Author's Note: And now we come to it, the final chapter. Although I'd promised not to do this again, for the last scene, I found it exceptionally fitting to bring back "my posse" for a brief curtain call. It worked out quite well, I think. Some of the things discussed in the narrative portion of this chapter will find their ways into either one shots or parts of longer works, depending on how my Muse decides to take them. So rest assured, though this long tale is over, I'm not finished writing. There will be more to come — though not immediately. I will soon be taking a week's vacation to — where else? Sister Bay (though not to the beautiful house I chose to use as the basis for the summer house in this tale). I'll be visiting all the places I used as locations or as the inspiration for sites in this tale, and I'll be giving my arm and shoulder the rest they need to heal properly, so I can write again when I return. In the meantime, for the curious, there are photos of places like Cave Point and the wild turkeys in my gallery on DeviantArt (Sevandor). And in time, this novel, like several of my earlier MM works, will show up as an ebook download on my website.

Until then, my deepest and most heartfelt thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read and to review this two-month-long journey into romance, adventure, and the absurd. All of your continued interest kept me going when I might have given up, and in the end, I think the "vacation" was well worth it. Bless you all, and celebratory cake all around!

XXVII

The Epilogue

On Sunday evening, after spending a very blissful day at the house — the pleasure of each other's company and all they did together made even sweeter by the knowledge that they had chosen one another, freely, lovingly, and forever — the newlyweds called Minion and Wayne, not to invite them over quite yet but to ask them to arrange for breakfast on Monday morning, at some place where they could share it with all of their guests, who would be heading back home later that day. It gave all of them an opportunity to talk as they hadn't been able to do at the wedding, to get to know one another a little bit better so that they could all be friends and family to one another, not merely distant acquaintances.

On Wednesday, with five full days of vacation still before them, Minion and Wayne returned to the boathouse, along with Pinky and Blinkie. Wayne had returned the other brainbots to the Lair on Tuesday, after Snooper, under Megamind's supervision, had given the police investigators a complete download of all the information and recordings he had concerning Mitchell's activities. Judge Crenshaw had issued an opinion that the bots' covert surveillance had not been illegal, as Megamind was essentially an official agent for various regional police authorities and Mitchell's recent actions and direct threats to Roxanne had given sufficient cause to warrant his observation as a potential danger. Although Snooper would have been permitted to remain at the lake house, he was insistent about returning with the others and Sneaker's still living core, wanting to make sure nothing happened to his partner before Daddy came home and could begin his restoration.

Before the others had returned to join them, Roxanne and Megamind had discussed the question of extending their vacation time, and had decided that for now, they would return home as scheduled. It wasn't that they didn't want to spend more time there, or that they felt they'd had enough of a honeymoon, but rather that there were too many things that needed to be dealt with as soon as possible that required their presence back in Metro City. Setting up and planning the interview with Wayne, giving KMCP the exclusive Roxanne had promised concerning the marriage of top reporter to former kidnapper, restoring Sneaker to retrieve all the data he'd collected on Mitchell, rebuilding Minion's damaged gorilla cybersuit, and in general making sure that all was quiet on the home front. So they spent the remainder of their last week relaxing and recovering from the wedding and in general having as much fun as they could. When they left, it was not with the wistfulness of something ended, but rather with the promise of something that could be returned to, whenever they wished.

Their homecoming was welcomed by both those who had genuinely missed them and those who had been desperate for more information since the first rumors of their engagement had leaked. The local bridal industry was sorely disappointed to find that the couple had already been married, thankyouverymuch, and thus had no need to drop a bundle on their services, but the police were relieved, since that saved them the task of having to provide the extra security that celebrity weddings always required. Jack Kincaid was not only delighted to be the head of the station that got all the exclusive pictures and videos and interviews, but he was tremendously relieved to hear that Stewart Mitchell had totally flipped his lid, thus taking from him the burden of needing to continue investigating the man.

In fact, the whole situation surrounding Mitchell was given an unexpected assist when one Leo Zaleski came forward, offering to provide all manner of evidence concerning the man's various highly illegal activities in exchange for some protection from prosecution for himself. Stalking and sexual harassment of co-workers were, according to evidence Zaleski produced, among Mitchell's more innocent hobbies. Many of the women he had "taken a shine to" disappeared and were never heard from again.

