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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
- 5
- 6
- 7
You know, the only thing worse than having no idea where to go or what to do in a story is having too many ideas and having to whittle it down. They're all so good that you don't know which ones to go with and which ones to abandon, and you know you can't use all of them but you still really, really want to!
Please know that I am VERY aware I am not an expert in genetics, chemistry, evolution, or what-have-you by any standards. Still… I'd like to think I have done enough research to satisfy, at the very least, a fanfiction for a movie that put comic book histories in a blender and made awesome sauce. So for those who have been waiting for me to just spit out the facts already; here ya' go.
I hope you like it.

Form and Function
"Real biologists who actually do the research will tell you that they almost never find a phenomenon, no matter how odd or irrelevant it looks when they first see it, that doesn't prove to serve a function. The outcome itself may be due to small accidents of evolution." ~E. O. Wilson

Bernard was sweet, really, but he needed to stop pestering her.
She'd only been working for two days straight. Considering the hours she regularly pulled on other projects this was barely an annoyance. As if he had any room to be judgmental after he'd spent so long making transcriptions, editing, and cataloguing everything they'd learned in the interviews, and subsequently ferreting out how to get permission from Megamind to use most of it.
As it turned out he didn't need to plead very much. The significant part Bernard had played in making Megamind the undisputed main subject of the Villain Wing in the Museum had earned the curator boons - he'd gotten permission to use a far larger portion of the interview than even Dr. Mardling had expected. In fact, Megamind had been extremely helpful to the point of it being downright weird, but then Dr. Mardling remembered the speech she had given him about feeling alone and lacking information and considered he might have felt the same way, striking up an odd kinship.
Besides, Metro Man could sense lies by paying attention to heartbeat and other factors. He'd have said something if Megamind was being deceptive. At least unreasonably so.
That was what was worrying her, though.
If she hadn't gathered the evidence herself she would have thought Megamind was being intentionally misleading with his physical stats. As it was they were extremely similar to Metro Man's if she accounted for the difference in their body frames. Metro Man had been correct; their internal arrangement was nearly identical aside from the sexual organs. If they hadn't clearly been from different worlds then she would have sworn they were two branches from the same evolutionary tree… then again there were universal traits and parochial traits when things developed. Perhaps this was just the internal arrangement that worked best for each creature as a universal?
Still, it was similar. Eerily similar, in fact. When measuring by human standards they had all too much in common, or more accurately they were off the charts in exactly the same ways.
Megamind weighed too much for his height, because like the other alien in their midst he was just physically denser than the denizens of this world. His blood pressure was too high and his blood sugar too low (surprising considering his sugar-laden dietary survey). There was no vitamin D in him whatsoever aside from some trace amounts, which was explained by the fact that there were large amounts of it in his urine; some filtering organ that acted like a liver must have been ridding him of any of the native vitamin he got from his food as if it were a contaminant.
The purpose vitamin D usually served in the body was likely fulfilled by the substance they couldn't identify from his blood tests. It seemed to be produced by his body for the same reason as vitamin D, and via roughly the same method – sun exposure. Given that Megamind theorized their worlds had circled a red sun and not a yellow one that would mean he was likely getting way too much sunlight, as well as neatly explaining the chemical difference since the levels of light exposure were so very different.
Vitamins were a good thing unless you got an overdose, and that worried her greatly. She suggested he not ingest too much vitamin D if his body didn't want it there, and avoid too much sunlight if possible and wear any sunscreens that didn't cause him discomfort. Megamind had said she'd have to talk to the warden about recess, he wasn't allowed sunscreen in prison since he'd once made a bomb with it (and various other toiletries), and fuck off away from his coffee; so no dice there.
All of those things, to the letter, were precisely mirrored in Metro Man, now that she had his blood tests to verify those things. Right down to the similar substance she couldn't identify.
There was even the fact that, independent of each other and decades apart, both aliens professed a love of anything very high in sulfur as far as foods were concerned. Durian was listed in both of their favorites lists, while Megamind seemed to favor magnesium as well in the form of very dark chocolate, dried fruit, almonds, pumpkin, and more chocolate. Metro Man liked all that high magnesium fare as well, he simply preferred things high in sulfur by far. Their diets were too similar to ignore the corollaries.
