Two updates: Legacy, Chapter Four, and more Health News

[sevandor]

Title: Legacy, Chapter Four: Crossroads

Author:  Sevandor (sevandor1 on fanfiction.net)Rating: PG-13
Characters: Megamind, OCs, mentions of Hal
Summary of Chapter Four, Crossroads, in which Megamind's and Minion's parents are informed of the coming apocalypse, and Megamind winds up back behind bars....
Length of this chapter: about 7000 words

See, the chapters are starting to get a little shorter.  :)  I really hope that I'm going to be able to continue producing fairly regularly during the coming weeks, as my husband will be scheduled to have a prostatectomy either late this month or early in October (we'll find out when tomorrow).  After talking with the surgeon yesterday, he feels that my husband has a 95 to 98 percent chance of complete recovery with the surgery, since the cancer was caught almost ridiculously early and there don't appear to be any other health concerns.  But the C word is still scary, I'm a worry wart, and I can't always trust my Muse when I'm upset -- though sometimes, she gets even more productive when I'm in the midst of these kinds of crises, just to give my mind something to chew on other than my stomach.  And a HUGE thank you to everyone who has expressed their kind concern and good wishes for both of us.  I appreciate them more than you'll ever know.  Now, on to a slightly angsty chapter in this very weird tale....

Link to Chapter One
Link to Chapter Two
Link to Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Crossroads

"Kyrel, you can't continue like this! It will not help our son one bit if he survives his birth and you don't!"

"Ordinarily, I wouldn't be inclined to agree with your husband when he's nearly shouting in anger, but in this case, I have to make an exception. Eliaan is right, Kyrel. The techniques of diverting a portion of your physical resources to provide extra support to your unborn son were not intended to be carried this far!"

Kyrel - who was looking rather more gray than blue today, her normally healthy lavender cheeks faded to a muted mauve and her usually bright green eyes dulled as if by some grimy film - nonetheless had enough of her typical spark to favor Notarr with one of her best scathing glares. She and Toomia had planned to meet with Eliaan and Notarr at the cybernetics facility that afternoon, to see the progress that was being made with a more efficient version of the neural interfaces used by the Potrell to move and guide their android bodies. When Toomia showed up but Kyrel did not, both the fish, her mate, and Kyrel's husband had known that the woman had once again failed to awaken from her midday rest because of overwhelming exhaustion from her determined efforts to will her unborn son to live. As soon as the trio realized that she wasn't coming, they headed straight for the Thejhan house, to help or to chide, whichever seemed most appropriate.

The help hadn't been required, as Kyrel was awake when they arrived, and even though she was clearly less than perfectly fit, she wasn't accepting delivery on the chiding, not even from her own worried spouse. "Males," she snapped as if that said it all, and it was indeed enough to cause the male ichthyoid to recoil a bit in his android body's habitat, green fins flittering. "You may be a fine microbiologist, Notarr, but once a babe has grown to more than an embryo, you're quite beyond your field of expertise!"

It was true, but Notarr was capable of being stubborn given the right reason, and this was good enough. "I knew enough to be of help to Toomia through her own term," he grumbled back. "She tried this, too, diverting so much of her own strength and bodily resources to our younglings that she nearly killed herself, and them as well. You can't afford to do this, Kyrel, not when you still have half your term before you!"

"My mate exaggerates," Toomia said with a roll of her amber eyes, elegant robot arms folded across her chest. "But not excessively," she added when Notarr's gray-green eyes flashed her a look of hurt. She fanned her fins at him in a way that was both apologetic and coquettish before turning to Kyrel with a more stern manner. "You've been following all that we'd determined would be most helpful for your son, and thus far, everything is as it should be. The scan only a few days ago showed that he's growing as he should, even better than we'd expected, and is in no danger of leaving you too soon. And yet you've been using the meditation not to strengthen both of you, but to strengthen him alone. Why? It makes no sense, Kyrel! Are you trying to rush him into an early birth?"

The blue woman looked away at her friend's pointed question, closing her eyes as she laid her hands on her belly, where the presence of her son was now quite visible. "No," she said quietly, accepting the query as justly asked. "I - know he would not fare well, if he comes before his time. But I'm afraid to give him less than all I have to give. If he died because I held back..." She shook her head, attempting to banish the thought.

