The Roxanne and Megamind are friends as children AU.
K+ rating
chapter 1 | chapter 2 | chapter 3 | chapter 4
(Follows Safe If We Stand Close Together and Happy Returns.)
There aren’t any guidelines for being best friends with an alien, no map key, no index, no safety instructions.
Roxanne tries, so very hard, to get it right in spite of this.
They don’t put the plan into effect right away; even Minion sees the necessity of making sure he’s reading first. And he seems calmer, now that they do have a definite plan.
The next weekend, Roxanne goes over to the prison every day and they work on Minion’s reading. He’s progressed during the week; Syx goes through the alphabet formations ten times on Friday after school, and Minion doesn’t miss a single letter.
Syx wants to move on to spelling out words for Minion to read in the tank, but Roxanne says they’d better make sure Minion can write the letters, too.
Using a pencil throws Minion off; he says it’s the ‘short dry strokes’ that confuse and distract him. He has better luck when he switches to a pen; and even better luck when Syx gives him a paintbrush and paint. The fluidity of the movements with the paintbrush makes it easier for him to focus.
Syx included the letter blends in his swimming alphabet—ch, th, sh, and so on—he really is right; they do make their own unique sounds distinct from their component letters. Roxanne remembers learning how to read, how hard the letter blends were to understand. Minion definitely catches on to them much faster this way, because he sees ‘ch’ as a pattern completely distinct from ‘c’ and ‘h’.
They move on to Syx swimming simple words for Minion the next day; Minion catches onto that impressively quickly. When Syx comes out of the tank, though, and they try having Minion read the same simple words from a written page, Minion is unable to do it. He says, frustrated, that the letters stay too still on the page—like they’re dead—is how he puts it.
None of them can think of a way around it, so on Sunday, Syx swims numbers for Minion, instead of trying reading again.
Minion doesn’t actually have trouble with the math part of math at all; the only thing he struggles with is reading out the numbers themselves.
“Minion’s excellent at math,” Syx says, “If you say a problem out loud, he comes up with the answer quickly, and he’s really fantastic at geometry; he has amazing spatial awareness!”
“Swimming in schools,” Minion says, with a gesture of his fins, “and in open water. You have to.”
Roxanne makes an impressed noise.
Their next weekend, they work on cursive; Minion picks up cursive quicker and easier than print because of the way the letters all flow together in cursive.
He writes it fairly easily and is able to read it, although slowly and very uncertainly.
Interestingly, he actually tends to read words better as Syx and Roxanne are writing them, rather than after they’ve finished writing. He says the words are more alive that way.
On Monday, Syx gets on the bus with an unusually full backpack and an excited gleam in his eye.
“New invention?” Roxanne asks, as soon as he sits down.
He grins at her.
“Yes,” he says, “and it’s brilliant! I’ll show you in the science corner when we get to shool!”
They’ve moved on to chapter books in reading class; they’re reading a book called The Witches together. Miss Anderson has them read paragraphs out loud in turn each day, and then they fill out a worksheet by themselves to make sure they’ve understood the chapter. After everyone’s finished with their worksheets, Miss Anderson leads them in a discussion about the chapter, going over the answers to the worksheet questions.
Syx finishes the worksheet first today, of course; when Roxanne, finishing second, turns her worksheet over and goes to the science corner, he’s already there and has gotten the new invention out of his backpack.
It looks a little bit like a computer, but only a little bit. It’s much smaller and lighter—basically just a keyboard attached to a screen, with a few strange instruments wired to the keyboard. The keyboard is different from a normal keyboard; it’s black instead of grayish white, the keys are bigger than normal keys, and the letters on them are written in cursive, with extra keys for each of the letter blends.
“What is it?” Roxanne asks, careful to keep her voice down so Miss Anderson won’t think they’re being too distracting to the other kids.
“I don’t have a name for it yet,” Syx whispers back, “but it’s for Minion! To help him read and write. Look!”
He presses the power button and the screen lights up, blank and white. The keys light up, too, their letters starting to glow—but the glow moves on each key, brightness following the outline of the letters.
“Writing them!” Roxanne says, understanding hitting her, “So the letters aren’t dead for him!”
Syx types, pressing the glowing keys quickly, letters appearing on the screen in cursive:
exactly
“And watch—” Syx says.
A clipboard is mounted to the right side of the keyboard, with extra clips added on each side of the board, and on the bottom of the board. Syx takes a notebook from his backpack, tears out a blank sheet of notebook paper and clips the paper into place on the clipboard.
There’s something almost like a little folded arm on the right side of the keyboard, too; Syx unfolds this. It terminates in a kind of metal grip; Syx puts a pencil in this and tightens it so that it’s held securely in place.
On the left side of the computer, a thin black thing that’s shaped like a paintbrush is plugged into the keyboard; Syx picks it up and presses a button on the brush-less end.
Roxanne jumps a little in surprise as the metal arm moves, turning the pencil point-down and placing it at the top of the page, against the paper, as if poised to write.
Using the paintbrush thing, Syx writes in cursive on the screen:
you can write in cursive here and it appears in print on the paper.
Roxanne gasps, delighted, as the metal arm moves, writing the words in print on the sheet of notepaper.
Syx taps the paintbrush on the top edge of the screen, as if it’s a magic wand, and the letters on the cursive side begin to glow and move like the letters on the keyboard, glow following each word in turn. He reaches up to the screen and wipes out the word ‘and’ with the tip of his finger. On the screen, the word disappears as if his fingertip is an eraser.
