Megamind sat on his couch in the safety of his own lair. They'd dropped their extras on a random street and promptly returned here. He'd taken the time to have a hot shower and change into his more everyday villain attire before Minion had called him to the television.

A bowl of uncooked batter was in his lap. The spoon he'd been using to eat it lay by the side, his appetite long forgotten. His hand was outstretched, holding the TV's remote. There was a weight to it that could not be accounted for by the plastic and small electronics incorporated into the mundane device. His thumb moved for one of the rubbery buttons. It hovered over it for a moment before pressing down, replaying the events on the screen.

A man stood on the steps of a wide, multistory building. It may have once been painted white, but years of neglect had caused the facade to turn a sickly yellow. He held a card in his trembling hands and read from it, tears streaking down his face.

"For every day these reasonable demands are not met, a victim will be made an example of," he choked up, throwing the card away and staring into the camera. "Sara, I love you take care–"

The frame of the shot shook as the man's head splattered. Dark red and gray flesh splattered against the yellow of the building, and his headless corpse fell to the ground with a dull thud. The scene changed to one of a somber newsroom.

"That was James Bowen," one presenter said almost clinically. "Father of–"

Megamind clicked the power button, shutting the screen off.

"Looks like Bakuda set up a website," Minion sat beside him, reading off a tablet. "There's not a lot on there, but she's put up a bio for the next victim, that includes some videos. She's also claiming to have the mayor and his family, but is saving them for the big event."

The tablet was pushed toward him, and Megamind grabbed it before chucking it away. He heard it impact the floor and bounce a few times. He knew all he needed to know about that. Her demands were frustratingly banal. Things like supplies and money. It had answered the question about what the heroes were doing. They were trying to defuse that situation while he ran amuck in their nest.

"Now I know you're upset, but look on the bright side." Minion wrapped an arm around him, shaking him. "We still have all the footage and, technically, she was following your advice. That means this is all because of you!"

Megamind shoved his minion off, standing up from the couch and straightening himself out. He was not in any shape or form responsible for that. Yes, they told her about carefully picking out hostages and making sure your intended audience could connect with them… but he never said to blow their heads off.

How did one jump from tying someone up and threatening them with gatling guns to that?!

"Minion, you can't think I'd condone this, this amateurish display, right?"

Yes, that's what it was. A clumsy and hamfisted way to attract attention. Blowing someone's head off was the easy way to gain notoriety, and villain work wasn't meant to be easy. Well, not all the time anyway.

"I wouldn't say I'm okaaay with it," Minion said sheepishly, looking to the side. "But I thought this was what you wanted?"

That gave him pause. He wanted other villains to follow in his footsteps, but not like this. This wasn't a problem with him. This was a problem with them. They were clearly so far off base that even pure-hearted, or pure evil, suggestions were taken out of context and twisted into grotesque endings.

Yes, this was in no way his fault.

There was the sound of a door shutting and footsteps echoed in the cavernous lair as their owner approached.

Canary walked over in casual clothes, wringing out of hands of the water that still clung to them. She'd been watching with them but had escaped to the bathroom.

"I'm good now," she said after a moment of hesitation. "What are we doing?"

Remedial classes apparently.

"Bad, you're Bad Canary. That's not a distinction you can slip."

He was reminded of Assault and how he straddled the line. Could Canary do the same? He'd keep it to himself; there was no point in putting ideas into the girl's head.

"Whatever," Canary replied while rolling her eyes. "That doesn't change the question. What are we doing?"

Megamind glanced around, seeing expectant gazes on him, both organic and mechanical. He'd always tried to be at the center of things, to be the one making all the big decisions. It was a role he fit well in. So then why did he suddenly want to be anywhere but?

Despite his unquestionable intellect, he found himself at a loss for the question. Words echoed in his head. Their source was generally unreliable and greasy, but they had some wisdom. It didn't matter if he was in control or not, as long as he pretended he was.

"Minion, appraise me on the current situation with our surveillance bots. Have we identified all the Empire members?"

His surveillance network would have been up some days now. That, along with his algorithm to track cape appearances, meant they should have some of them on the books.

