Fic: Cold Fusion: True North, Chapter 7
Title: Cold Fusion: True North, Chapter 7
Author: Dal_Niente
Rating: M for later chapters
Word Count: 3,700
Author's Note: Onward to chapter 7, in which everyone is very, very confused! I OWN NOTHING (well, the cabbie is mine, but that’s all). Don’t sue me.
Chapter 7
Megamind has been quiet all morning, which is unusual, but Minion figures he might just be tired. He was up later than usual last night, and he’s had another early-morning meeting with the city officials about the Metro Tower rebuild - he always comes back from those with several hundred new problems tumbling through his mind, and the businessmen render him numb and unhappy.
“People’s lives are just numbers to them,” he had said one night recently. “Dollar figures. Minion, I don’t understand it,” and then he had wandered off and sat staring into a viewfinder Minion hadn’t seen before for the rest of the night.
Lord knows what he had been looking at. He had fallen asleep there, eyes pressed against the repurposed binocular goggles, until Minion had very gently settled him back in his chair and taken a peek through the scope. All he’d seen were a bunch of stars - not even anything special, as far as he could tell. But they must mean something, because that viewfinder has been appearing more and more frequently. It’s out this morning; Megamind had fallen asleep stargazing last night and now there are marks in his blue skin - two deep indents like parentheses around his eyes, which are already deeply shadowed from lack of rest. He looks awful.
Minion, who had been shocked almost speechless by his master’s disheveled appearance, is almost defiantly cheerful over breakfast. Megamind refuses his coffee outright, and that’s when Minion starts cracking jokes until finally one of them gets a smile, and then he hides half a caffeine tablet in Megamind’s jelly doughnut and soon all is right with the world again.
Until, very suddenly, it isn’t.
Megamind, who has finished breakfast and is halfway to the kitchen door, whirls when he hears Minion gag. He’s at Minion’s side almost immediately, perched on the shoulder of the gorilla suit and unscrewing the dome with deft hands. “What is it, which one, can you tell?” He swiftly upends the tank so no water is lost; there’s a selectively permeable membrane on the bottom to keep it from leaking but it won’t hold up the weight of the water inside. Minion is jostled a bit, but it’s better than forcing him to breathe air, especially when he’s like this.
Minion groans and shakes his head. “Gimme a second - it’s jangling, it’s weird.”
Megamind bites his lip. If one of the reactors is bad, Minion would be the first to know - he resonates to their hum. “It is one of the reactors, though, right?”
“It - yes.” Minion nods weakly, gags again. “Agh, ow. Yes. It’ll be the cold one. It’s out of whack, it’s like there’s a third note and it’s gone all dissonant…usually it’s a perfect fifth, but it’s like it’s been augmented or something.”
Megamind’s eyebrows shoot up. A third note?
“Hang on,” he tells Minion, and jumps from the gorilla suit to the kitchen counter to his chair to the floor. Ordinarily he would have simply hopped down, but that would have hurt Minion, and Megamind will not hurt Minion. “I’ll change your water and then I’ll run and look.”
But Minion shakes his head. “No time,” he manages, and then he throws up.
Megamind winces. Nobody likes being sick, but for Minion it’s worse because he has to breathe that water.
“Okay, all right,” Megamind says. He keeps his tone short, no-nonsense. There will be time to freak out later. “Pool?”
Minion is quite literally green around the gills, and doesn’t say anything. He can’t. If he opens his mouth…
Megamind nods once, decisive. “Pool,” he mutters, answering his own question, and breaks into a run, heart hammering triple beats (thd-d-doom thd-d-doom thd-d-doom) behind his ribcage. Minion is throwing up again.
This sort of thing has happened only once before, years ago, back before Megamind had realized just how scarce muons really were and moved his traps to low Earth orbit. After that, he and Minion had run a series of tests to see how the fish would respond to different malfunctions with the generators. At best, Minion had felt mildly nauseated; at worst, he had screamed himself hoarse until his eyes had rolled back in his head and he’d become unresponsive. Megamind had wanted to stop testing after that, but Minion had insisted they continue until they’d tried everything that could possibly go wrong.
But this response isn’t on any of Megamind’s lists, which means it’s something new, something neither he nor Minion had thought of. And that thought - the thought that he had overlooked something that is now causing Minion to shake and vomit - scares Megamind worse than almost anything else can.
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Roxanne is getting out of the shower when it happens. Her stomach lifts, churns, turns over, and up comes breakfast. There is no warning. She goes from being completely fine to doubled-over and heaving in under two seconds.
She hiccups, gulps, staggers to her toilet and falls to her knees, retches again.
It isn’t food poisoning. She knows it isn’t food poisoning. She isn’t sure how she knows it, but she does, the same as she knows the sky is blue and water is wet. It’s just something that is true. And the little voice in the back of her mind that is her intuition is screaming at her, and it’s screaming one very coherent message:
Get To Minion.