Eliaan, who had been pacing in frustration, abruptly stopped to go to her side, slipping his long arms around her as he sat beside her on the low couch where she was seated. "Oh, tsia'le, you've done so much already, no one can ever say that you've been a less than perfect mother! But Mykaal literally cannot live without you now, and you must share your strength with him, not merely sacrifice it to him!"

"I know," she murmured. "But... something in me feels that time is pressing. I don't know why, but I have this sense of urgency, as if not doing all I possibly can, even to my own detriment, will..." She shook her head again, frustrated by the words she couldn't seem to find.

Her husband thought he understood, and kissed her gently, soothingly. "We all wish that this could be over and done with, my heart, it's only natural to want to leap past the waiting and the worrying, especially with a son such as ours. But he's doing as well as you predicted, and there's all the time in the world-"

"No!" Though the rest of her seemed gray and pale, the green fire flared in her eyes, not of anger but of anxiety. "That's just it, don't you see? There isn't time!" She sounded utterly certain of it, but also confused, as if she knew why she said it, but didn't understand how she knew.

Eliaan looked perplexed, Notarr strangely thoughtful, but Toomia's golden-brown eyes narrowed with an odd frown. "I know there are only six months left in your term," she said, trying to puzzle out what her friend was trying to say. "But you can't mean that your son must be born this soon or not at all. He could never survive!"

When Kyrel answered with only another shake of her head, Toomia looked to the others for their insight. Notarr hummed softly, a thoughtful sound. "The youngling cannot be born before his time, all of us know this, it's the most common sense there is," he reflected. "But if her little one is restless, he isn't alone. All of our younglings have been skittish, lately; I've seen it in many of them, especially Tori."

"The youngest of both our kinds have always been most sensitive to currents of emotion before we elder folk even notice it," Eliaan observed, a small, pensive frown creasing his brow. "Is Tori with you?"

"Not today," Toomia said, fins flittering in a kind of full-body headshake. "As Notarr said, all the younglings have been restless these past few days, and knowing that Kyrel has been weakening herself - in what now appears to be a strange need to hasten your son's arrival - I didn't think his uneasy mood would help your son's, or hers."

"There's no time," Kyrel said softly, desperately. "The full term is too long, he must come sooner..."

"Why?" Eliaan asked the question, genuinely at a loss. He took her by the shoulders and gently turned her to face him. "We can't see the future, my heart, none of us have that gift, not even the Glaupek with all their incredible powers. What is it that makes you feel such intense urgency?"

"I don't know!" Her voice was a thin wail. "There's nothing logical or rational about it, only emotional. But I feel it in my heart, in my bones, with every breath I take. Something is threatening, and if Mykaal cannot come soon, I fear he will never come at all!"

Her husband was about to point out that he felt no such thing when he stopped himself from saying it. Though all the peoples of Ayalthis had strong emotions, the very young and people in certain hypersensitized conditions - such as pregnant woman - were exceptionally so. They had no ability to predict the future, but they had an uncanny ability to perceive the present, not in the way of seeing actions and events, but in sensing the currents of emotion in more than just those close by. An accident in the city could make the children living nearby upset and restless for hours until things calmed down again. Two years ago, a landslide up in the mountains that had seriously effected one of the tributaries to the Dusiomi River had caused a powerful wave of upset, especially in the children of the Potrell; it had lasted for almost a month, until the damaged settlements had been repaired and the injured properly attended.

Eliaan hadn't seen any children recently, except for Tori, and being extremely occupied with both his wife and his work had kept him out of touch with events beyond his little part of the world. "All of the youngsters have been restless," he echoed his friends' words. "Of both our peoples?"

"That I have seen," Toomia confirmed with a bob of her small body. "For almost a week, now. Something is upsetting them, though I don't know what." Her amber eyes turned to Kyrel. "And it's making the little one inside you restless, too." It wasn't a question.

Kyrel dipped her head in acknowledgment. "I should be calm for him, soothing him, assuring him that all will be well - but how can I if I don't even know why he is troubled? I - I thought that he must be in distress because of me, because my body wasn't being as accepting and supportive of him as he needs. I feared that I might lose him because I'd done something wrong, so I gave him all I could."

"Too much," Eliaan said with a sigh, leaning forward to touch his high forehead to hers for a moment before kissing her brow. "You went too far, tsia'le, you can't give Mykaal so much of your strength that you have none left for yourself to continue."