Dr. Mardling sighed and put her glasses down, rubbing her temples. Having finally obtained samples of Metro Man's blood she had instantly begun chemical mapping and further DNA tests, as well as those of Megamind's, and even for computers the likes of which she possessed that took TIME. So few people realized just how HUGE the code to make a living thing was. The samples she had gotten from Metro Man before only really contained what she could get from his semen; blood was far more useful.
The only thing she was positive of was that they were oviparous mammals. Everything from then on was still up for debate.
Genetically speaking there was no such thing as a group of animals that all behaved exactly the same way; Pandas were classified as carnivores and almost completely herbivorous, Whales were mammals that looked as fishy as could be, Echidnas and Platypus laid eggs despite being mammals, certain fish and one species of bird produced a milk-like substance to feed their young like mammals. The sheer number and variety of mating strategies, sex-determination systems, and gender types were mind-boggling. Hermaphrodites were extremely common in nature; more so than many people were comfortable admitting, and some creatures even changed gender when environmental factors required it like the clownfish. There were infertile drones mass-produced for the sake of manual labor, and extremely fertile queens that mated once and kept popping out eggs forever after. A type of lizard had no males whatsoever and simply cloned themselves, and engaged in sex with other females when they liked. And many, many, many more things that a lot of people got fussy about, prehensile penises included. In the animal kingdom all of those things were perfectly normal.
Megamind said it himself; their planets had a lot longer to evolve than anything on this planet had the chance to thus far. Any effective strategy could have thrived, even if there were no existing examples on this planet to compare them to.
There was one thing she had definitely discovered after examining Metro Man's sperm, though; the ovum decided the gender, not the seed. Metro Man was shooting nothing but boys. Typically, that indicated birds or reptiles here, but mammals had evolved from reptiles and could very likely have held on to that sex determination system even after reaching the warm-blooded stage on either world.
With nothing more to analyze until the DNA mapping came back, she worked on what she DID know, and that was an awful lot of sexual data the two had given her to help her figure out how they really functioned.
Infuriatingly enough that left her with more questions than answers, because despite the drastic and obvious sexual differences… they had nearly identical penises. Both had a baculum of the same basic shape and length. Both of them engorged after penetration, after which the head expanded. They both pulled UP to stimulate themselves, locking their fingers underneath the head when self-stimulating, indicating that intercourse mainly relied on pulling and not thrusting. From there it thankfully diverged a bit, though, and she had to examine them one-by-one.
When Metro Man, ejaculated it happened in three separate stages.
The first stage leading up to the actual paroxysm contained about 20% of the overall total amount of sperm released in any given session. This initial flow was mostly fluid and only half as dense as human ejaculate, yet contained the same number of actual sperm as a normal human would produce in total. This stage could easily occur before penetration since it preceded orgasm and most often even engorgement. Dr. Mardling theorized that one of the purposes of this first stage might be to provide additional lubrication; useful in a species that evidently got right down to business with little foreplay (if the comments Metro Man had relayed from his previous lovers were accurate).
The second stage occurred at the moment of orgasm and released a much thicker substance containing 70% or so of the total spermatozoa. This 'core' ejaculate was quite dense; the consistency of cake frosting being forced out of a tube. It stuck relentlessly where it was put and remained there until it was washed, scraped, or dissolved in an alkaline solution. In fact for semen it contained nearly no alkaline whatsoever, which probably explained why the sperm cells were inert. Alkalines were important.
The third stage of ejaculate was astoundingly far thicker. It emerged at the consistency of warm marshmallow and hardened very quickly from there to the tacky consistency of warm rubber. This substance contained the straggling, unlucky 10% of sperm that hadn't gotten out in time to avoid becoming part of the last stage. Given the strangeness of the first two stages, this one was blessedly obvious in function.
Dr. Mardling could only assume this last stage was a copulatory plug. Creatures on Earth produced copulatory plugs all the time. Squirrels, Kangaroos, bees, and even some primates produced them. The main benefit was to give the sperm a time advantage over any subsequent mating and keep that specific male's semen right where it needed to be. Competition for mates was often fierce and the longer you could lock your own DNA in place the better. Most species used this as a method of ensuring fertilization as an alternative to guarding their mates in a territory, not in addition to it; so Metro Man's species must have been competitive as hell. And like many copulatory plugs, this substance was composed mainly of mild acids.