"All? No." Minion said plainly before raising a finger. "But we do have about half of them. Tracking them means we'll definitely get the rest of them soon. We've also picked up the names of a lot of their non-powered members. I would show you their profiles, but someone, I'm not naming names, threw their tablet away."

Megamind huffed, crossing his arms and raising his chin imperiously. It was his tablet; he could throw it if he wanted to. Besides, knowledge of their actual identities was meant to aid in tracking down their cape personas. He didn't care who they actually were. Movement from the corner of his eye showed Spider Bot waking. It stretched its legs before turning around and going back into low power mode.

"Has Purity been identified?" He was not one to forgive that easily.

Before Minion could inform him, Canary butted in with a raised hand.

"I'm definitely not opposed to outing nazis, but between that and a crazy bitch blowing people's heads up, shouldn't we be talking about her?"

Canary was implying he should be taking action against Bakuda. He'd much rather ignore her all together, but he didn't want it to look like he was hiding from something. Something bumped against his shin, and he noticed a Spider Mite waving his tablet to him. With an annoyed sigh, he reached down and retrieved the device. The screen was cracked now, but functional, and he flipped through applications.

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"There. I redistributed some of the surveillance bots to cover where she might be."

He hadn't picked them completely at random, but it would be a stretch to say they were carefully analyzed locations.

The pout on her told him she wasn't satisfied with that and he thumbed the tablet again, sending her some files.

"Check for yourself. I'm doing everything in my power."

It was a blatant lie. Everything in his power was reserved for Metro Man and no one else.

Canary took out the modified phone he provided her and began reading through what he'd sent her with a look of skepticism. While she was looking through that, he went back to the dossier they had on the Empire capes.

They had Purity. A Miss Kayden Anders, previously Kayden Russel. Mother of one and a half. He said half because it looked like she cared for the child of her ex-husband. It looked like surveillance was already on her residence, and so he made some mental plans before moving on.

"Bakuda is nothing but a small fry. A momentary blip that people will forget about in a week. I'm after the big ones, the ones who other people look to, for example. Lung was one; Kaisar would be another. As for Coil…"

He let his words hang while he brought up the latest intel they had on him. The file size had grown since the last time he'd checked. What they had should be a result of the bugs he put in the supplies he traded and the trackers they'd attached to their vehicles, but this seemed like more than that. Megamind stole a glance at Minion, who had an expectant look on his face.

"Minion, is there something you'd like to say?"

A wide smile formed on his minion's face and the fish moved up and down, eager to share whatever he'd done.

"You bet, sir. I noticed all the places we found were owned by shell companies. It's the same type of work I do for us when setting up a new lair and ordering supplies. So I had the idea to do the reverse of what I usually do and try to track them down using the companies themselves. It was tough work, but I managed to make some real progress. Oh!" He seemed to remember something and jogged to the side. He came back hauling a corkboard on wheels. "It's better to see it this way."

An evidence board, like those used by detectives on television, was displayed. It showed various members of Coil's group with different colored strings connecting them. While a lot of work had gone into it, Megamind felt those efforts were best spent elsewhere.

"Minion, apart from not caring about the love lives of mercenaries, are you seriously suggesting there's a five-person love triangle-er pentagram? Life isn't like your soaps."

Minion's smile broke, and he looked at the contents of the board, bonking his own container in a motion of realization.

"Ah, oops." His iron hand pushed on the board. It oscillated a few rotations before ending on the other side, where a similarly styled chart was. "This was what I meant to show you." The hand rested on the bottom of the board, threatening to flip it back. "But if you're interested, I can explain how we're currently up to five and nearing six people fighting for the affections of—"

Megamind reached out with his hand, making sure Minion didn't change it back to his fantasy world. It was impressive work for his minion. It showed the connections of various business entities and how they related to people in Coil's employ. Some of the properties weren't even owned by them, belonging to relatives instead.

"The bay has a bond villain." Canary shared her thoughts, having looked up from her phone. She leveled a critical eye at the board. "You know? I'm not surprised. Honestly, it seems pretty tame."

Cautious was how Megamind would describe it. Was he preparing for a big work or simply paranoid to the extreme? Maybe it was rude of him, but Megamind was not going to wait around and passively find out.