She grabs her phone - even with last night’s meltdown, she had remembered to plug it in - and ignores the two new voicemails in favor of speed-dial.
“Pick up, pick up, pick up.” She chants it through clenched teeth, her eyes watering as the phone rings. She’d planned on waiting a day or two before heading back to the lair to have a Talk with Megamind, but it looks like there’s been a change of plans.
“Hi, you’ve reached Jocelyn Andrada’s cell, I can’t come to the phone right now but if you’ll leave me a detailed message and a call-back number I’ll -”
Roxanne hangs up, swearing and scared (and also slightly irritated because how, how is she supposed to get dressed when she’s like this? and come on, she just brushed her teeth), and dials Akos’ number. She hadn’t meant to take him up on his offer of on-call service, but she really doesn’t have much of a choice.
He picks up after the first ring. “Yello.”
“Akos, help,” and that’s all she can get out before she’s bent double again with her face in the toilet. Really, this is getting ridiculous. There’s nothing left to get rid of! “Help it’s Roxanne and I need to get to the warehouse now.”
“Fifteen - yeah, same to you, asshole!” There’s a squeal, followed by some distant honking that Roxanne might have found funny another day. “Sorry. Fifteen minutes.”
“Hurry,” she gasps, and stumbles off in search of clothes. The floor falls away from her, rolling like the deck of a ship.
Five minutes later she has come to the conclusion that sweatpants are God, and that her shirt can go fuck itself because she is not bothering - getting into underwear was hard enough, and it’s a chilly morning and Roxanne is not going to deal with more than one set of sleeves right now. She crawls into a hoodie, and that’s going to have to be good enough.
That done, she makes her way to the kitchen and retrieves plastic bags and stuffs them in her hoodie pocket before staggering to the door, pausing on the way to grab her cell phone and purse.
Ordinarily, Roxanne is okay with taking the stairs, but not today. Today she pushes the elevator button repeatedly, taking some small comfort in its persistent clicking. Minion, what is going on? she wonders, and curls over one of the bags, hacking, but nothing comes up.
But it does get her thinking. Why is she so bent on getting to Minion, of all people?
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
“Almost there, hang on, we’re almost there, okay?” Megamind scrambles around a corner and down yet another flight of stairs - Why is Minion’s pool so far away from the kitchen? And why isn’t there some sort of elevator or transportation device? Poor design planning on somebody’s part. Another day he might have made some sort of joke, but today he just shrugs it off as another failure. Add it to the pile.
“With you all the way, Sir.” Minion coughs, gags, dry heaves. “Ow. I’m broadcasting, Sir; once I’m out of the water you should be able to feel some of this. See what - see what you make of it.” His voice trails off at the end. If Megamind weren’t running, he’d have gone weak at the knees. Minion has never been like this.
“Okay, Minion, okay. Shut up, okay?”
There, there’s the pool ahead, and Megamind skids into the room and flings himself onto his knees at the water’s edge, punches through the membrane on Minion’s dome and curls both hands under the boxy body, carefully lifts his friend free of the tank.
His stomach roils almost immediately when his hands come in contact with Minion's ventral ganglia, but he grits his teeth and holds onto the fish just long enough to get a feel for the sensation before he drops him into the pool. Minion sinks to the bottom, where he rests on the sand between a fan coral and a rather startled starfish and blinks miserably up at his friend.
Megamind has put him in the shallow end - three or four feet of water, warmer at this end than at the other, which is thirty feet deep and cool - in case he has to get in with the fish later. He can swim better than most humans, but he’d rather not have to if Minion is sick. Scuba gear is just so impersonal.
He swallows hard, then reaches into the water and places a transmitter at Minion’s side. “I’m going to check out the reactors, run some diagnostics. I’ll be back. If anything changes, if you need me, the button is right by your fin.”
Minion rolls an eye downwards and nods. The green light on the transmitter shines reassuringly up through the water.
“Back soon,” Megamind promises, then gets to his feet and flees.
Oh, God, what is it, what did I miss? He runs headlong into the controls without bothering to slow down, then pushes himself back a step and sends his hands flying over the keys while he scans the output desperately for any sign of trouble. “Nibs!” he cries over his shoulder. “Nibs, Liam, Ort!” Minion is definitely nauseated so the problem has to be with the cold fusion reactor, it has to be; that’s the one that makes Minion sick, the muon reactor just makes him hurt -
He strikes blindly out at the screen, his nerves ragged. Why is his best friend the damn canary? Why does it have to be Minion, why can’t it be me, not Minion, not Minion, not Minion -
Behind him, brainbots cluster and whirl and three drift forward, thauming and waiting for instructions.
