The Science is Not Impossible

By Jeannette Hetfield

Chapter 1: It's Mega-late

Where was that noise coming from? And what was the flashing light all about? Roxanne opened very sleepy eyes to discover that she was in bed alone. She rolled over onto her back, groaning softly. The digital clock on the nightstand displayed a blaring green time of 3:45am. It was too late for anyone to be working. Silvery light flashed across the ceiling along with the unmistakable sound of hammering, and then a power drill fired up followed by…a chainsaw? He was inventing again. In the middle of the night.

Again.

She rolled groggy eyes, but smiled. He was certainly the most persistent person she'd ever known. After all, he'd kidnapped her almost once a week every week for nearly two decades. It hadn't been a secret that the main reason for her repeated kidnappings was to lure Metro Man into his traps. Although, he did later admit that seeing her had been his second favorite part about the kidnappings. First was the witty banter between the evil genius and the muscle bound pretty boy.

She shook her head, marveling over the way everything had turned out. Their relationship had definitely not started through conventional means and maybe that was why the whole thing had worked out. It might not be normal, but it felt right.

For a few more minutes she laid there, wondering if he might stop, but the flashes continued dancing across the ceiling. So she threw back the covers and shivered when the shock of the cold night air hit her bare shoulders. Hurriedly, she shoved cold feet into her fuzzy pink slippers and then pulled a sweater over her too-thin tank top.

The distinct aroma of coffee hung in the air as her softly padded feet made the long trek across the concrete floor of the lair over to a supply cabinet full of shower caps. She pulled one out just as a brain bot hovered over to her holding welding goggles in one of its metal hands.

"Thank you," she said softly. Once the goggles were firmly in place over her eyes, she placed the shower cap over her hair.

Then the little floating cyborg nestled itself into her arms. It had formed a strange attachment to her, rather like a dog. Only it was cold metal instead of warm fur. She didn't mind though, rubbing its domed head, watching the energy ribbons following the path her fingers made. It was kind of sweet.

Weird, but sweet. At least it didn't constantly try to bite her the way the other brain bots did.

The high, red curtain was pulled only part of the way closed, which would explain how the light from within had filtered through into the bedroom. Megamind still hadn't noticed her presence because he was concentrating heavily on the welding. He also wore a shower cap, which he often did when experimenting or inventing. She hadn't figured out why exactly and wasn't about to ask because it would hurt his feelings.

Most of the time he was proud of the large baldness of his blue head, but every now and then he seemed sensitive to the remarks that the media still made in articles about Metro Man's perfect brown coif and graying temples. Sometimes he still made the occasional snippy remark about the flying hero's "stupid perfect hair" and insisted that not even the most powerful man in the universe could have such perfect tresses. And in fact, it was likely that he had probably been wearing a toopee all along, which in turn meant that Megamind thought he had finally discovered Metro Man's weakness: male pattern baldness. Though there was absolutely no proof that Metro Man was bald it certainly had put a spring in Megamind's step for weeks.

Roxanne had never corrected Megamind's mispronunciation of toupee. Besides, it was funnier than the original word. She'd stopped correctly him a long time ago because human words still stumped him at times. Now she barely even noticed it. Recently, she'd even said Metrocity live during one of her reports instead of Metro City. She'd grown so accustomed to hearing Megamind pronounce it wrong for years that it now sounded natural to her ears.

Over 1,000 viewer comments had popped up on the station's website within two minutes. The funny thing was that she hadn't even realized she'd said it that way until her new cameraman George casually mentioned it on the drive back to the station. At first she'd been mortified and Megamind's superior smirk when she came home didn't help one bit.

But it was worse when she read the comments posted in the forum. People were just plain mean. Apparently, not everyone had accepted Megamind as the defender of Metrocity. Just because he wasn't Metro Man didn't mean he was any less a person or a hero. She didn't think Megamind had read the comments, but to make sure, Roxanne had the tech department remove all of the abusive postings.

Now every time she reported the news, she pronounced the name of their city wrong with the sole purpose of irritating the complainers. She didn't care how mad they got. Megamind's pronunciations were preferable to her anyway. It uniquely endearing. Uniquely Megamind.

Even though he hadn't come to bed, he'd certainly dressed for it, donning his favorite evil science pajamas covered in various radiation and hazmat symbols. To complete the nocturnal ensemble, he still wore the cape and the little bat slippers. She bit her lower lip, trying not to laugh. Nerdy through and through. He was so cute.