A fair number of those who did eventually turn up had managed to escape from the persons to whom they'd been sold, generally — but not always — overseas. Mitchell was known in the least savory sections of the underworld as a "marriage broker" for wealthy men with "discriminating" tastes. He had been working as a television producer because it put him in a position to find the kinds of women his clients could afford, and he enjoyed the sort of life it gave him, and the sort of women he had the pleasure of "sampling" before turning them over to the men who would purchase them. It was an ideal situation to him, letting him enjoy beautiful, often moderate celebrity-status women who would then vanish without a trace.

Zaleski had been sucked into his flesh-peddling racket when Mitchell needed a hacker to clean up some records that could have caused serious trouble for him. At the time, Leo had been deep in debt, right out of college and buried under several tons of student loans without so much as a job prospect for scrubbing toilets at a fast food joint. Once snared by Mitchell he became trapped, bound to keep on helping him under threat of having his complicity in grossly illegal activities revealed. While he admittedly enjoyed the challenge of some of the complex hacking jobs he did for Mitchell, he had been feeling more and more that the risks of continuing weren't adequately balanced by what Mitchell was paying him.

This whole business with Roxanne Ritchi had been the last straw. Mitchell's behavior had been strange from the very start. This hadn't been one of his usual plots for grabbing a profitable woman for some well-paying client; there had been atypical personal angles in it. For one, Zaleski had known for years that his "boss" was a racist and an all-around bigot; he had often made tasteless jokes about Leo's Polish Catholic background, and would often have denigrating things to say about the foreigners who hired him, the women he trapped, and anyone who didn't fit into his very narrow definition of acceptable humanity.

When Megamind had been nothing more than a hyperactive, over-dramatic, totally ludicrous loser of a so-called supervillain — Mitchell's description, Zaleski was quick to point out, not his own — Mitchell had been perfectly happy to blow him off as a joke, obviously no threat to the purity of the human race. The moment he gave up his criminal ways, Mitchell began to harbor suspicions that the alien was a scout, sent to infiltrate Earth society with the objective of eventually calling in his kind to conquer the world.

When he began to date Roxanne Ritchi and it became apparent that she returned his feelings to some degree, Mitchell had felt Megamind was becoming more dangerous, a threat not only to the planet but to a woman he had begun to obsessively believe was destined to be his, and no one else's. When he heard that the two of them were now living together, he began to make plans to "bring her back into the fold" by making her his own. Zaleski had wanted to warn them of Mitchell's intentions more than once, but fear that he would wind up exposing his involvement in the producer's criminal activities had kept his mouth shut.

Now with Mitchell safely behind bars, Leo was finally able to come forward and start singing like an entire flock of songbirds, hoping that it would keep the bastard incarcerated for the rest of his unnatural life. Aware of the man's ability to become violent when his plans went badly wrong and he had someone on whom he could pin the blame, Leo had actually ferreted out the unlisted number for the Scott house in Sister Bay and had tried to call it, to warn them; when that failed, he'd managed to dig up Roxanne's cell number and had tried calling that, again without luck as she'd left it at the house. He'd considered calling the police in Sister Bay, but he didn't know what to tell them that wouldn't somehow backfire.

When he discovered that Mitchell had gone both ballistic and bonkers and was now in custody pending trial, he knew he'd never have a better chance to try cutting some kind of plea bargain to get out of this vicious circle he'd become mired in. Leo hadn't deluded himself with fantasies of walking away free as a bird, but he was able to provide the authorities with so much information about Mitchell's illegal activities — some of which allowed them to solve long-standing missing persons cases across the country, others of which helped them to locate and recover several prominent missing women — they were willing to be remarkably lenient.

Even Megamind had encouraged them to cut Zaleski some slack, since though he and Roxanne had come within a hair's breadth of being killed, he knew what it was like to feel trapped in a life that had become not a destiny, but a living nightmare. There was undeniable evidence that the man had indeed tried to warn them, in the form of voice mails and answering machine messages on the phones he'd called on their wedding day. Leo did wind up doing time, but mostly in a minimum security prison, with a lot of his sentence spent in work release, helping develop better security software for sensitive and vulnerable databases.

