Chapter Text
It was a late June Saturday morning, the weekend before the annual Fourth of July celebration, and Lucius Best stood in the doorway of their new stylish and spacious flat-roofed four-bedroom bungalow, coffee mug in hand, gazing over the wide veranda that surrounded the house, across the lush green lawn he hired Dash Parr to mow once a week, to the smaller two-bedroom house directly across the street, now partially obscured by a large moving van.
Paragon Place was a quiet neighborhood in a sleepy sub-division a mile or so from the main expressway that led to downtown Metroville, a cul-de-sac inhabited by retirees and average families, where nothing much happened. New neighbors were the most exciting prospect in months.
A lingering sip of coffee, Lucius watching as the driver, hired swamper, and two men, one slight, slender and bespectacled, the other as tall and massively burley as Bob Parr followed the directions of an attractive woman with short chestnut hair dressed in a white sleeveless blouse and knee-length red and blue plaid skirt.
“Honey?”, Lucius called loudly over his shoulder. “Did you know we’re gettin’ some new neighbors?”
“Why would I want to know?”, came the slightly drawn out reply from the kitchen.
Lucius smiled. His wife had an impressive set of pipes. Always had.
Across the street, a massive home aquarium tank was being carefully transferred from moving van to dwelling. At least their pets were going to be quiet ones, Lucius thought to himself with a wry grin, ducking back into the house, closing the front door behind him. He rinsed out his treasured white ceramic Victor coffee mug in the kitchen sink, the one memento of his military service, placing it upside-down in the wire dish rack to dry.
“I’m gonna head over and chat to Bob", Lucius announced. “Want me to say ‘Hi' to Helen for you?”
“Just so long as you're not planning to go ‘bowling'”, Honey called from their bedroom.
Lucius shook his head, understanding his wife's gentle mockery. Almost a year later, and he was still being good-naturedly and justifiably reminded of how exactly the Kronos Incident had begun, resulting in he and his wife being relocated from their downtown condominium apartment to the suburbs.
Pulling on his polished black Chelsea boots, Lucius slipped out of the house into the cool morning, the few clouds in the sky heralding a warm day ahead, walking clockwise with his hands in his pockets around the cul-de-sac and up the driveway of the sprawling Parr residence to the two car garage to find his best friend Robert ‘Bob' Parr under the hood of his beloved Ferrari 250 GTO, delicately adjusting one of the six carburetors on the powerful V-12 engine.
“Mornin’, Bob!”, Lucius announced himself. “You still tinkerin' with that Italian jalopy?”
“Pay him no mind, Sophia", the massive blonde man patted the aerodynamic aluminum bodywork affectionately. “He’s just jealous because he drives a Studebaker.”
“Mmmmm-hmm", Lucius nodded sagely. “And who you gonna be calling for a ride when your expensive toy car needs parts. Give me South Bend steel any day over your imported soda can. ‘Sides, Helen know you're makin' eyes at another set of curves?”
“I know all about his little affair with that hussy", Helen Parr quipped, stepping into the garage. “Good morning, Lucius.”
“Honey sends her best", Lucius grinned.
“She always does.”
“Looks like the Henderson place finally sold", Lucius informed the married couple, flicking a thumb over his shoulder.
Bob gently closed the hood of the gleaming black Ferrari. “Yeah, I saw the van pull up earlier. They’ve been hard at it since they arrived. Not a lot of stuff for three people. Furniture is all brand new. So's the Tee-bird in the carport.”
“So you been keepin' an eye on ‘em, pretendin’ to fix your ride", Lucius nodded.
Helen flicked a wary look at her husband. “What are you thinking, Bob?”
“We know everybody in the neighborhood but the Scott’s on the corner have been cleared by the company", Bob observed, wiping his hands on a rag. “And everyone else but the Hughes are from the old days. Add in the fact I've seen only one bed get moved into the Henderson place. And something about that big guy is just…off.”
Lucius, Bob, and Helen watched silently as the man in question carried a huge carton off the moving van towards the front door, his unusual from-the-hips foot-slapping gait saying he should have fallen with every step he took, but improbably didn’t.
“Is…is that a kitchen range he’s carryin’?”, Lucius wondered quietly.