“Ort, I need you to check on the muon reactor, nothing should be wrong but it doesn’t hurt to check. Take some of the others with you. Liam, Nibs,” he snaps as Ort zooms away with a small fleet of other brainbots, “you’re amphibious, you check the cold fusion reactor. Remember to wear protective gear. Report back to me, here, in five minutes. If I’m not here, I’ll be down in the pool room with Minion.”
He only vaguely registers them leaving; his mind is racing.
What had he missed? What is it? Minion had said it sounded like a third frequency had joined the other two, but Megamind can’t think of anything that would cause that. Well, another reactor might do the trick, but let’s face it, that’s just ridiculous. Who the hell would build a cold fusion reactor in Metro City?
“…Not sure why the scientific community hasn't looked further into cold fusion before… Obviously, it isn't the impossibility they all think it is…”
Who, indeed.
His fingers stutter on the keys as his eyes go wide, and he slides a second keyboard out from under the first. He’ll have to work his hands double fast, running two searches at once, but it’s necessary. His hands lift, and he makes them dance.
Nibs is back, plugging into the control station next to the one Megamind is currently overclocking.
Brainbot Model 6.3, Designation: 77
Serial No. 236AR904D
Alternate: “_Nibs”
Firmware update 07 .14 .2011
Software update 07 .14 .2011
Hardware update 07 .14 .2011
Input: _DIAGNOSTIC_REQUEST
InputSource: =Daddy
Output: “_all .quiet .on .the .western .front”
Megamind doesn’t even look up; the computer translates Nibs’ output to a synthesized voice. It’s a new upgrade; the newer brainbots don’t even need the computer. “That was fast.”
Input: _SKEPTICISM
InputSource: =Daddy
Output: “_we .are .certain .previous .output .is .correct”
Tone: offense
Megamind nods shortly and continues scanning the output readings, looking for something, anything that would prove Nibs wrong. The background check on Robert Anderson hums along two consoles over.
Output: “_ahem”
Tone: worried
Megamind glares. “What, Nibs.”
Output: “_902TY138F_ .reports .reactor .activity_12.2124632_km_ .north .of .current .location.”
Tone: hesitant
Megamind spins. “There’s another reactor?” Nibs whirs and clicks as Ort comes whizzing back. The second brainbot says something synthesized about the muon reactor being completely fine, but Megamind holds up a hand. “Nibs?”
Output: “_not .to .put .too .fine .a .point .on .it”
Output: _PAUSE_FOR_EMPHASIS
Output: “_yes”
Tone: apologetic
“God DAMN it!” Megamind shrieks, and runs.
He does not look at the background check. If he had, he would have seen that no one by the name of Robert Anderson has ever worked for Metro University.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Roxanne has had just about enough weirdness to last her a lifetime, but right now, she’s just glad Megamind hasn’t pulled her fingerprints from the Lair’s systems. She can still get in.
Akos glances over his shoulder as if he expects a police car to pull around any minute. “Miss Ritchi…” he says nervously, “we’re gonna get in trouble…”
“Trouble can kiss my sweet ass,” she rasps, and just about falls on her face when the hidden door slides open, but Akos catches her.
Eyes huge, he supports her as she staggers down a long, narrow hall, making twists and turns that seem to be totally random. All the halls are narrow, and fairly well-lit by white hanging globes. “What is this place?”
Roxanne doesn’t bother answering. Minion is very, very close, but the sick feeling is muted now, somehow. She just hopes they don’t run into -
A streak of blue and black flashes across the hall in front of them, yelling something incoherent at the top if its lungs, and Roxanne winces. Akos stops dead. “The hell was that?”
Roxanne wants to turn and leave, but that little voice is still chanting insistently that she needs to Get To Minion, Get To Minion. She presses on, ignoring Akos’ questions, and eventually he falls blissfully silent. Roxanne is glad of small comforts; she is beginning to get a headache. Megamind seems to have a fondness for spiral staircases, and vertigo and spiral stairs don’t mix well.
Slowly, she makes her way to where Megamind had run past, and turns, only to find yet another flight of stairs. She groans.
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“…Stupid, idiot, brainless bag of meat and blood and carbon, I’ve had it up to here with humans thinking they have all the answers, didn’t we make it clear that cold fusion was a useless pursuit… waste of perfectly good air, he’s got less sense than a box of rocks…” He bursts back into the underground pool room at full speed and falls to the floor at the edge of the pool with enough force to bruise his knees and crack the tile. “Minion?”
Minion opens his eyes and looks up at him. “Sir?”
Megamind smiles down at his friend in what he hopes is a reassuring manner but probably isn’t. “I found the problem, Minion. Some idiot built a reactor.”
“Some idiot built two reactors,” Minion wheezes, and it actually takes Megamind a moment or two to get that he’s trying to joke.
He snorts. “Hah. Listen, I-”
“Minion!”
Minion’s eyes open wide and Megamind lets out a startled yell and spins around on his knees, overbalances, flails, and falls into the pool with a tremendous splash. He doesn’t fall on Minion, but the sea urchin that is keeping Minion company makes a big impression.
