Fic: Getting Away From It All, Chapter 5
Title: Getting Away From It All, chapter 5
Author: sevandor (Sevandor1 on fanfiction.net)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: For someone with his personality, it’s strange to think that Megamind has no idea what a “vacation” really is. Now, he gets to learn. Chapter V: The Road Trip, in which fans, normal people, and real food are encountered. Post movie, my fanverse. Megamind, Roxanne. About 7000 words.
Floof (not even fluff) and some odd humor in this one... :)
Chapter One
Chapter 2 on fanfiction.net
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
V
The Road Trip
When the sensation of being jostled about wakened Megamind, his initial expectation was that Roxanne was shaking him, so that they could get on their way. As he fought his way up from the muddy depths of drowsiness, his second thought was that someone had managed to discover them parked at the end of the unpaved road by running into a car they didn't know was there. As he finally blinked his eyes and came to the surface of consciousness, however, he could feel the car moving, not in the way it would if it had been hit, but as it would when driving, and making an abrupt change of course. He straightened in his seat, looking about in an attempt to make sense of unfamiliar surroundings. What lay beyond the windows - open countryside, green, rolling hills covered by wide acres of farms and pastureland, dotted with wooded areas, and broken by occasional houses, barns, and other rural buildings - was definitely unfamiliar, though Roxanne behind the wheel was not. She saw his sudden change of position and smiled apologetically.
"'Morning, hon," she greeted, blowing him a small kiss. "Sorry if that little maneuver woke you, I was just about to make a wrong turn and I guess I didn't handle the correction too smoothly, caught a bit of the gravel shoulder. How're you feeling? Rested?"
"Better," he said around a prodigious yawn. "Though I could probably use another few days of sleep." He stretched his back and his neck, making a face over the necessity of a seatbelt. Roxanne always insisted upon it when they were in her car, and though he conceded to her wishes, he sometimes disliked the way the dratted thing chafed at his long neck. "Where are we?"
She checked the dashboard clock, which showed the time as 9:00 a.m. "North of Algoma, about forty minutes from where Wayne dropped us off. I gave you a nudge when I was ready to get going, but you didn't seem to like the idea, so I let you sleep. Hope you don't mind."
"Did I miss anything worth waking up for?"
"From your point of view? Probably not. We've been through a few small towns and a lot of farms. Other than that... There was the nuclear power plant, but I think it's just as well that you missed it. I don't think they'd be up to giving you a tour."
"I doubt it," he agreed rather affably. "I suspect the South Haven plant sent mug shots of me to all the other nuclear sites after I tried breaking in when I was nineteen."
"What on earth were you trying to do?" Roxanne wondered, intrigued. "Nuke Metro City?"
But the blue genius was remarkably blasé about the matter. "Nah, that'd be like fouling your own nest. I was trying to prove a point with Wayne, that I could beat just about any security system around. I almost did, too, but I made a mistake and gave him too much of a hint about what I was planning. I didn't do more than actually get through the front door of the plant before he figured it out and hauled me back to prison. I did prove my point, though, so I chalked that up as one of my almost-wins."
Roxanne shook her head, chuckling. "You guys were just a two-man frat house war, weren't you? Always trying to one-up each other."
Megamind smiled. "I guess so, a lot of the time. Michigan was lucky to have us, when you think about it."
She laughed and nudged him with her elbow. "I thought you've always insisted your battles weren't for the tourists!"
"Oh, they weren't, but you can't deny that we added a lot of spice to what would've otherwise been a pretty dull town."
Roxanne gave a sound between a chuckle and a snort, amused by his playful preening. It was so much better than the bickering and sniping, and let her finally begin to relax into the spirit of a vacation. "The pair of you certainly kept things interesting," she agreed, as much head-swelling as she was willing to encourage. "It shouldn't be too much longer before we reach the turn heading up into the peninsula - oh, hey, would you look at that?"
Megamind, who had been searching behind the seats for his thermos of coffee, glanced up. "Look at what? Where?"