Mitchell ended up being declared legally insane — but only for his last, and least serious, crimes. Thanks to Leo's evidence and testimony, the much, much longer list of abductions, murders, and trafficking of slaves were held as having been committed while he was fully sane and competent. There was no doubt that he would never again be free, and a very strong possibility that eventually, the trial for one of the crimes that he had committed in a state with capital punishment would end with him on Death Row.

All in all, both Roxanne and the entire management staff of KMCP decided it would be a very good idea for them to never again hire anyone with the first, middle, or last name Stewart.

Another very positive upshot of their vacation concerned the way Metro City's police and emergency services had responded to being on their own, without any kind of defender to do their jobs for them. While it was agreed that none of the emergencies that had come up in Megamind's absence had been anything extraordinary, a number of them had been things that for years, they had let their superheroes handle with minimal support. The brainbots had done a great deal to help in some of the more dangerous situations, but the often underworked police and firemen had stepped up fully for a change, and discovered that unless they'd completely forgotten their training, they were much more capable than they had expected they could be.

This really came as no surprise to either Megamind or Minion — or Wayne. The retired hero had long felt that the biggest reason behind the seemingly utter helplessness of all the citizens of Metro City was of his own making, in never learning to say no to them. He knew that he had been raised to thrive on the attention he was given as a superhero, and for many years, he had been perfectly happy living with that status quo.

But as he had begun to feel more and more confined by and trapped in that life, he had had to face the bitter truth: that he had walked into that gilded cage freely, had let others lock it, and had never checked his own pockets to find that he held the key. Though the people who took advantage of his presence to rely on him for everything were responsible for their actions, he was also responsible for teaching them how they could treat him and what they could expect of him, simply by never refusing them when he should have.

That particular discussion — about the valuable wisdom of learning when to say no and sticking to it consistently — was had at the Lair two weeks after their return from vacation, when the initial hubbub over the wedding had died down a bit, and Megamind had finally invited Wayne into the living areas he had kept secret for so long. The musician had been suitably impressed — shocked, actually, especially when he discovered that every bit of the place had been built, shaped, carved, decorated, whatever by hand, and almost entirely by Megamind, using mostly scavenged items for the raw materials, fashioned and constructed over almost twenty years.

Some parts had been saved and moved when the Lair had needed to be relocated, but for a long while, Megamind and fought tenaciously to keep this one place — this single haven he had built inside an old abandoned shell of what had originally been a power plant, and later had been used as a warehouse — safe from discovery and destruction. Hence, he had set up his network of auxiliary lairs around the city, places which he had used as staging areas for his elaborate plans and villainous schemes that could be abandoned or destroyed with impunity, leaving his home intact.

It was a side of his former foe that Wayne had never even suspected existed, and being introduced to it now was, he understood, a significant act of trust. It was the moment in which he knew he had been truly accepted as a friend, and was offered friendship in return. It was a gift he did not take lightly, and so he had opened up to his new friend, telling him as much as he knew of the pitfalls of being Metro City's hero in residence.

As always, Minion had prepared the excellent dinner that evening and for a change shared it with the other members of his family, allowing three of the best trained household bots to do the serving. Roxanne had declared that, contrary to the opinion of some women at the station, married life did not suddenly, magically improve her domestic skills, nor make her inexplicably want to spend the time needed to do. Much as she loved her new husband, she also loved her career, and as both her personal and professional lives blossomed, she had no inclination to spend what free time she had in learning to become a good little housewife.

This was not an issue with either Megamind or Minion. The ichthyoid genuinely enjoyed cooking and sewing, two skills that he took especial pride in because of the fact that he was a fish, and they were abilities no fish on this world had ever needed or been able to learn, much less master. And Megamind didn't see why Roxanne should be expected to pursue anything that didn't interest her, particularly not when someone else in their family enjoyed those things so very much and there were scores of brainbots to handle the less pleasant chores of maintaining a household.

In their years of villainy, the blue alien knew that he'd been horribly insensitive and had expected Minion to take care of such mundane matters simply because he always had. Since their switch to heroism, when Minion wanted or needed help, he asked for it, and Megamind had done what he could to be of assistance. But to expect Roxanne to take over household chores simply because she was a woman was, in both his and Minion's opinion, a terribly antiquated and sexist attitude, not to mention a complete waste of her true talents.