“OW,” Megamind says, very clearly, and is halfway up and onto dry land before he really knows what’s happening. He says some other things as well, most of them rude.
Minion rises about a foot in the water. “Miss Ritchi?” he exclaims, bewildered.
Roxanne starts to answer, then bends over, retching horribly. Megamind goes white. First Minion, and now Roxanne? But why would Roxanne be sick?
Then he’s on his feet and next to her, one hand under her chin, the other pressed to her forehead. “No fever,” he says, relieved, but that relief is short-lived when she slaps him smartly across the face.
“Don’t,” she mutters, glaring out of watering eyes, “don’t touch me, you…you obnoxious…don’t like you,” and it’s true. She doesn’t like him very much at the moment. She still loves him, but she doesn’t like him. It’s a confusing distinction, but it’s there.
“Wait,” says a voice, and an older man with greying hair appears suddenly on Roxanne’s other side and pulls her away from Megamind, who is so surprised that he actually lets her go. “You’re him, aren’t you? You’re Megamind.”
Once upon a time, Megamind might have said something like, the one and only, or maybe, that’s sort of a stupid question, isn’t it?
But now, all he says is, “Yeah, that’s me. Roxanne, what are you doing here?”
She’s been pulling insistently at the strange man. “I’m trying,” she snarls, abruptly lucid, and Megamind recoils, “to get to Minion. Akos, let me go.”
He obeys, although he looks like he has some serious misgivings about doing so.
As it turns out, those misgivings were spot on, because Roxanne takes three enormous, staggering steps, and goes straight into the deep end of the pool before either of the other two can react.
Megamind is after her in a heartbeat, tearing out of his dripping cape and diving in without a second thought. Roxanne is already clawing around in a general surface-ward direction, but her eyes are squeezed closed against the salt water and when Megamind grabs her under the arms and locks her close against his chest in a lifeguard’s hold, she gasps and chokes on salt water.
Eyes stinging, lungs burning, she breaks the surface and flails. Ordinarily she is a fairly strong swimmer, but she is sick and disoriented and, okay, now she’s panicking.
Megamind’s voice in her ear shocks her like electricity and she stills. “Easy,” he hums. “Easy. I got you. You’re okay. You’re fine. Everything’s fine, you hear me?”
Roxanne chokes, coughs, gags a little, and nods.
“Why’d you grab me,” is the first thing out of her mouth. “I had it under control.”
“Liar,” Megamind says, and swims her into the shallows until she can stand, then releases her carefully, turning her around so she faces him. She doesn’t look as pale as she had, and her eyes are clearer. As far as he can tell, she’s focusing just fine.
“Listen, I need to go take care of what’s making Minion sick, but if you’re here to see him I won’t stop you. Just be careful, okay? Try not to touch anything on the reef. Some of it’s poisonous, some of it’s venomous, either way I don’t want to come home and find you foaming at the mouth or dead or something.”
“Reef?” She looks around, gapes at the colorful coral and anemones. “Reef,” she breathes, and nods. “Okay. I’ll be careful.”
“You’re sure you’ll be all right?”
She looks around at Megamind, who is still holding her by the arms, standing waist-deep in the pool with water beading on his suit and trickling down his worried face.
She blinks, and it’s like flipping a switch - Megamind’s expression goes completely flat and he lets go of her arms. Then he turns away, sloshing to the low stairs in one corner and exiting the pool without looking back.
“You, Akos,” he snaps, pointing, and the other man jumps and looks around at him. “Stay with them until I get back. Don’t wander off. I need to…take care of a friend.” He picks up his cape and leaves, walking with an oddly precise, clipped gait that Roxanne doesn’t recognize.
She puzzles over that for a moment, then realizes with a start that she feels completely fine now. When she was a child, she’d had problems with car-sickness - she’d feel incredibly ill in the family station wagon, but as soon as the vehicle had stopped and she was allowed to get out she would be fine. The way she feels now is exactly the same as she used to feel years ago when she stepped out of the car - all right, but searching, as if her body itself were wondering why. Weird.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
It’s on, it’s charged, it’s working - of course it’s working, he knew it would. There’s no reason for it not to work. And he knows his calculations are precise and correct.
He hadn’t expected the core to be quite that shade of orange, but he’ll take what he can get. The output readings are all positive, except for a few glitches which will probably work themselves out.
Life, today, is good. And tomorrow, when the reactor is performing at capacity and glowing blue-white the way it should be, he will call a press conference, and soon his name will be in headlines all over the world, and life will be even better. That’s worth a few favors, a few bills of sale, a lost job. More than worth it. The university is going to be sorry they let him go.
“Victory is mine,” he says quietly, and shivers. He’s always wanted to say that, and the way his words echo around the stage and the huge, empty room is positively delicious.