She pointed out her side of the car. "I think it's a wind farm," she said, gesturing toward the tall shapes of wind turbine towers dotting the hills that stretched out to the west and ran parallel to the highway. "They've been talking about building one outside Metro City, and I've seen pictures, but I've never actually seen so many of them before."
The ex-villain had to lean forward to try to get a decent glimpse of the massive modern day windmills, and even then had some trouble because of the angle of the windshield and his unusually high cranium. When he made a small sound of frustration, Roxanne obliged by pulling over onto the shoulder and stopping. "Won't hurt to take a few minutes to get out and have a good look," she said as she shut off the car and unbuckled her seatbelt. "That's part of being on vacation, taking the time to stop and smell the roses - or gawk at cool stuff when you see it."
Having no personal experience in the matter, Megamind was quite willing to defer to her advice. Getting out also let them stretch their legs a bit, a relief after several hours of being confined to even a comfortable car. It also made finding the thermos easier. While he opened it to savor some of the still hot contents, Roxanne fished out her digital camera from behind her seat.
"They aren't close," her beau noted, having moved to her side of the car to study the many towers and the land in between while she was bringing out her equipment. "Several miles away, I think, which would make them quite large, to be so obvious at this distance. Why would they put something like this here? I can't imagine that the farms have a need for so much power."
"Most of it's probably going to a larger city in the area, like Green Bay," Roxanne speculated as she switched the lens for a more powerful telephoto that would give them a closer view of the turbines. "Remember what I said about the region being very environmentally aware? A wind farm this size could provide energy for a pretty large area with a low population density, without any pollution. And I imagine that once they get used to it, the cows and farm animals and wildlife aren't really bothered by it."
She handed him the camera so he could have a closer look for himself. She sighed as he peered through the viewfinder and refocused the lens. "Too bad I packed the binoculars with the stuff Wayne brought over last night. They would've been a little less clumsy to use for something like this."
"Not a problem," Megamind assured her. "This is good enough." After using the lens' augmentation to study the towers and the steadily turning blades atop them, he sniffed softly. "I wonder if this is one of the projects the mayor and the governor have in store for me?"
Roxanne chuckled as she leaned back against the car and enjoyed the warm and soft morning breeze flowing up the gentle slope of the valley to the west. It was heavy with scents of the growing crops of corn and beans and hay, ripening fruit in orchards, the stands of tall oaks and other trees, as well as the sharper, more pungent odors of the animals out in the pastures. "They probably do," she speculated, noticing that a car was heading their way from the north, but not caring, as they were well clear of it on the opposite shoulder. "And I'll bet that they expect you to find a way to do it better, faster, and cheaper."
Megamind's answering snort was eloquent. "No bet; that's what they always expect. I suppose I could find a way to make them more efficient, but really, they're already works of art, in their own ways. Simple, streamlined, elegant - you can't improve on that without making them look ridiculous, or creating an even greater hazard for wildlife."
She smiled. "Remember to say it just like that when they ask you," she suggested, kissing his cheek.
He lowered the camera and was about to return her kiss more fully when the approaching car zipped by, then nearly spun out as the driver suddenly slammed on the brakes. The car - actually a small SUV with a family inside - stopped, remained still for only a split second, then jolted into reverse and came squealing back almost as quickly as it had passed before stopping again, directly in front of them. Several faces were plastered to the driver's side windows, the driver himself and two kids in the back. The mom was also leaning in their direction, mouth open and gawking like the others.
Hero and reporter exchanged droll looks, then looked back at the quartet staring at them, faces now less distorted as their windows rolled down.
Megamind managed a charmingly bright smile, quite well aware that he was the object of their open-mouthed attention. "Yes? Something we can do for you? Are you lost and need directions?"
"Uh..." the dad said with an outstanding lack of articulation. "Ah... erm...."
"We know you!" one of the kids in the back seat, a boy of about seven, squealed. "You're that superhero guy from Michigan, right?"
The other kid, a girl of perhaps twelve, elbowed her brother. "Hey, don't be rude, stupid! The guy's got a name! Megamind, right?"
Said hero nodded as he leaned back against the hood of the Corvette and struck a nonchalant pose. "Do you need help, or did you stop simply to marvel at my incredibly awesome handsomeness?"
