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Isthmus	By : AwfulLawful Category: +M through R > Megamind Views: 3514 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Megamind or make any profit from this story, it was done purely out of love for the characters.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
Isthmus

Note:
Before anyone asks again – no this is not one of those 'Megamind turns out to be female' stories. I have no real issue with genderflip per se but it seems like it's never done quite to my satisfaction as far as the reverse-domino effect that would have on the story as a whole.
For example: If Megamind is female from birth, how the hell would the Warden get away with raising a little girl in a men's institution? From a biological standpoint, how would that affect her relationship with Roxanne? Or even interacting with Metro Boy in school? Unless you start the story from Megamind's arrival on Earth and change everything from there onward you are entirely basing your story on the premise of a female character behaving exactly like a male would, as well as every other character reacting to said events as if that character was male, up until some magical universal 'Megamind=female now' transfer switch is flipped for your story to be remotely feasible. It just doesn't work that way; and I didn't get into fanfiction to rewrite entire books and movies right from the introduction.
...okay maybe ONCE but I started at the end of The Hobbit and completely derailed The Lord of the Rings. It was still the end of a story, just not the big story.
You can apply the above complaint to all sources of fanfiction, ESPECIALLY Harry Potter.
Again, nothing is really wrong with the overall concept, but I have very rarely if ever seen it done in a way that didn't make the story feel like the psychological equivalent of patchwork quilting - nothing really matches up but it's at least been arranged in a pretty pattern that pleases the eye. I firmly believe on matching up my seams and colors if at all possible; quilting or not.
So - no. The Megamind I have invented here is not female. Nor entirely male. What part of biological jigsaw puzzle' did you not understand? Alien genders need not be binary! There is more than 0 and 1 here.

Chapter 2: Red Letter Day

"Could it be that I commit my crimes for reasons OTHER than monetary gain? Could it be that I derive pleasure from passing my time in challenges of wit and skill? Could it be that the crime of murder is too mundane, too artless, to satisfy my needs? Could it be that I actually RESPECT The Batman and LOOK FORWARD to our periodic tests? Of COURSE it could. And were I to KILL The Batman - red-letter day aside ... the rest of my days could well be blank boxes." ~Calendar Man

Megamind sat at his workstation dejectedly and glowered.
Minion called it pouting but it was clearly glowering since Masters of Villainy did NOT do anything as crass as pouting. There was a difference in definition and everything! And anyway Minion had entirely the wrong angle to be able to tell. Megamind was glowering at the paper, not Minion, so the fish just wasn't getting the full glowering effect from his vantage point. If Megamind had looked up at Minion it would have been obvious that there was no childish pouting involved whatsoever, he just didn't feel like looking up to demonstrate it, so there.
Megamind had been staring at the vellum paper for an hour and no urge to actually make a mark on it had appeared. This was odd since he had all sorts of ideas going through his magnificent mind at the moment concerning evil plots that were sure to succeed. Unfortunately all of them involved very much the usual amount of physical activity that every other plan of his involved; lots. At the moment Megamind just wasn't up to lots of physical activity. And that was just annoying, especially since he'd even made an effort to go out into the damnable winter his foster world suffered from as part of the seasonal change. Curse this insufferable icy inconvenience!
Every. Single. Year! Megamind swore every December that if his two favorite playthings didn't live in this climate he wouldn't bother with Metrocity at all! There had to be better places to set up camp. Oh well. Metro Man wouldn't leave unless he was desperately needed in another location, nobody else would be nearly as much fun to kidnap as Miss Ritchi, and relocating Miss Ritchi by force was as likely to succeed as trying to fight the snowstorms by shooting at them-
THERE was an idea.
*scribble scribble*
...sigh.
Megamind lay his head on the tabletop and rested his neck while he went over the events of the previous day and continued up until this point in time. Though he seldom admitted such things even in the face of irrefutable evidence (on the grounds that a mistake you learned from was never, ultimately, a mistake) Megamind had to accept he was an idiot for continuing with his kidnapping plans this morning without taking into account the, er… unfortunate event of the last evening.
The battle, glorious learning experience though it had been, had proven inadvisable at best in his current condition. It had been such a good plan, though! It couldn't have waited for clearer weather or recovery time for such a little problem! Though Megamind supposed he should have at least fixed the temperature regulator for the tank in Minion's suit before they left… he thought the fish might have caught a chill. Minion hadn't said anything though and participated with his usual cheer and helpfulness. Megamind would be sure to get him a treat. Perhaps some feeder fish to hunt in the bigger tank.
