How Megamind falls in love with Roxanne Ritchi.

pre-movie, canon-compliant, T rating

AO3 | FFN | chapter 1 | chapter 2

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Megamind fidgets impatiently, waiting for Miss Ritchi to awaken. Everything is ready, everything arranged and perfectly in position. It had been—surprisingly fun, setting the whole thing up, figuring how to stage it all for maximum effect

Up until now, Megamind’s evil plots have all been outright fights—different kinds of robot vehicles and suits, different types of weapons, but always out in the open and conducted like battles. This one is quite a different flavor of supervillainy—sinister and elaborate, instead of violently destructive mayhem. More—classic.

He’s taken Miss Ritchi to an abandoned warehouse which he set up ahead of time—black cloth over the windows to cast the room in darkness and stage lights hung from the ceiling to make dramatic pools of light on the warehouse floor and illuminate the deathtrap he’s constructed for Miss Ritchi.

The deathtrap he’s made for her is a thing of beauty, a trio of big crescent-shaped blades mounted on pendulums and hung from the ceiling. The blades are designed to swing back and forth, slowly lowering closer and closer to the chair in which Miss Ritchi sits. Just now, the blades are still; their motion ready to begin at the pull of the big lever on the control panel.

(The pendulums, of course, even when fully extended, are obviously not long enough to allow the blades to ever come close enough to Miss Ritchi’s chair to actually harm her. Megamind wants to scare this woman, not kill her.)

Miss Ritchi stirs in her chair. Megamind, lurking in the shadows just beyond the central pool of light, straightens his spine and twitches the hem of his cape into place.

Yes! It’s time to show Miss Ritchi what this supervillain looks like when he’s at the top of his game!

Her eyes flutter open, and she blinks, lifting her head slowly and looking around, an expression of confusion on her face.

Hidden in the shadows, Megamind gives an evil laugh, and has the satisfaction of seeing her jump at the sound of his voice.

“Miss Ritchi,” he says, “we meet again.”

He steps into the light.

“—Megamind,” she says, and is he just imagining that slight tremble in her voice?

“Were you expecting someone else?” he asks, giving her a slow, dangerous smile.

She takes a deep breath, and then deliberately lifts her chin.

“No, I’m pretty clear on who I was throwing coffee at,” she says, tone impertinent.

Megamind feels a pulse of—he can’t tell if it’s annoyance or admiration.

(admiration. it’s admiration.)

“Our previous meeting was, quite unfortunately cut short—” he says, skipping to the next part in the speech he planned, since Miss Ritchi has refused to take her cue. “But—”

“Well, if you enjoyed having coffee thrown at you that much, you can buy me some more,” Miss Ritchi says, “I’d be happy to oblige, if you’ll just untie me—”

“Not that previous encounter!” Megamind says.

“Oh, the previous-previous encounter where you were on fire?” Miss Ritchi says. “My mistake.”

“The encounter during which I captured and threatened you!” Megamind says. “As I was saying, it was, unfortunately, cut short—this one, I fear, may be as well, though for quite a different reason.”

Megamind trails a hand lovingly over the control panel of the console, then pointedly looks up. Miss Ritchi looks up as well, and Megamind sees the moment that she sees the blades suspended above her head, sees her eyes widen, sees her swallow visibly.

“Tell me, Miss Ritchi,” he says softly, “am I scary enough for you, yet?”

She looks at him sharply, and Megamind, still watching her face, readies himself for the inevitable panic—

—but her expression—it’s all wrong; her face isn’t crumpling with fear; it’s—her eyebrows draw together as she looks at him, and then her lips part just a little and her eyes widen.

“Is that why you know my name?” she asks, and her tone is all wrong, too, incredulous instead of supplicatory or panicked. “Because of the report?”

Megamind blinks, taken aback and taken off-guard by the question. What—?

“Of course I know your name,” he says, “it was right there on the screen.”