“Uh-huh…”, Bob agreed, just as quietly, slightly stunned at the overt display of strength.
*-*-*
Roxanne Ritchi handed twenty-five dollars cash from her wallet to the driver of the moving van, accepting a hand-written receipt in return, watching as the driver and his helper climbed into the van, starting the engine, pulling away, swinging away around the curve of the cul-de-sac, their job completed. She shook her head in disbelief. It wasn’t that long ago she’d dropped that much just paying for lunch.
Turning and entering the small one-storey house, she closed the door behind her, leaning against it, enjoying the cool of the shadowed interior.
Maintaining her role as an average woman in the early Nineteen Sixties was draining, mentally and emotionally exhausting, the constant demand to watch what she said, in case she revealed their secret, or said too much to the wrong person and changed the timeline in any of a dozen different ways that might result in her never being born.
The thought still gave her nightmares.
Pushing off from the door, Roxanne turned right into the living room, crowded with furniture and stacks of cardboard boxes, peering into the kitchen, where her romantic partner and his sidekick were hooking up the stove.
“How long ‘til this place is livable?”, Roxanne inquired, wishing for nothing more than a hot shower, a decent meal, and about ten hours of uninterrupted sleep.
A dramatic sigh from behind the avocado enameled stove, which matched the refrigerator humming quietly directly opposite. “The brain-bots are setting up the bed right now”, came the familiar voice of her one-time frequent abductor. “Once they’ve finished in there, they’ll unpack and set up your office. Electricity is on, gas and water are hooked up. So, maybe Sunday?”
“What about the phone?”
“Hooking up Monday", Megamind informed her.
Roxanne sighed, surrendering to the inevitable of someone, probably her, driving to look for a restaurant that did take-out.
One hand on Minion's faux-furry back to let the alien fish-gorilla-cyborg know she was passing behind him, the former television reporter stepped through the ‘L'- shaped kitchen past the basement stairs, checking the bathroom sink taps to confirm the water was indeed turned on, then into the seventeen by ten foot front bedroom she had claimed as her office space, and started setting up her desk.
The brain-bot designated ‘Clyde', one of three that had arrived with them after the accident at the former Evil Lair, was attempting to unbox her brand new IBM Selectric typewriter. Roxanne shooed it away, not trusting the bumbling automaton responsible for the power surge that had torn them loose from the year 2010 to open a peanut, let alone her means of potentially earning a living.
Lifting the electric typewriter out of its shipping box onto the desk with a slight grunt, Roxanne regarded the device for a moment. She hadn’t used one of these antiques, with its golf ball sized print head, since high school. A glance at her cell-phone told her it was just after three in the afternoon. A bit of effort and she’d have most of her work space set up before five.
Roxanne was under the desk, fumbling to plug in the typewriter and her cell-phone charger when the doorbell rang, causing her to jump slightly, banging her head. “I’ll get it!”, she called, crawling out from under the desk. “Disguises!”, she stage whispered into the kitchen as she went to open the front door.
The door opened to reveal a woman, perhaps a handful of years older than Roxanne and barely taller, her dark auburn hair cut in an attractive side-bob parted on her left, dressed in a pair of pale yellow slacks that emphasized her hips and thighs, and a light coral short-sleeved blouse, a glass-lidded floral motif Corning-ware casserole dish held in a kitchen towel in her hands.
“Hi! Helen Parr", the woman introduced herself with a genuinely friendly smile that reached her warm brown eyes. “I know how difficult moving can be, so consider this a ‘Welcome to the neighborhood’ offering.”
Roxanne blinked, then remembered her manners.
“Uh, hi. Ritchi. Roxanne”, she fumbled, stepping back. “Um, come in, I guess. Place is a bit of a disaster at the moment.”
Helen smiled again, stepping over the threshold. “Well, if you need a hand unpacking, let me know. Bob and I are still moving in ourselves. Kitchen?”
Roxanne led Helen through the cluttered living room into the kitchen, where Megamind was standing up from behind the stove, his disguise generator activated. Minion was just coming up from the basement stairs, closing the door behind himself, shutting away the brain-bots before they could cause trouble.
“Bernard, this is our new neighbor, Helen", Roxanne introduced her guest. “Helen, my…husband, Bernard, and his –“
“Brother", Minion interjected smoothly, supremely pleased with himself.