To illustrate this further came the actual sperm count. By sheer numbers; the man was outstripping every creature she knew of in terms of semen production for body size. By volume he produced about an ounce on the core ejaculate. The top side of average for a human male was 6.5 milliliters… so he was already producing over eight times what humans did just by volume. Compensating for density was an entirely different matter… if the viscosity of the semen was compensated for until it reached the same consistency as human ejaculate the man comparatively came literal buckets.
There was just one major problem with it; the spermatozoa were, again, inactive. Inert. They didn't move whatsoever, which wasn't all that surprising considering all the missing ingredients normally present in most creatures' ejaculate. Each individual sperm was a little amoeboid thing that was clearly designed to crawl to its destination rather than swim, so a lot less fluid was really needed for that in the first place – 'swimmers' need something to swim in and 'crawlers' would just need to be in the right place. But a complete absence of any alkaline substances was impossible unless the female anatomy of Metro Man's species was unlike anything Dr. Mardling had ever seen in nature on earth.
It was entirely possible that the females of the species possessed the alkalines and remaining substances that Metro Man lacked, but that seemed like it would be detrimental to a vagina considering the acidity of the mucous membranes had a direct function. To a point that just didn't make any SENSE because vaginas tended to be acidic in order to keep themselves clean. The semen usually carried levels of alkaline needed to reduce that acidity… just so that the sperm could survive there long enough to do their job.
Metro Man's 'crawlers' were probably perfectly fine the way they were, and the female's body would provide all the missing ingredients. But then the copulatory plug issue came back, because it could be dissolved by alkaline solutions over time. If the female's body produced the alkalines, wouldn't the plug just dissolve around the edges and fall out before it could harden? Dr. Mardling had experimented with this theory years before (she'd had access to the semen, at least, if not the blood) and found it didn't take much to break down the seal if there was direct contact.
That made the idea that the female filled in those chemical gaps extremely unlikely.
And this was yet another dead-end for now.
Here Dr. Mardling ran out of things to analyze on Metro Man until more information came back, so she moved on to Megamind… who was ostensibly he most interesting alien she had ever examined, despite there only being two in existence on Earth that she knew of.

Of course Megamind had been doing his own research.
The first thing he did was loosely study everything he could about creatures' mating strategies on Earth, put them on mental file as mere examples, and start all on his own without bothering with direct comparison. His DNA was unlike anything here regardless and nothing was likely to match up anyway; trying would have been counter-productive and a common human failing in logic. The good doctor had been quite helpful, but she was still human and Megamind was very much not. Thus he continued on his own and doubted she would discover anything he couldn't work out for himself.
Aside from the functional direction of his tunnel, that is… he would have taken an embarrassingly long time to figure that one out without a second party available to physically probe him for information and he knew it.
The additional set of samples and all information that Megamind had demanded was blessedly unopposed by any party involved. He'd simply been given them and allowed to leave, as per the agreement he'd made with the brute to begin with… but he was still surprised when it had actually been granted without argument. Dr. Mardling promise Megamind hadn't doubted for a moment after she'd shared her own story, but Metro Man had been oddly accepting of the situation. Then again the man had looked strangely pale after Megamind came out of the back room and had left in rather a hurry. Megamind certainly wouldn't have allowed the hero to run off with samples of his body… though come to think of it the idiot wouldn't have known what to do with it from a scientific standpoint and the thought of him wanting it for any other reason was just damned creepy.
Ah well, back to business.
Megamind took five hours to assemble what he needed for the DNA mapping, Blood sample analysis, and general analysis of all other gathered fluids, skin samples, and what-have-you. Of course the skin samples were his own; Dr. Mardling hadn't asked for them, which Megamind thought was out of fairness because she was unlikely to get them from Metro Man. HE preferred to be thorough and would use some of the DNA he had been provided from Metro Man to synthetically grow a skin sample even if he couldn't get it from the man himself. That machine took fifteen minutes to build, since the hero's cells seemed to prefer staying alive and were tenacious enough that he didn't need the constant care and attention to the process that human cells would have required. He would have been surprised if ceasing to refrigerate them would have had any effect whatsoever on the shelf life.