She sat down on the empty stool next to him, still rubbing the brain bot's head. It hummed contentedly. Megamind finally noticed her then and turned off the welding torch.

"Ollo!" he said and then stood abruptly, half-running and half-walking to the cabinet she'd just taken the shower cap from.

"Hi. Kinda late to be working isn't it?" she called after him.

Megamind rushed back over with an armful of circuits and gears, subsequently dumping them on the workstation.

He pushed the goggles up onto his forehead, round green eyes widening slightly. "Is it? No, it's only—" He glanced at his projection watch. "3:45 am. It's early."

"Maybe on the planet you came from, but on Earth, this is when we puny humans sleep," she explained patiently.

"Oh." Then he walked in a hurried circle around the workstation gathering up the parts he'd just dumped on the table back into his arms. He sat down again on the stool, chucked the parts on the space in front of him into a haphazard pile and paused long enough to ask:

"So why aren't you sleeping?"

"Because your noisy hammering slash drilling slash chainsaw woke me up, silly," she said, laughing at his perplexed face.

"Oh! I'm sorry," he said with a concerned look. "Do you think you'll be able to fall back to sleep?"

She shrugged. "Maybe, but now that I'm a married woman it's hard for me to get a good night's sleep unless you're next to me."

"Oh, really?" he said in a deeper voice, looking suddenly pleased with himself.

"Can't help it," she added. "I'm addicted, but don't let that go to your head. It might explode."

He leaned closer to whisper in her ear: "Just proves you were always meant to be my woman."

"Woman?" she scoffed. "This is the 21st century and—"

"Yes, yes to all of the above. You're empowered and an individual and madly in love with the brainiest brain of them all!" he said, kissing her soundly.

Just as she was really beginning to relax, he broke the kiss off much too quickly and was on his feet again. As before, he half-ran to various other storage cabinets to grab a sledge hammer and a wrench. He certainly was hyper tonight, which would explain why he'd never come to bed. Before resuming the welding, he swiftly pushed her goggles back down over her eyes. After readjusting his own protective eyewear, the welding torch lit up the little corner they sat in.

She relented a few moments later. "Yeah, I guess it was…meant to be."

"Partially," he nodded, "but mostly because you find me irresistible!"

"You think?" she said, wincing slightly as the sparks from the welding flew left and right.

"I know," he said with a supremely confident tone. "So what is it exactly? My handsome profile? My goatee? My physically fit physique? My enormous head? Or my astonishing genius?"

All of the above, she thought, and more than you'll ever know. "Well, you are kinda cute I guess and so intellectual that I am astounded on a daily basis," she said with mild sarcasm.

"Kinda cute?" he repeated, completely ignoring the compliment regarding his intellect. He turned the welding torch off and tossed it onto the workstation, pushed his goggles back up and planted fists on his narrow hips. "Any idiot knows that overgrown bicep Scott has nothing on me."

Roxanne frowned. Metro Man, alias Wayne Scott, was certainly the last person on her mind these days, but Megamind obviously still thought about his former nemesis. This wasn't the first time and likely wouldn't be the last that he'd compared himself to Metro Man, or Music Man rather. She looked into his eyes that were fixedly looking at her and waiting for a response. They were so bright and vividly, perfectly green. No other color barged in to share the spotlight except for flecks of yellow that weaved a pattern through the green. There was, however, something else in his gaze that had nothing to do with the color. It was something that she didn't see too often because he normally hid it behind a mask of superior self-confidence. A distinct vulnerability rested there now.

She let the brain bot go, which floated away and slowly wound her arms around Megamind's shoulders.

"Then I am most definitely an idiot. I can only hope I get more idiot-like the longer we're married."

He relaxed his stance to put his arms around her waist, pulling her up against him, smiling a little. "I guess I could say you're the biggest idiot I've ever seen."

"I am the idiot," she agreed, nodding.

If she were anyone else, then she'd probably be insulted given that he'd just basically called her an idiot, though it was far from an insult. Things tended to work in the opposite way when it came to Megamind. Even when he was very bad, he was really very good deep down.

"Oh!" he said suddenly, making her jump.

"What?" she said alarmed.

"Do you want to know what I'm working on?" he asked excitedly, jumping to his feet.

"Always."

Megamind got a little messy when in a creative mood. Blueprints sat in piles all over the workstation. Circuit boards lay on top of the blueprints. Nuts and bolts were scattered from one end to the other and even littered the floor. A soldering gun occupied the space next to the welding torch. Red wires and green wires and blue wires were also in the mix of parts. She leaned over what he'd been welding for a better view. It looked like a large, handheld remote with so many knobs and dials that it made her dizzy just to look at them.