She shivered, suddenly feeling cold both of body and heart. "I know, I see that now," she admitted, not resisting when her spouse drew her close to offer his warmth. "I fear for him more than myself, tsi'aan. He isn't yet fully a part of this world, but already the world threatens him! It makes no sense, to kill myself trying to protect him when without me, he will surely die - but why do I keep feeling that time is short, too short? What has happened?" Her green eyes were wide with a mixture of fear, confusion, and defiance, the first leading to the last.

Before anyone could even attempt to answer with so much as a weakly hazarded guess, the house's comm system chimed, the unique sound easily recognizable to all four who heard it. "Varaan?" Notarr identified as Eliaan rose to answer the call at the nearest comm station. "I thought your brother makes a habit to only call at the end of the week, not in the middle, to spare the transmission load on the communications systems between here and Glaupek."

"That's his usual excuse for being lazy," Eliaan confirmed as he strode across the room to the console. He instructed the system to accept the contact, and though the image on the display first showed the emblem for Ayalthan Diplomatic Service as it always did when Varaan called from his home on Glaupek, Eliaan started to speak before the image shifted. "To what do we owe the pleasure of this out of the ordinary call, brother?" he asked, smiling. When the display changed to show that brother's face, his smile faded.

Varaan looked almost as gray-skinned as Kyrel - and worse, his normally cheerful face was haggard; the lines and sunken shadows made it seem as if he had aged several centuries since his last contact, only a few days ago. "I wish it was pleasure that prompted it," he replied, his tone as grave as his expression. "Is Kyrel there with you?"

"And our friends Toomia and Notarr. If this is a matter of business and requires privacy, I can transfer to my study..."

But the elder man shook his head. "No, they'll hear this soon enough, it might be best if they heard it from me and not through some government or scientific announcement that might distort the facts to prevent a panic."

Kyrel heard the last word and felt another shiver that had nothing to do with cold. "Panic? Why would people panic? Varaan, what's happened? Are the Glaupek-"

She had to bite her lip to bite off the inevitable question. It was known throughout their system - in particular to the Ayalthans, who had given them the means to survive a near-dead world - that while the Glaupeks of today were perceived as an amiable people, the competitive aggressiveness they displayed in their work as traders and merchants was a less destructive form of the same native impulses that had led them to the wars that had almost utterly destroyed their own world. Among the most peace-loving of the Ayalthans, there was always a faint thread of fear that the godlike people might someday choose to make war again, among their own kind or against their neighboring worlds.

Either would be tragic, catastrophic, and Kyrel had begun to voice the question that she and her husband and their guests were suddenly thinking. It would make perfect sense if it were true, as the war of an entire world would certainly be a great enough horror to stir up the emotions of their sensitive young, even from several million miles away.

She wasn't sure, therefore, if she was glad or dismayed when Varaan shook his head, aware of the rest of the unfinished question. "No, they haven't started a war. They - ah, I'm surprised you haven't already heard it; Shenaal alerted me to it even before anyone here knew that anything at all had happened."

Eliaan frowned. "What does Kyrel's father have to do with the embassy to Glaupek? He's a director of education, not diplomacy."

"He's also involved with the interplanetary Watch," Notarr pointed out, having been thinking along the same lines as Kyrel, that the Glaupeks were somehow threatening to send war out into their entire system. It was a line of thought he was glad to drop, though the mention of her father stirred another uneasy notion. The Watch tracked the movement of all detectable objects, both natural and manufactured, throughout their system, keeping an eye out for anything like a wayward asteroid or comet that might pose a threat to any of the inhabited worlds. "Have they found some chunk of space debris heading for us that they can't neutralize?" Such a discovery would be as emotionally upsetting as war.

But again, Varaan shook his head, sadly. "I wish they had. They've discovered what appears to be a wormhole in the asteroid belt inside the orbit of Cobin."

Toomia, the engineer in her family, looked puzzled. "Isn't that a good thing? I thought you and your design team were trying to find a way to artificially create stable wormholes for interstellar travel. Having a permanent natural one nearby could be very useful, for studying purposes, if nothing else."

"This one isn't natural," he admitted reluctantly. "If it were, we would've discovered it ages ago. It shows all the traits of being created by the drive my team and I have been working on - that we knew wasn't ready to be used anywhere but in small-scale laboratory containment simulations."

