Elseworld Episode

"The Long Arm of the Plot: Any bad guys, no matter how far they run, will always end up in one of two ways by the end of the game; obviously dead, or on your side. There is no in-between." ~ Console RPG Cliches #185

I really have no excuse for this one. It began as a comment on a Deviantart picture (Evil Metro Man by Celestialess) and evolved into this. May be 3 or four parts, just to get these guys out of my brain.

The sickly yellow-teal light of the vortex was only made creepier by the utter lack of noise it produced.

The space had no insistent static crackle to it as one would expect. Instead there was a greasy feel to the space around it –as if its presence made the air more fluid- and the air subtly tasted of copper. Megamind had managed to make one of these portals once, though he hadn't been brave enough to try and go through it – he used it as a way to move large inventions and never dared to use it on anything living. Once Wayne had destroyed the first portal gun it had never been rebuilt. Whether this was due to Megamind's tendency to resist making the same thing twice or because he wasn't comfortable enough with the science to try it again was never exactly clear, but Wayne did remember that the blue man hadn't exactly pitched his usual fit over one of his toys being eradicated.

The vortex had appeared in his kitchen, of all places, and hovered in the air about three feet off the ground at its center and completely obscured the stacked ovens behind it. Wayne wondered if Megamind was playing with temporal distortion again. He wouldn't put it past his odd little buddy to decide appearing uninvited at his former enemy's home to demonstrate it was an acceptable way to gloat, especially since Wayne had teased him the last time about not wanting to try going through it himself. He remembered being a bit cruel about it, implying Megamind's lack of confidence in his own inventions was justified. If that was the case Wayne would accept the gloating gracefully and would be content to provide an apology if prompted.

He still wondered about it. Something didn't seem quite right. It was only that Megamind's portal had been a bright and brilliant blue and green, not this mix of dull, sad colors. Though that might mean it was someone else's portal, it also might not – he knew that frequency and color were connected somehow. Perhaps this was the improved version Megamind felt safer with as a method of transport. If it was anyone else they would be in for a hell of a surprise. Wayne didn't generally take kindly to break-ins and shedding his Wayne regalia wouldn't prevent him from enjoying the opportunity to use his powers again and cart some idiots off to jail. Under Citizen's Arrest, of course, since Wayne no longer existed. If he played his cards right they wouldn't even be conscious long enough to see his home or realize what had hit them.

In the moments after its opening Wayne had thought this, examined the portal without touching it (walking around it only made him dizzy as it seemed entirely two-dimensional), and changed out of his robe and into some normal street clothes. All done in his super-speed, the vortex had only spun halfway from appearing to now before he returned to wait and see what it would do. Upon slowing to the speed everyone else operated on he discovered the thing was spinning very fast indeed; and maintained complete and utter silence. It didn't even produce a subtle breeze. For all the presence it had in the room it might have been an illusion, if not for the taste and feel of the air.

It seemed a while to him before anything happened. He made his coffee, cut a ripe pear into wedges, toasted bread and set up his breakfast. After a moment of thought he did it all again just in case it did turn out to be his blue friend. It would be rude not to offer, and Megamind had proved invaluable as an advisor on his musical career; Roxanne had no idea what a song sounded like unplugged and rough cut, so her concept of 'talent' was very skewed. Some of his finished songs had made her gape in surprise. Wayne remembered the last song she had done that for and grinned to himself while leaning back against the fridge as he sipped his coffee.

It was then that he heard the tinny scream of laser-vision from within the swirl of light.

An instant later a familiar blue form rocketed out of it as if launched from a catapult. Miraculously Wayne reacted in time to catch him before impact with the kitchen counter at that speed surely would have rent him in two. He had not, however, managed to completely avoid the blazing red trails of light following Megamind, which bit harshly into Wayne's back as he shielded him. Wayne's clothes instantly caught fire and he tossed Megamind over the breakfast bar to the couch where he would land safely.