So that evening, they were all able to talk over dinner, and after. Wayne had offered his advice, then he and the newlyweds had settled on just how much of the lake house should properly be his wedding gift. He wanted to pay for it all, Roxanne insisted that he pay only a third, and they eventually compromised on half. Anything less than that, Wayne insisted, would not make it a proper gift in his eyes, and Megamind completely agreed (though he had leaned more toward the idea of Wayne paying for two-thirds, just on general formerly evil principles).

The time for his interview that would reveal the whole truth of his "retirement" was also agreed upon: mid-November, right around the date that his adoptive parents had chosen as his birthday. It seemed fitting to Wayne for him to come clean at the beginning of a new year in his life, as it was certain to be the opening of another chapter in it. That date would give all of them time to prepare for it, since no one held any illusions that this wouldn't have some kind of repercussions for them all. Roxanne wanted to handle things as carefully as possible, to minimize the potential negative uproar Wayne's confessions might cause, and waiting until then also allowed her and Megamind to take a proper week off in early October as their official honeymoon.

They discussed going to a number of exotic locations where there would be warm and sunny beaches and new things to see — all now made possible by the full Presidential pardon that had been given to Megamind as a wedding gift from the White House.

That timing seemed a little odd, but in giving it, the president had said that it was fitting. Over the past two years and more, the ex-villain had more than proved the validity of his reformation. His decision to make the commitment of marriage to the very woman whose life he had disrupted and her eager acceptance of him demonstrated how very much he had changed. While consenting adults living together was no crime and certainly nothing unusual in this day and age, Megamind's desire to make a legal and binding commitment to Roxanne was the final proof of his changed heart. Though the pardon would have gone through eventually regardless, granting it now was a sort of stamp of approval not just on the marriage itself, but on Megamind's respectful decisions to help rather than hurt the society of which he was a part.

But in the end, they decided to return to Sister Bay. The area was quieter now — except on the weekends, when flocks of tourists showed up to gawk at the magnificent display of nature decked out in her blazing fall colors, something that ultra-urban Metro saw in such panoply only via televised reports from well outside the city.

Minion, while interested in seeing such a thing up close for the first time, had declared that there would be other autumns but only one honeymoon for his two best friends and had thus forestalled any suggestion that he come along. Moreover, it was his turn to experience a first: his first time not merely filling in for Megamind as the city's defender, but taking on that job as his recently and publicly declared partner in heroism. He wanted to see how the various local authorities and emergency services dealt with his changed status, and in the end was very pleased with and proud of the results. They'd always liked Minion, many of them even back in the evil old days, and they treated him with all the respect that Megamind himself now gave him.

It was a very happy and heady week for the ichthyoid, especially since he now had a new and improved version of his old gorilla suit to do his hero work in. He and Megamind had also decided that the humanoid cybersuit he'd used during their vacation wouldn't go into permanent retirement, but would be used when a more human and less intrusive appearance was desirable — with a few minor modifications that would allow Minion to stay in touch with the brainbots and thus avoid the problem that had occurred due to a lack of communications during the wedding.

Wayne once again volunteered to help if help was needed, but until after the interview and his confession to the public, he decided it would be best to keep a low profile on that front. Instead, he devoted more of his time to his music, and to figuring out just what kind of balance he hoped to strike in his future life. He also took advantage of this time — when people still thought of him as the non-superpowered Wayne Scott — to explore possibilities in expanding his social life, in search of the first tenuous connections that might someday lead him to the happiness Roxanne and Megamind had found with each other.

On the last day of September, the final closing on the lake house was completed, and became the official and legal property of Mykaal and Roxanne Thejhan. During the following week, Minion and a crew of brainbots went up to install all the subtle but powerful security measures that would keep the place safe from anyone who might try to accost either them or their property, whether they were there or not. To any curiosity seekers who might happen by, there was nothing to give away who owned the place, and the actual neighbors had decided they liked Megamind and Roxanne during their month-long vacation, and had no trouble keeping an eye on the place, as they had done for the Scotts when they were not in residence.