That done Megamind put everything to work and… had some hot cocoa and watched television while the machines worked for him. He generally made nothing that required his intervention outside capers (for dramatic effect, of course) and there was no reason he couldn't theorize and watch something funny at the same time. When the egg timer went off Megamind had enjoyed himself thoroughly for an hour and a half and had several hundred ideas gently bouncing off one another in his head like bubbles. They occasionally linked and formed chains, but mostly he was saving the really solid thinking for when he had all the data back from analysis.
From that point on all he had to do was put whatever he had found up for display so he could stare at it all at once and think. The longest part of this entire process was retrieving the ball of string from the brain-bots, who seemed to be playing catch with it.
The evidence he had gotten from the medical examinations was all rudimentary stuff he had mostly already known aside from what he'd discovered from the blood sample Metro Man had given. The skin samples and analysis of them gave him no new information. Nearly everything he had surmised about his enemy's body and how it worked had been correct to begin with. There were only so many methods a body could use to become that damnably resilient, and theory 4 had been correct (with smatterings of theory 2 thrown in).
The DNA and chemical mapping was the most exciting part, because try as he might Megamind had never been able to get a sample from the brute before. When they were complete Megamind went through his own results first, then looked over Metro Man's and was disturbed by how similar they looked at a glance.
Then he had the computer analyze how close the results were to each other to see how long ago evolution had split their species from the root.
*…..*
*...*
*?!*
*!*
Seven minutes later Minion followed three frantic brain-bots to where Megamind was hyperventilating on the floor in a cold sweat.

Dr. Mardling called Bernard's office the instant she had the results back from the DNA mapping.
"Don't you ever sleep?" he drawled.
"Says the man who's still here too," she snapped. "I know what's going on and you're going to think I'm insane-"
"Too late, woman."
"-but you'd better get over here now."
"Fine," Bernard conceded, and headed over to her office.
Apparently she was so excited she couldn't wait the seven minutes it would take him to navigate his way to the other side of the museum and called his phone while he was midway there. He picked up and didn't even bother with a greeting, or even a 'what?'. He knew she'd start ranting as soon as he answered.
"Do you know how close the DNA is between Humans and Chimpanzees or Bonobos?" she demanded.
"No, I just heard it's close," he sighed. "Can this wait?"
"The difference between them is roughly 1.2%. That's not a lot really. But it's enough for us to be different species. See that 1.2% isn't just instructions on 'how to make an ape', it's like a program and that little bit of difference is composed of a lot of things that tell the rest of the code how to organize itself," she continued doggedly. "How far are you?"
"Halfway up Metro Man's nose," the man answered, clutching his coat around himself on the bridge between the towers. "Whoever decided to keep these bridges open-air should be flogged."
"I believe that was you," she laughed.
"Go on then."
Bernard heard frantic typing in the background as she spoke. "On that same percentage scale the average difference between individual humans is about 0.1%. If the codes are that close, then it's pretty much a given that the subjects are the same species."
"And this is important for me to know on the way there, why?" he asked as he entered the Hero Wing.
"Because Metro Man and Megamind are only divergent from each other by 0.0963%!"
Bernard snorted. "Then run your number again because they can't be the same species."
"Oh, no – this isn't just about the numbers anymore. I'll show you the proof when you get here. They are definitely the same species!"
"If you must," he said, then flipped his phone shut. Before he went to her office he went by the bathrooms and snack machines first, only daring to head into one of her lectures with and empty bladder and something sugary to put in his stomach to make the experience more bearable.

"How the hell did you manage that, Vanessa?" the curator demanded when he walked in and saw something that should have been impossible on her screen.
He knew very well that Merto Man's ameaboid sperm were and had always been dormant. But now he saw them – they couldn't have been anything else – displayed on her screen and squirming around like disturbing little balloon animals.
She turned and gave him a bag-eyed, tired grin and snatched the second hot chocolate he had brought up with him. "After I got the results back from the DNA mapping I mixed the fluid samples I got from Megamind into some of Metro Man's-"
"EW," Bernard complained.
"Don't you know what this means!?" she demanded hotly. "It's a spermatheca!"
"A what? What is?" he drawled.
"The organ I couldn't identify in Megamind!"
"Alright, but what's a spermatheca?" he sighed.