Chapter 6
Top of Page
Chapter 8
Return to Master List
Author: Dal_Niente
Rating: M for later chapters
Word Count: 3,700
Author's Note: Onward to chapter 7, in which everyone is very, very confused! I OWN NOTHING (well, the cabbie is mine, but that’s all). Don’t sue me.
Chapter 7
Megamind has been quiet all morning, which is unusual, but Minion figures he might just be tired. He was up later than usual last night, and he’s had another early-morning meeting with the city officials about the Metro Tower rebuild - he always comes back from those with several hundred new problems tumbling through his mind, and the businessmen render him numb and unhappy.
“People’s lives are just numbers to them,” he had said one night recently. “Dollar figures. Minion, I don’t understand it,” and then he had wandered off and sat staring into a viewfinder Minion hadn’t seen before for the rest of the night.
Lord knows what he had been looking at. He had fallen asleep there, eyes pressed against the repurposed binocular goggles, until Minion had very gently settled him back in his chair and taken a peek through the scope. All he’d seen were a bunch of stars - not even anything special, as far as he could tell. But they must mean something, because that viewfinder has been appearing more and more frequently. It’s out this morning; Megamind had fallen asleep stargazing last night and now there are marks in his blue skin - two deep indents like parentheses around his eyes, which are already deeply shadowed from lack of rest. He looks awful.
Minion, who had been shocked almost speechless by his master’s disheveled appearance, is almost defiantly cheerful over breakfast. Megamind refuses his coffee outright, and that’s when Minion starts cracking jokes until finally one of them gets a smile, and then he hides half a caffeine tablet in Megamind’s jelly doughnut and soon all is right with the world again.
Until, very suddenly, it isn’t.
Megamind, who has finished breakfast and is halfway to the kitchen door, whirls when he hears Minion gag. He’s at Minion’s side almost immediately, perched on the shoulder of the gorilla suit and unscrewing the dome with deft hands. “What is it, which one, can you tell?” He swiftly upends the tank so no water is lost; there’s a selectively permeable membrane on the bottom to keep it from leaking but it won’t hold up the weight of the water inside. Minion is jostled a bit, but it’s better than forcing him to breathe air, especially when he’s like this.
Minion groans and shakes his head. “Gimme a second - it’s jangling, it’s weird.”
Megamind bites his lip. If one of the reactors is bad, Minion would be the first to know - he resonates to their hum. “It is one of the reactors, though, right?”
“It - yes.” Minion nods weakly, gags again. “Agh, ow. Yes. It’ll be the cold one. It’s out of whack, it’s like there’s a third note and it’s gone all dissonant…usually it’s a perfect fifth, but it’s like it’s been augmented or something.”
Megamind’s eyebrows shoot up. A third note?
“Hang on,” he tells Minion, and jumps from the gorilla suit to the kitchen counter to his chair to the floor. Ordinarily he would have simply hopped down, but that would have hurt Minion, and Megamind will not hurt Minion. “I’ll change your water and then I’ll run and look.”
But Minion shakes his head. “No time,” he manages, and then he throws up.
Megamind winces. Nobody likes being sick, but for Minion it’s worse because he has to breathe that water.
“Okay, all right,” Megamind says. He keeps his tone short, no-nonsense. There will be time to freak out later. “Pool?”
Minion is quite literally green around the gills, and doesn’t say anything. He can’t. If he opens his mouth…
Megamind nods once, decisive. “Pool,” he mutters, answering his own question, and breaks into a run, heart hammering triple beats (thd-d-doom thd-d-doom thd-d-doom) behind his ribcage. Minion is throwing up again.
This sort of thing has happened only once before, years ago, back before Megamind had realized just how scarce muons really were and moved his traps to low Earth orbit. After that, he and Minion had run a series of tests to see how the fish would respond to different malfunctions with the generators. At best, Minion had felt mildly nauseated; at worst, he had screamed himself hoarse until his eyes had rolled back in his head and he’d become unresponsive. Megamind had wanted to stop testing after that, but Minion had insisted they continue until they’d tried everything that could possibly go wrong.
But this response isn’t on any of Megamind’s lists, which means it’s something new, something neither he nor Minion had thought of. And that thought - the thought that he had overlooked something that is now causing Minion to shake and vomit - scares Megamind worse than almost anything else can.
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Roxanne is getting out of the shower when it happens. Her stomach lifts, churns, turns over, and up comes breakfast. There is no warning. She goes from being completely fine to doubled-over and heaving in under two seconds.
She hiccups, gulps, staggers to her toilet and falls to her knees, retches again.
It isn’t food poisoning. She knows it isn’t food poisoning. She isn’t sure how she knows it, but she does, the same as she knows the sky is blue and water is wet. It’s just something that is true. And the little voice in the back of her mind that is her intuition is screaming at her, and it’s screaming one very coherent message:
Get To Minion.