"Maybe one of your associates didn't agree with that assessment," Notarr pointed out. "There's always someone on a project team who gets excited and impatient when they feel things are coming close to being finished. If they managed to do it outside the lab, maybe they were right..."

"It wasn't any of them. Even if we didn't all agree that the drive isn't ready to be used, none of us would have been foolish enough to try to do it inside the gravity well of star - and certainly not so close to the star itself!" From the way he snapped out that final phrase, it was difficult to tell if he was angry or mortified or something else entirely.

Eliaan's brow pinched between his amber-brown eyes, tight with worry and concern. "Varaan, you wouldn't have done this..." He tried to sound certain, but wasn't fully able to. His brother had been away among the Glaupek for so many years, and their more aggressively ambitious natures sometimes had unfortunate effects on Ayalthan impulsiveness.

The elder brother sighed heavily. "No, I didn't, but I might as well have, fool that I was."

Toomia and Notarr were perplexed; Kyrel was silent, her already pale face gone ashen from what her own mind was piecing together. "I'm not sure I understand why this is so upsetting," Notarr admitted, since of all of them, he was the least educated in this kind of science. "Why is the wormhole being near to the sun a problem?"

Eliaan provided the answer. "Because in a way, they're gravitational fields of their own, a very intense well that might be described as a two-ended black hole. Stabilized, it can be transversible, meaning you could pass a ship through it and come out the other end almost instantly, on the opposite side of the galaxy. But opening it close to another powerful source of gravity, like a star, can seriously affect its stability."

He turned back to his brother. "And if that's the case, this one should collapse and disappear very quickly, am I right?"

"Should," Varaan confirmed. "But it isn't. It's been there for almost a week, and we only noticed it now because theWatch spotted it on a routine scan of the system. Its presence has already begun to affect the natural course of Cobin, and the effect isn't weakening or shrinking, it's getting larger and stronger."

All of those listening were shocked. "It isn't supposed to do that, from what you've told me of the drive," Toomia was first to finally say. "Are you sure that's what's happening?"

The ambassador/engineer grimaced. "Positive. There was a measurable difference in both size and strength over the course of a single day, and that was calculated from a distance. We've sent all our scout ships closer to it to get as much detailed information as we can. Thus far, we know two things, other than the fact that it isn't a natural phenomenon: it isn't being stabilized the way it was designed to be, with the use of exotic matter; the person who constructed the engine apparently didn't understand that part of the design notations, or thought the effect could be successfully achieved without it. And lacking that, the anomaly appears to be using other energy sources close to it to remain in existence. Specifically, it seems to be drawing energy from its interaction with solar gravity, and is attracting mass from nearby sources. The asteroids in its vicinity are already gone, and it's exerting a pull on the nearest planetary bodies - two of the three inner worlds, and Cobin."

His listeners gasped. "Is Cobin in danger?" Eliaan asked, the cold knot in his belly making him suddenly unsure that he wanted to hear the answer.

Varaan did not lie. "Yes. All of us are in danger, Eliaan, which is why all of our survey ships have been sent to investigate more thoroughly; they're the fastest and most capable vessels we have, few though they are. Long range analysis, however, has showed a number of distressing factors: this is not a transversible wormhole. What matter and energy go in do not pass through to another point in normal space. Like fuel in an engine, they're being consumed to continue and increase its output. The more that goes in, the larger and faster it will grow. Whatever was done in an attempt to form the wormhole without the stabilizing exotic matter turned it from something potentially beneficial to something with the potential for monstrous destruction. And where it opened - in the inner asteroid belt with Cobin and Lihaar so nearby in their yearly orbits - was like planting seedlings of slaughterweed into fertile pasture. It will spread like the weed, and consume and kill all it touches."

The four listeners were silent as they absorbed this horrifying news. Slaughterweed was one of the worst results to have arisen from the wars that had almost destroyed Glaupek. Originally grown and bred as a biological weapon, the weed could grow almost anywhere, both on land or underwater and in a wide range of temperatures. It could take root in the poorest soil, but if it somehow found its way into particularly fertile environs, it could grow so rapidly, it would turn a lush forest or thick bed of sea plants into a sterile wasteland in a matter of days. It was so poisonous, even the antidote for it could not be given quickly enough to prevent it from causing death if eaten, and no species on Glaupek had been immune to it.