She whipped around and pulled up a few new windows. "You know how queen bees can mate only once and keep making eggs pretty much forever? It's because they have a spermatheca; an organ specifically meant to store, preserve, and sometimes selectively release sperm when needed. I've only ever encountered this type of organ in females or hermaphrodites, never in a male! But it looks like there are two distinct types of males in this species and each one only produces half of the ingredients to make effective sperm! The enzymes I got from Megamind are almost entirely alkalines and other chemicals that trigger capacitation and hyperactivation, which Metro Man's body can't do because his glands don't produce all of the needed ingredients!"
"Keep in mind I'm not an Exobiologist," he snapped.
"Okay," she conceded, taking a few breaths to calm down and taking a few sips of the hot chocolate to help with thought and energy levels. "Think of it like a mixing pot. You know how the human body produces sperm, right?"
Bernard made a disgusted face. "As long as it works I don't need to know how."
"It takes a lot more than one organ to make sperm, Bern," she said. "It's a succession of things – vesicles, ducts, glands, enzymes… lots of stuff goes into making sperm work. They're not just little soldiers that pop out ready to march without training and supplies, is what I'm saying. If you took an individual sperm cell out of the seminal vesicle without letting it mix with all the glandular fluids and things that it would normally be mixed with on the way out of the body then you'd wind up with the same problem Metro Man has now; it'd only be half complete."
"The stuff Megamind makes in the spermathecal thing wakes up the dormant crawlers," he repeated flatly. "So Megamind is what? If their chromosomes indicate a diploid system and there are clearly females in Megamind's memories, then how the hell can you have three genders?"
"Megamind is a male! They're both male! The trigger for this dual male system is in an autosome, not an allosome; basically there's a separate set of instructions that takes the complete 'male' code and says 'use these bits but not those bits' and controls how they grow and develop into adults. The opening leading to Megamind's spermathecal probably wasn't capable of being broken into until recently, after puberty had begun. Otherwise it would have been closed up."
"I guess that makes sense," Bernard mused. "The same thing triggers the way their brains work, right? Same processing power, different 'on' switches."
"Right! That even reinforces the female mimic theory because the females Megamind told us about look and act exactly like the blue males he saw. They work the same way right down to the mental switches. Still – no matter how much they resemble the females in look and mental function, the Blue Males are still very much male. But neither male can produce fully viable semen unless the two of them work together. This species doesn't just have a single male, it has… cooperative males. Neither one of which is capable of breeding independently. Each type of male has only half of what's needed to make a fully-fertile sperm cell."
"So what does that mean exactly?" he asked.
"It MEANS that it takes three people to make a baby," she explained patiently. "At least. I don't have a female here so I can't compare beyond the two males we have access to. The Territorial Males mate with the Blue Males, then the Blue Males inseminate the Female with the now active spermatozoa."
Bernard took off his glasses, rubbed his temples, put them back on. It was a weird mental image and now he couldn't get rid of it. In order for breeding to work for this species you had males having sex with each other before impregnating a female was even possible, and that was normal. Alien indeed. He snapped, "How did that evolve!?"
"I have a theory!"
"Of course you do."
"What's the one thing that's rampant in Territorial creatures?"
"Fighting," he said automatically.
"No!" She paused and considered the sense of that answer. "Well, yes… but I meant something else," Dr. Mardling said. "Cheating. Lots of Territorial animals have developed ways to cheat to maintain genetic diversity, and one of those things is different types of males. There could be two or three types even when you look at animals we have here; birds, fish, lizards, snakes… One of those types is usually a female mimic that looks the way he does in order to sneak past the bigger, stronger males and spread his genes around without getting thrown out of the territory."
"So the first step in your theory is that the territorial thing started first in a simple male/female species with that mimic, with both types of males fully fertile on their own, and somehow led to a dual male situation?" Bernard asked.
Dr. Mardling took more of the sugary drink and let it heat the inside of her mouth before swallowing. She nodded. "Yeah. It might have started with developmental mimicry, sort of like how cheetah cubs have black and white striped fur on their backs that mimic the pattern of the honey badger, because resembling something that vicious helped them escape from predators via mistaken identity. Lions are terrified of honey badgers if they've ever met one, and they'd be leery about facing anything black and white striped again, in addition to the already existing fear of skunks. So that pattern helps keep the cheetah cubs safe and they live long enough to shed that patterned baby-fur and survive to adulthood."