Wayne understood now. This wasn't an experiment; it was a battle. Megamind had been trying to escape and he clearly needed help. While the smoke alarm wailed at him he tore off the remains of his shirt and put it in a pot where it could burn out safely and then turned his attention back to the vortex. For what was surely only a quarter second it remained open. In that time Wayne saw something that he knew would haunt him for the rest of his days.

A flesh-colored distortion screamed and thrashed in the tunnel within. The effect was only made all the faster by the pinprick of violet light in the distance winking out, which Wayne thought must have been the entrance to the tunnel disappearing into nothingness. The warped creature could not go back, so it had to move forward. As the distortion spun and twisted hideously and made its way closer to the exit it began to take on more humanoid features proportional to the reduced distance to conventional reality. As he stared in horror, Wayne began to see his own face, arms, and shoulders solidify just outside the doorway whilst the rest of the body remained at the mercy of swirling temporal forces.

He looked furious. His eyes were glowing red, bile and blood flowed freely from mouth, nose, ears, and even around his eyes. He bore an expression of wrath that one would expect to see only on Death itself.

Wayne knew he should reach out to him, save him if at all possible, but reaching into that vortex would only cause him to distort the same way. Wayne didn't know if it would pull him in too. Looking at the other him caused a deep sense that something was terribly wrong; something that he felt in the presence of villains of the most evil kind who delighted in the pain and torment of others so much that it was their only reason for living. Wayne found himself unconsciously backing away from the portal. If he had to fight this… person… he didn't know if he could win; especially if he possessed all the same powers. Rage and insanity had a way of making power more dangerous, if only because the wielder had a more ruthless method of using them and never seemed to care about bystanders and collateral damage. Tossing buildings around is a lot easier if one doesn't care about the people inside them.

Just before it closed the other Wayne seemed to realize he wasn't going to make it and shouted something unintelligible and venomous. An awful noise like shredding fabric screamed out of the vortex as the misshapen mass finally couldn't bear the stress of being stretched any longer and was minced into thousands of pieces. The ring of sickly light closed into nothing before him and Wayne was certain, instinctively, that he had just watched himself die.

It would seem that his weakness, the only method by which he was aware he might be destroyed, was warping reality itself. And now he knew Megamind could certainly do that if he so chose to. Maybe that was why he had never remade the portal gun. It definitely would have worked… and ended their game.

But where had the other him come from? How was that possible? He leaned back against the counter and closed his eyes to think.

…Megamind. He had created Tighten using what little DNA he had gathered after Wayne's apparent demise. Perhaps he had decided to go all the way and make a clone? It would be a terrible betrayal if done after becoming Metro City's new hero, but not outside the realms of possibility. Wayne didn't want to believe that because it would put Roxanne in danger too. He really hadn't thought Megamind was capable of doing something that harebrained after seeing proof firsthand that duplicating Wayne was inadvisable at best.

With this in mind he focused his eyes toward Metro City. Even over great distances he could focus his x-ray eyes to view what he needed, and from anywhere in the city he could usually find what he wanted if it was in a predictable place. Roxanne was not in her apartment, but she was in Megamind's lab.

Megamind was with her.

The weight of shock was heavy as he moved to look at the silent, still figure on his couch. Yes, this was still definitely Megamind.

And yet… it was clearly not.

He stared for a long while before he could wrest himself out of his stupor and get his phone.

Roxanne drove the invisible car, which was currently visible, down the road at breakneck speed. They had been given a police siren and lights by the city council in the event they had to get somewhere in a hurry due to a crime, which Megamind was not abusing in the slightest (sarcasm font desperately needed). From the back seat came the sounds of tinkering, power tools, and the occasional maniacal laugh as Megamind worked fervently on something to take out their new threat. They were on their way to take down yet another ridiculously costumed villain who had returned to town after being chased out years before in the belief that Megamind would be an easier target than Wayne, and the fact that they were entirely correct did not bode well.

As her phone rang, Roxanne ignored it. The second time it went off, though, Minion picked it up and looked at the number. "Uh, Miss Ritchie? You might want to take this."

"Kind of busy here!" she called and turned the car sharply to make their exit. In the back Meganind yelled as he and everything he was working on slid to the right and impacted loudly against the door. A faint 'ow' was barely heard over the sirens.

