Star Crossed Wires

Megamind was proud of many things: his intellect, his fashion sense, his ability to monologue under pressure, and, most recently, the complex neural subroutine system he’d written for himself to optimize everyday tasks.

It had started small — a little automation to get him out of bed and into the shower on time. Then it grew into meal prepping and outfit selecting and lab lockups, each one triggered by specific environmental cues and times of day. It saved precious brainpower, letting him focus on Important Villainous– er, Scientific Deeds.

Today, he’d added a new routine: a defensive reflex, one he thought might help during unexpected combat. It was meant to activate only when confronted with an aggressive physical threat while his hands were full.

He’d mentally tagged it with the label Routine\_X43: high-speed evasive maneuver. Code: Run-and-hide protocol.

He had not realized that, in a moment of sleep-deprived error, he’d... miswired a few things.

It was late, and the lab was quiet. Minion had gone to sleep, tucked away in his castle. Most the Brainbots were offline, gently snoring in their ceiling nests, resting until they were scheduled to switch places with the night shift's patrol.

Roxanne was awake, though. Sitting beside Megamind on the couch in the lounge area, teasing him with sarcastic quips while they watched a black-and-white mystery film.

She leaned in — smooth, soft, affectionate — and kissed him.

And Megamind, with all the grace of a startled cat, vanished.

Well, not quite vanished. More like darted three meters in 0.6 seconds and curled himself behind a nearby armchair, wide-eyed and breathing rapidly.

Roxanne blinked.

“…What the hell just happened?” she asked aloud, standing.

From behind the chair: a muffled, “…oh no.”

“What?” she called, bewildered. “Was that—was that bad?”

“No! No no no no no!” Megamind peeked over the chair cautiously, like she might throw something. She'd never seen that look on his face in regards to her, and she never wanted to see it again. “That was wonderful! Glorious! The peak of human and inhuman experience!”

Roxanne stared. “Then why are you hiding like a chihuahua during fireworks?”

He paused. His eyes flicked left. Then right. And then a strange, almost comically serene look crossed his face as he closed his eyes and went very still.

“…Are you meditating?” she asked, incredulous.

Silence.

“Did I break you?” she added, worried irritated.

Still no answer.

“Megamind.”

“Shhh,” he whispered. “Thinking.”

Two minutes passed. She crossed her arms.

Finally, he stood up straight, adjusted his collar, and gave her an apologetic smile. “Ah-ha! Yes. Solved it.”

“You solved what, exactly?”

Megamind chuckled nervously. “Okay, so, you know how I’m constantly optimizing my brain function using custom mental algorithms and sensory-coded triggers to activate internal subroutines in a way that streamlines routine tasks and saves cognitive load?”

“…Sure,” she said slowly. “Totally normal sentence.”

"It's... It's like..." He thought for a second. Roxanne knew he was trying to dumb it down for her without making her feel like he needed to dumb it down for her. Sweet, but Roxanne was too impatient to appreciate it at the moment. "It's like a computer program. Push button A to get result B. Except the button is certain stimulus — like waking up — and the result is my behavior — showering."

"That makes sense, I guess?" Roxanne shrugged. Whether it was an alien thing, a genius thing, or a him thing, Roxanne was used enough to him pulling random craziness out of thin air. He can program his brain. Sure. Why not? "And this made you hide behind a chair because..?"

“Well,” he said, twiddling his fingers, “I may have — ha — misassigned a new routine to the wrong stimulus?”

“Which was…?”

“…‘mouth contact’ triggered a ‘curl up and hide from danger’ routine.”

A long pause.

Roxanne looked at him. 

Megamind must've taken her look for incomprehension, because he grinned weakly and added. “You kissed me and my brain said ‘INCOMING THREAT, ABORT MISSION.’”

She snorted. Then laughed. Then leaned back against the couch and wheezed with giggles.

Megamind watched, eyes softening. “I’m very sorry.”

“I’m not mad,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m just very confused. Is it fixed now?”

He nodded solemnly. “It is. The false routine has been deleted, the correct behavior reinstated, and I have now permanently flagged you as ‘safe,’ ‘welcome,’ and ‘please do again.’”

Roxanne smirked. “Oh? Like this?”

She leaned in again.

This time, Megamind stayed where he was, closed his eyes for the right reason, and kissed her back.