Bernard yawned and sat in the nearest chair. "And with offspring that looked entirely female – cute blue things with big heads – the territorial male would have had trouble telling which were the males he needed to either get rid of or kick out of his territory until they were old enough to survive on their own."
"Yes! If all the males are Territorial, then inevitably the young males will eventually have to leave and establish their own areas. So as a fail-safe to ensure they're old enough to make it they could have been born blue and only developed the obviously male coloring and shape later on." Dr. Mardling opened up another window and started typing out everything they were discussing so she could present it to her patients when she called them later to let them know of their findings. "Then Evolution figured out pretty quickly that looking like a female made it easier for some of those young males to sneak in under the bigger males' radar and spread their genes. That must have proven such an effective strategy that the young males that stayed blue longer passed on their genes further until certain blue males stopped growing up to be Territorial and became either live-in female mimics or nomads going from place to place spreading their DNA where the females weren't being watched too closely."
"Females are usually the driving force for this sort of strategic breeding, aren't they?" Bernard asked. "Everyone is mainly concerned with spreading their own DNA; males and females alike. So with a variety of male types to choose from she can have both strong males to look after her and her daughters and nomadic, intelligent males to spread her DNA far and wide."
"Right!" Dr. Mardling sighed and turned around. "Here's where it gets depressing though. Most species would have just stopped there. But with the amount of time a red sun would have given them to develop into more advanced strategies… can you guess the next step?"
"They got intelligent enough to figure out what genes were, and how DNA crossed over, and the blue males were suddenly in trouble. Sentience combined with intelligence and the big guys figured it out." Bernard made a face and sat back in his chair. "Ick, that sounds like the war of the sexes on a Holocaust level of stupid. But what remotely intelligent female is going to stick around with a male that threatens her babies, mimics or not?"
"Ah, but that's the point. They won't," Dr. Mardling stated flatly. "That drove stronger Territorial males to keep the females in line, and more intelligent females to compensate, and more intelligent and efficient female mimics to get past them both and survive."
"As strong as Metro Man, even his ancestors, must be; how did the blue guys stand a chance?" Bernard asked.
The woman swished her cup around morosely. "I suppose eventually the blue males managed to survive by becoming distributors of the Territorial males DNA and not their own. I'm not sure if that evolved or if it was genetic engineering to both placate the females rather than killing off the mimics and keep the mimics from out-breeding their patriarchs – both are possible with intelligent creatures. But we both know that the territorial males were going to come out on top somehow, and the blue males were doomed unless they stopped being competition."
"So if both types of males eventually wound up needing each other, who won?" Bernard asked.
She shook her head at him. "You're thinking of this as a competition between the males. It's not. The females won. This sort of thing is always significantly influenced by the females because they have the most control over the offspring. Think: who would make a better father? The guy always off fighting or the smart blue males that can stay with them at all times and help with the children? The first type is necessary, but the second type is just wanted. If this was just a competition between the males then the territorial ones would have eradicated the blue males LONG before this weird genetic rock-paper-scissors thing happened."
"Oh, I see now." Bernard snorted. "The females had the option of having the best of both types of males and grasped at it until they got their way."
Dr. Mardling agreed. "If only in some areas in the beginning; the two types of males would have thrived together. Having the blue males in the territory started attracting more females because a) they knew they'd have help raising the offspring if the mimics decided to stay and not wander b) the offspring would thrive for the extra help, and c) it indicated that Territorial Male wouldn't make them get rid of a third of their babies! The territoriality would eventually have to expand to include the blue males as useful things to keep on an instinctive level; more mates for the territorial males and a higher survival rate for his offspring. The big males would have no choice but to adapt or the females would have left."
"No female will stay if you menace her baby, and as smart as they were the females would have left the territories that didn't allow them to keep their blue sons and stay with more accepting territorial males. Those accepting males that needed the blue males help just to reproduce bred better through female selection and preference, and over a very long time they actually bred out the fully fertile and more violent males over time. For a territorial creature, Metro Man is astoundingly nice about it, isn't he? He's the results of thousands – possibly millions - of years of it being necessary that the blue things in his area wanted to stay there. He's-"
"-an overprotective babysitter rather than a tyrant that guards you like a treasure hoard," Bernard finished for her. "Because he evolved to behave that way. Because you get more babies that way. You have to be strong and nice." The man looked down out the doorway toward the villain wing, did a few quick summations, and snorted with one short laugh. "Lucky for us. I can't imagine what would have happened if the territorial males were still aggressive when they got here. It would be rude to say genocide, but…" He sighed. "No wonder the big guy does whatever he can not to hurt the criminals and villains he captures. They're not other territorial males, and they're not food. So his default action is 'capture gently' because that's what his instincts are telling him to do."