Roxanne couldn't quite smother the laugh that bubbled up at his audacious lack of humility. The parents were still trying to find their voices, but the kids had no problem whatsoever. "Oh, man, this is so totally cool!" the boy exclaimed. "Can we have your autograph or take your picture or something? The guys back home will never believe this!"
"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah!" the girl squealed, scrambling around for something behind her, between the seats. "We've gotta get a picture! Is that okay? We've got our own camera...."
The couple again exchanged glances; Roxanne shrugged, seeing no harm in it, and Megamind capitulated. "Fine," he said, "but make it quick. We don't want to interfere with traffic." Fortunately, it was still fairly early on a weekday morning and well out of any town, so there were no cars or trucks in sight at the moment, though that certainly couldn't last for long.
Shrieking with delight, the children scrambled out. "Can you take the picture?" the boy asked Roxanne, even though his sister had the camera.
"No, stupid!" the girl insisted, "stupid" being her apparent term of endearment for her brother. "She's Roxanne Ritchi, his girlfriend! We've gotta have her in the picture, too!"
"Why?" the boy wanted to know. "You're the one who's all mushy-faced over him - why do you want his girlfriend in the picture?"
The girl blushed as thoroughly as the blue alien, though the color it produced on their cheeks was quite different. Roxanne couldn't help but giggle. "Ah, one of your many female admirers, Mr. Handsome Superhero," she whispered to him as she tried to hide her laughter so as not to further discomfit him.
"Mom! Dad!" the girl called, employing her own method of diversion to keep from dying of embarrassment. "Come on, one of you can do this! Hurry up, there's another car coming!"
The father almost fell out of the SUV as his door opened, but he managed a creditable save to keep from falling on his face. Fortunately, the approaching car turned at a crossroad before reaching them, but he took the camera from his daughter and snapped off a few shots quickly. Roxanne insisted that she take one of the entire family with her famous beau.
After the brief moment of embarrassment, Megamind had quickly recovered his poise, and he signaled for the reporter to take one more shot before the group started to head back to their vehicle. Smiling with charming innocence, he kissed his young admirer's cheek just as Roxanne snapped the picture, capturing the look of blissful shock on the girl's face. Roxanne then returned the camera, and her brother almost had to drag the suddenly nerveless girl back into the car. As the family waved goodbye and continued on, they could hear her squeal, "My friends are gonna be soooo jealous...!"
'But he wasn't even wearin' any spikes...!" came the boy's fading lament.
"That was sweet of you," Roxanne said as they watched the SUV drive off. "She'll be bragging about this until she gets a crush on the next popular guy."
The ex-villain sighed and smiled at the same time. "You don't suppose this is going to keep happening until we go home, do you? I don't really want to get a reputation for kissing babies, or little girls. People might get the wrong idea."
She grinned and shrugged, kissing him in consolation before they climbed back into the car. "It could happen again, but I doubt it'll be too often. Did you see the back of their van? Tourists, from Iowa. Wayne said something about that when he came over to pick up our luggage last night. There may be others like those, but not as many as you're afraid of, sweetie. Most of the people who go to the upper peninsula are looking for a more quiet kind of place, to relax, to unwind. Families that want exciting around here usually head to Wisconsin Dells, or the Chicago area. And years back, Door County was one of the places where mobsters from Chicago like Al Capone went to cool off; it was considered neutral ground. It still has something of that atmosphere, a place where people who get noticed every day in their regular lives go to feel more normal, because the locals and a lot of the visitors know how to be friendly without being intrusive. I think that's a big part of why Wayne suggested it in the first place.
"Besides," she added as she climbed in and closed the door a few seconds after Megamind had done the same, "look at the bright side."
A small frown creased his brow. "There's a bright side to this?"
The brunette nodded, brushing aside the lock of hair that fell across her eyes with the motion. "Oh, yes, definitely. Those people aren't from Metro City, but they liked you. They weren't scared of you, not the kids or their parents. They thought you were a very cool celebrity, and they accepted you without ever once saying the word alien. I think that's a very big bright side, don't you?"