Its tiny and dustlike seeds, seemingly indestructible, had remained in the planet's atmosphere for centuries following the end of the war, thwarting the survivors' efforts to reclaim their world. The invulnerability the Ayalthan scientists had given the surviving Glaupek had largely been intended to combat this pernicious remnant of their past, which had finally been fully eradicated less than a century ago. The legacy of slaughterweed lived on throughout the system as a bitter metaphor for destructive power that could not be controlled.

Toomia's eyes were wide as she attempted to come to grips with this information, which very adequately explained the distress of their children. Even from so far away, such a cataclysm - and the horror of those who discovered it - could surely be felt by the sensitive younglings. "Can it be stopped - or at least escaped?"

Varaan's expression was as miserable as his deep sigh. "Stopped? Possibly. It was an artificially created effect, so we might be able to find the means of artificially reversing it, to force it to collapse. But if we can't stop it and the hole continues to grow and strengthen, escape is impossible. It will expand until it has expended all available fuel, which means until it reaches the outermost limits of our system. If its rate of growth can't be slowed, none of the ships we have for intrasystem travel could move quickly enough to go beyond its reach before..." He didn't want to say the next words; he didn't need to. Before the wormhole caught and swallowed them whole.

For a minute that seemed to last forever, the room was silent. The subject of using the hyperdrive capable survey ships wasn't even raised, since they were needed to work on the attempt to stop the impending disaster, and at best could only take a dozen people to safety, anyway. When the silence was finally broken by Kyrel, it was not to ask how this had happened, who could have done such a thing or why, nor even even how it could be stopped. There was only one question in her mind. "How long?"

There was no need for her to elaborate, nor any need for Varaan to ask what she meant. How long before the wormhole destroyed Cobin and all the life on it. How long before it reached farther, grew hungrier, consumed their sun itself. How long before the beast would be satisfied, how long before it would die.

How long before they would die.

Her bondbrother took a deep breath, summoning the strength to answer. "Six months," he said at last, hating the words even as he spoke them. "Seven, at most."

Kyrel closed her eyes, an expression of deep pain. Just enough time for Mykaal to finish his struggle to live. Just enough time for him to be born, to win his fight - and then to lose.

**********

Although it was a sunny late November day in Metro City - for which everyone involved in the city's holiday parade was thankful - the winds were brisk from the north, and cold. Megamind had more than half-wished he could just stay home with Roxanne, even if they spent most of their time warm and snuggling in bed so he wouldn't be tempted to tell her any more of the complex tale of what had happened to his homeworld until after her interview with Wayne. But he had promised Warden Thurmer that he would do this favor for the rookie Warden Alvarez, and it wasn't really that difficult a task.

Clever though the engineers who had made the scanning system for the ultra-secure isolation cell had been, he'd had a chance to see the schematics since his reform, and their designs really were child's play to the blue genius. Even if the thing needed a major overhaul, it wouldn't take more than a couple of hours, and he could then return to the comfort of home and the prospect of hearing an excited Minion tell them all about the fun he'd had, being grand marshal of the parade. He wasn't actually that interested in hearing the details of the parade itself, but he knew that it would make his old friend happy to gush about it, so the least he could do would be to smile pleasantly and listen.

It was the walk from the parking lot he hated. The prison was still out in the middle of flat, empty farmlands, and all but a very few of the parking spaces were a good hike across an equally flat and unsheltered expanse of asphalt. He was pleased by the opportunity to drive Roxanne's custom Corvette - she'd told her husband to take it rather than a hoverbike, since Minion needed the Invisible Car and the 'Vette's warm interior was much more comfortable on blustery pre-winter days - but not by the prospect of that hike. It was to his considerably delighted relief, therefore, when the guards at the gatehouse directed him to use the smaller, closer lot reserved for the administration staff and VIPs. Not that he felt he didn't deserve to be considered a VIP, but after so many years of coming here as a Very Indignant Prisoner, it was nice to know that the new man in charge considered him an important dignitary.

