smiled, he'd dared to think she might even say yes.
But now…
He chokes back another angry sob and yanks the door to the medical supplies closet, grabs the TENS patches and a heart monitor, whirls, and starts back for the decompression chambers at a flat run.
“Is she…?”
Minion is still peering at the monitors. “Well, the pressure and liquid combo seem to be working, Sir, and the nanites have spread evenly through her body and are doing their job. Subsonar pulses indicate no hydrocrystalline buildup in or around her cells and we’re at two degrees Celsius already.”
Megamind’s knees go weak. “Thank you.”
“She is still…dead, Sir.” Minion swallows. “And very, very cold.”
“Okay, increase the pressure level reduction to twelve square inch pounds per minute,” Megamind tells him, sounding much more sure of himself than he feels. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Sir, you should go and get some-” Minion begins, then stops short as several brainbots zoom into the room carrying folded black cloths. “-Blankets,” he finishes lamely, then rallies. “You’ll also need to get hot liquids into her to raise her core body temperature. Heat inhalation is also a good idea-steam would be best. Should I go start heating up some water?”
“Yes. Good idea.” Now that Megamind has done all he can do, he sounds flat. He stands without fidgeting, staring through the six-inch-thick glass at Roxanne’s motionless form.
Minion starts to say something else, then apparently thinks better of it and leaves. Good. Megamind isn’t sure he’s up to talking right now.
He waits anxiously until the temperature gauge reads 33, then drains the liquid from the tank and swings the door open, grabs Roxanne by the ankles and hauls her out onto the floor. Her skin feels like skin, not spongy or waxy; it’s a good sign but he can't allow himself the luxury of hope. Moving quickly, he attaches sticky round TENS patches to her temples, chest, and stomach, and hooks the ones on her chest and stomach to the TENS machine.
The ones on her head, he passes off to two hovering brainbots. “On my mark, pulse at 350 joules,” he tells them, then leans over and starts rescue breathing and CPR. “…Fourteen, fifteen.” He sits back. “Mark.”
The brainbots flash.
Breathe twice, fifteen compressions, breathe, fifteen. “Mark.”
Flash.
Roxanne’s head tips to the side and liquid trickles from her nose and mouth. Nothing.
No, he thinks, forcing his shaking hands into fists. I do not accept this. Not today. Failure is not an option.
He grits his teeth and makes a decision, grabs the nearest brainbot by the claws. “Light me,” he hisses, and shuts his eyes. He remembers at the last second to unclench his jaw.
Megamind chose a lightning bolt as his symbol for a reason, and it’s the same reason he doesn’t have a defibrillator in the Lair. He rarely acknowledges his capacity for purely elemental destruction; he relies on his intellect, on brains over brawn, as a matter of principle and of pride. Today, though, Roxanne needs him to be as alien as he can ever possibly be and he rises to the challenge without hesitation. The electricity roils in through his palms, lances up his arms and coils uncomfortably in the bottom of his stomach. He doesn’t let go of the brainbot for a good fifteen seconds-when he does, he turns and plants both hands flat on Roxanne’s chest, fingers splayed.
He opens his eyes to find the world blue-spinning and hazy, blinding white around the edges. He focuses, brings all of his will to bear on the energy trembling in his body-issues a command. “LIVE,” he snarls, and the lightning leaps up inside him, dances behind his eyes, courses gleefully down his arms and wraps around Roxanne’s heart and up into her brain.
Megamind follows it in, flows down the life gradient into her body and sends himself flickering along dead synapses and flashing down through her nervous system, flaring into her in one final, desperate burst of light and energy. For an instant, just an instant faster than thought, they’re part of each other so completely that Megamind honestly isn’t sure where he ends and she begins.
He crackles through empty neural highways, lighting her up. He inhales, her chest expands. He tastes the fluid in her throat and sinuses and does something with his own respiratory system as he exhales that translates to a violent hiccupping spasm in her chest cavity. Liquid pours from her mouth and nose; her chest relaxes. He breathes again, cleanly now, and blood rushes.
And the heart monitor says, Beep.
He slumps back, falls back into his own stunningly lonely mind and gasps, staring down at her in disbelief. It worked. She chokes, coughs, begins to shake violently. It worked.
Megamind lunges for the blankets.
Lifting her into a sitting position, he shucks off her wet clothes and then wraps her as tightly as he dares in blanket after blanket-after three, he adds the electric one and sets it on a very low setting, and then he spaces another two and finishes with the heat retention sheet. Only the very top of her head is showing now, a frizzy tuft of brown hair.
Not knowing what else to do, he crawls over and lies on top of her, pressing the blankets close with his weight. With all the layers he’s wrapped her in, his lower body temperature can’t possibly make a difference now.
Beep, says the monitor. Beep. Beep. Beep.
At this point, there’s only one thing left for him to do. The one thing he hasn’t let himself do yet, the one thing he’s stamped out and choked back and forced himself to avoid so that he can focus on fixing what he had done. Now that Roxanne is breathing again-and shivering-there’s only one thing Megamind can do.
He wraps himself around her and cries.
Forward to Chapter 2
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