She hops from her wrought iron seat and waggles her fingers at the seriously exhausted-looking barista.
“Me! That’s me, that’s mine!” she calls out, bumping past the late-morning crowd of jogger moms and their baby buggies, all clustered around the mobile cafe. He sets her takeaway cup on the counter.
“Weird name,” he remarks as she reaches for it. Honey’s narrow shoulders bob up, smile turning up a notch.
“Not my real name,” she says, uncapping her tea to add milk.
It starts with a tremble Honey doesn’t acknowledge. Quakes are common back home, constant and totally unimpressive. She stirs in milk and sugar and flicks the stirrer into a recycling bin. The second—the second bucks the ground underfoot, splashes her hot tea across her hands and wrists, and these are the moments when Honey really wishes she had a superpower. Clairvoyance, maybe. Or prestidigitation.
A flock of pigeons explodes into flight, warbling their way airborne. Her paper cup rolls beneath the stand. Joggers and baby carriages scatter around them, all dashing away from the rumble.
“Not again,” the barista groans, hastily unloading the register.
“I’m guessing this isn’t an earthquake,” she says, shaking off her hot, stinging hands. The ground grumbles.
Honey whips towards the booming voice. The mech is, well, intimidatingly large, and definitely not of the huggably Baymax-ian variety, but she’s faced bigger…with her team, who all had their own set of strengths, and were currently absent. But still. She can do this. Her stomach swoops.
“I wish,” he says. He jerks his head, backing away. “Hey, I—uh, you should maybe follow the soccer moms. It’s about to get—”
“Wonderful idea! Thanks!” She pulls her chem-bag from around her shoulders. The barista takes off, and Honey drags out her SFIT hoodie, pulling it inside out before she yanks it over her head and tugs the hood over her hair. She sprints towards the robot.
She knew San Fransokyo’s sister city had its own set of problems, but she thought (naively, hopefully)—and her friends had assured her—that taking a couple of days to present at the National Chemist’s Association with Dr. Chatterjee would go off without a hitch. She fumbles with her phone, shoots off a text. This is definitely a hitch.
A bright blue chem-ball pops against the asphalt, ice snarling from one sidewalk to the next between her and this Megamind guy. Buy time. She needs to buy time.
“Hey! Cool it! Maybe? For a second!” she shouts. Honey ducks behind a screaming car, fingers flying across the face of her bag. Improvise, adapt, overcome. She pops an orange ball beneath a wedge heel, then another. Buoyant foam bubbles under foot, freezes like rubber. She gives them an experimental bounce, then pops back up like a meerkat.
“I didn’t mean to pun! Metro Man might not be here, but I am!”
God, she feels naked without her suit, her helmet, her friends, but he doesn’t need to know that.
His malignant laughter is cut short by a bright blue explosion at the feet of his massive machination, and the villain throws the levers controlling the robot’s ambulation, sending it scrambling back in shock as he fiercely searches for the source of the interruption. Was that -- ice? Metro Man didn’t possess ice powers, as far as his data showed; the hero had never displayed such capabilities to him in all the years they’d been at this grandiose game of theirs.
❝ – hey! Who threw that!? ❞
He demanded, sounding much more like a cross school master looking to scold the student tossing spitballs across the classroom than a super villain intent on destroying a populated metropolis. The answer to his indignant query came in the lithe form of an exceedingly tiny girl, who proceeded to not only hinder his evil doing, but to subsequently toss out a shrapnel of witty banter to boot! I’m here, she said stalwartly, as though some run-of-the-mill bookworm was going to pose a challenge to him. Did she intend to play hero? Certainly not -- she was obviously no Metro Man. And Megamind had nothing to gain by harming ordinary citizens -- he only threatened them to bait the super hero into battle, because ...well, that’s what villains did, wasn’t it? His laughter rang out through the panicked streets once more, much more condescending this time as he took in the sight of her standing there, prepared to oppose him with nothing but a satchel slung around her hip and shoulder.
❝ -- Ohohohoho !! My my my! Is that so? And who exactly are you? Foolish girl -- YOU DARE challenge the mighty MEGAMIND?? ❞
-- then again, it suddenly occurred to the self-proclaimed epitome of evil; just where had that ice come from?
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