"We know that the reason the state's letting us do the repairs and upgrades in spite of the budget crunch is because you made donations of your own," Warden Alvarez told him as they headed from his office to the wing with the specially monitored isolation unit. Alvarez was a handsome Hispanic man of about forty with a distinguished touch of gray showing in this thick black hair, but he was only and inch or two taller than Megamind. This had always made the former villain much more comfortable with him than he might have been - that and the fact that since he'd taken over as the head of the facility, Alvarez never felt a need to send guards to escort their blue guest around the prison. Warden Thurmer had always insisted on an escort, even after he'd given up his villainous ways, though Megamind did know that the older man had done it as a purely precautionary measure. During his first year or so as a hero, there had been a lot of bad blood between him and some of the more hardened inmates who considered him the worst sort of traitor, and Thurmer had only wanted to make sure that the city didn't lose two Defenders inside of a year.

Megamind cleared his throat a bit self-consciously at the new warden's astute deduction. "Well," he half-coughed, "it may be a prison, but it's also where I grew up. And a couple of months ago, I found out that it wasn't as bad a place as I'd always thought. The walls and guards and the razor-wire and motion tracking and infrared surveillance keep the prisoners in, but for me, there were even worse things that they kept out. It just didn't feel right to let the place fall to pieces because some idiots in the government aren't willing to properly tax the wealthy, so as one of the people not being taxed..." He shrugged.

Alvarez smiled broadly, white teeth flashing below his neatly-trimmed dark mustache. "You figured you could make up for some of the inequity. Oh, I'm not arguing, I'm grateful. Having proper facilities helps make my job easier. If the inmates don't feel like they're animals in a badly run pound, some of them might actually consider the idea of cleaning up their acts. We still need to be clear about the fact that they're here to serve time for crimes they chose to commit, but you can't motivate a person who knows he's being mistreated."

"It's difficult," the ex-villain had to agree, since he knew firsthand just how hard it had been for him to make that change while he still felt completely unwanted by the world. "The love of a good woman is a wonderful incentive to change, but I know how impossibly lucky I was to get that! Are you and Phil DeVries really serious about rehabilitating Hal Stewart?"

The warden waggled one hand. "Phil is; he thinks it could work if we can just get him off his butt and into some useful activities. I'm not as convinced, I've seen his type before, lazy slackers who want everything in life done for them and served up on a silver platter. If he hadn't accidentally been given superpowers, he would've kept on the way he'd been going, and would've either amounted to nothing, or he would've started stalking people like Ms Ritchi - ah, excuse me, it's Mrs. Thejhan now, isn't it?"

"Off camera," Megamind confirmed. "But it's all right, I don't mind that people still call her that, just so long as they remember that she is married, and to whom!"

Alvarez chuckled at his emphatic reminder. "If they don't, I'm sure you'll find ways to remind them. Anyway, Stewart showed just what kind of a person he is when he grossly misused the powers he was given. Even as a super, his definition of good was only what he thought was good for him."

The alien rolled his eyes in expressive disgust as they reached the short corridor to the isolation chamber, where two repair techs from the DOC were waiting. "And we worked so hard with him - a total waste of time and effort! But you don't need to worry about those powers coming back, Warden. Getting Metro Man's DNA to fuse with an Earth human's was a difficult proposition to begin with. I doubt that the same person could tolerate a second deliberate invasion on their system, and a spontaneous recurrence isn't possible."

The new warden sighed. "I know, I've heard the run down from half a dozen different genetic specialists who've been in to examine him. But making sure this monitoring system is running at peak efficiency would make me feel better if I do decide to let him into the general inmate population during the day."

Megamind couldn't blame the man for wanting to feel reassured, though he'd rather hoped his word alone might be enough. Oh, well, with the extra technicians on hand to help run the diagnostics and make any minor repairs, the whole thing would go very quickly.

It amused him to see how surprised the two techs were to see him in ordinary civilian clothing rather than his working garb, but it was also gratifying. They obviously knew who he was, but also that he wasn't "on" as a superhero, just another engineer in to do a job, albeit an exceptionally talented and brilliant engineer, if he did say so himself. Roxanne had been right about that, and he would have to find some way to thank her for her insight when he got home.

On the whole, the work went quite pleasantly. Whoever had picked these techs to work with him hadn't been a fool; they'd selected bright people capable of taking directions and implementing them correctly and quickly without questioning Megamind's expertise or authority. While some of the longer diagnostics were running - at a snail's pace, the blue hero felt; he really wished he'd thought to bring along one of his better helper brainbots, they were capable of running such tests much faster than even this high-tech but rather ordinary equipment - the two men were quite amiable, talking with him almost as if he was just another ordinary technogeeky guy. How's married life treating you, any plans for the holiday, how's the fish doing, heard he was in the parade...