As the realization of that truth sank in, Megamind found himself at a loss for words. It certainly was a bright side, and one very much worth thinking about.
***********
Wayne had been quite right when he'd said that only two roads crossed over the bay - Sturgeon Bay, after which the surrounding small city had been named - and onto the upper peninsula itself. The city itself was small, having less than ten thousand actual residents, and once beyond it, all the towns and tiny hamlets were much, much smaller. The population of visitors could be quite high during the warmest summer months, and it was because of this particular warning and the steadily growing heat of the day that Roxanne decided to take the alternate route Wayne had suggested rather than deal with any kind of crowd. She enjoyed driving on the open country roads, something made all the more enjoyable by the fact that Megamind never complained about wanting to be the one behind the wheel. It was so unlike every other guy she had ever dated, it reminded her once more of all the many reasons, large and small, that she loved him.
They had gone only a mile or two up the road, which was flanked on both sides by broad farm fields and woodlands, when the ex-villain, watching the scenery rolling by, suddenly asked, "Where are the turkeys?"
Roxanne had been trying to decide on which playlist to use to provide a little traveling music, and was thus startled by the question. "Huh? What did you say?"
"I said, where are the turkeys? After all the talk I've been hearing about them, I expected us to be run over by a herd of them every fifty feet!"
"It's a flock, not a herd, and they aren't quite that common, even here."
"Then when do we get to see them?"
"Whenever they decide to come out of whatever woods they're roosting in. They spend most of the day foraging for food, so I suppose that sooner or later, we'll catch sight of a flock. You just have to be patient when it comes to nature, sweetie. Wild things live on their own schedules, not ours."
Megamind grumped. "Well, that's just disappointing. Wild fangirls on the highways, but no wild turkeys."
"We have a whole month," she reminded him in her best tones of appeasement.
He harrumphed, clearly unappeased. "Impressive birds, my giant blue head," he said, mimicking his former nemesis. "Impressive anythings don't hide out where no one can see them! They have a sense of presentation!"
Roxanne sort of had to admit that that was true, as strutting toms presenting themselves for the consideration of hens were certainly turkeys at their most impressive. On the other hand, she didn't think it would be wise to encourage this grouchy train of thought too much. "Well, if we don't see any before it's time to go home, I'll give Wayne a call and have him track down a couple of flocks for us. He's the one who practically promised you'd see 'em, after all." That appeared to reasonably mollify her ex-kidnapper, and they drove on without any new complaints about the inconvenient habits of wild turkeys.
Some miles farther up the road, however, Megamind found something new to puzzle over. "Cavepoint?" he said, making the word sound utterly distasteful. "What in the world is a cavepoint?"
Roxanne, who had been humming along with a song in the playlist she'd selected, had no idea what he was talking about. "Come again?" she prompted rather than confess that she hadn't been paying attention.
"That was the third sign I've seen in the last five miles for something called a 'cavepoint.' Isn't that an oooxiemoron? Caves are holes and points are sharp, so how can a cave have a point? Are they talking about stalactites and stalagmites, or is it a pointed something with a big hole in it?"
"I have no idea, sweetie. Are you sure you read the signs right?"
He lifted his chin indignantly. "Absolutely! Look, see? There's another one!" He pointed to a sign, which read CAVE POINT COUNTY PARK, with an arrow pointing to the right.
Roxanne saw the error in the close spacing of the words. "I think it's two words, hon, not one. Sounds like it's just the name of a park."
"But why would anyone name a park something that makes no sense?"
"Maybe it does to the people who named it. We can always ask some-whoops!"
"Somewhoops?" her beau echoed, giving her a look of disbelief. "And people keep saying I can't pronounce simple words...!"
"No, no, the 'whoops' was for something else. I was going to fill up the tank last night and I forgot. The low fuel light just came on, and I think we still have more than another twenty miles to go before we get to Wayne's place."
Fortunately, a few moments later, they came around a curve in the wooded stretch of road along which they'd been traveling, the speed limit dropped, and a number of houses and other small buildings came into view. Unfortunately, none of them appeared to be a gas station. "I don't suppose that the GPS is equipped to show gas stations outside our part of Michigan?" she wondered.