Miss Ritchi’s lips quiver around the edges, but it looks less as if she’s trying not to cry and more as if she’s trying to repress a smile.

“Did it really upset you that much?” she asks, her tone even more incredulous, sounding, inexplicably, less frightened and more confident—almost pleased.

“That outrageously provocative report of yours did earn you the terrible fate you are about to suffer, yes,” Megamind snaps.

Miss Ritchi makes a snorting noise of amusement, but then her lips twist in a way that seems somehow bitter.

“Well, of all the overreactions to that interview I’ve gotten,” she says, “I have to say yours takes the cake.”

“Overreaction? Over—” Megamind splutters, then pulls himself together and draws himself up to his full height. “Your attempts to cover your fear with a facade of facetiousness are futile!”

“Ooh, alliteration,” Miss Ritchi says, “very classic children’s cartoon villain. Maybe you should try speaking in rhyme next.”

“You can scream all you wish, Miss Ritchi!” Megamind says loudly, with a dramatic flourish, “I’m afraid no one can hear you—yet!”

Miss Ritchi blinks and tilts her head to one side.

“Yet?” she says.

Megamind permits himself an evil chuckle, trying to get the mood back, and steps from his own little pool of light to the larger one around Miss Ritchi’s chair.

“Oh, yes,” he says, “you see, in about—oh, a minute and a half—your terrified pleas for mercy shall be broadcast on every channel in the city.” He stalks slowly around Miss Ritchi’s chair, his cape billowing in a satisfyingly sinister manner. “While you were asleep, I took the opportunity to broadcast a challenge to Metro Man, calling him to a battle on the steps of Metrocity’s courthouse. He should be arriving there any moment now.”

“Well, if you’ve got a prior engagement, I wouldn’t want to keep you,” Miss Ritchi says, turning her head to look at him over her shoulder.

“Oh, but I’m enjoying our conversation so much, Miss Ritchi!” Megamind says.

He pauses for a moment as he realizes that’s actually true. He is enjoying this, in spite of Miss Ritchi’s stubborn refusal to follow the expected script.

(no. no, not in spite of. because of.)

Megamind shakes his head, focusing his thoughts again.

“And the message to Metro Man was merely a clever ruse!” he says, continuing his circuit around her chair. “When he arrives on the courthouse steps, I will broadcast my true message—the demand that Metro Man relinquish his position as the city’s Defender and leave Metrocity forever, in exchange for your life! What do you say to that, Miss Ritchi?”

He times the movement and the words perfectly, ending the speech directly in front of her, turning on his heel to face her with a snap of his cape.

Miss Ritchi blinks, looking surprised.

“I—uh—are you sure you’ve picked the right hostage for the job?” she says. “I mean—I’m—flattered and all, Megamind, but I don’t think I’m gonna be any too popular with—well, with anyone, right now, but especially with Metro Man.”

Megamind frowns.

“What? Why not?” he asks.

(is this an attempted trick? her trying to convince him to let her go?)

Miss Ritchi gives him a strange look.

“Because of the report?” she says. “You know. The same report that made you mad enough to kidnap me and threaten me with dismemberment? Maybe you didn’t notice, Megamind, but you weren’t exactly the only one with a reason to be upset about it.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Megamind says impatiently, “the implied criticism of Metro Man! Which will naturally have made him eager to prove you wrong! Possibly he’s even been practicing with his eye laser aim—”

He bites his tongue; fuck; he hadn’t meant to bring that up! It’s much too close to the subject of—

“Yes, I’d hate for you to have to get set on fire trying to save me again,” Miss Ritchi says, sweetly vindictive.

(oh fuck so she did notice that oh no—)

“I—I have no idea what you mean, Miss Ritchi!” Megamind says, his voice an octave higher than he’d like.

“Oh?” Miss Ritchi says, her lips beginning to curl in that same satisfied smirk that she’d given to the camera after her report. “So you didn’t—”

“Time for the broadcast!” Megamind says loudly, and slaps his hand down on the broadcast button.

