How Megamind falls in love with Roxanne Ritchi.
pre-movie, canon-compliant, T rating
Megamind is prepared to stake out the entrance of the KCMP station building for at least a week before finding the perfect time to stage his planned abduction of Miss Ritchi. He wants this to go smoothly, unlike his first disastrous and embarrassing attempt to take her hostage mid-battle, and he’s never actually…done this kind of thing before, so it will obviously easier to pull it off while Miss Ritchi is alone.
As the station employees all tend to arrive and leave the building at approximately the same times each day, he naturally assumes that catching Miss Ritchi by herself will be difficult.
That part of it, though, is actually surprisingly easy.
He’s only been there a couple of hours, lurking in the invisible car outside the station entrance and trying not to go out of his mind with boredom, when Miss Ritchi emerges from the building, alone and walking fast, scowling like a thundercloud.
Megamind, caught off guard by her sudden and unexpected appearance, scrambles, trying to find the can of aerosol-dispersible sedative that he’s created especially for this plan. By the time he locates it underneath the passenger seat, Miss Ritchi has moved past the car and is several yards down the sidewalk.
Megamind growls in frustration and holds a quick internal debate with himself—follow her in the car? get out and chase her? wait here until she returns?
Chasing her seems undignified, and following her in the car seems potentially tricky—traffic, and pedestrians and oh this is so much more complicated than he thought it would be! What is the protocol, here? He needs some kind of handbook or manual or guidelines—
He decides to wait, and to hope that, when Miss Ritchi returns, she’ll still be alone. With an irritated sigh, Megamind slouches down into the driver’s seat to wait.
After a minute, he reaches out moodily to turn up the car’s stereo, absently setting the can of knockout spray down on the dashboard.
Only sixteen minutes later, Miss Ritchi comes into sight again, and, as luck would have it, she is still alone.
Determined not to miss his chance this time, Megamind throws open the car door and springs out at her, uttering a triumphant exclamation as he does so.
Unfortunately, Miss Ritchi is carrying three full cardboard drink carriers, stacked one on top of the other, and, even more unfortunately, he’s accidentally forgotten the can of knockout spray on the dashboard, so when he springs at her and says “ah-ha!”, in a triumphant manner, Miss Ritchi, whirling to face him, does not, as he intended, immediately inhale a cloud of sedative spray and collapse into convenient unconsciousness, falling gracefully into his waiting arms like the swooning heroine from a black and white movie, but, instead, says “fuck!” very loudly and drops the uppermost drink carrier.
Hot coffee splatters the sidewalk between them; the two of them leap away from it instinctively—Miss Ritchi leaps backwards, and Megamind leaps sideways, which means that he’s too far away to grab Miss Ritchi, and, instead, takes the second drink carrier directly to the chest when she deliberately throws it at him.
More coffee splashes his uniform, a few hot droplets hitting the unprotected skin of his face, and Megamind gives an ignominious yelp of surprise.
He grabs wildly for her and she throws one of the four remaining cups at him. He’s quick enough to avoid being hit by it, but the next one she throws almost catches him full in the face. He brings his arm up just barely in time and the coffee splashes rather painfully over his unprotected hand instead.
(he elected to leave off his spiked gloves and mantle for this part of the plan, thinking that accidentally poking your damsel in distress with spikes while abducting her would probably be bad form for a supervillain, a decision he is now somewhat regretting.)
“St—ow!—stop that!” he cries, blocking another cup.
“No!”
Miss Ritchi throws the word and the last coffee cup at him at the same time, promptly follows up the move by throwing the empty drink carrier at his face, and then takes off sprinting down the sidewalk.
Megamind runs after her, dripping with coffee and mentally cursing himself.
As he still doesn’t have the knockout spray, capturing and subduing Miss Ritchi proves to be fraught with difficulty, and when he finally manages to avoid being bitten, kicked, or beaten to death with her handbag for long enough to pick her up bodily, throw her over his shoulder, and turn back towards the car—
—he’s lost track of exactly where he left the invisible car, and since he closed the car door when he leaped out at Miss Ritchi, and the car is goddamn invisible, locating it is a bit—oh for heaven’s sake; this is ridiculous! This should have been so simple, so easy, so—
Miss Ritchi elbows him sharply between the shoulder blades and Megamind makes a noise of pained surprise.
By the time he at last manages to locate the invisible car, open the door, bend down enough to reach into the car and retrieve the knockout spray from the dashboard, get elbowed between the shoulder blades again, drop the knockout spray, put down Miss Ritchi, wrestle Miss Ritchi into the car, hastily restrain Miss Ritchi in makeshift bonds created by knotting the seatbelt around her, bend down and retrieve the knockout spray from where it’s rolled beneath the car, get kicked in the small of the back by Miss Ritchi, drop the knockout spray for a second time, and pick the knockout spray back up yet again, Megamind is hot, out of breath, still covered in coffee, and feeling more than a little ridiculous.
He deftly avoids another kick, rises to his feet, and then finally—finally!—succeeds in spraying the terrible, terrible woman with the knockout spray.
Miss Ritchi goes limp, sagging in her haphazard restraints as her eyes slip close— less like a swooning damsel from a black and white movie and more like a particularly dangerous crocodile that’s been hit with several tranquilizer darts.
Megamind, panting, eyes her warily for a moment, half convinced that the unconsciousness is a ploy meant to catch him off guard—but no, it seems to be genuine enough, thank the evil gods.
He glances up and around—fuck. As he suspected, they’ve attracted a bit of a crowd during their tussle, which is exactly what he didn’t want; there are a number of mindless drones gaping at them—from a safe distance, of course.
Megamind, looking at them, feels a pulse of irritation.
The collective—he’s not sure if it’s cowardice or laziness or a combination of both that makes the ordinary citizens of Metrocity so willing to let Metro Man handle everything—but whatever it is, it irks Megamind, in spite of the fact that it makes his job so much simpler. ‘Helpless people of Metro City’ Metro Man calls them, and they seems so annoyingly eager to be helpless. Ever since Megamind became a supervillain, none of the ordinary citizens have even tried to stand up to him at all.
Not that he wants to be attacked by a mob again, but still.
Doesn’t anyone in this city have any spirit?
Megamind is sure that one of the members of their audience either has or soon will run and locate a phone to call Metro Man for help. And although Metro Man’s eventual involvement in this plot essential, this is not the time or the place for Megamind to meet up with Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes. So Megamind swiftly untangles Miss Ritchi from her seatbelt, buckles her in properly, and gets into the car.
He throws the car into gear and peels out, tires squalling as he speeds away, the scent of coffee strong in his nostrils and the unconscious Miss Ritchi in the passenger seat.
…to be continued.
author’s notes: so it turns out that the breathing problems I’ve been having are bronchitis! And I’m still getting some more tests done, also, to make sure there’s nothing else bad going on, too. But yes, I have bronchitis.
(and I’m definitely not imagining the breathing problems, which is what I was half-afraid they’d say; there’s really nothing quite like the awful way being neuroatypical makes you doubt your own perception of reality.)
Thank you all so much for the well-wishes, and for the great comments on the first chapter! I really appreciate having you guys; you make such a difference in my life. ❤
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