Megamind shook his head. "You didn't ask for it, and I hadn't thought we'd be taking many road trips outside the Metrocity area."
She slowed the car and pulled over to the side of the road. "Then I think we should stop and ask the locals before we wind up in the middle of nowhere, out of gas. At least here, we know there are people around to ask."
They came to a stop just outside a small park, beyond which they could see the shore of Lake Michigan, more or less to the south. Glancing at the low buildings nearby, none of which appeared taller than two stories, Roxanne spotted one across the street with a fluttering OPEN flag out front, and a sign declaring VISITOR'S INFORMATION beside the open door. "That looks like a good place to start," she decided as she unbuckled herself and opened her door.
When she climbed out, she noticed that Megamind hadn't followed suit. "Are you planning to stay here and wait?" she asked. "I don't think anyone inside there will bite, not if they're the local information bureau."
Megamind was still reluctant. "I'm not sure that I'm quite ready to handle another group of... er... potential admirers."
Roxanne's smile was wry. "I never thought I'd see the day when the great Megamind would turn shy about facing his public. I understand, this is new territory and we're not quite sure how people will react, but if you don't want to spend the whole trip under a disguise, you have to try sometime." She glanced over her shoulder at the building, which appeared to be nothing more than some kind of art or craft shop. There were no other cars parked on the street outside it. "I think it should be safe," she reported. "Given the time, the place probably just opened, and it doesn't look like there are any other customers yet."
Still, he continued to hesitate, and she shook her head. "It's now or never, Mykaal. Don't let the threat of running into another gushing fangirl scare you off. I'll be right there with you to fend 'em off, if any are brazen enough to show their faces."
She said it with such grim determination, he couldn't help but smile. "Is that a dare, Ms Ritchi?" he challenged.
"More like a promise," she assured him, "but if you want to take it that way, I'm game. I dare you to walk into that shop first and ask someone where we can find the nearest gas station. You up for it, Mr. Superego?"
He returned with a positively wicked grin as he unbuckled his seatbelt. "Oh, I'm up for anything you can throw at me, Ms Nosy Reporter! You will rue the day you dared to challenge me!"
With that, he wasted not a moment exiting the car to stride across the street, fortunately well ahead of a pickup truck that was about to pass by at a somewhat higher speed than the local limit. Roxanne followed quickly, not because she doubted him, but because she wanted to see whatever happened next. She'd guessed, rightly so, that if she made it a dare, his uneasiness would flee and he'd slip right back into his more typical extravagant public demeanor. Now she wanted to be sure she didn't miss out.
She had also guessed correctly that there were no other customers in the shop. It was a small and rather crowded place, displaying many shelves filled with wares of different handcrafted items, ranging from small and rather trite to large and quite lovely. To one side of the narrow main room was a small counter with a cash register and a rack full of various brochures, pamphlets, flyers, magazines, and even maps for local businesses, as well as other attractions and points of interest. What the place did not have, however, was some sort of proprietor or clerk in evidence.
That curious lack took a fair amount of the wind out of the blue hero's sails. "Well, this just isn't right!" he declared as he heard Roxanne come up behind him. "What kind of appalling security is this? Anyone could just come in and walk off with half the place!"
His girlfriend tried not to smile too broadly. "This isn't Metro City, hon; it isn't even Green Bay. That's the way of it sometimes in small towns. People trust one another, they even trust most of their guests. I'm sure if some crook comes in and wants to rob the place blind, you'll stop him."
He drew himself up into a proper hero's stance. "Of course!" He then sagged a bit. "But... isn't this just a little strange? I mean, really, we could empty the cash register - or what if we wanted to buy something? Do they work on the honor system? I'd say that's going a bit too far...."
"I agree. Maybe the owner had to go answer the phone or use the restroom. Let's just wait a couple of minutes and see what happens."
As that seemed to be the best available option, Megamind went along with it. While Roxanne glanced at a few shelves near the front of the small room, showing an array of beautifully carved wood beside a collection of colorful and intricate hand-quilted items, he looked around the clerk's station to see if perhaps there was any indication of mayhem.