He turns away from the dangerously perceptive Miss Ritchi and to the camera, giving it his best evil laugh. On the screen above the console, Metro Man’s face flickers into view. Behind him, Megamind can see a watching crowd of citizens.

(good; the first squadron of brainbots with cameras are hidden in position around the courthouse, then! which means Minion and the other three squadrons should be in position as well.)

“Megamind!” Metro Man says, narrowing his eyes at Megamind. “Come out and face me!”

(excellent; if Metro Man can see him, his projection image and broadcast are functioning properly!)

Megamind gives another evil laugh, for the sheer fun of it.

“I’m afraid there’s been a change of plan, Metro Man,” he says, “I’ll have to cancel our appointment.”

“The only appointment you have is with your jail cell!” Metro Man says, pointing dramatically.

Not the most impressive bit of banter he’s ever heard, Megamind thinks critically, as the citizens behind Metro Man cheer. Not even the most impressive bit of banter he’s heard today, actually.

“You are mistaken, Metro Man,” Megamind says, with sinister dignity, when they’ve finished cheering, “today is my appointment with destiny.” He pauses to allow the citizens to boo. “You will leave Metrocity! Or else this is the last you ever hear of—Roxanne Ritchi!”

Megamind steps aside with, revealing Miss Ritchi with a flourish.

“Who?” says Metro Man.

A look flashes in Miss Ritchi’s face for an instant—almost hurt, almost embarrassment, as if she wants to flinch but won’t let herself.

And something about that expression—

(I know how that feels)

“Miss Roxanne Ritchi!” Megamind says. “The KCMP news reporter!”

“Oh,” Metro Man says, without enthusiasm, and Megamind vividly imagines punching him in the face. 

He grinds his teeth together, then gestures with an even more theatrical flourish at Miss Ritchi.

“Having been fortunate enough to escape the clutches of my evil once,” he says, “Miss Ritchi dared to question my mastery of villainy!”

He deliberately places his hand on the control panel’s lever and looks over at Miss Ritchi. Her poise is back, her chin raised, her spine straight.

Megamind gives her a particularly evil smile.

“Well, question no longer, Miss Ritchi,” he says, and throws the lever.

The blades begin to swing with a menacing noise of sharp metal. Miss Ritchi looks up and takes a quick breath.

Megamind doesn’t see the rest of her reaction; he looks away from her swiftly, not wanting, somehow, to see the moment where she actually starts to be afraid of—

(him)

—the deathtrap.

“With every passing moment, the blades will move closer and closer to Miss Ritchi,” he says to Metro Man. “Her doom is inevitable—unless you agree to accede to my demand!”

Metro Man opens his mouth, no doubt to give a heroic refusal, but then—

“Where did you get this thing?”

Megamind looks over his shoulder at Miss Ritchi. She’s looking up at the blades, still, watching them, but she appears to be—

—nowhere near as terrified as she should be.

“I—I beg your pardon?” Megamind says, certain he must have misheard her.

“The swishy blade deathtrap thing,” Miss Ritchi says, looking away from the blades, looking at him, now, a challenging tilt to her chin and that sharp smile hovering around the edges of her mouth. “Did you order it out of an Acme catalogue or something?”

She raises an eyebrow at him and Megamind takes a sharp breath of his own.

“Did you have to put it together yourself?” Miss Ritchi continues, “Or was it no assembly required?”

And then she smirks at him.

Smirks. At him.

As if there aren’t deadly blades suspended above her head, as if he hasn’t just threatened her, as if she knows she’s not really in danger, as if he’s not—

(evil. as if he’s not evil.)

Megamind feels an odd sensation go through his body, as though she’s just tapped two fingers sharply against his sternum, the phantom touch ringing through him like a chord of music, making his heart beat out of time.

“I—” he says, “—I designed it myself, actually.”