She picked up a handful of papers that had calculations covering every inch. When he'd run out of room on one piece, he'd moved onto the next blank page. No eraser marks marred the numbers. Megamind never made a mistake when doing math. He could probably even do it all in his head. She wondered he even bothered writing it down. College Algebra hadn't been too terrible for her and even though Calculus had been a trial, she'd still passed it because D was a passing grade. She couldn't make heads or tails of this arithmetic though, because its complexity was unlike anything she'd ever seen before.

Giving up, she set the paper back on the table and noticed yet another addition to the clutter. Three empty coffee mugs also took up their own corner of the table. A once over around the lair revealed a coffee mug here, there and everywhere. Instead of refilling the same mug, he evidently kept getting a new one; as though he was so distracted he couldn't remember where he'd left the others and resorted to emptying the kitchen cabinets. He took off at a run for the second time, disappearing around the corner and then returned just as fast with a full mug of coffee.

"Megamind, how much of that have you drank?" she questioned suspiciously, pointing at the blue mug in his hand.

"Only twelve cups," he shrugged, swallowing a huge mouthful. The scalding liquid didn't even appear to burn his throat.

"Twelve!" she shrieked. "You drank all that by yourself?"

"Yes, why oh, I'm sorry did you want some too I'm afraid this is the last but you can have this one," he said all in one breath, holding the mug out to her.

"No, I don't want any, but you should really have cut yourself off after mug number five." She picked up his wrist and felt for a pulse, which was racing so fast she could barely tell it was thumping.

"Nonsense, I take bigger doses of caffeine than humans can!"

"But—"

"Never mind that now! Look!"

Face lit up with excitement, he grabbed her hand and ran, dragging her behind him, over to the platform that rose into the fake observatory. He'd never bothered to deconstruct the rickety structure and now used it regularly for nothing other than…observation.

"Behold my latest and greatest creation!" he announced once the platform reached the top.

The computer monitors were all up and running. Once again pushing her goggles out of the way, she passed by each to study them more closely. There were progress bars on each of the monitors. It looked like he was simultaneously uploading multiple programs into something. One progress bar showed 67 percent, another 28 percent and a third read 95 percent.

"Okay…" she surmised slowly. "Obviously you're uploading programs into something."

"Uh huh!" he confirmed excitedly, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. "Go on! Guess!"

"Well, if I had to guess—"

"Oh, you'll never guess!" he interrupted impatiently. He seized her hand and pulled her over to yet another monitor. This one was twice as large as the others.

Her mouth dropped open. She was looking at an infinitesimally rotating Earth. "Is this is a live feed?"

"Yep!"

"Megamind, what is this?"

He could barely contain himself, looking ready to burst.

"Remember the Death Ray?"

"How could I forget?" she said sarcastically.

"Right. I forgot you were you there too," he said absently. "No matter."

He pushed his high-backed leather chair behind Roxanne, who yelped with surprise as she was forced to sit down without warning. He swung around to stand in front of her, the pajama cape swishing through the air. The monitors behind him all displayed different angles of the earth.

She pointed to the largest one directly above his head. "Just exactly how many satellites have you got in orbit?"

"Four, give or take."

Her mouth dropped open. "Is that legal?"

"By whose standards?"

"NASA's!"

"Who? Oh, I don't know," he said dismissively. "They've been in orbit since my days of being a criminal genius and I'm quite certain they're unaware of their existence. Even if they did find out, I'm a heroic genius now so it all evens out."

She eyed him dubiously, unconvinced and wondered if government officials would be knocking on their door anytime soon.

"Okay, what are you doing with so many satellites in orbit?" she asked, intrigued.

He grinned. "The Death Ray as you know, channels energy directly from the sun. Energy so concentrated that it's only good for catastrophic explosions. I wondered…what to do with all that raw power?" He held out his hands for effect. "Then…it hit me."

Roxanne listened carefully to every word he said. Unfortunately, the words were all very technical in origin and beyond her comprehension that the explanation was Greek to her human ears.

"…so by recalibrating the alignment of the Death Ray from one distinct energy beam into four separate energy beams emitted from the satellites in space, I can harness all that power into smaller, less explosive bursts."

Roxanne loathed feeling stupid, but she certainly did right now. It was hard to concentrate when she couldn't figure out what to concentrate on first. She grasped at the word energy. He'd said it more than once.

