Despicable Me (5 page)

“Congratulations,” Gru says to Dr. Nefario. “Now,
those
are Cookie Robots! We are one step closer to getting that Shrink Ray and ultimately… the moon!” He and the scientist exchange high fives.

Suddenly a toy unicorn appears from behind the table. A tiny hand makes it hop along.

“
La la la la la. I love unicorns. I love unicorns. If they were real, I could pet one
,” sings Agnes.

Gru grits his teeth as the three girls emerge from behind the table.

“What are you doing here? I told you to stay in the kitchen,” he says.

“We got bored,” answers Margo. “What is this place?”

Gru isn’t sure how to answer, so he ignores the question. “Get back in the kitchen.”

“Will you play with us?” Agnes asks innocently.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because!” Gru replies. “I’m busy!”

“Doing what? ’Cause I don’t see any patients here. Or dental equipment,” Margo points out.

“Um, okay, okay, you got me,” says Gru. “The dentist thing is more of a hobby. In real life, my job is… a spy. I am a spy. And it is top secret, and you may not tell anybody.”

Edith isn’t listening. “What does this do?” She pushes a button, and a laser shoots out from a panel in the wall.

“No! Don’t touch that!” shouts Dr. Nefario.

It’s too late. The laser makes contact with Agnes’s stuffed unicorn. The stuffed animal instantly turns to ashes.

“Waaaaaah!” cries Agnes.

“That is an annoying sound,” Gru says to her. “Remember our deal?”

“Waaaaaah!”

“Okay, we get it. You’re sad,” says Gru. “Now stop it!”

Margo shakes her head. “She’s not going to stop. That was her favorite unicorn.”

Gru feels like he might explode from the piercing cries. Thinking quickly, he calls over some of his minions.

“This is a code red,” Gru explains. “I need you to go and get the girl a new toy. And hurry!”

The minions salute and run off.

“Who are those little guys?” Margo asks.

“They are my… uh… cousins,” Gru replies. “Okay, bedtime.”

“Awww,” the girls whine, following Gru to their bedroom.

Once the girls see their new bedroom, they stop and stare. The beds are actually three nuclear warhead casings, with a pillow and blanket nestled inside each one.

Without wasting another moment, Gru plops each girl into a bed. “Okay, all tucked in. Sweet dreams,” he says.

“Just so you know,” begins Margo, “you’re never going to be my dad.”

“I think I can live with that,” Gru replies.

Margo is taken aback by Gru’s response. It isn’t what she expected, and she feels a little sad.

Agnes holds up a book and asks Gru to read them a bedtime story. When Gru refuses, Agnes says, “But we can’t go to sleep without a bedtime story.”

Without missing a beat, Gru says, “Well, then, it’s going to be a long night for you, isn’t it?”

That leaves Agnes speechless. Did he really just say that?

“Good night, sleep tight,” he continues. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite, because there are literally thousands of them. Oh, and there’s
probably something in your closet.” He walks out of the girls’ room, shutting off the lights and closing the door.

“He’s just kidding, Agnes,” says Margo. But none of the girls are convinced.

Then the door opens, and three minions enter. One of them approaches Agnes and hands her the new “toy.” It’s a toilet brush that the minions dressed up to look like a unicorn.

Agnes smiles. “It’s beautiful,” she says, giving one minion a kiss.

The minion blushes and they leave the room.

Agnes closes her eyes and goes to sleep, clutching the toilet brush all night.

“Welcome back
to the Fortress
of Vectortude.”

—Vector

“Girls, let’s go! Time to deliver cookies!”

Gru has loaded up all the cookies, including his special Cookie Robots, into a wagon.

The girls come out the front door wearing ballet tutus.

“First we’re going to dance class,” insists Margo.

Gru shakes his head. “Actually, we’re going to have to skip the dance class today.”

“
Actually
, we can’t skip the dance class today,” Margo tells him. “We have a big recital coming up. We’re doing a dance from
Swan Lake
.”

“That’s fantastic, wonderful,” Gru says dismissively. He heads for his van. “But right now we’re going to deliver cookies.”

“No,” says Margo.

“No?” repeats Gru, a little surprised.

“We’re not going to deliver cookies until we go to dance class,” Margo says firmly. She folds her arms. Edith does the same. Agnes has a
little trouble folding her arms, then finally gets it. Then the three of them start marching down the street.

Gru fumes with anger. “You just keep walking!” he yells. “Because I’m not driving you!”

Margo calls back over her shoulder, “Okay.”

A few minutes later, Gru is in his car, driving slowly alongside the girls. “I am going to give you to the count of three, and if you’re not in this car… I can’t even tell you what. One, two, two and three-quarters… two and seven-eighths… I am serious! I’ll make it five. But that’s it. Five looms in your future.”

Fifteen minutes later, Gru finds himself sitting in the waiting room, along with the other parents. While the girls take their class, Gru is forced to hold all the girls’ girly stuff: dolls, clothes, and anything pink. He looks miserable.

When the class ends, Agnes runs up to him. “Here you go,” she says, holding out a ticket.

“What is this?” asks Gru.

“Your ticket to the dance recital,” explains Agnes. “You’re coming, right?”

“Of course, of course,” replies Gru, totally lying. “I have pins and needles that I am sitting on.”

Wide-eyed and hopeful, Agnes holds up her pinkie to him. “Pinkie promise?”

Gru stares at her. He notices that the other girls are watching them. Realizing he will do whatever it takes to get those cookies delivered, Gru reluctantly holds out his pinkie. “My pinkie promises.”