She grabs her phone - even with last night’s meltdown, she had remembered to plug it in - and ignores the two new voicemails in favor of speed-dial.
“Pick up, pick up, pick up.” She chants it through clenched teeth, her eyes watering as the phone rings. She’d planned on waiting a day or two before heading back to the lair to have a Talk with Megamind, but it looks like there’s been a change of plans.
“Hi, you’ve reached Jocelyn Andrada’s cell, I can’t come to the phone right now but if you’ll leave me a detailed message and a call-back number I’ll -”
Roxanne hangs up, swearing and scared (and also slightly irritated because how, how is she supposed to get dressed when she’s like this? and come on, she just brushed her teeth), and dials Akos’ number. She hadn’t meant to take him up on his offer of on-call service, but she really doesn’t have much of a choice.
He picks up after the first ring. “Yello.”
“Akos, help,” and that’s all she can get out before she’s bent double again with her face in the toilet. Really, this is getting ridiculous. There’s nothing left to get rid of! “Help it’s Roxanne and I need to get to the warehouse now.”
“Fifteen - yeah, same to you, asshole!” There’s a squeal, followed by some distant honking that Roxanne might have found funny another day. “Sorry. Fifteen minutes.”
“Hurry,” she gasps, and stumbles off in search of clothes. The floor falls away from her, rolling like the deck of a ship.
Five minutes later she has come to the conclusion that sweatpants are God, and that her shirt can go fuck itself because she is not bothering - getting into underwear was hard enough, and it’s a chilly morning and Roxanne is not going to deal with more than one set of sleeves right now. She crawls into a hoodie, and that’s going to have to be good enough.
That done, she makes her way to the kitchen and retrieves plastic bags and stuffs them in her hoodie pocket before staggering to the door, pausing on the way to grab her cell phone and purse.
Ordinarily, Roxanne is okay with taking the stairs, but not today. Today she pushes the elevator button repeatedly, taking some small comfort in its persistent clicking. Minion, what is going on? she wonders, and curls over one of the bags, hacking, but nothing comes up.
But it does get her thinking. Why is she so bent on getting to Minion, of all people?
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“Almost there, hang on, we’re almost there, okay?” Megamind scrambles around a corner and down yet another flight of stairs - Why is Minion’s pool so far away from the kitchen? And why isn’t there some sort of elevator or transportation device? Poor design planning on somebody’s part. Another day he might have made some sort of joke, but today he just shrugs it off as another failure. Add it to the pile.
“With you all the way, Sir.” Minion coughs, gags, dry heaves. “Ow. I’m broadcasting, Sir; once I’m out of the water you should be able to feel some of this. See what - see what you make of it.” His voice trails off at the end. If Megamind weren’t running, he’d have gone weak at the knees. Minion has never been like this.
“Okay, Minion, okay. Shut up, okay?”
There, there’s the pool ahead, and Megamind skids into the room and flings himself onto his knees at the water’s edge, punches through the membrane on Minion’s dome and curls both hands under the boxy body, carefully lifts his friend free of the tank.
His stomach roils almost immediately when his hands come in contact with Minion's ventral ganglia, but he grits his teeth and holds onto the fish just long enough to get a feel for the sensation before he drops him into the pool. Minion sinks to the bottom, where he rests on the sand between a fan coral and a rather startled starfish and blinks miserably up at his friend.
Megamind has put him in the shallow end - three or four feet of water, warmer at this end than at the other, which is thirty feet deep and cool - in case he has to get in with the fish later. He can swim better than most humans, but he’d rather not have to if Minion is sick. Scuba gear is just so impersonal.
He swallows hard, then reaches into the water and places a transmitter at Minion’s side. “I’m going to check out the reactors, run some diagnostics. I’ll be back. If anything changes, if you need me, the button is right by your fin.”
Minion rolls an eye downwards and nods. The green light on the transmitter shines reassuringly up through the water.
“Back soon,” Megamind promises, then gets to his feet and flees.
Oh, God, what is it, what did I miss? He runs headlong into the controls without bothering to slow down, then pushes himself back a step and sends his hands flying over the keys while he scans the output desperately for any sign of trouble. “Nibs!” he cries over his shoulder. “Nibs, Liam, Ort!” Minion is definitely nauseated so the problem has to be with the cold fusion reactor, it has to be; that’s the one that makes Minion sick, the muon reactor just makes him hurt -
He strikes blindly out at the screen, his nerves ragged. Why is his best friend the damn canary? Why does it have to be Minion, why can’t it be me, not Minion, not Minion, not Minion -
Behind him, brainbots cluster and whirl and three drift forward, thauming and waiting for instructions.