“Günstling”, Megamind finished, flicking an irritated glance at the disguised cyborg. “Non-fraternal twins. I got the looks, talent, and brains. Günstling got…”, a dramatic wrist-roll in Minion's direction, “…that.”
Helen gave the imposing, barrel-chested young man an appraising once-over. At least six feet tall, a shock of unruly brown hair above dark, intelligent brown eyes, a blunt button nose, and a wide jaw with a slight prognathous underbite.
Günstling leaned forward, delicately plucking the glass lid off the casserole dish with a massive hand, inhaling appreciatively. “Mmmm", he hummed. “Cheeseburger potatoes au gratin, with chives. A comfort food classic.”
Helen lifted an eyebrow. She’d just read the recipe for the first time a week ago.
“So what is it you do?”, Helen inquired, changing the subject.
Roxanne rummaged in a box for wine glasses while Günstling replaced the lid on the casserole and took the dish from Helen, setting it on a flap torn from a cardboard carton as an expedient trivet to protect the white Formica laminate countertop.
“Roxanne is a freelance writer and reporter", Bernard explained, arms crossed, leaning casually against the stove. “Whereas I’m an independent researcher and inventor.”
Roxanne held up two wine glasses in one hand, a moisture-dewed bottle of white wine she’d retrieved from the refrigerator in the other. “Join me? The boys can finish up in here”, she suggested.
“Wine not?", Helen chuckled, following her hostess back into the living room. The Ritchi men were definitely odd, but Helen had a good feeling about Roxanne.
Roxanne settled on the new couch, sitting sideways, feet tucked up, and Helen realized she’d neglected to kick off her flats when she’d entered the house. Glasses of wine were poured, the bottle put on the bare hardwood floor.
“So what do you do, Helen?”
Helen chuckled in practiced self-deprecation. “Oh, nothing so exciting, just an average housewife and mom.”
“Bullshit.”
Helen nearly choked on her sip of wine at the casual profanity.
Roxanne's blue eyes stared challenge over the rim of her wine glass. “Being a homemaker is unappreciated, undervalued labor. There’s absolutely nothing average about it.”
Backs of two fingers to her lips, Helen coughed quietly, regaining her composure. “You sound like you’ve been reading Betty Friedan”, she remarked casually.
“ ’The Feminine Mystique’ “, Roxanne nodded. “Brilliant second wave feminist literature, if a bit bourgeois.”
“Oh, I like you”, Helen grinned, tipping her glass towards Roxanne in offer of a toast. “We’re going to get along just fine.”
*-*-*
The lamps on the bedside tables threw cones of soft golden light as Robert Parr lay beside his wife, his reading glasses on, as both of them did a bit of reading before bed. “So, what are they like?”, he inquired, his curiosity finally getting the better of him.
Helen closed the paperback she’d been staring at, realizing she couldn’t remember a word she’d read. She paused before answering. “Roxanne is incredibly intelligent, almost frighteningly so. Incredibly perceptive. Mouth like a sailor. You’d like her.”
Bob grunted amusement.
“Bernard. Hmm. Sandy blonde hair, wire-rimmed glasses. Good with his hands. Creative. Sarcastic as anything. Incredible green eyes.”
“Attractive?”, Bob queried.
Helen shrugged. “Not my type. His eyes, though. Electric, almost literally luminous. And there’s something about him, something…foreign.”
“And the big guy?”
A nod from his wife. “Günstling. Plays at being a genial idiot. He isn't. And if Bernard and Günstling are actually ‘non-fraternal’ twins, I'll eat my hat!” Helen sighed, annoyed and frustrated. “I’ve got nothing more than vague feeling to go on, but I’d swear something is up with them, all of them.”
“I hear a ‘but' coming…”, Bob nodded.
“But I like Roxanne”, Helen admitted, throwing her hands up. “She gets it.”
Bob patted Helen's leg affectionately. “I trust your judgement, honey."
Helen arched an eyebrow at her husband.
“But I’m still gonna ask Rick to have ‘em checked out”, he nodded, turning out his light and rolling over. “Goodnight, honey. Love you.”
Helen leaned up and pecked a kiss on her husband’s cheek. “Goodnight, Bob.”