The next Friday, the couple departed for their quiet honeymoon. During that week, they came to know not only the beauties of the area in the fall, but the beauty of their lives, not as hero and reporter or celebrity couple, but as two people who deeply respected and passionately loved and thoroughly took joy in one another.

oooooooooo

On Tuesday morning of that week, they decided it was time to go out and about and actually see the gorgeous autumn scenery they had supposedly come to gawk at. Having had enough of each other's cooking — some of which had convinced them that they really needed to either enroll in a cooking course or have Minion tutor them for times like this, when they were without their live-in chef — they headed out to have breakfast at the little café they'd come to love in the tiny town.

The owners and regular staff who'd been there in August were delighted to see them, and treated them like old friends who had lived there for years. Being outside the usual weekend days when the "leafers" came in droves to view the autumn-clad trees, the café was quiet, but not quite empty. Sitting in the same corner where they'd been on that evening in August was the quartet of regular visitors from Milwaukee, who'd been the first to show them pictures of and explain to them such sites as Cave Point, which had wound up playing a significant part in the high points of their vacation.

"We heard you got married at Cave Point a week or two after we left," Rosemary said with great enthusiasm after greetings had been exchanged. "You're so lucky! I know that's where I'd want to do it, if I ever got married, it's so beautiful."

"It wasn't so beautiful during a storm the week before," Roxanne said with a smile as they took the seats they'd occupied at their last encounter. She looked at Kate. "You were so right about it being very different in bad weather — and he just had to check it out in the middle of the worst thunderstorm!"

Jeanne whistled at the very idea; Kate shook her head. "Wow, we were never quite that gutsy! You didn't get hurt, did you?"

Megamind shook his head. "No — well, I didn't, but Roxanne got a little sore from sliding down that slope and nearly falling off the bluff in the heavy rain."

She snorted. "Yes, and from getting tossed into a tree by my rescuer! I think I may have permanent scars from where some of the branches poked me in the butt."

"You're perfectly fine," her husband replied with a smirk that was perilously close to a leer. "Not even a scratch left, last time I checked."

Roxanne swatted him with the napkin she'd been unfolding, laughing. The others were smiling. "So, does married life agree with you?" James wondered. "We've heard some really outrageous stories about the wedding on a few of those TV gossip shows."

"Oh, I totally believe the part about the whack job with a gun showing up," Jeanne opined. "Weddings have a way of bringing the crazies out of the woodwork. What I want to know is was Wayne Scott really the Maid of Honor?"

"Oh, yeah!" Rosemary agreed. "And did he actually show up in a kilt? Full Highland Dress or just a casual version?"

Both Roxanne and Megamind blinked at her, completely at a loss. "I know it's terrible for someone with a Scottish family background to admit it," Roxanne confessed, "but what's the difference? Isn't a kilt a kilt?"

Most of the others chuckled. "Oooh, don't say that in front of Rosemary," Jeanne warned. "She's a major-league aficionado of anything Scottish — you'll get a twenty minute lecture off a question like that!"

Rosemary blushed but smiled, knowing it was true. Megamind had a better solution. "They say a picture's worth a million words," he said, gesturing meaningfully to Roxanne.

"It's only a thousand, sweetie," she said as she reached for the satchel purse she'd set on an empty chair, "but you're right, it's easier to show than to explain." She pulled out his iPad and handed it to him.

James grinned. "What, don't superheroes use man-bags to carry their own gadgets?" he asked, clearly teasing since he had a small black leather satchel that he toted about for that very purpose.

"Not when they keep forgetting it and leaving it behind," was Roxanne's droll explanation.

"I'm not used to keeping track of things like that," Megamind defended as he flipped open the cover, tapped in the unlock code, and went looking for the appropriate photo album. "I'm used to having things attached to me, like a cape or a gun belt or pockets and jetpacks. Ah, here! The brainbots took so many pictures of Wayne at the wedding, we had to give him an entire album of his own. Some of them are rather ridiculous," he added with a wicked chuckle.

"He didn't go commando, did he?" Kate asked as Megamind handed the Pad to Jeanne, who passed it to Rosemary for her expert opinion. "With the winds at the Point, that could be very embarrassing...!"