"The key thing is energy right?"

"Yeah," he said with minimal patience, testing her. "What kind of energy?"

Roxanne's eyebrows furrowed as she thought. "All right, the Death Ray draws energy from the sun…oh! Solar energy!"

He clapped his hands together. "Boingo!"

She scooted forward onto the edge of her seat, picking up on his excitement. "So you're collecting solar energy and channeling it through the satellites towards…what?"

"Not what. Where," he emphasized.

"Metrocity?" she guessed.

"A plus and fifty gold stars, Mrs. Megamind!" he cried.

Her eyebrows knitted together as she considered this latest project. "Does this have anything to do with the economy? Metrocity isn't in bad condition, but we're hurting just like every other city."

"Yes and no," he answered. "I'm the good guy now and it's my job to do good guy things. Besides, the Death Ray is useless to me in its current capacity. It's just been floating up there doing nothing when it could be providing an alternate means of power for Metrocity. Minion contacted the mayor earlier this week. We have a meeting tomorrow to discuss my proposal."

Amazed, Roxanne sat back in the leather chair and gazed at him proudly. Who'd have thought that after everything he'd done to threaten the city in the past with his villainous ways that he'd do such an about face and use his brainpower to help the economy and the citizens? She pushed herself out of the chair and approached him, putting her arms around his neck to give him a lingering kiss.

"Wow…what was that for?" he asked, looking bemused.

"You truly are a genius."

A pink blush filled his blue cheeks. "Oh….well, I know."

She laughed at his ever-present egocentricity. "Thank you for thinking of the city."

He shrugged one shoulder bashfully. "Well, it was nothing…but do go on."

Roxanne obliged. "First you repaired the entire city after Tighten nearly destroyed it. You gave the Equestrinator to the Metrocity SWAT team to be a Trojan horse against the criminals. Then you reprogrammed the robosheep to sniff for bombs. Now you're going to save our economy millions with your Death Ray." She laid her head on his shoulder and squeezed his middle. "You've done so many wonderful things for us."

He nodded. "I have, haven't I? Mmm, I was thinking that maybe I shouldn't call it the Death Ray anymore. It might give everyone the wrong idea."

"Everyone's memories don't exactly inspire joy," she agreed.

He tapped his chin with a finger as he thought and then his eyes suddenly gleamed. "The opposite of death! The Birth Ray!" he said dramatically, gazing into the distance.

"The Birth Ray," she repeated, trying out the title. "I like it."

"You do?" he asked brightly.

"Of course. Birth means a new beginning," she said beaming, raising her head to look at him.

He laughed excitedly, picked her up and spun her around in a circle. Since he was still a limitless ball of energy, he rushed all the around the fake observatory adjusting knobs on the monitors and typing codes into the computers so fast that his fingers were a blue blur across the keyboard.

"You know," she ventured. "This can probably wait until morning."

"It is morning."

"I meant morning that involves sunlight. You've hardly slept any this week and—"

"Nonsense! I must finish this as soon as possible. Besides, my body chemistry is different from yours. I can go on and on with very little sleep."

"Yes, but every genius needs his beauty sleep," she insisted, playing with the high collar of his pajamas.

"I don't think it's possible for me to be anymore bootiful," he said, looking at readouts he'd just printed.

She rolled her eyes and sighed. "You're not even a little interested in getting some sleep?"

"Nope."

"Good. Me neither," she hinted, raising her eyebrows at him and squeezing his arm.

Megamind didn't say anything. He was probably not even listening to her since he was so intent on his latest project. Even though his genius was vast, he could be really dumb when it came to her signals. Funny how the behavior of males wasn't exclusive to human men. Male stupidity was apparently universal. He barely seemed to notice how her hand as it slid over his back and began rubbing between his shoulder blades.

Then he stilled suddenly and glanced at her slyly. She grinned back.

"Roxanne, have I been neglecting you?" he asked carefully.

"Yes!" she said with firm relief. For a minute there, she thought she'd have to spell everything out word for word.

He hurriedly tossed the papers into the empty chair and leaned in for a kiss. Their lips were very close to connecting when he suddenly thrust her away from him, yelling at the top of his lungs.

"AAAAHHHH!" he screamed. He jumped into the seat of the swivel chair, hurriedly brushing his hands all over his body.

Roxanne stared at him in shock, placing a hand over her racing heart. "What's wrong?"

"A spee-ider fell onto my head!" he bellowed, still brushing himself frenziedly.