Minion glanced back to be sure he wasn't hurt and then persisted. "But it's Metr- er… Mr. Scott, Ma'am."

Roxanne flipped off the sirens and slowed to a normal pace so she could talk and drive safely, then snatched her phone. Quickly setting it to speaker, she set it on the dashboard and continued toward their destination. "Wayne, do you have any advice on this one? We're-"

Wayne, who had been watching them just before he called, said, "You'll be fine, she's right up Megamind's alley. When you're done I need you to get an outfit out of Megamind's lair and head over to my place as fast as you can."

Roxanne lifted a brow. "One; I am still not your girlfriend. Two; aren't we a little old for sleepovers? Three; how do you know I keep clothes at his place, anyway?"

"Megamind's, Roxie. Something loose like his night clothes-"

Megamind then hissed at Roxanne. "You could have warned me before that turn!"

"Wear your damned seat belt," Roxie snapped.

He snorted. "You're just lucky my torch wasn't on-"

"GUYS!" They all looked at the phone again. The force of that yell had made the phone physically vibrate on the dashboard. "Just trust me and do it, alright?" Silence followed. Roxie stopped at a red light moments later and snapped the phone shut.

Megamind lifted his goggles up onto his forehead and looked to Roxanne in confusion. "Why does he want us to bring clothes? Was he hitting on us?"

With her arm on the back of the seat, Roxanne shrugged. "The better question is; are we interested if he was?"

They looked at the phone and hummed in thought, clearly considering it, while Minion had both hands on the sides of his bowl dearly wishing he had ears to cover in these situations.

The more Wayne stared the more apparent the differences between the two Megaminds became. It had been an hour since he called his backup and they were late, damn them. They had obviously misinterpreted the urgency of his call and weren't exactly hurrying after escorting Lady Doppler to jail. She indeed fell quickly as, predictably, Megamind did very well defeating enemies whose primary skill was technology. Whereas it might take him a while to work out how to defeat someone with superpowers all the inventors fell like dominoes in his wake. They didn't stand a chance. He and Roxie were celebrating just before they came over to Wayne's, which would inevitably involve showers afterward and delay them still further.

In the meantime Wayne was stuck looking after this strange doppelgänger.

After he had called Roxanne Wayne had done a scan of his unexpected guest and quickly found out why he was still unconscious; the force with which he had been knocked through the portal had indeed been because he had been launched. Megamind was not as fragile as the average human, no, but he would break under enough pressure – and this one had taken a hit that was hard enough to cause a deep fracture in his cheekbone. It had not become apparent until after the area was swollen and brilliant pink, but Wayne had set it and it would heal on its own in time. The burst of laser-vision from the unfortunate Wayne duplicate had indeed connected on a very small patch of the blue man's shoulder, which had blistered and blackened. Wayne wasn't worried about those things.

He was worried about everything else that he had found.

As much as they had fought, Megamind bore few scars or permanent damage. Though he had certainly been hurt quite a lot he healed faster than humans and rarely showed marks after that. Even bone fractures healed relatively fast – a few days at most depending on severity. It was Megamind's own version of an inherited superpower: nanobots that his parent race used as their own type of mandatory vaccination. It was protection from the world at large. They were constantly repairing him as quickly as they could, keeping him healthy and preventing disease. This was a lucky break for both Earth and Megamind as it kept him from transmitting his people's diseases to an entirely unprepared population and kept Earth's diseases from turning Megamind's extremely endangered species into an extinct one.

As they grew they made more of themselves and were powered by the same method that fueled their host: converting food to energy. Wayne was grateful for this as, in one particularly heated battle, he had accidentally severed Megamind's right hand with one wayward stroke of his heat vision. He had been aiming in a completely different direction at the time and failed to notice a polished surface sufficient to rebound it, and the results had been devastating.

Megamind had known what to do, though, and simply had the severed limb bound to its root. It healed. Wayne would never forget that Megamind had forgiven him that incident, enemies though they'd been. He never believed it had been deliberate. Perhaps that was when Wayne had started to like the little guy and their banter turned more comical rather than offensive. That was when it became more like a game.