Yes, that sounded like a good idea.
Megamind scribbled that little note down as well and abruptly lost his urge to write anything yet again. He should really get up and do something about his predicament other than pou- glower about it. Even the chair was uncomfortable, and considering this was one of the more heavily padded ones in the lair he was just going to have to bear it lest Minion notice something was amiss. It was all his own fault, too, for not having better control over his own basic motor functions… but once again every time Megamind got into that sexually charged state his mind seemed to surrender to a pleasantly blank haze of sensation. It was almost as if his body was designed to make him lose control of his higher cognitive functions during sex! Even if he was only doing it to himself!
Not impossible as an intentional biological feature... but unlikely since it seemed an unwise evolutionary tactic at best. What if he was attacked while all that was going on!? There wouldn't be any defense! Hell even creatures on this planet used mid-coital ambush as a tactic to weed out their rivals. It made them horrible, horrible assholes but it was still effective as a strategy so they did it anyway. All's fair in love and war, and sometimes they were precisely the same thing.
He erased the doodle of Minion's first mechanical body that he'd been fussing with earlier and sat back in his chair to stretch out his arms and legs after sitting for far too long, then regretted it.
…..OW.
Megamind tensed with unexpected pain that only increased in intensity when the jolt increased the pain and thus made him tense harder on reflex. This was annoying. If it hadn't been for that damned noise!
Megamind didn't even remember what it had sounded like, really, and that worried him because he remembered EVERYTHING. Literally. But the sound itself just hadn't registered in his mind as much as how it made him feel. His awareness of the entire world had screamed "DANGER!" at him so fiercely he'd carelessly hurt himself and not even realized it until his orgasm had passed. Before the motor control portion of his brain could switch from 'that's fantastic' to 'ow, stop' he had focused on something else entirely; trying to identify the threat, and he couldn't focus on absolutely anything else until it had been calm and quiet long enough to satisfy that urge.
Once the main spasms were over the injury was only realized by examining his hands and discovering three things; a small patch of purpling skin stuck under his fingernails, a lot of red around it, and a worrying amount of clear fluid… which was continuing to emerge from the injury with every aftershock in small bursts.
He mentally berated himself for it every moment since it had occurred, but everyone was allowed one slip-up of common sense every now again right? What idiot managed to injure themselves while masturbating? That was the sort of thing you heard stories about but never expected any rational person to ever manage themselves... barring faulty implements that legitimately failed their intended function while being used, which was just a horrifying thought and prompted mental images that made him wince. Ew.
Still, it hadn't exactly been expected, had it? He hadn't had to worry about sudden noises freezing him since… oh. Years ago.
Metro Boy used to growl when they had attended school together. It had not been a pleasant experience to say the least. It had made Megamind a skittish bundle of nerves every time, even though it had never been directly intended for him. Block tower fell down? Growl. Broke the hundredth crayon of the day? Growl. Snapped a guitar string? Big nasty growl. The teacher and classmates would treat Metro Boy like a frustrated puppy when it happened because that noise was really the only consequence. The boy hero had never struck anyone, or shouted, or went on destructive rampages. It was as if he felt the frustrated rumble was capable of neatly communicating everything he needed to say.
Nobody ever noticed Megamind clutching Minion's orb and huddling down like a startled mouse because they had been paying too much attention to their favored alien; the one that looked more like them and had rich parents and could take them flying. Even as a child Megamind had wondered about this reaction. He couldn't seem to help recoiling. It was like when someone tapped your knee with a hammer and it made your leg pop up like it was on a spring. His assumption had been that their species' had interacted (how hard would it be for Metro Man to go planet-hopping with those powers, honestly?) and it hadn't ended well for his own kind; thus the response. Given the differences between what Megamind could hear and human hearing it was likely no one else heard that growl the same way he did, though. To Megamind, Metro Boy's vocal tantrums had made his eyes rattle in their sockets. To the Teacher and Metro Boy's little flunkies he might have actually sounded like a puppy for all Megamind knew. They apparently found the super powered tyke's tantrums adorable, likeable even.
That instantly alert nervousness Metro Boy's growls had once caused was NOTHING compared to the heart-freezing terror he'd experienced the day before, though. Still, it had been a similar effect. Perhaps he should investigate that. Metro Man didn't growl; he seemed to have grown out of it. So what had it been?