Dr. Mardling smiled. "And then population control sets in."
Bernard looked back to her. "What?"
"This three gender system is an extremely effective, safe, nonviolent, and natural form of birth control; no chemicals or surgeries needed. Population always rises faster than resources can compensate for. The number of mouths to feed will rapidly approach the point where birth control will become essential inside marked territories, lest they overtax the land and starve to death. Just abstaining from sex entirely won't work. Just like every other animal these people are made to crave sex; it's part of being a sexually reproductive species. Sex will happen, bar none, and sticking with only male + female pairs there will inevitably be babies galore, less resources, and with no birth control the problem spirals out of control. Extinction is pretty much a certainty, if only in certain areas."
"BUT if you add a little foresight and creativity, another option becomes available, even leaving out same-sex pairs. Just avoid fertile combinations! Have as much sex as you want – territorial male and female, territorial male and blue male, female and unfertilized blue male – as long as you pass by that ONE fertile combination of a fertilized blue male and female there's no risk of pregnancy whatsoever! That option must have been devastatingly attractive to the females… or really anyone intelligent enough to see the benefits of it. Even the bigger males."
"The simple ability to have sex freely without taxing the limited resources inside marked boundaries would have helped weed out the genes of those territorial males that could still breed independently of the blue males. So the intelligence factor became a HUGE deciding element in the process. Suddenly the territorial males that could NOT fertilize a female on his own won a competition with the ones that could because the females – and blue males – preferred his company!"
Bernard nearly choked on his drink when the idea struck. "Heh. Doesn't that also mean that the blue males can mate with each other without the risk of pregnancy, and if they inhabit the same territory it won't matter because they're carrying the same male's sperm anyway?"
Dr. Mardling froze. "...or the blue males could sneak their own territorial males' DNA into other territories by secondarily inseminating blue males there and contaminating a rival's gene pool."
"These blue guys have the potential to be some shady, territory hopping, gene smuggling, cheating motherfuckers, don't they?" Bernard asked.
"As a method of promoting genetic diversity of course…"
"That's a polite way to put it."
There was a pause while they both processed the implications of this sort of behavior in sentient beings. It wasn't difficult because they were human, and even among the most reserved of human societies – for example, the Amish – about 20% of the offspring regularly didn't belong to the father. Greek Legends didn't even begin to match the senselessly drama intense family dynamics even a normal, well-adjusted territory could produce if these theories were true… and they didn't even know how big those territories could conceivably be.
Suddenly the sexually trimorphic, blue skinned and hyper intelligent or huge and super powered aliens seemed very relatable to humanity in a hilariously depressing way.
"I wanna see a show written from the perspective of a family like this." Dr. Mardling admitted.
"I'd watch that." Bernard, for whom 'misery loves company' was practically a sanity mantra, could barely maintain his cool. There was a tiny bit of glee in his normally deadpan voice. "I'd watch the hell out of that. There's also something pretty important that you're missing here."
"What's that?" she asked, as she finished up the notes of their conversation.
"Why didn't Megamind figure it out for himself?" Bernard asked.
Dr. Mardling shrugged as she kept typing. "He just recently started going through puberty."
"Yeah, I'm calling bullshit on that. The urge to actually have sex doesn't negate the fact that the flirty thing starts up long before then. Little boys pull little girls' hair when they're too young to get to the bus stop by themselves. Clearly, I think at least, Metro Man noticed a long time ago that Megamind was attractive. He's always, ALWAYS suspiciously unhurt upon capture even compared to other villains, Metro Man goes out of his way to obey Megamind's unwritten 'rules' unless he has no choice, and he even trusts Megamind to avoid hurting civilians if it can at all be avoided. I think Metro Man's been sweet on the guy for a couple of decades, if not longer."
As she finished the notes, Dr. Mardling turned to face Bernard. "So what's the problem?"
Bernard grimaced at her. "You should remember High School. Think about it; some spoiled psycho you don't like at all starts being nice to you for absolutely any reason. How do you feel if they're at all physically interesting?"