If this copy of Megamind was a clone then someone had done a marvelous job of both reproducing those nanobots and simulating old scars. Wayne's x-ray clearly revealed the nanobots still swimming away and diligently doing their jobs in this blue man as well, but he had scars. They were thin yet very long and must have come from massive injuries. Imagination failed on what must have happened to cause them, mostly because Wayne was trying very hard not to think about it. A few of them had layering in the scar tissue, indicating the same wounds had to have been opened several times before healing completely. There were few things that could have caused that. Something that vicious had to be intentional. He had been intentionally hurt so badly that the nanobots couldn't heal him entirely.

Those were only the old scars, though. He was littered with new ones too. They were disturbingly… decorative. To Wayne's growing unease he could tell they were obviously made with Laser-vision as well. Delicate interlocking patterns of swirls, dots and lines wound over the entirety of the blue man's skin. It resembled absolutely nothing he had seen on Earth; the designs were too intricate. As far as Wayne could tell not a single limb, finger, or toe had been spared. It must have been monstrously painful, especially with the little nanobots trying to repair the burns. The only way Wayne could think the scars would remain visible was if they had been carved repeatedly until layers upon layers of scar had eventually become wide enough to see. Alternatively, they could have been burned through and held apart until the nanobots had no choice but to work inward. Either way it must have been torture, but the second option actually sounded easier.

Comparatively this guy was smaller than the Megamind Wayne knew. Not only was this one thinner, which was quite a feat that made him look positively flimsy, he was also a bit shorter. Wayne had seen similar effects when visiting remote areas of the world to help during or after natural disasters and knew well that inadequate food, a famine for example, would stunt growth in children that survived it. The differences between adult siblings who were born at different times could be pretty jarring. This one observation did not bode well and Wayne was beginning to trust the first impression he had gotten from his other self, and accept that this may be more than a simple time travel or cloning incident.

Wayne knew a victim when he saw one. He couldn't exactly take him to a hospital or the police to handle. Until he got Megamind's input on the situation he couldn't even think of an explanation let alone how to move forward. In the meantime there was someone that clearly needed his help who had no other resources to count on than Wayne himself. This was what prompted him to take matters into his own hands.

Wayne had never been sick or injured before. When his parents suffered both they were always taken care of by hired help, and he certainly didn't have any siblings or kids of his own. He had never dealt with this particular aspect of rescue before – once the immediate danger was taken care of it had always been civil servants who handled the actual caretaking and recovery. Wayne had absolutely no experience with taking care of anyone, even himself. All he could do was make educated guesses at this point and hope they were right.

The first obvious thing to do was discard the battered and practically useless clothes the duplicate had arrived in. At some point every villain/hero wound up in the sewer pursuing either each other or escape, and these clothes smelled like they had seen many such excursions recently. They also looked as if they had been taken out of either a dumpster or stolen from a poor consignment shop. This was why he had requested Megamind bring a change of clothes: there was no saving the ones his double had arrived in. They went straight into the trash.

The next obvious thing to do was dress him in something else. Given the options available until Megamind finally arrived it was either going to be a blanket or Wayne's robe, but the immediate problem with that was doing that now would prove pretty futile given that the man was just as filthy as his clothes had been. Wayne was already positive he was going to have to clean his couch after he was finished getting his unexpected visitor settled. For someone with his senses the stench was nearly unbearable (those enemies that figured it out made him go into the sewers quite a lot out of malice) and he didn't want that to linger in his house any longer than absolutely necessary. As the man was still unconscious and likely to remain so for quite some time while the nanobots did their work and both Megamind and Roxanne were quite a while away still, Wayne grudgingly accepted that it was up to him to solve the problem.

Megamind was clearly freaking out, but quietly, which was rare.

It never lasted long, though, so Wayne preemptively clamped a hand over his mouth before he let out an overdramatic scream. "Can you not wake him up before we've had a chance to think, please?" he hissed. A short x-ray vision scan just before they entered showed the nanobots weren't working as frantically as they had been before, which required less energy. After seeing how they worked in Megamind, Wayne had no doubt that meant this duplicate was now capable of being woken.