It must have been a resonance thing… Megamind knew that certain frequencies, such as 19 Hertz, triggered a fear reaction in humans. Automatically. They couldn't help it. It was likely instinctive because certain natural sounds, a tiger growl for example, had exactly that resonance and any developing proto-humans would have evolved to instinctively fear that noise and vibration… because it heralded the approach of a predator that would munch on your bones like so many pretzels. It made perfect sense because that fear response would give your body a hair-trigger on the eponymous fight or flight reflex and increase the chances of escape, thus survival.
Whatever that sound had been it must have simply, coincidentally, matched a natural resonance reaction that Megamind's own people had evolved for similar reasons, likely interaction with Metro Man's people. He already knew that certain noises were amplified for him due to the size and internal makeup of his head. Not all of his magnificent cranium was composed of brain - there were empty pockets in his head around his auditory canals, and the canals themselves were much larger than that of humans, so it made sense that noises affected him differently.
In the years he had been on earth there had been several causes for that fear reaction. It had happened a few times during particularly violent thunderstorms and the rumbling heavens made the whole building shake. On another occasion it was due to the pipe organ in an old church he was using as a site for a caper. The pipes vibrating in reaction to all of his surround sound equipment (background music is essential, after all) had triggered his body's danger alarm just enough to make him accidentally pronounce Metro City correctly when he stuttered in the middle of what was usually a single word for him. The shocked stare he had gotten from his nemesis and victim had almost been worth it.
Today, though, the fight had very definitely NOT been worth it. The strain of participating in it via all the usual runny-jumpy-climby stuff that battles involved had strained his injury significantly. And as embarrassing as the placement and cause of it was Megamind was reluctant to talk about it. The area between his legs had been actively bleeding by the time he had returned to his lair amazingly un-captured, which was actually frightening for a while because it made Megamind wonder what had been so important that it had pulled Metro Man away long enough to allow it. Megamind was certain Roxanne had been rescued, but after Metro Man flew away with her the hero had just seemed to lose interest in chasing his nemesis. It was almost insulting… but served his purposes today.
He took a deep breath and swallowed and tried to stay calm. The whole area felt hot and itchy and uncomfortable, and upon inspection with a mirror in the bathroom Megamind could tell the skin was NOT healing! It was drying and curling back and only exacerbating the problem, and that was only where his recent activities hadn't torn it still further. It didn't seem to be festering, which was a small miracle, but it certainly wasn't getting better either. After all that exertion the hole had actually gotten much bigger.
There was nothing beyond that Megamind had the courage to examine because it would require using a light and actually inspecting what bits of his insides that he had exposed, and he was afraid of what he would find there. Since he had discovered as a teenager that it felt good to press there the blue skinned alien assumed that his testicles were simply internal since he clearly had none on the outside. It was the only explanation he had for it and wasn't keen on investigating much further. It wasn't as if he could ask anyone else for answers about his body; there simply weren't any people that could offer him information without running painful and humiliating tests that Megamind was certainly not going to submit himself to enduring for the sake of mere curiosity.
Still; he had always healed before! At roughly four times the speed humans did, for that matter! So why wasn't this healing? It wasn't normal for his skin to just pull apart like that rather than mend. There must be a reason why he wasn't healing. Unfortunately the first thought Megamind had on that subject was that he had damaged himself in a way that his body wasn't able to compensate for.
NOW maybe he should swallow his pride and see the doctor at the prison by surrendering willingly? Or perhaps seek out treatment from another source, since this was likely beyond a simple prison physician's ability? Maybe someone that had dealings with aliens… but would they bother to treat a villain if such a person even existed? After all, the only other alien Megamind knew of hadn't likely needed any sort of medical care whatsoever. If Metro Man had needed a doctor at some point the cause of it certainly hadn't been one of the battles Megamind had participated in.
Megamind lifted his head off the desk and groaned, scowled at the paper that had stuck to his forehead and ripped it off, then continued ripping until the meaningless blueprint destruction made him feel better.
A concerned, "Sir, are you still pouting?" came from the kitchen area. Minion had noticed something was wrong and was going out of his way and doing his fishy best to cheer up his ward and boss. The smell of colorful confectionery wasn't doing it so much as knowing Minion was making the effort.