"Oh, SHIT," the greying woman deadpanned. "Megamind doesn't find Metro Man attractive!"
"Not in the least," Bernard let out an entirely unamused huff of breath. "Whether he knows it or not, Megamind has taken 'Not if you were The Last Man Alive' to its literal extreme. From a sexual standpoint he's so uninterested in Metro Man he never even wondered if they might be compatible, let alone the same thing."
"Is that a problem?" she asked.
"Considering we've got the last of the species here, female or not?" the curator snorted. "I'd think so."
"I really hope it's just because they're too young," she muttered. "They're both still maturing, though I think Megamind is doing so faster, since he probably matches pace with the females."
"If that's not the reason?" Bernard asked.
Dr. Mardling groaned and palmed her face. "That could be an issue when they do get there and Metro Man starts wanting to keep Megamind in his boundaries. What'll happen if he tries to leave?"
Bernard hummed in thought. "I guess we'll find out."

Once Megamind's panic attack had subsided and Minion had stopped freaking out and trying to call the prison physician while the Brain-Bots restrained him things devolved into a somber sort of mood. Megamind had given up on getting anything at all productive done and put on his robe and slippers, brooding in his chair near a television he wasn't watching with a mug of tea that he was really only using as a prop to warm his hands with.
"There's a gap where we meet," he sang dourly. "Where I end and you begin… and I'm sorry for us."
Minion sighed. "Is this really the time for Radiohead, Sir?"
"Bite your tongue, Minion," Megamind uttered blankly, then fell into a severe villainous growl. "It's always time for Radiohead."
"I won't argue that," the fish conceded, mostly because he knew he would lose. "Will you at least tell me what happened? Are you sure you don't need to see someone? I could call your new doctor if you'd rather see her," he offered.
Megamind smiled a little; that was a big offer considering how suspicious Minion was of her. "I'm sure, thank you. It was just an event. I'm alright now."
"Sir," Minion started as he sat down in the adjacent chair. "You are not alright. It looked like you were having a heart attack."
The villain chuckled humorlessly, a bit insanely. "It sort of felt like it, too."
Minion grimaced. "What's going on?"
Megamind blew on the tea and decided he didn't want it after all and set it on the side table. "What do you remember about our home world, Minion?"
Blindsided, Minion stammered for a few seconds before taking a moment to actually consider that. "Not much, I'm afraid. I was a baby too, really. I remember your mother. I know you have her eyes. Everything else is sort of blank until she handed me to you and I really started remembering more."
"She made you for me," Megamind said slowly. "I'm sorry, Minion. I never really considered it before, but when I was going through my own memories of my parents I know now that she did. She was a geneticist or some similar profession or it was a skill she had regardless of her actual work. There were creatures that resembled you in tanks and things in the place where they were building my – our – escape pod. I think that my people had identified this planet, perhaps visited before at one time as Dr. Mardling has surmised in her brilliant way. They knew where Earth was, but by the time our sun devolved it happened so fast and there wasn't TIME." Here he shivered and pulled the robe tighter around himself. "I think mother was taking bit of genes from creatures from our own world and trying to create a companion for me that resembled a creature this world already had. Perhaps that way I might be allowed to keep you and I'd have a constant companion, even if there wasn't enough time or material for one of them to come here with me." He picked up the mug again, frowned at it, realized his hands were just bored and threw it.
"Sir!" Minion admonished, but just sighed and let it go with the subject hovering in the air. "I had wondered, but I didn't want to ask you because I thought remembering something we couldn't do anything about would just make you upset."
"You should be able to ask me these things," Megamind argued. "And I am sorry I never thought to bring it up."
"What is this all about?" the fish demanded. "Sir, please tell me. Is it something you found out about Metro Man from all this stuff?" he asked, gesturing to the papers hanging all around the workstation, rife with both aliens' medical analyses.
"Yes, it is, Minion," Megamind admitted. "It's not his fault, or mine, or anyone's. I just hadn't realized until today how much that idiot scares me."
Minion frowned and thought back to all the battles, capers, schemes, kidnappings and everything else the two rivals had been through over the years. "Sir, do you really think he'd hurt you?"
Megamind shuddered and folded in on himself in the chair. "Yes. I really think he might."
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