AUTHOR'S NOTE: This idea is inspired by one of my favorite live action Disney movies, "Honey I Shrunk the Kids," but with a slightly different twist on things. The Impossibles belong to HB, all other characters are mine. I'd also like to thank a fellow writer, Sakura-chan 484, for allowing me to borrow the name, the Atlas Foundation, for this story. I just wanted to use the name, I don't intend on making it the same as hers (and if I do, it's clearly unintentional).

It was a quiet, peaceful night in the suburbs of Megatropolis. Well, somewhat quiet, at least. The attic of Ken Mills was bustling with activity. Ken loved to tinker and he considered himself an amateur inventor. As a matter of fact, the house was full of some of his crazy inventions. The place looked more like a space control center than a house! Ken was a regular absent minded professor!

Ken's family didn't mind. Too much. His second wife, Barbara, was out of town at the time anyway, visiting her mother, and she took their three-year-old son, Adam, with her. Ken had two kids from his previous marriage. Their names were Windy (which is short for Winnifred, but never call her that) age eighteen, and Mark, age sixteen. Only Windy was home at the time. Mark was who knows where, but Ken wasn't worried about his teenage son. He knew Mark was always in and out of the house, and often in and out of the city itself. But he was almost always with his friends, so Ken usually let it slide.

That night, Ken was working on his latest invention. Windy came up to the attic to see what all the noise was about. It was starting to drive her crazy.

"Dad!" she shouted at the top of her voice, in order to get her father's attention. Ken looked up, and lifted the welding mask he was wearing.

"Yeah, what is it, honey?" he asked.

"The neighbors are starting to complain again," Windy said, looking at the odd large, ray-like contraption in the attic. "What is this thing, anyway?"

"This is a shrinking ray," Ken said. "I've spent the last twenty years trying to perfect it. It's sort of an off and on project."

"Does it work?"

"I was just about to test it. Come on. We'll see."

Ken handed Windy a pair of goggles, and she immediately put them on, and stood behind her father. Then, she took hold of her long, dark brown ponytail, and began chewing the end of it. She always did that when she was nervous. She often heard explosions coming from the attic. Ken put an apple on the table across the attic, and then walked back to his machine. He pushed a couple of buttons, and the laser was activated, hitting the apple. The apple began shaking a little, and steam began rising from it.

"Come on . . . ." Ken said, hopefully. "Come on and shrink . . . ."

Suddenly . . . . .

KABLAM!

The apple practically desintigrated. Bits of mashed apple flew all over the place. Windy let out a scream as some hit her. Ken sighed.

"Rats," he said. "I thought I had it that time."

"Don't feel bad about it, Daddy," Windy said, taking off the goggles, and putting them on a nearby table. "If you can't get the machine to shrink anything, you could always use it to make homemade applesauce."

"Very funny, Win," Ken said, sarcastically. "Very hysterical. I'd better get to work cleaning this mess up."

Windy giggled, and headed back downstairs. Ken sighed, and got to work cleaning up the applesauce. It was driving him crazy. He couldn't figure out what he was doing wrong with the machine. No matter what he did, it kept blowing up fruit. Once he finished cleaning, he went back to working on the machine, making adjustments here and there. He wasn't planning on doing anymore testing that night. He didn't really like cleaning up mashed fruit more than once a day.

As Ken was cleaning up, and making adjustments to his machine, a large van drove up to the house. Half a dozen men climbed out. They were all wearing some kind of military uniform, complete with helmets, and dark aviator style sunglasses, despite the fact that it was already dark outside. They were from an organization known as The Atlas Foundation. They were a "science" lab (and the term was used as loosely as possible because some of the stuff Atlas has done was downright illegal).

"All right men," the leader of the troops said. "You know what to do. Let's go!"

The troops quietly snuck into the house and looked around. There wasn't a person in sight, so they continued up to the attic. Ken was adjusting something on his machine, and didn't notice the uninvited visitors. That was one thing about Ken Mills. He often got so involved with something, he got lost in it. He didn't notice the Atlas men standing behind him, and he certainly didn't notice when one took a wrench from the toolbox sitting on the table. As a matter of fact, he didn't notice anything, until the man from Atlas bopped him with that wrench, knocking him out. The man threw aside the wrench, and began dragging Ken down the stairs. Three others began dismantling his shrinking ray, and they took the parts with them as they followed their leader down the stairs. The other two just followed.

But their actions weren't going to go unnoticed.

Windy, who had been brushing applesauce out of her long, dark brown hair, heard a strange thump from the attic, and went to check it out.

"Daddy?" she asked, as she approached the staircase that led to the attic. She stopped short and gasped when she saw the men from Atlas dragging her unconscious father down the stairs, and carrying machine parts with them. She was about to let out a blood-curdling scream when the last two Atlas men grabbed her, and one covered her mouth with his hand.

"What do we do with her, sir?" one asked.

"Just tie her up and leave her here," the troop leader said. "She can't do anything to us."

The two men dragged Windy into another room, and started to tie her to a chair as tightly as they possibly could. They also gagged her so the neighbors wouldn't hear her screaming.

"This oughta hold her," one of them said. "Don't try anything stupid now, sweetie, or else your daddy's gonna get it!"

Once they were finished, they left the house, and climbed into their van, taking off for who knows where.

Windy started struggling and screaming at the top of her lungs, but she knew it wouldn't do her any good. Even if she did manage to get loose, she wouldn't have been able to follow them. She didn't know where they were going, and her stepmother had the car. Ken's car was in the shop. There was only one thing she could do, and that was hope her brother would come home and soon!