There was not, though what did catch his eye was a bowl near the register, full of something labeled Amish made cashew brittle, with an invitation for it to be sampled. He knew about peanut brittle from life in prison, as it was one of the things that could be purchased at the commissary. That stuff had been sweet, if not precisely delicious, and the scent of this was also sweet, reminding his stomach that breakfast, such as it was, had been almost six hours ago. Figuring that there was nothing better to do while they waited for the proprietor, he plucked a piece from the bowl and popped it into his mouth.
His eyes popped wide the moment it hit his tongue. This was nothing like the stuff he remembered from prison. This was actually... good. No, not merely good. It was sweet, yes, but sweet like actual sugar, not some cheap liquid fructose goo concentrate, and it was also... what was that flavor? Butter? Certainly not the stuff that the cheap prison candy used; that had always had a vague aftertaste of used motor oil to it, which gave the candy the overall sensation of having been scorched and burned, not merely cooked, imbedded with incongruously rubbery and tasteless yet bitter little rocks that were supposedly peanuts. He'd eaten it when offered by his uncles because he would admittedly eat almost anything sweet, but this...! It had subtle textures beyond merely "brittle," smooth and crackly in the candy and genuinely crunchy in the nuts that actually tasted like they were supposed to taste, flavors of things that were clearly identifiable as real foods, not merely cheap over-processed or chemically concocted substitutes.
This wasn't candy; this was... ambrosia.
And needless to say, more of it found its way into the delighted alien's mouth not even three seconds later.
Of course, it was at that particular moment, with his mouth unquestionably full, that Roxanne spoke up behind him, and sounds of movement could be heard approaching from the rooms beyond the counter before him.
"Hey, hon, is Minion still interested in patchwork quilting?" his girlfriend asked as he frantically tried to chew and swallow what he'd stuffed into his mouth - a tricky proposition, as it was a mite too full and the now-sticky candy had become something of a solid mass glued to his teeth. "They've got some lovely little decorative pieces here, and I was thinking it might be a nice sort of small thank-you gift, with him filling in for you for a few weeks."
"Yurph," was all Megamind managed to get out through his struggle to hide the evidence of his own unseemly fit of greed.
"What was that?" Roxanne asked distractedly, not having noted his embarrassed distress. It didn't help that the sounds from the other room were rapidly getting closer.
"Uh ehg yurph, ee igh," came the valiant attempt at an intelligible reply. Sadly, it lost on all fronts.
What it succeeded in doing, however, was to get Roxanne's attention. "Are you okay, sweetie?" she inquired, abandoning whatever she'd been looking at to see what was wrong.
"Yurph, ught ein!" Oh, great, now he could see the shadows of someone approaching beyond the counter even as he felt Roxanne come up behind him. His desperate attempts finally met with some degree of success, and he managed to swallow enough to regain some control of his voice. "Whah do oo asthk?"
His beloved wasn't a crack reporter for nothing; it didn't take more than a moment for her to assess the situation and determine what had been going on. She smirked. "I ask because you sound like you've been choking to death. 'Sample' doesn't mean 'eat half the bowl in one shot,'" she pointed out at her very drollest. "If you're that hungry, we can stop somewhere for a real breakfast, you know."
With one last monumental effort and a huge swallow, the not so bright at the moment genius managed to finally clear his mouth. "I got carried away," he admitted, chagrined. "But who is this Amish, and how did he find the recipe for the food of the gods?"
Curious to know what had prompted such a response, Roxanne took a bit of the stuff from the now only half-full bowl and tried it. "That's good," she agreed. "But it isn't exactly food of the gods, hon, it's just what you get when you use real food for ingredients and don't use machines to do the cooking. Minion could probably make something like this, if he wanted to encourage your sugar habit. And Amish isn't a person, it's a group of people who do things the old fashioned ways as a part of their religious beliefs."
"And most places these days, it's old fashioned to use fresh ingredients of good quality real foods instead of stale, inferior substitutes," the person who had been approaching said as she entered the room. She was a middle-aged woman of average height, brown haired, with a round, pleasant face. "Good morning!" she greeted with a smile. "I take it you're both from out of town?"