"NO, Minion. It is called glowering!" he retorted dryly, unable to summon much venom in his tone.
"I don't understand why you're glowering anyway. We won today!"
"I didn't win. I just escaped," Megamind hissed, too irritated to gloat. "There's a difference."
When Minion didn't continue the conversation Megamind put his head back down on the table. Now he'd given himself away. When did he ever pass up the opportunity to claim a victory? Minion wasn't going to let this go now, not until he'd poked at Megamind until he fessed up.
Oh, fuck it; he was pouting. At least it was for a good reason, though.
An open wound like this could be disastrous if it became infected, and it already felt feverish. A normal hospital was pointless. They wouldn't know what to do with an alien, would almost instantly call the police, and anyway they were notoriously centers of gossip and some chatty intern would inform the press of his presence faster than even the police would know about it. No… that would ruin his reputation as the #1 villain of Metrocity, one he had fought so long to achieve, and it was worth waiting a little while longer to see how things developed. If the wound got out of hand he could always ask Minion to take a look, humiliating as that thought was.
Megamind took another deep breath and he stood to pace so he could think to the steady beat of footfalls only to freeze in place and remember he was supposed to be taking shorter steps.
Urgh. Maybe he should just go back to bed and hope he felt better in the morning.
"The cookies are almost done, Sir," Minion called cheerfully from the back. "Do you want some tea with them?"
After cookies. He would go to bed after cookies.
Although... Megamind was sorely tempted to attempt duplicating that sound somehow, just to see if he could figure out what made it through association… so he could locate the original source and DE-BILITATE it to prevent this sort of thing happening again.
Yes, that was a much better idea, he thought, smiling and gripping his DE-GUN fondly.

Metro Man sat on the roof of the abandoned observatory and fretted.
He was watching Megamind from there and had been for a while now. The observatory gave him an amazingly unobscured view. After realizing how good of a view it really was Metro Man was amazed Megamind hadn't used the observatory for one of his plots yet since he wouldn't even have had to leave his warehouse to keep track of things, but maybe that was because it would have been too close to his hideout for comfort and drawn unwanted attention. Mobs had once been a common occurrence in Metro City before they had a hero to calm their constant, though justified, paranoia.
Even Metro Man found that prospect unacceptable and it was one of the main reasons he had never told anyone where Megamind's lair was. Megamind didn't deserve a good portion of the ire he got from the people of Metro City and inciting a lynch mob when he was, well, ineffectual evil… was a bit much. Roxanne had realized it years ago, and Metro Man hadn't been far behind, that Megamind had absolutely perfected the art of murderless mayhem, and he had done it on purpose. It had never been about Metro City - it had always been about the game. As long as Megamind kept it that way and the other villains, the really nasty ones, continued to take a backseat to the general theatrics… all the better. Metro Man didn't mind playing that game. It was boring and tedious, but something he could deal with so long as it continued to reduce the other types of criminal activity.
And it was essential that he keep this city safe. He'd known it since he was a child.
A scream alerted the hero to yet another issue he had to deal with and he left to do so, coming back fifteen minutes later. He had been flitting back and forth between his hero gig and keeping tabs on the other alien for a while now. By then Megamind was doodling on his planning paper and eating the frosted gingerbread Minion had been making since their return from this morning's caper. Metro Man sat and watched and continued to stall.
He WOULD have to go over there and try to start a conversation eventually. The problem was how to do that without starting a scuffle, because he really didn't think Megamind was up to that just now, and how to broach the actual subject he needed to talk about. How exactly does one casually mention they noticed you had an embarrassing injury? Wayne winced, imagining it. No matter how he began the speech kept starting with, "So I was watching you masturbate-" and just got worse from there. Yeah. THAT would not go over well.
But he had to do something.
Normally Megamind would pace while he thought but had stood silently panicking in one spot after returning from the escape Wayne had allowed him, which was somehow worse to watch than the usual pacing would have been. Megamind was clearly in pain - and an idiot for going ahead with the fight anyway - and Metro Man had resisted x-raying him again for fear of what he might find and guilt over that being the cause of this whole thing anyway. Now he wondered if he might not have a choice in the matter. Toward the end of the fight Metro Man could smell Megamind's blood again and had little doubt as to what the cause was, with all the running and climbing the little guy was doing trying to eke out some semblance of victory. It all ended the same way, though; Megamind fought, Metro Man beat him, Roxanne was rescued while her snark knight commentary made the crowd cheer. The same old routine.