Megamind found it strange and yet satisfying, strange because he was used to being a flashy center of attention, satisfying because it gave him a rare feeling of belonging, of fitting in, of being normal. He didn't think he'd ever want to be thought of as so ordinary that he lost the good feelings that came with being unique and special, but in its proper proportion, it was quite enjoyable. Yes, he'd have to thank Roxanne for this, doubly. What a wonderful and intelligent woman!

They'd gone through the first round of checks, had made a number of minor repairs and adjustments which the tests indicated were necessary, and had almost finished the second round, testing the tweaks and repairs, when one of the techs, Norm, grunted rather than give the other tech, Lee, an answer to his question about tomorrow's game against the Packers. "I'm getting a cannot complete request error in module three," he reported grumpily. "It needed a memory chip replaced, but I know I did it right, and the new chip's good, I tested all of 'em yesterday to make sure we wouldn't have problems with 'em today. And the electrical probes show all the circuits are good, too."

After he'd glanced ever so briefly at the portion of the console that had Norm irritated, Megamind couldn't help but smirk. "That's because you're trying to start the engine with an empty tank," he said drolly.

The heavier of the two techs blinked and gave a "Huh?" that showed not one bit of his years of college education.

Megamind didn't bother to look up from the part of the main panel he was sealing up after running his own successful diagnostics on the most complex of the needed repairs, which included a few adjustments of his own to improve the system's overall performance by at least a factor of ten. "That's the synaptic activity scanner you're trying to check. It can't complete a system test without someone in the isolation cell for it to scan. Granted, it's probably used to seeing activity on the order of a gnat, these days, but..." He shrugged eloquently.

Norm swatted his own cheek. "Well, duh," he scolded himself. "I guess I'm just a nuts and bolts kind of guy, fine with the hardware but not so good with the fancy software. Hey, Lee, you wanna step in there for a sec and give this thing a gnat to look for?"

"Ha, ha," the balding tech said without humor, also closing up his part of the system now that it had been checked, adjusted, and tested. "I'm not the one who didn't understand what I was working on."

"I'll do it," Alvarez volunteered before the byplay could degenerate into a stupid argument. Megamind had to give this new warden credit for having guts and being willing to do things some of the guards were uneasy with. Back in his old evil days, he knew that some of the guards were reluctant to enter this cell because he was in it, and they didn't want to be counted among those who had been tricked by the villain, allowing him to escape. Since then, however, he'd found that a few of the guards were afraid of the cell itself, fearing that its fancy gadgetry could somehow control their minds or suck out their brains. Megamind had no doubt that the original designers had wanted to be able to control him, but the technology was far beyond the best of them. At best, this was nothing but an elaborate medical scanner, not a brain reprogrammer.

He watched when Alvarez stepped into the chamber and Norm reactivated the sensors. When the appropriate displays and readouts came alive, they showed flickers of light inside the outline of a head and lines of data text below, indicating the amount and regions of activity within the warden's brain along with the system's descriptions of that activity and its potential meaning. Norm shrugged. "Well, it's working, though I have no idea what it's trying to tell me, to be perfectly honest."

The blue genius smiled crookedly. "It's telling you that he's awake, has slightly higher than average brain activity, and is probably plotting to stop at the grocery store on the way home to order his Thanksgiving turkey. Am I right, Warden?"

Alvarez laughed as he stepped back out of the round room. "Pretty close, though it's the pumpkin pie I had in mind, not the bird. I presume you were just joking about that part."

"Mostly. To someone familiar with the various regions of the brain and their general functions and processes, an educated guess could be made as to the type of thoughts the activity might indicate. The designers were trying to have an advanced warning system for anything I might be plotting, to keep a step ahead of me." His grin was mischievously wicked. "Of course, I was always thinking at least five steps ahead of them, so it never really worked the way they wanted."

The warden grinned back. "I remember that, it frustrated the hell out of the designers and the people who'd been counting on it to be worth what they'd spent on it. With Stewart, it might be useful enough, if he stays the way he is now. If it's not too much to ask, would you mind stepping inside to let it scan you? I just want to make sure it can pick up higher levels of activity properly, like it's supposed to."