There was no sarcasm in her voice, even though it had to be patently obvious that Megamind was no local. Remembering that he was still under a dare, he spoke first. "Ah, yes, yes we are - and I'm sorry, I think I ate a little more of your samples than I should have."
The woman waved it off, still smiling. "You aren't the first," she assured him. "We sell more of that stuff than almost anything else in the shop. People do seem to get addicted to it. If that's what you're here for, I was just about to bring in some fresh stock, the shipment from my Amish friends just arrived."
Her easy manner helped calm his jitters over his impulsive faux pas. "Oh, no - well, I mean yes, I think I would be interested in that, but that's not why we're here. We're on our way to a friend's summer house in... where is it again, Roxanne?"
"Sister Bay," she provided, her attention now drawn back to the things she'd been perusing.
"That's it, Sister Bay. We were on our way there, but it seems our car is running low on fuel, and we don't know where the nearest gas station might be."
The clerk nodded her understanding. "That'd be about six or seven miles farther up the road, on highway 57 in Bailey's Harbor. It's on the right, and trust me, you can't miss it. Are you planning to be here for a while, or did you come just for the opening of the festival?"
"Festival?"
"The Peninsula Music Festival," she explained, plucking a specific advertising brochure from the rack of informative items and handing it to him. "It happens every August for the first three weeks, concerts by the local orchestra and a number of noted guests. It's a sort of end of the season tradition, since after that, most of the summer residents and guests start packing up and heading back home. If you're not here for that, then you're just in visiting?"
Somehow, the woman managed to be inquisitive without seeming the least bit prying, as one might be when talking to a friend they haven't seen in a while. "Yes, just visiting," Megamind found himself answering, surprised at how easily the woman had drawn him into a conversation without making him feel at all suspicious. "A break from work."
The clerk was completely understanding. "Everyone needs that once in a while, even superheroes," she said with a wink and a twinkle in her dark eyes.
A faint hint of lavender crept across the alien's blue cheeks. "Oh, so you know who we are - who I am," he corrected, well aware that between his oversized bald head and his complexion, he was by far and away the more noticeable and unmistakable.
The woman's chuckle was kind. "Well, I don't think there's much anyone who lives near Lake Michigan who doesn't know who you are one way or another, Mr. Megamind. Even up here, we do have television and newspapers, though a lot of people don't pay them as much mind as they might, were they at home. But I'm a local, live here all year 'round, so I've heard things from time to time. Lately, it's been mostly good things about you, so if you're worried about people having a hard time accepting you, don't. There might be some vacationers who have bad attitudes, but not many, and not the real residents. We've all heard about how you're coming up with some good ways to help clean up the lake and keep it that way, and believe me, we're all for it."
"Told you so," Roxanne's voice came from across the small room.
Megamind spared a moment to stick out his tongue at her, which made the clerk laugh as she came out from behind the counter and started collecting a number of things from the literature rack. "We provide information for visitors here in Jacksonport," she explained, "though with the Door being such a comparatively small region, nothing's all that far from anywhere else, so what we have covers pretty much everything. These will give you some good sources of general information about what's where and what's going on and all the things there are to do while you're here. Will you be staying the whole week?"
"The whole month, actually," the alien once again found himself saying without intending to reveal so much. Had there been some sort of truth drug in that candy?
The woman saw his sudden flash of concern, and smiled in a disarming, friendly way. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to pry," she assured him. "It's just part of my job, being a face for the visitor's bureau, we like to make everyone feel at home and welcome. Most folks enjoy talking about why they're here and what they've done or plan to do during their stay. It's a harmless way of breaking the ice."
He saw her point, and made an effort to relax again. "Oh, right, sorry," he said, a bit sheepish. "I guess in my line of work, you get a little suspicious of people's motives."
"Perfectly understandable. We get police officers and folks in the military visiting, and though some of them really do want to talk, others aren't so eager. Comes with the territory, I guess. Don't you mind me, I'm just an old chatterbox who enjoys people, no matter where they're from or what they do. Though I'll warn you, I'm not the only local who's like that. But if you don't want to chit-chat, that's okay, too, no one will think any worse of you for it. Folks do come here to relax, and all of us respect that. We wouldn't stay in business very long if we didn't, now, would we?"