"Excellent as always, Minion," Megamind gave the overdue compliment. Minion had outdone himself here and showed the type of initiative one looked for in a minion. "Thoughts of how to rattle his cage? I'm thinking we can contact the Undersiders and accidentally mistake his holdings for the Empire's."

It was sneakier than he was used to, but that was the type of subterfuge Coil was engaged with, and so it felt appropriate to beat him at his own game. If only to show that he could.

"No," Canary interjected with a firm voice. "All that's going to accomplish is to throw the city into more chaos."

Where was the problem with that? He'd feel like a broken record explaining that, and so he struck at it from another angle.

"Don't you have other things to worry about? Like planning your next event. I don't want to hear that you've fallen behind on it."

That reminded him. He'd have to excavate a nice pit to keep the alligators he'd pick up from there. He already had plenty of enrichment toys for them in the shape of Protectorate plushies.

"Thats…" Canary released a tired sigh. "Not on the top of my list. I'm working on it, but there are a lot of other things–"

Megamind tutted, shaking his head in disappointment.

"Time management, Canary. It's an important part of being a villain. We all have things we could be doing."

On his part, he needed to write down his notes for everything he learned. The video would also need to be prepared for distribution. He'd managed to snag a copy of Uber and Leet's recording, but the two were adamant about posting themselves. They would probably beat him to the punch, but he'd looked into their stream and found their numbers low. If that reporter had not bungled the story on him so badly, he would have reached out to her for first dibs. Instead, she would have to find it on the forums like everyone else. His bots would ensure it was spammed on every board. With that level of commitment, it was sure to be picked up by mainstream media.

Canary let out a muted noise of frustration. Clearly, she understood he was right. She went back to her phone, angrily cycling through things like a teenager might.

"Can do, sir," Minion confirmed the feasibility of his earlier idea. "Downtown is a bit of a mess between the two groups so it would be easy to mistake one for another."

Megamind looked at the board again, cross-referencing it with the map Harry had put together a while back. There was a bit of overlap there.

Fighting for scraps of territory still didn't make sense to him. What made less sense was that they'd have de facto control of parts of the city from the heroes themselves.

Of course, that may be because the heroes were purposely restricted. How many other 'Vistas' without guns were out there? They already had enough duties; they didn't need people who didn't have the first idea of heroism to bog down their work even further.

Wordlessly, he paced to his computer. He sat in his plush chair and locked his fingers together, stretching them out and earning a series of pops. Separating them, they began to dance on his keyboard.

"Uh, boss?" Minion walked up behind his chair, leaning on it and causing it to dip down. "Something the matter?"

He shook his head while typing.

"Don't you worry, Minion. I've just decided to take a closer look at my former hotel."

Their security was formidable, and the programs he usually used for extracting information from websites were rebuffed. He even noticed attempts to track down where his attacks originated.

All they'd find was a server in Siberia he'd subverted weeks ago.

With his initial attack rebuffed, he began considering how to breach it.

"Hey," Canary called out, waving her phone. "Remember how you were going to get Triumph tickets to the zoo? To make sure he was there when I did my thing."

Megamind nodded.

It hadn't been difficult to get the boy's identity. The cameras they'd set up on the college campus had captured him before he donned his mask.

"Do you happen to know the mayor's last name?" She asked a leading question, placing the phone next to his keyboard. "It's Christner."

What did that have to do with Triumph? Or Rory Christner, as he was known in his civilian…

"Your nemesis has been kidnapped?!" He blurted out, abruptly standing from his chair. "That's cheating. You can't kidnap someone's nemesis. It will throw off the entire plan!"

Canary's head moved up and down, a slight smile on her face.

"Yes, which means..." she trailed off, leaving him to fill in the blank.

Bakuda wasn't his problem, but Triumph really did fit the perfect mold for Canary's rival. Finding another would be time-consuming. Could he pair her up with Vista? No, their themes wouldn't mesh well at all. Gallant might work, but whoever he chose would leave them starting at zero.

Could Canary rescue him? He tossed the idea out immediately. A villain rescuing their rival? That was a poor joke and would leave to all kinds of baseless rumors. Like Canary secretly being a good person.

No, someone else had to do it.

These days, he found himself making more and more unwanted sacrifices. He supposed rescuing his protege's eternal foe would just be another of them.