Then Wayne had made the decision that he didn't want to have this particular conversation while under guard, in the prison, while Megamind had to deal with the Warden's presence during what was sure to be a humiliating conversation with all that surveillance and being handcuffed to the chair he was sitting in. So he'd taken his sweet time getting Roxanne settled while she asked him why he was deliberately letting Megamind get away and Metro Man told her to stop being nosy. He should have known better because now she was just interested.
Now that Wayne thought about it there was one excuse he could think of for stopping by Megamind's lair, and how to bring up the subject, if he just bent the truth a little. But it would require he know the current condition of the injury he'd caused.
Oh well. In for an inch, in for a mile, he supposed. As long as he didn't outright lie.
Focusing his x-ray on the blue body again, Metro Man grunted a little sympathetically. The tear had gotten bigger; it was twice as big as it had been yesterday and now ran almost the entire length of that membrane, as well as further, smaller tears spidering out from the middle. Yeah, that thing wasn't going to heal. It clearly wanted to be open and, upon focusing down further to a cellular level, there was a clear divide between the healthy cells around it and the membrane itself. They were two different structures to the point where the remaining bits of that membrane might just pull off like a the plastic seal on a container. Hell, the membrane might have all come off in one uniform piece when healthy.
Just now, though, the skin there was hanging on for all it was worth despite simply not having the healing capabilities of the flesh it was attached to; it was drying out because the blood flow had been reduced, presumably triggered by the damage, as if the blue body had simply given up on it and had signed a sort of biological eviction notice. Wayne guessed that little built-in tourniquet trick was meant to prevent any infection or festering from that disposable bit of skin getting into the structure around it, and that was a really cool feature if you didn't think too hard about it evolving because at some point that trick had been necessary.
It was still clearly attached, though, and enough blood was present to make it look terrible as the tearing continued to spread, and poor Megs HAD to be feeling it. Wayne Scott, Metro Man, had never felt physical pain. But he did know the extent of emotional turmoil it took to affect the way he moved and how he carried himself and how much was needed to make him wince. He couldn't imagine feeling that physically. It must have been hell.
The tunnel beyond didn't appear to be damaged in any way nor did anything else in the blue body aside from the usual cuts and bruises typical of a post-battle Megamind. Aside from the obvious, he was perfectly healthy. Good.
Metro Man was forced to refocus when Megamind abruptly stood and started doing odd things. First Megamind did a sort of scan on his own head and ticked away on his computer to analyze the results, then he started putting something together. Wayne glanced curiously at the paper the villain had been sketching on, remembered it was all Greek to him aside from little pictures he could recognize like screws and metal sheets, and watched the inventor himself for clues. It took very little time to put together, actually. The device was a simple speaker as far as he could tell, though it had a lot of strangely shaped empty spaces inside it. The sound it initially made was pretty cute, really, like an aggressive purr. If babies growled it would sound like that, he was sure.
Minion poked his head… bowl… whatever out from the kitchen area and brought out another plate of cookies. "That sounds familiar, sir."
Megamind nodded and swallowed. Why did he look so nervous? "It's as close as I could get to the sound my worthy adversary used to make as a tiny titan in shool. Remember that little growl? That sadly spoiled socialite used it as a way of expressing ire over every little thing that didn't go his way, never noticing how it affected me."
Metro Man sat up and watched with interest. He didn't actually remember doing it in school when Megamind was there. He thought he would have stopped by then.
Minion frowned. "Yeah. Lucky you were already in the corner most times or you might have jumped back into another student and just gotten into even more trouble. Why are you bringing it up, though?"
"Because, Minion, I'm tired of falling prey to that auditory affliction that assails me from time to time. Remember the pipe organ incident? And the spring storms? I believe that there is a resonance at play here - a biological alarm system that my people evolved for a reason. Perhaps in response to seismic activity or predators." Megamind fiddled with the dials and made the sound a bit louder and a little bit deeper. Though his hands had begun to shake unsteadily Megamind seemed pleased with the effect. "I am going to create a mechanization that tracks down things that may cause that particular resonance and destroy it!"
Metro Man raised a brow. He wondered if Megamind was going to recognize the main problem with that before actually trying it.