“Ort, I need you to check on the muon reactor, nothing should be wrong but it doesn’t hurt to check. Take some of the others with you. Liam, Nibs,” he snaps as Ort zooms away with a small fleet of other brainbots, “you’re amphibious, you check the cold fusion reactor. Remember to wear protective gear. Report back to me, here, in five minutes. If I’m not here, I’ll be down in the pool room with Minion.”
He only vaguely registers them leaving; his mind is racing.
What had he missed? What is it? Minion had said it sounded like a third frequency had joined the other two, but Megamind can’t think of anything that would cause that. Well, another reactor might do the trick, but let’s face it, that’s just ridiculous. Who the hell would build a cold fusion reactor in Metro City?
“…Not sure why the scientific community hasn't looked further into cold fusion before… Obviously, it isn't the impossibility they all think it is…”
Who, indeed.
His fingers stutter on the keys as his eyes go wide, and he slides a second keyboard out from under the first. He’ll have to work his hands double fast, running two searches at once, but it’s necessary. His hands lift, and he makes them dance.
Nibs is back, plugging into the control station next to the one Megamind is currently overclocking.
Brainbot Model 6.3, Designation: 77
Serial No. 236AR904D
Alternate: “_Nibs”
Firmware update 07 .14 .2011
Software update 07 .14 .2011
Hardware update 07 .14 .2011
Input: _DIAGNOSTIC_REQUEST
InputSource: =Daddy
Output: “_all .quiet .on .the .western .front”
Megamind doesn’t even look up; the computer translates Nibs’ output to a synthesized voice. It’s a new upgrade; the newer brainbots don’t even need the computer. “That was fast.”
Input: _SKEPTICISM
InputSource: =Daddy
Output: “_we .are .certain .previous .output .is .correct”
Tone: offense
Megamind nods shortly and continues scanning the output readings, looking for something, anything that would prove Nibs wrong. The background check on Robert Anderson hums along two consoles over.
Output: “_ahem”
Tone: worried
Megamind glares. “What, Nibs.”
Output: “_902TY138F_ .reports .reactor .activity_12.2124632_km_ .north .of .current .location.”
Tone: hesitant
Megamind spins. “There’s another reactor?” Nibs whirs and clicks as Ort comes whizzing back. The second brainbot says something synthesized about the muon reactor being completely fine, but Megamind holds up a hand. “Nibs?”
Output: “_not .to .put .too .fine .a .point .on .it”
Output: _PAUSE_FOR_EMPHASIS
Output: “_yes”
Tone: apologetic
“God DAMN it!” Megamind shrieks, and runs.
He does not look at the background check. If he had, he would have seen that no one by the name of Robert Anderson has ever worked for Metro University.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Roxanne has had just about enough weirdness to last her a lifetime, but right now, she’s just glad Megamind hasn’t pulled her fingerprints from the Lair’s systems. She can still get in.
Akos glances over his shoulder as if he expects a police car to pull around any minute. “Miss Ritchi…” he says nervously, “we’re gonna get in trouble…”
“Trouble can kiss my sweet ass,” she rasps, and just about falls on her face when the hidden door slides open, but Akos catches her.
Eyes huge, he supports her as she staggers down a long, narrow hall, making twists and turns that seem to be totally random. All the halls are narrow, and fairly well-lit by white hanging globes. “What is this place?”
Roxanne doesn’t bother answering. Minion is very, very close, but the sick feeling is muted now, somehow. She just hopes they don’t run into -
A streak of blue and black flashes across the hall in front of them, yelling something incoherent at the top if its lungs, and Roxanne winces. Akos stops dead. “The hell was that?”
Roxanne wants to turn and leave, but that little voice is still chanting insistently that she needs to Get To Minion, Get To Minion. She presses on, ignoring Akos’ questions, and eventually he falls blissfully silent. Roxanne is glad of small comforts; she is beginning to get a headache. Megamind seems to have a fondness for spiral staircases, and vertigo and spiral stairs don’t mix well.
Slowly, she makes her way to where Megamind had run past, and turns, only to find yet another flight of stairs. She groans.
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“…Stupid, idiot, brainless bag of meat and blood and carbon, I’ve had it up to here with humans thinking they have all the answers, didn’t we make it clear that cold fusion was a useless pursuit… waste of perfectly good air, he’s got less sense than a box of rocks…” He bursts back into the underground pool room at full speed and falls to the floor at the edge of the pool with enough force to bruise his knees and crack the tile. “Minion?”
Minion opens his eyes and looks up at him. “Sir?”
Megamind smiles down at his friend in what he hopes is a reassuring manner but probably isn’t. “I found the problem, Minion. Some idiot built a reactor.”
“Some idiot built two reactors,” Minion wheezes, and it actually takes Megamind a moment or two to get that he’s trying to joke.
He snorts. “Hah. Listen, I-”
“Minion!”
Minion’s eyes open wide and Megamind lets out a startled yell and spins around on his knees, overbalances, flails, and falls into the pool with a tremendous splash. He doesn’t fall on Minion, but the sea urchin that is keeping Minion company makes a big impression.