Megamind nodded, and suddenly found himself glad that he'd taken up Roxanne's dare. Though neither of them could have known it, they had accidentally stumbled into just the right place and the right person to make him feel that he would not be looked down on as a freak here, that he would be able to remain out from under a disguise and be accepted as just another visitor who wanted a little peace and quiet, maybe along with some fun.
He smiled, a sort of dawning realization smile. "No, you wouldn't, would you? I guess I'm coming off sounding kinda paranoid. It's...just been an awfully rough few months, lately, for both of us."
"Which is why we're here," Roxanne added as she came back again. "To relax and put all of that behind us. I know this isn't much, but do you think Minion would like it? The detail on it is really nice." What she laid on the counter for him to see was a small mat or hanging, done in patchwork, the design of the many small pieces of cloth creating a sort of gentle whirlpool surrounded by three rows of waves. The piecing and stitching had been done very precisely, and the fabrics - all in shades of ocean blues and sea greens, with hints of purple and highlights of foamy white - were either of rippled batik-style colors or had been printed with patterns of tiny fish, some stylized, some realistic. The overall effect was quite charming, and had drawn Roxanne's attention the moment she'd laid eyes on it.
"That's very well done," her beau had to admit, since his appreciation of art tended to lean toward its incorporation into functional craft. His entire home - handmade from raw materials that were largely bits and pieces of items that had been salvaged or scavenged from other things over many years - was an elegant testament to this inclination. "I'm not sure what he'd do with it, but I'm sure he'd like it, just for the artistry." His smile for Roxanne was warm. "It's nice of you to think of him. I suspect he'll appreciate that even more."
Roxanne dismissed his praise with an easy gesture, though she was also smiling. "I could never forget him. He's like the sweet, nice younger brother who lives with us - even though he's older, and a fish. It's not much, but it's something, and you did eat a little more of those 'samples' than you should have."
He blushed. "Okay, okay, you've got a point. I guess I should actually buy some, shouldn't I?"
"To say the least."
"I was just about to bring more out," the clerk said, disappearing into the back rooms again to fetch it.
While she was gone, Roxanne nudged her beau. "See? Interacting with the natives wasn't that bad, was it?"
Megamind answered with a mischievous grin. "No, and I won the dare!"
"I was counting on it," she assured him with an affectionate kiss that she broke only when they heard the clerk returning.
While she was ringing up their selections, talking cheerfully about the weather and other such innocuous topics, more customers entered the shop. In the lingeringly blissful state that was still his normal reaction to Roxanne's kisses, Megamind didn't even notice. They noticed him as they moved into that part of the store, but beyond a few whispered words among themselves and some oddly shy, smiling glances at the oblivious alien, they made nothing more of it. The same thing happened when they left with their purchases and the informational items the clerk had given them. A couple heading toward the shop did do a double-take as they headed across the street, and there was a surprised squeak from a teenaged girl who passed them as she was walking her dog near the car, but that was the worst of it.
"Well, now, do you think you'll be able to survive more than a few days here?" Roxanne asked after they'd climbed back into the car and were on their way again.
The alien shrugged, scanning one of the brochures they'd been given. "As long as I don't lose my mind to boredom - hey, didn't that woman say the gas station was in a place called Beeley's Harbor?"
"I think she said Bailey's Harbor, but yeah, that's the place. Why?"
"This says that there's a place where you can learn kite-surfing on the bay behind the gas station - it's windsurfing with a huge kite instead of a sail! I've always wanted to learn windsurfing, but the water near Metrocity was disgusting most of the time, and I suppose I really shouldn't try this without Minion around, anyway, though maybe if I learned how before he comes up here, I wouldn't totally suck at it and we could actually enjoy ourselves...."
As he rambled on about the possibilities of kite-surfing and other available water sports that they might share before anyone joined them, Roxanne hid a knowing smile. Barring any unforeseen dreadful pitfalls, this whole vacation thing was beginning to look as if it just might work out well, after all.
To be continued...