He would also wake up hungry.

Megamind pushed at his hands until he let go. He spoke in the same whisper Wayne had explained the situation in. "I was gasping. I'm not stupid enough to yell four feet away from someone I want to stay asleep."

"That's only partially true," Roxanne argued quietly. "Any ideas?"

Megamind glared at her as if he could bore, 'of course I do' into her retinas telepathically.

"Sorry," she shrugged.

"Multiverse Theory. Wayne, how many times have you fought villains that could travel through time?" he asked Wayne.

"One, not counting the two that managed it accidentally. It seems to be a popular theme," Wayne sighed tiredly. Megamind nodded at him and turned to go into the other room where they could speak normally. They followed him, leaving the other one of him to sleep. "So what's this Multiverse thing?"

Megamind rubbed his temples. He didn't speak, but went to the fridge and swiped a juice. He tossed one to Roxanne.

"Well?" Wayne insisted.

"I'm trying to figure out how to explain it to you two in a way you'll understand it," he snapped. "In my mind it's a jigsaw pattern of numbers, frequencies, and planes; but I know what it means. Putting it into words is a lot harder. Give me a minute."

Wayne got up and made them all coffee while Megamind brooded.

"As far as time is concerned, what do you know?" he asked at last.

"Only that effect follows cause," Roxanne shrugged.

"Wrong," Megamind said instantly. "Time is simultaneous. This is going to be a lot harder than I thought…" He took a few big gulps of his coffee, winced, added enough sugar to kill a housecat, and sat back again while he stirred what had basically become coffee-flavored sugar soup. "How about this; time and space distort each other. You can only have a completely accurate measurement of space if you calculate that from a reference frame in which time does not exist, and visa-versa. Better?"

"No," his audience answered in perfect sync.

Megamind pinched the bridge of his nose and cursed all Human languages for their inadequacy. "Just believe me when I say dimensional travel is possible and relatively easy compared to landing in the right place, ok?"

Wayne chuckled and shook his head. "I believe that first part. How would landing in the right place be hard?"

Roxanne brightened. "Oh, I know this one!"

Megamind flashed her a fond smile. "You ask him the important question, then."

"Ok," she said. "Alright Wayne, where is the Earth?"

"We're on it," he answered incredulously.

"Yes," Megamind said wearily. "The Earth is also spinning along its axis and rotating around the sun. The sun is moving within the Orion arm of the Milky Way Galaxy and swaying up and down as it goes along, further disturbing the Earth's position by dragging it along too. The Milky Way is spinning and moving in space, and being dragged either toward or pushed away from other galaxies, whose gravitational pull also has an effect on- are you starting to see my point? You can't just open a portal to another universe and expect it to open in the same place on Earth. It would be easy for it to open in the same place in space, but the Earth would certainly not be there for the travelers to land on.

Managing to make the portal in the first place is relatively easy. Dimension-hopping is complicated but it's basically the time-space equivalent of poking a hole through a piece of paper and coming out the other side. Landing on the right planet? Even if you manage to land in the same place in time that doesn't mean the gravitational constants in both dimensions will be the same. All things considered the Earth is moving abysmally fast in space with all the stability of a drunk bumblebee."

Roxanne nodded. "And you have to figure out how to get the portal to first appear on that bumblebee and then stick to it once it opens." She turned to Megamind, "Right?"

"…basically, yes." Megamind considered mentioning how the portal needed to conform to the gravitational forces around it without losing structural stability but Roxanne's explanation, while simple and trite, was more likely to make sense to the sentient slab of muscle they were trying to explain Finite Temporal Distortion to. Megamind crossed his arms and scowled. "And then we'd have to land on the surface of the Earth and not appear either a thousand miles under or over it depending on the time of day."

They stared at him.

"A Barycenter," he elaborated.

More staring.

Megamind palmed his face as if he wanted to wash off contagious stupid. "You know that Pluto has a moon called Charon?"