“OW,” Megamind says, very clearly, and is halfway up and onto dry land before he really knows what’s happening. He says some other things as well, most of them rude.
Minion rises about a foot in the water. “Miss Ritchi?” he exclaims, bewildered.
Roxanne starts to answer, then bends over, retching horribly. Megamind goes white. First Minion, and now Roxanne? But why would Roxanne be sick?
Then he’s on his feet and next to her, one hand under her chin, the other pressed to her forehead. “No fever,” he says, relieved, but that relief is short-lived when she slaps him smartly across the face.
“Don’t,” she mutters, glaring out of watering eyes, “don’t touch me, you…you obnoxious…don’t like you,” and it’s true. She doesn’t like him very much at the moment. She still loves him, but she doesn’t like him. It’s a confusing distinction, but it’s there.
“Wait,” says a voice, and an older man with greying hair appears suddenly on Roxanne’s other side and pulls her away from Megamind, who is so surprised that he actually lets her go. “You’re him, aren’t you? You’re Megamind.”
Once upon a time, Megamind might have said something like, the one and only, or maybe, that’s sort of a stupid question, isn’t it?
But now, all he says is, “Yeah, that’s me. Roxanne, what are you doing here?”
She’s been pulling insistently at the strange man. “I’m trying,” she snarls, abruptly lucid, and Megamind recoils, “to get to Minion. Akos, let me go.”
He obeys, although he looks like he has some serious misgivings about doing so.
As it turns out, those misgivings were spot on, because Roxanne takes three enormous, staggering steps, and goes straight into the deep end of the pool before either of the other two can react.
Megamind is after her in a heartbeat, tearing out of his dripping cape and diving in without a second thought. Roxanne is already clawing around in a general surface-ward direction, but her eyes are squeezed closed against the salt water and when Megamind grabs her under the arms and locks her close against his chest in a lifeguard’s hold, she gasps and chokes on salt water.
Eyes stinging, lungs burning, she breaks the surface and flails. Ordinarily she is a fairly strong swimmer, but she is sick and disoriented and, okay, now she’s panicking.
Megamind’s voice in her ear shocks her like electricity and she stills. “Easy,” he hums. “Easy. I got you. You’re okay. You’re fine. Everything’s fine, you hear me?”
Roxanne chokes, coughs, gags a little, and nods.
“Why’d you grab me,” is the first thing out of her mouth. “I had it under control.”
“Liar,” Megamind says, and swims her into the shallows until she can stand, then releases her carefully, turning her around so she faces him. She doesn’t look as pale as she had, and her eyes are clearer. As far as he can tell, she’s focusing just fine.
“Listen, I need to go take care of what’s making Minion sick, but if you’re here to see him I won’t stop you. Just be careful, okay? Try not to touch anything on the reef. Some of it’s poisonous, some of it’s venomous, either way I don’t want to come home and find you foaming at the mouth or dead or something.”
“Reef?” She looks around, gapes at the colorful coral and anemones. “Reef,” she breathes, and nods. “Okay. I’ll be careful.”
“You’re sure you’ll be all right?”
She looks around at Megamind, who is still holding her by the arms, standing waist-deep in the pool with water beading on his suit and trickling down his worried face.
She blinks, and it’s like flipping a switch - Megamind’s expression goes completely flat and he lets go of her arms. Then he turns away, sloshing to the low stairs in one corner and exiting the pool without looking back.
“You, Akos,” he snaps, pointing, and the other man jumps and looks around at him. “Stay with them until I get back. Don’t wander off. I need to…take care of a friend.” He picks up his cape and leaves, walking with an oddly precise, clipped gait that Roxanne doesn’t recognize.
She puzzles over that for a moment, then realizes with a start that she feels completely fine now. When she was a child, she’d had problems with car-sickness - she’d feel incredibly ill in the family station wagon, but as soon as the vehicle had stopped and she was allowed to get out she would be fine. The way she feels now is exactly the same as she used to feel years ago when she stepped out of the car - all right, but searching, as if her body itself were wondering why. Weird.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
It’s on, it’s charged, it’s working - of course it’s working, he knew it would. There’s no reason for it not to work. And he knows his calculations are precise and correct.
He hadn’t expected the core to be quite that shade of orange, but he’ll take what he can get. The output readings are all positive, except for a few glitches which will probably work themselves out.
Life, today, is good. And tomorrow, when the reactor is performing at capacity and glowing blue-white the way it should be, he will call a press conference, and soon his name will be in headlines all over the world, and life will be even better. That’s worth a few favors, a few bills of sale, a lost job. More than worth it. The university is going to be sorry they let him go.
“Victory is mine,” he says quietly, and shivers. He’s always wanted to say that, and the way his words echo around the stage and the huge, empty room is positively delicious.
Chapter 6
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