Minion bobbed side to side in his tank in a considering way. "Sir, someone will eventually order a new pipe organ, and you can't control the weather; Lady Doppler has dibs and you have to obey the villain code unless you plan to kill her; those are the rules. Anything else that makes a similar sound would probably be mechanical and used for something important. You're basically burning all the spinning wheels in the kingdom and just hoping everyone will have their thread and fabric imported instead of just replacing the spinning wheels."
Megamind crossed his arms and gave his cohort an analyzing look. "Spinning wheels?"
"I may have been watching the Disney Channel, sir."
"That doesn't sound very evil. Are you at least stealing the cable?"
"Oh, of course!" Minion smiled.
Megamind sighed and stared at the speaker. "Well, what do you suggest I do, Minion?"
The fish held out his tray and put it down when they were waved away. "Well, Sir, will you at least tell me why you need to do anything at all?"
Megamind grunted and muttered something Metro Man couldn't hear, then sighed. "Something happened yesterday that triggered that response. I don't know what made the noise but I felt like the world would end if I didn't stay still and figure out what the threat was. I've never been that scared before. Not since the first time I was falling in the middle of a caper and wasn't certain yet if Metro Man would bother to catch me."
Metro Man winced and clenched his fists.
Megamind continued. "So I need to find out what made that noise and get rid of it, or at least change it somehow to that it can't make that sound again. And I can't do that until I duplicate the noise so I know what to scan for… then the brain-bots can find the source."
Minion nodded, or more accurately bobbed in his bowl. "Alright. How can I help?"
"You can stay here and turn off the simulator once it reaches the right frequency," Megamind said simply.
Confused, Minion tilted sideways in the water. "Why can't you do that, Sir?"
Megamind swallowed. "Because once it hits the right frequency it is very likely I won't be able to move anymore."
Metro Man was torn between wanting to go in there now and explain himself, or waiting to see what his growl sounded like from an outside perspective. As it turned out he didn't have much time to wonder about it at all because Megamind's clever fingers found the frequency almost instantly - presumably that was the purpose of scanning his own head. He'd been trying to figure out what noises would reverberate in the cavities.
Megamind dropped like he'd been deactivated. Minion forgot his duty to turn off the device momentarily in his panic while he tried to revive his ward.
And Metro Man attacked on reflex.
An instant after the thing had begun that deep rumbling it was encased in two super-powered fists and crushed. Metro Man didn't know why he wanted so badly to destroy the thing, he just did, and he knew it was hurting Megamind.
Seconds passed while Metro Man panted and tried to contain the irrational urge to further crush the bits of machinery still in his hands. Minion gaped and lifted one metal finger as if he was going to speak but couldn't find the words, and Megamind-
Megamind lay so still it would have been easy to mistake him for a holographic image put there to distract. He had even stopped breathing. It wasn't until Metro Man drifted toward him that the villain broke and scrabbled back with only three limbs; the fourth reaching for his DE-GUN.
Metro Man shook his head, not knowing why he had bothered. "Put it down," he ordered, disturbed by Megamind's behavior. It just wasn't normal. "You know that thing doesn't work on me anyway."
Megamind either didn't hear or care because he kept at it, crying out when he finally hit a solid surface with his back and shakily fussing with the setting wheel on his weapon.
"You've already tried all of them, Megamind," the hero reasoned. "Please, just calm down." He hoped that he could get a reasonable conversation out of the other alien, but conciliating him enough to do that always seemed like such an insane chore. And it wasn't terribly likely to be easy after Metro Man had stormed in and smashed something because… actually he didn't know that last part. "Listen, we need to tal-"
Megamind ignored him and fired.
The blast hit him like a bolt of lightning. Metro Man wasn't hurt in the slightest, predictably, though he found his hair suddenly standing on end and both heard and felt his body crackling with an insistent blue static. At this point the hero intended to ask what the purpose in even trying that particular gun was when all previous experience proved it wouldn't work. Megamind had hit his enemy with every setting; DE-STROY, DE-HYDRATE, DE-COMPRESS, DE-MORALIZE, DE-BILITATE, DE-ATH RAY, DE-REGULATE… none of them had been even remotely effective. How many more settings could there possibly be? It wasn't even that big of a wheel.
Metro Man's inquiry died on his lips, though, when something occurred that the hero wouldn't have been able to predict even if he'd had years in which to make a list of all the cartoony slapstick bullshit things for that gun to do.