“Really,” Miss Ritchi says, raising both eyebrows at him this time. “Are you sure? Because it seems kinda weirdly familiar—”

“Are you really sure this is what you should be spending the last moments of your life focusing on?” Megamind asks, torn between amusement and disbelief.

“Last moments?” Miss Ritchi scoffs. “At the rate those things are coming down, it’ll be fifteen minutes at least before they reach me.”

“I could speed them up,” Megamind says, which is a blatant lie; he didn’t bother to include that capacity in the deathtrap design.

Miss Ritchi gives an unconvinced hum.

“Maybe,” she says, “but a deathtrap like this, part of the torture is how long it takes for the blades to descend, right? Having to watch them—ha!”

Megamind jumps at the last word.

“Ah?” he says.

“It’s from that Edgar Allan Poe story!” she says triumphantly. “The Pit and the Pendulum! I knew it reminded me of something!”

Megamind feels himself flush; he opens his mouth to tell her that just because the deathtrap might have been inspired very slightly by said story, that in no way detracted from the fact that he’d definitely done the actual design work for the thing himself, but—

“Anyway,” Metro Man says loudly, and Megamind jumps for a second time, spinning around to face the camera and the screen again.

(shit; he’d actually half-forgotten about Metro Man)

“No need to panic, Miss,” Metro Man says, “I’m on my way!”

fuckfuckfuck, shit—

Megamind whirls to face Miss Ritchi.

“You’re supposed to be screaming!” he hisses, more than a little frantically. “You need to be screaming!”

Miss Ritchi raises her eyebrows again.

“No,” she says.

“No, no, no!” Megamind says, waving his arms, “You don’t understand; you need to be screaming; it’s an essential part of the—”

—plan; it’s an essential part of the plan, which involves Minion and the different swarms of brainbots being set up in strategic places throughout the city, ready to play pre-recorded screams which should lead Metro Man into a series of different traps which will all test for possible weaknesses, and the deployment of which should give Megamind sufficient time to escape from this location, but if Miss Ritchi isn’t screaming when Metro Man takes off, he’ll know not to follow the false screams, and the traps won’t be sprung and Metro Man will arrive here too early and Megamind—

—will be punched across the room.

Which he is, before he can finish that sentence.

Fuck.

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Sitting in his cell, later, with his cracked ribs wrapped tightly, Megamind watches Miss Ritchi being interviewed again. The questions the other journalist gives her are even more leading this time, with as little space as possible for any possible criticism of Metro Man.

She doesn’t give any, which, fair is fair, she was never in any danger from Metro Man this time; he didn’t use his eye lasers at all; the only things that got destroyed were the roof of the abandoned warehouse and Megamind’s deathtrap; and the only one who got injured was Megamind.

(which she most likely doesn’t know about. he hopes she doesn’t know about it. he didn’t mention his ribs at all until he got back to the prison infirmary. better that everyone thinks it’s difficult for even Metro Man to injure him.)

She does, however, have some scathing things to say about the people who just watched her abduction, and made no move to help her. When the interviewing journalist quickly points out that several members of the crowd took it upon themselves to call Metro Man for help—as though he thinks this just as much assistance as their duty required, Miss Ritchi’s eyes snap dangerously.

“Exactly when,” Miss Ritchi says, “did the people of this city decide to let a single man handle all of their problems? One has to wonder if the attitude of complacency that evidently comes from having such a very super-powered Defender is really in Metro City’s public interest. The—”

“And what do you think, now,” the interviewing journalist loudly, interrupting her, “about your statement the other day that Megamind is more a danger to himself than to anyone else? Considering your recent ordeal at the hands of Megamind, wouldn’t you agree that he’s definitely a danger to the public?”

There’s a smug look to the interviewing journalist’s face as he looks at Miss Ritchi that sets Megamind’s teeth on edge. As though the man thinks Miss Ritchi has been put in her place.

Which is, of course, exactly what Megamind intended to do when he kidnapped her, but somehow he feels annoyed instead of pleased.

Miss Ritchi lifts her chin.