Finally
, after the dance class detour, Gru gets the girls back in the van to begin his master plan to steal back the Shrink Ray. He parks down the street from Vector’s fortress and begins to stack cookie boxes in a wagon on the sidewalk. The girls change into their clothes and join him.

“Our first customer is a man named Vector,” Gru says.

Margo looks at her order form. “But he’s a
V
. We’re supposed to start with the
A
’s, then we go to the
B
’s, then we go to the—”

“Yes, yes,” interrupts Gru. “I went to kindergarten. I know how the alphabet works!” Realizing he’s being too harsh, Gru quickly softens and says, “I was just thinking that it might be nice to deliver Mr. Vector’s first, that’s all.”

The girls nod and make their way down the sidewalk toward Vector’s fortress.

Gru suppresses a smile and repeats to himself, “It’s almost over…. It’s almost over.” He goes inside the back of the van and watches the girls on a video screen.

The girls enter the gate, and Vector greets them at the front door. “Ah, girls, welcome back to the Fortress of Vectortude.” He laughs and then leads them inside.

Margo consults her order form as Edith and Agnes put Vector’s twenty-three boxes of
cookies on the counter, including the Coconutties box with the robotic cookies in it. Inside the van, Gru launches Cookie Robot software on his computer so he can control the robotic cookies.

“That will be fifty-two dollars,” Margo tells Vector.

Vector zips open his fanny pack and looks for money. He doesn’t notice that twelve robotic cookies are climbing out of the box and scampering across the counter behind him.

The cookies quickly run a scan of the house and locate the Shrink Ray in a vault. They leap off the counter and scurry down the hall. They form a ladder to reach the security panel beside the vault and then shut down Vector’s security system.

The vault door slowly opens, revealing the Shrink Ray. The Cookie Robots happily high-five each other. But they can’t carry the Shrink
Ray out the front door—they are too small! Gru, of course, knows that. So he instructs them to go to the far side of the vault and burn a hole in the wall. Gru and two minions climb in through the hole.

Meanwhile, Vector counts out the money and hands it to Margo.

“Why are you wearing your pajamas?” Agnes asks him.

“These are not pajamas. This is a warm-up suit,” Vector answers, slightly annoyed. He leads the girls out, with no idea of the Shrink Ray robbery happening in his own home.

But the robbery hits a snag. While Gru and his minions struggle to lift the heavy Shrink Ray case, the Cookie Robots accidentally seal up the hole in the wall. They’re all trapped inside!

“It’s so fluffy!”

—Agnes

Stuck inside Vector’s fortress, Gru has to think fast. He orders the minions to help him lift the heavy Shrink Ray into an air duct. One minion grabs the other minion and shakes him until he glows. Now they have light in the duct! The threesome crawls through the air duct, dragging the Shrink Ray behind them.

To his relief, Gru spots a way out ahead. But he never makes it there. Since the Shrink Ray is so heavy, they all fall through a weak spot in the floor of the duct, and through the ceiling of Vector’s living room! They dangle dangerously above Vector, who is watching TV. Although Vector is oblivious to what’s going on above him, his pet shark is not so clueless. Swimming beneath the glass floor, the shark notices the tender morsel above that is Gru.

The shark lunges, striking the glass hard.

“What the…?” Vector wonders. “Quiet down, fish.”

THUMP!
The shark strikes the glass again, causing the whole room to shake. Gru and his minions are knocked from their position—but so is Vector, who ends up with his head in a bucket of snacks. He never sees Gru and the minions make a break for it. They don’t want to be the shark’s lunch!

Gru meets the girls back by the van. He hurries them inside.

“But what about all the other people who ordered cookies?” Margo asks.

“Life’s full of disappointments… for some people,” Gru replies, and begins driving.

At that moment, Agnes sees something out the window and screams. Gru swerves as he tries to figure out what is wrong.

“Super Silly Fun Land!” Agnes explains,
pointing to the amusement park. “Can we go? Please?”

The other girls join in. “Please? We’ll never ask for anything else ever again!”

Gru stares at the girls, then smiles as a plan forms in his head. “Okay,” he says finally.

He leads them into the amusement park and watches as they climb into a roller coaster car.

“Come on,” Edith calls to him.

Gru shakes his head. “Good-bye! Have fun!”

A park worker turns to Gru and says, “Sorry, dude, they can’t ride without an adult.”

“What?” asks a surprised Gru. “Ugh.” His plan to ditch the girls is foiled!

Gru is stuck riding the roller coaster with the girls. There are loops; there are corkscrews; there are giant drops. The girls are ecstatic, but Gru… not so much. By the end, he looks beaten and battered and ready to throw up.

As they walk by the shooting-gallery booth, Agnes screams again. She points to the main prize—a unicorn. “It’s so fluffy, I’m going to die!” she cries.

“You
have
to let us play for it,” insists Margo.

“No no no,” says Gru.

The girls beg again. A heavy sigh escapes Gru’s lips, and he turns to the vendor in the booth. “How much for the fluffy unicorn?”

“It’s not for sale,” replies the sleazy-looking vendor. “But all you have to do to win it is knock down that little spaceship there.” He points to the smallest of the spaceship targets.

Gru nods and slaps a one-dollar bill on the counter. The girls then take aim and fire. They all miss.

The next time they try, Agnes actually hits the target! “I hit it! Did you see that? I hit it!” she sings.

But when they are told that Agnes didn’t actually win, Gru steps in. “She hit that. I saw that with my own eyes,” he says to the vendor.