A short instant after that crackling beam hit him,with a great WHOOSH that had absolutely no right to sound like a hoard of angry pigeons taking flight, every single solitary bit of loose hanging paper in Megamind's lair leapt toward Metro Man. As this was quite a considerable amount of paper given the blue man's planning methods it wasn't long before the hero was enveloped in it. Metro Man startled and tried to at least bat them away from his face, but all that did was help the pieces his hands contacted stick there instead, eventually giving off the impression that he was wearing over-sized paper mache boxing gloves. By the time this weird function of the DE-GUN was complete Metro Man was absolutely coated in the stuff.
This was an odd but amazingly effective method of slowing Metro Man down for two major reasons.
First, he wasn't about to use his laser vision to cut through the paper when he couldn't see what he was aiming at. Megamind knew damned well that his nemesis couldn't use his X-ray vision to see through his own eyelids, and that they would close on reflex when suddenly covered in anything, clingy paper bits included. Using his lasers without guidance ran the risk of hurting someone and he just wasn't going to do that. Flailing about trying to catch someone he couldn't see was dangerous for the same reason, only relevant to controlling his strength instead.
Second, Metro Man had a hard time focusing his super hearing properly immediately after a loud noise threw off his internal volume dial. One of the main drawbacks of super hearing was that it made loud noises proportionally LOUDER; and essentially stunted his ability to hear quiet things until the shock wore off. Thousands of loose bits of planning paper, though individually tolerable in terms of rustle, had the combined auditory force of broadcast static blasted over a loudspeaker inches from his head when it all whacked onto him simultaneously… and now the only things Metro Man could hear were his own muffled complaints and his heartbeat roaring in his ears.
Annoyed, shocked, and grudgingly impressed with his very clever if comical little nemesis, Metro Man knelt down and started trying to pull the mercilessly well-adhered bits of ridiculousness off of himself. That was when he realized the DE-GUN beam that had summoned the papers must have also activated a dormant adhesive, because he was having considerable trouble getting the evil things off without taking his costume and hair off with them.
The first thing he got uncovered after freeing his fingers was his mouth, at which point he couldn't help snapping. "Son of a Jack-o-Lantern! Did you glue these? How does that even work!?"
He had been hoping for a monologue on how he couldn't possibly understand the intricacies of manufacturing multi-functional weapons of evil, but Megamind and Minion were both wisely, and strangely, remaining silent. All the hero could sense was the vibrations in the floor through his knees and toes that indicated they were essentially scampering off. He couldn't even tell what direction they were going in or how fast, just that the vibrations were getting weaker. And yet again Metro Man found himself impressed.
Anyone else with his powers wouldn't have been bothered with simply burning and flailing his way out of this. Megamind's strategy on this trap was relying entirely on how much Metro Man didn't want to cause them any harm if it could be avoided, and it was working. As far as a 'run for it' plan went, this was a damned good one, even considering the powers they were up against.
That was the biggest difference between a normal mobster-type villain and scientist. Scientists made it their purpose in life to figure out what to do by proving what wouldn't work until they found something that did, no matter how stupid it initially seemed. The more they failed, the more they learned. In a way they craved failure because it taught them what direction was the wrong one to go in and showed them, purely by misdirection, the right path. Logic played a surprisingly minuscule part in a lot of their reasoning. Whereas most villains thought bigger and better guns might help (they did not) Megamind would see a Metro Man pinata in a storefront, put two and eighty four and electrically-activated adhesive together, and come up with THIS. And it would work far better than anything the purely logically-minded people would come up with.
Damn it, too, because this was annoying. He'd already scared the hell out of them. His only morally acceptable choice was to meticulously peel the things off, even if it took a while.
Eventually Metro Man managed to free his head, hands, and enough of his body to move unimpeded… though now he looked like a walking advertisement for Megamind's desperate need for a filing cabinet… or a truckload of them. If he tried to take off any more of the papers he would be having an already awkward conversation Au natural since the paper and fabric refused to relinquish their bond, which Megamind would only have himself to blame for.
Metro Man was essentially wearing a suit made of plans for capers he had already thwarted.
And Megamind and Minion were gone. Most of Minion was there, though, because Megamind had simply snatched the bowl off of the robot body and scarpered.
Metro Man stood there and grumbled to himself.
When Megamind actually had a reason not to get caught he was a slippery little bastard indeed. This might be harder than he thought.

THERE - the DE-COUPAGE setting has a function. You're welcome! ^_^
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