"He didn't, thank God," Roxanne said with great fervor. "There wasn't much wind until later in the day. He did have a couple of Marilyn Monroe moments during the reception, but not during the ceremony. "

"It's not quite the full formal Highland outfit," Rosemary declared after examining some of the pictures. "But it's pretty close. Is that a legitimate tartan?"

"He said it was," Megamind answered a bit dubiously. "I'll admit that it's not my area of expertise, but it seemed rather odd and convenient that this just happened to be in shades of blue — not his usual color."

"It might be a monochrome variation," the retired librarian postulated. "They can be done for special occasions or specific purposes..." She launched into an explanation of tartan variations that might indeed have gone on for a while, had Jeanne and Kate not taken the iPad from her to have a look at the other pictures in the album. They came across some of the ridiculous ones Megamind had mentioned, including a "Marilyn Monroe" shot that Roxanne had spoken of, with a sudden gust of wind blowing Wayne's kilt up and exposing his white boxers covered with absurdly bright metallic gold stars.

"Funny, I always figured him for a briefs kind of guy," Kate quipped through her laughter. "Don't boxers bunch up and get uncomfortable under tights?"

"I wouldn't know," his successor said with a crooked smile, but would not elaborate.

Roxanne cleared her suddenly dry throat and leaned over to touch one of the controls on the iPad's screen, calling up the directory page for the photo albums. "I think he has half that thing crammed with photos and videos of the wedding and the reception," she said, shooting her still ever-so-innocent spouse a scolding but amused glance.

"Actually, I do," Megamind readily admitted. "I was hoping we might run into the four of you while we were here this week."

All four looked rather surprised. "Oh?" Jeanne said in a neutral tone that nonetheless betrayed a hint of suspicion.

The blue genius nodded. "You were the ones who first told us about the Point and showed us your pictures of it when we first came here on vacation. It became a very special place to us, and when we decided to get married there, I felt sorry that we couldn't ask you to come because we had no idea how to contact you. We didn't even know your last names."

Now, the foursome looked considerably more than surprised. "Why would you want to invite us?" James asked. "You only met us that one time, and almost anyone could've shown you pictures and told you stories about Cave Point."

Roxanne, however, understood what he meant, and gave Megamind an encouraging nod, placing one hand over his.

He explained. "Yes, we only met that one time, but that was the first time since I was a little boy that people ever made me feel so... comfortable, so accepted, in just a few minutes! I felt so relaxed that I even told you my real name without thinking about it, and I'd never done that before. It was important to me. If I hadn't been able to feel that way so quickly, I probably would've wanted to head home much sooner than I should've, I wouldn't have gotten the rest I really did need, and I'm afraid I wouldn't have worked up the nerve to ask Roxanne to marry me. Maybe eventually, but still half burned out, I think it would've taken much longer. Things might've just gone back to the lousy way they'd been, or even gotten worse. "

He raised his wife's hand to his lips and softly kissed it, smiling. "Now that I know what I do, I can see that I would've been a fool to miss out on even one more minute of what we have together. So I was hoping to see all of you again, to thank you. That evening helped me in ways I didn't begin to really understand until you'd gone home, and no one here who recognized you knew exactly who you were or how to contact you."

The four were speechless for a good minute, which for them was quite remarkable. "I'm glad we could help," Rosemary was finally the first to say. "Though we weren't really doing anything unusual for us."

"That's for sure," Jeanne seconded. "We'll run off at the mouth with total strangers with virtually no provocation. It's just the way we are."

Megamind nodded vigorously. "I know, and that's what made such a difference! You treated me like I was just another person visiting here for the first time, not like a celebrity or a freak or anything out of the ordinary. It was great! I'd never had an experience quite like that before, and it made me look at the whole idea of a vacation as something that could be good, not something I had to endure until it was time to go home."

He sighed. "I'm probably making this sound a whole lot more complex than it actually is. I just wanted you to know that I appreciated it, you being so friendly and accepting when you didn't have to be. And since you weren't here for the wedding — and we haven't given much in the way of the really interesting pictures or videos to the media — I thought you'd like to see that." He pointed to the image-filled iPad currently in James' hands.

Roxanne grinned as she returned the kiss to the back of her spouse's blue hand. "Yeah, I don't know what all he put on there, but I know he crammed a bunch of videos in along with the photos. I just hope you didn't put in anything embarrassing," she warned him with a lethal glare that wouldn't have harmed a gnat.