"Yes," they agreed.

"You're wrong. Pluto isn't a planet, it's a planetoid. Charon isn't Pluto's moon – it's another planetoid. They are two planetoids orbiting each other around a common barycenter – the point between two objects where they balance each other. Since Pluto is closer to the barycenter it is true that Charon goes around Pluto, but only because it is farther away from their mutual center. They're less like planet and moon than two planetoids orbiting a common central point. Like… a binary star system."

"Okay. Now what does this have to do with the Earth?" Wayne asked.

The Earth wobbles along the orbital plane," Megamind said tersely. "Because the large moon pulls it off-center. It's a similar dance as Pluto and Charon but with one partner much bigger than the other, so as they spin around the bigger partner moves less than it would if the outside partner were a similar size… but there's still a significant wobble. In truth the Earth and Moon are almost a double-planet system, except that the barycenter is still located inside the Earth and not outside of it. The barycenter of the Earth and Moon, the middle point where they spin around each other, is located about a thousand miles below the crust; halfway to the core. So the core of the planet we are standing on is not the same as the gravitational center that actually travels along the orbital plane. The 'ground level' we need to land on, or even slightly above, moves up and down relative to that barycenter depending on the time of day because the moon is pulling the planet off-center along the orbital plane relative to the sun."

Wayne gave Roxanne a look that clearly said 'I'm glad he was never actually evil.'

"I saw that," Megamind snapped tartly over the edge of his coffee cup.

"If he did it - the other you- you can too, though," Wayne began. "Maybe we can send him back. If the evil me is gone now-"

"NO," Megamind insisted harshly. "We're fifty feet underground at the moment, you muscle-brain." He motioned to the ceiling to illustrate this. Wayne had carved out the stone himself to create his hidden home. "It was by an infinitesimally small amount considering the calculations involved, but he still missed. It was only sheer dumb luck that he appeared in an empty pocket in the crust rather than say… solid rock. Or the middle of an ocean. Or in the basin of an active volcano. Or in the Stratosphere. Argue with me all you want but I am NOT attempting to send him back, especially if he doesn't want to go. As a newly reformed Villain I refuse to be responsible for what would very likely be the most spectacularly creative murder ever." He paused. "Or would it be suicide..?"

Wayne winced and sat back heavily, which made his couch give a complaining groan. "So… he's staying."

"Unless we're evil and he's suicidal, yes."

Wayne palmed his face wearily. "If it's that difficult, then how in Fudge's name did he end up in my kitchen?"

"Because, old friend, fate has a sense of humor; at least it does in our universe. We both know he was trying to get as far away from you – the other you- as possible. With that in mind doesn't it just figure he wound up literally running into you the second he arrived?" Megamind said tiredly.

"Strangely, yes, that does make perfect sense," Roxanne agreed.

After he was finished explaining Megamind finished the rest of his drink and lay his head back against the couch to rest his neck. "It's a miracle it worked at all."

"What now?" Roxanne asked quietly. "Now that the evil version of Wayne is gone, what if the other you wants to go back and we have to tell him no?"

"He didn't want to go back," Megamind said. He held up the portal gun that his alternate had used. "This was only meant for a single use. It was designed to break after firing once to the point where the circuitry was fried by the very act of pulling the trigger. Even if I could fix the portal gun it would take me months to do the calculations over again and I'd need his help to do it, and he's already failed once so I doubt we would fare better on a second run." Sighing, he sat up and stared sadly at it, then put it on the table. "What worries me is; if there was a 'me' and a 'you' in that other world," he said 'you' while gesturing to Wayne, ", then where is Roxanne and Minion?"

Both Roxanne and Wayne winced. "I don't want to think about it," she said firmly.

"I don't have a choice," Megamind grumbled. "In situations like this I really wish I could NOT think for a while, but I can't."

"So, what do we do now?" Wayne asked.

Megamind sighed. "Nothing to do but wait until he wakes up and hear his side of the story, though I highly suggest you take everything out of that room with your picture on it, Wayne. I don't want a battle breaking out the instant he wakes up."

Please excuse my science.