She huffed and folded her arms. "A spider? Seriously? That's why you felt it was necessary to scream in my face?"

"Get it off!"

She slowly walked over to him, not in any hurry considering the heart attack that had almost taken place in her chest.

"It's all over me!" he yelled, yanking off his shower cap to rub at his head. "I can feel its hairy legs creeping everywhere!"

"Get down off the chair," she ordered.

He immediately jumped down; freaking out that the insect had taken up residence on his person somewhere. Roxanne slowly looked him over, turning him this way and that, but no spider could be found.

"I think it's gone," she concluded, straightening up after examining his leg.

"Are you sure?" he fretted, eyes darting all over his body. "How do you know?"

"Because it's crawling across the floor right over there," she said, pointing to eight legs that traveled into a dark corner.

"Oh!" Megamind leapt into the chair again. "Kill it please! No, stomp it!"

"Okay, okay. Big baby," she muttered.

Ever since he survived the ordeal of having a spider blown into his eye, Megamind had been a little skittish when it came to the eight-legged arachnids. Roxanne wasn't a big fan of bugs either, but they weren't that horrible considering she could easily squish them with a shoe. She stalked the insect as it scurried up the wall and with a loud thump the sole of her slipper caught the unsuspecting bug with a crunch.

"Eew," she said, looking at the bottom of the slipper.

"Oh, what a nightmare," he said, sliding down into the seat of the chair. "I really must see about getting an exterminator."

Roxanne searched for something to clean her slipper with, but there was nothing available that she could see. So she scraped it off on the papers Megamind had just been reading. He could always print another copy. After it was rid of all bug guts, she dropped the slipper on the floor and slid her foot back inside. She moved towards her currently less than brave husband—at least, when it came to fending off the terrifying wrath of the spee-ider.

She patted his large head. "Feel better now?"

"Yes," he said in relief, still shuddering. "Unpleasant little monsters."

Roxanne smirked. "Hard to believe the great and powerful Megamind has arachnophobia."

He glared back at her. "I…do…not…have…arachno-fabio!"

"No, you don't," she agreed with a smirk. "You have a-rach-no-pho-bi-a."

His nostrils flared. "Well, for your information, Miss Smarty Reporter Pants, I was going to tell you that you are very enticing in a shower cap and welding goggles, but I've changed my mind!"

This was too easy. Slowly she leaned over him, placing each of her hands on the black leather arms, trapping him on the seat.

"You changed your mind?" she whispered.

"Yes, I did," he said pouting, averting his eyes.

She stuck her lower lip out slightly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."

"You didn't?" he asked, finally looking at her.

His face was so innocent and childlike that she didn't have the heart to tease him anymore. Sometimes she forgot just how vulnerable he could be, considering he'd spent his childhood in prison and going to a school where all the other children teased him relentlessly every day.

Smiling warmly, she kissed the center of his forehead. "No, I didn't." She straightened to let him out of the chair. "Why don't you just use your dehydration gun on the next spider you see? Set it for de-stroy. Problem solved."

His eyes lit up. "Excellent idea! It has a lower setting so it won't blow a hole in the wall."

She chuckled. "That's good a thing to remember, otherwise you'd have this place looking like Swiss cheese. Hey, what time is it?"

He glanced at his watch. "Almost 4:30."

With a shrug she said, "No point in going back to bed since I would be getting up at 5:00 anyway. Think I'll go make us some breakfast."

She stepped onto the platform and he quickly followed behind her. "Oh. You…um, aren't feeling…neglected…anymore?" he asked hopefully.

"The harrowing spee-ider incident was kind of a mood killer."

His face fell. "Okay."

"But I might be feeling neglected later tonight," she hinted, slipping her hand into his.

"Okay!" he said again, but with much more enthusiasm.

The platform came to a stop on the lower level. Towing him behind her, Roxanne started for the kitchen. Megamind might not need a lot of sleep, but she refused to let him keep skipping meals or sending Minion out for donuts after she left for work. With all the gadgets he'd been building lately he'd need the extra protein to keep him going.

As they headed for the kitchen, Roxanne stopped short. Megamind collided into her, pushing her forward a step.

"What is it? Is it another spee-ider?" he asked worriedly, looking all around the floor and the high ceiling.

She stopped because she'd happened to notice something in the lair that she'd never seen before. The lair was huge and full of all sorts of machines, both large and larger. Somehow it must have just become lost among everything else. Nestled in a dark corner was an object about the size of a small car concealed by a black tarp.

"Megamind, what on earth is that?"