The metal arm moves up, turns the pencil around so that the eraser is pointed down, moves to the word ‘and’ on the page, and erases it in three firm strokes. Then it moves up, spins again, so that the lead tip is downwards again.
Syx rewrites the word ‘and’ in its place on the screen again, and the metal arm rewrites the word on the page in print. Then he moves down on the screen and writes:
You see?
On the notepage, the metal arm writes the same thing in print.
“That’s amazing,” Roxanne breathes.
Syx looks at her sidelong, a small smile starting to curl the edges of his mouth.
Then he clicks the paintbrush again.
This time when he moves the paintbrush over the screen, he writes in cursive:
And look what else it can do!
The metal arm writes the same thing on the next line of the notepaper in cursive, too.
Roxanne gives a breathless laugh of amazement and Syx, really smiling now, clicks the paintbrush once more and sets it down.
“It’s in his handwriting, too!” he says, “Even the print! I had him write the letters for me and programmed the shapes into it!”
He takes the pencil from the metal arm and folds the arm down.
“And it does one more thing,” he says. “Hand me a book!”
Roxanne hands him the extra copy of The Witches that Miss Anderson keeps on her bookshelf. He opens it to the first page, then picks up the last of the mysterious instruments wired to the keyboard.
This instrument looks like one of the price scanner guns that they use at the grocery store. He aims this at the first page of the book and presses the trigger.
There’s a quiet click, and then the words of the books first page start slowly to appear on the screen in cursive, as if someone’s writing them.
A Note About Witches: In fairy-tales, witches always wear silly black hats and black cloaks, and they…
Syx puts down the scanner and looks at Roxanne.
“What do you think?” he asks.
Roxanne, grinning, puts her hands on his shoulders and gives him a light, delighted shake.
“It’s fantastic!” she says, hugging him quickly. “Syx, you’re so smart; you’re a genius! Has Minion tried it out yet?”
“Not yet,” Syx says, grinning widely at her. “I just finished it this morning and I wanted to show it to you. We’re going to test it out when I get back home today!”
“I wish I could be there,” Roxanne says.
“So do I,” he says. “Really, though—you think it’s going to be useful?”
“Definitely,” Roxanne says.
“Do you think I should change anything?”
“I—” Roxanne pauses, thinking.
“You’ll need to add a way,” she says, “to adjust the speed of the words when he’s using it to read. He might need it slower for now, and later he’ll be able to read faster.”
“Oooh, yes,” Syx says, “speed adjustment; I hadn’t thought of that!”
He begins to pack the device away again into his backpack.
“The Read-Write,” Roxanne says suddenly.
Syx, zipping his backpack, looks at her inquiringly.
“That’s what you should call it,” she says.
“The Read-Write,” Syx says, eyes lighting up as he gets the pun. “The Read-Right; ahahaha, yes! I love it!”
Roxanne laughs, too.
“All right, class,” Miss Anderson says, “is everyone finished with their worksheets?”
Syx and Roxanne go to sit again at their desks, and join in the discussion.
Afterwards, as they’re getting out their social studies books, one of the other kids, Dwayne, raises his hand.
“Dwayne?” Miss Anderson says.
“Can Syx and Roxanne show us the thing they were using?”
Roxanne glances over at Syx; he’s wide-eyed with surprise, looking at Dwayne.
“Syx?” Miss Anderson says. “Roxanne? Would you like to give the class a demonstration?”
Syx’s eyes go even wider as he looks at Miss Anderson. Roxanne looks at her, too; she’s smiling.
Roxanne glances back at Syx, who’s already looking at her, a question in his eyes. She nods decisively.
This wasn’t originally in her plan, but it will definitely be useful.
“Um,” Syx says, “yes. I—you’ll all be able to see easier if everyone comes over to the science corner?”
He glances uncertainly at Miss Anderson, who nods encouragingly at him.
Roxanne and Syx lead the way over to the table in the science corner and Syx starts to set the device back up again.
“This is the Read-Write,” Roxanne says, raising her voice slightly so that everyone can hear. “Syx made it. It’s for his—”
She hesitates, looking over at Syx, not sure what relationship word approximation he would prefer to use.
“Brother,” he says, looking at Miss Anderson. “It’s for my brother.”
“He has trouble reading and writing,” Roxanne says, “Syx made the Read-Write to help him.”
“He understands movement best,” Syx says, warming to his theme, beginning to gesture excitedly. “We figured out that he can understand written language if the letters and words appear as movements, rather than static, unmoving symbols!”
He turns on the Read-Write with a flourish.
“You see?” he says, pointing to the glowing keys. “Movements!”
“Why are the letters cursive?” Gary asks.
“Cursive is clearer for him than print,” Syx says. “The movement is more fluid; it feels more natural to him that way. Now—” he begins to set up the arm of the Read-Write again, putting a pencil into the grip, “—I’ll show you how it works.”
Everyone seems really interested in the Read-Write, Miss Anderson included. They all lean forward to watch as Syx continues the demonstration, answering their questions, explaining things. Roxanne helps, jumping in from time to time to break Syx’s explanations down into simpler words when they get too complicated for their classmates to understand.
Syx gets more confident as the demonstration goes on, his gestures and expressions growing gradually more and more animated, until he’s practically glowing with happiness, his hands dancing in the air as he talks.
Roxanne, watching him, smiles so hard that her face hurts.
…to be continued.
HAPPY DAY EIGHT OF MY NINE DAYS OF MEGAMIND! Thank you all for continuing to read, like, reblog, and comment; it makes me so happy. I hope the new chapter makes you happy, too!
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