“No,” she says. “My previous statement still stands.”

The interviewing journalist’s mouth opens and closes a few times.

Megamind’s jaw falls, too.

“But after being taken hostage twice—having your life threatened—”

“Haven’t you noticed,” Miss Ritchi says, lips beginning to curve into a smirk, “that I’m fine? Megamind’s going to have to do much better than that if he wants me to believe he’s dangerous.”

“—back to you in the studio, Dan,” the interviewing journalist says, in a tone of one washing his hands of the whole thing.

Megamind turns off the television and tosses the remote away, onto his cot in the corner.

(god. fucking. damn it!)

He’d like to get up and pace, but his ribs ache and doesn’t want to move any more than necessary.

He’s too agitated to stay completely still, though; he brushes the backs of the fingernails of his right hand restlessly back and forth on the arm of his chair, letting the movement come from his wrist, like he’s strumming a guitar without a pick. He presses the fingertips of his left hand down against the other chair arm, distractedly going through a scale.

That look she’d given him, the smirk while the blades swung overhead, and the way she’d talked to him, and then that challenge during her second interview, even more blatant than the first had been, challenging him, baiting him on purpose.

(have to do much better than that)

He grits his teeth and presses the fingertips of his left hand down hard in a flattened fifth, the devil’s chord, imagining the dissonant sound it would make if he were actually holding an instrument.

She looks at him like he isn’t evil; she looks at him, talks to him, like he isn’t evil, and that realization has gotten under his skin somehow; it’s—

(baffling, intoxicating, fascinating)

—unacceptable! It is completely and utterly unacceptable that this, this sarcastic, impertinent, infuriating woman thinks she can get away with—

(with behaving as if he’s not evil)

He presses the fingertips of one hand carefully to the center of his chest, but he’s not thinking about the pain in his ribs; he’s thinking about—

(that odd feeling, invisible fingers tapping against his sternum, the sensation spreading through him like ripples through water, like light, like a chord of music)

Have to do better? Better than that? Better than a kidnapping and gigantic overhead blades? The deathtrap, the threats, the evil monologue—what the hell more does she want from him?

Megamind glares at the blank television and growls beneath his breath.

So Miss Ritchi’s hard to impress, is she? Hard to scare? He’ll give her scary! He’ll give her better! Next time—

Megamind stops for a moment, blinking.

Next time.

He tips his head, a thought occurring.

Next time.

Is—is this the reaction she means this challenge of hers to provoke?

Standing so close to the battle that first time, snapping photographs when she should have been running—intern, the bottom of the screen had said during both her interviews. Intern, not full reporter, and Megamind thinks of how infuriating it had been when Metrocity’s news outlets were still referring to him as a ‘villain’ rather than a ‘supervillain’, thinks of the lengths he went to change that.

(Megamind’s going to have to do much better than that if he wants me to believe he’s dangerous.)

A clear challenge, almost an invitation to kidnap her again—

(going to have to do much better than that if he wants me to believe he’s dangerous, not so scary when you think about it, and then that smirk at the camera, and he’d been right the first time; he’d been right when he’d thought that smirk was for him.)

Oh, she is clever; she is very, very clever.

Megamind laughs, hardly noticing the resulting pain from his ribs.

And he’s fallen right into her trap! Already planning her next kidnapping! God, that news station of hers had her fetching coffee; what an utter waste of brilliance.

The knowledge that he’s been caught so neatly only makes Megamind more determined to win this game they’ve started playing—he really is going to have to think of something spectacular for her next kidnapping.

Megamind grins, smile sharp around the edges, and begins to plan.

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…to be continued.

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author’s notes: Thank you all so much for the likes, reblogs, comments, and get-well wishes! I really appreciate them all so much! My cat and I are both still sick, but she seems to be improving, and that definitely makes me feel happier and less anxious, which will hopefully lead to me starting to get better, too. Fingers crossed that this trend continues, and both of us get well soon!