Megamind wrinkled his nose as he glanced into the chamber. "Has it been fumigated?" he asked, more concerned with assault on his sensitive nose that he might get from the stench of Hal's slovenly habits than the fact that he had spent too much of his life in this room.

"Standard operating procedure," Alvarez assured him. "We moved him out before dawn and the clean up crew went in and did a thorough job. I swear Stewart would never bathe if we didn't force him into the showers at least twice a week."

The reformed villain laughed. "Yes, Warden Thurmer was always glad that I preferred to be fastiDEEus when it came to personal hygiene. From what I saw - or smelled - of his living quarters, Stewart had no sense of smell." He leaned into the cell just enough to take a sniff, and approved of the janitor's work. There was still a bit of a bleachy scent in the air, but not overpowering and certainly preferable to Hal's personal odors, which he'd come to associate with a number of unpleasant emotions, most notably monumental failure.

When he gave the warden a nod to indicate his willingness to cooperate with the test - after all, who better to provide an example of superior neural activity? - Lee, who had finished his work and had moved to join Norm at the console, said, "Give us a minute to shut down the system before you go in. That way we'll have a completely clean start, no risk of the previous reading having an effect on it."

Megamind shrugged his acquiescence but hardly thought it necessary. "Unless it's an extremely primitive and shoddy piece of construction, there shouldn't be any issue with residuals. The system is primarily designed to pick up neuronal activity in the various layers of the cerebral cortex, it senses the biochemical and bioelectric action of the major neurotransmitters, gamma-aminobutyric - oh, never mind, too much information," he said with rapid dismissive hand-flaps as he caught himself about to launch into another spate of unintentional technobabble. Really, had something opened up a spigot in his brain, allowing just about anything he'd ever read or heard to come spilling out of his mouth at the most ridiculous and random moments? "Whenever you're ready."

After a few more button-pushes and flicks of switches, Norm gave him a thumbs-up. The blue hero hesitated only a moment before stepping inside the circular room. It felt a little strange, he had to admit, coming in here of his own volition. The last time he'd done that had been well over three years before, when he'd given up, believing that he could not defeat the "hero" he'd created who had turned more evil than he himself had ever truly dreamed of being. And yet, this was no longer his "home"; it belonged to the amoral cretin who had been given a chance to choose a noble, worthwhile future, and had instead thrown it away because he was plain selfish and lazy. Megamind snorted as he glanced around the room with its silly paintings and slogans on the walls. Perhaps happy thoughts could make happy people, but a person had to bother thinking for that rationale to work.

"Okay, the system's coming on line," Lee called into the chamber, warning the occupant in case there might be some unpleasant side effect to the activation. Megamind knew it wasn't so, and thus wasn't distracted from his study of something on the walls that had caught his eye. Had Hal tried to scratch some graphic obscenity onto one of the pink kittens? That certainly looked like a-

"Jesus Christ!" Lee's voice came ripping through the open doorway. "What'd you do, Norm?"

"Nothing!" the other tech snapped back, his voice in a panic. "You turned on the power, not me!"

"It's not supposed to do that...!"

"I know! But - holy-!"

That was suddenly followed by a loud crackling noise, a flash of lights from the observation station, and the powerful, distinctive stench of burned circuits and wires. Warden Alvarez barked, "What's-" but nothing more could be heard over the abrupt ear-splitting clamor of alarm bells and sirens.

Megamind's attention was torn away from the defaced art by the noise, which he'd heard before, too late on the heels of many successful escape attempts. But this time, he wasn't in the process of escaping, and though he sprang for the door out of reflex, he didn't quite make it before it slammed shut, sealing him in.

"What's going on?" he demanded, unable to suppress the coldly unpleasant shiver of fear that shot up his spine. His shouts were no more audible than anyone else's above the scream of the warning sirens, but he had a terrible feeling that the world had suddenly slipped into reverse, and the whole business of asking for his help had been nothing but a set-up to get him back behind bars. "Warden! What's the meaning of - this...?"

The alarms had obscured more than voices; it had also covered a subtle, more insidious hiss that entered the cell as invisibly as the gas that Megamind only now could smell as it filled his lungs as he prepared to shout more loudly. His green eyes went wide, horrified by the tidal wave of betrayal that crashed over him only moments before the knockout gas sent the rest of his mind and body crashing into black oblivion.

To be continued...