He laughed. "Not to us, though there is a really nice video of you slinging Mitchell's cube out into the middle of Sister Bay, then kicking him back into the water after the brainbots fished him out..."

"Oh, I've gotta see that!" Kate enthused, reaching for the Pad. "We heard that some nutcase showed up at the wedding..."

"Nutcase my eye!" Rosemary, the former prison librarian, snorted. "I've seen the news reports. The guy turned out to be a major felon and sex offender of the worst kind!"

"Alleged major felon and sex offender of the worst kind," Roxanne, ever the precise journalist, corrected. "Though the evidence is very heavily against him. I'm glad I didn't know about any of his past history while he was stalking me, though. Lord only knows if he really was planning to keep me for himself, or figured he'd sell me to some sicko overseas when he got bored with me."

"Or on the east coast," Megamind added darkly. "He had plenty of 'clients' right here in North America. And if any of them ever show their faces within five hundred miles of Metro City..." His tone promised the most dire of consequences.

It wasn't the threat that caused Roxanne to start. "Hey, you said 'Metro City,' sweetie! Not 'Metrocity.'"

He wrinkled his nose and waved one hand in a casually dismissive fashion. "Did I? Complete slip of the tongue, nothing more." But his wink said that perhaps he was considering an occasional correct pronunciation of the place he defended, just to mess with people's heads.

"Oh, jeeze, what a great shot to the face!" Rosemary said as the video she was leaning over to watch showed Roxanne giving Mitchell a good solid kick right in the mouth and back into the bay.

"Does this Pad have the 3G connection?" James wondered. "We could link it to mine if it does, so we don't all have to crowd around the one screen." We now included two of the waitstaff who hadn't been in town on the day of the wedding, but had heard much of it from those who'd been there.

"It does," Megamind confirmed as he stood up, "but I've got the access pretty heavily encrypted. Let me get into the settings and clear you..."

"You don't have to go all computer geek, hon," Roxanne said, even as he went over to make the adjustments and the two men started to talk tech-speak at each other. She reached into her satchel to produce another iPad. "I let you put all that stuff on mine, just in case."

But the blue hero merely grinned cheerfully. "Great, then everybody can watch! Don't worry about our food," he told the two staffers and the now-curious hostess who had wandered over to see what the excitement was about. "We can eat later. With three screens, there should be room enough for everyone to see clearly."

"Can we link mine in?" Kate wanted to know, hauling up her bag from the floor. "It's only a wi-fi type, but a fourth screen might help..."

"Do you have the Bump app...?"

Jeanne gave Roxanne an amused look as the reporter handed off her iPad to be passed on to the intrigued staff members. "Don't tell me, he got it for you as a wedding present," the older woman guessed, recalling that Roxanne hadn't had one when they'd met two months ago.

The younger brunette smiled broadly, tucking a stray strand of her bangs behind one ear. "Among other things. Mykaal got tired of me always wanting to use his a long time ago, and it was a good excuse to get me one of my own."

"Oh, no need to explain. Kate and Rosemary had iPad Envy something awful after I first got mine. And I'm married to a techno geek myself — electronics and their accessories are standards on the gift list for all occasions. But it's okay. I do use 'em, and he loves to share these passionate interests of his with me. I know he just wants to make me happy, and indulging his obsessions for gizmos and gadgets once in a while isn't too big a price to pay to see him happy — is it?"

Roxanne's eyes went to Megamind. He was fairly glowing with the delight of being able to show off his ingenious security methods to someone other than Minion who actually understood what he was talking about, and he almost danced with glee while he explained something about one of Blinkie's better videos to the fascinated employees, who were amazed to hear that the photographer had been one of his little robotic helpers. It was the energetic, boyishly enthusiastic side of him that she'd long since fallen in love with, and seeing him relaxed and able to behave like any happy, excited, and friendly person who was accepted just as he was — big head, blue skin, pointy ears, geeky interests, checkered past and all — warmed her more than she could say, and made her love him all the more.

"No," Roxanne agreed wholeheartedly, her wide smile sparkling in her eyes as brightly as the rings on her finger. "It's not too much to pay. In fact, it's really a bargain."

The End