Author's Notes: This is my first fanfic for Xmen: evo AND for the Incredibles, so I'm sorry if I messed anything up in terms of personality. ANYWAY, Hello, I'm Guille van Cartier, and this is my fanfic, Incredible New Start, an Incredibles/Xmen: Evolution crossover. Sounds maybe a strange idea, I'm not sure whether anybody's done it yet, but anyway, I thought it'd fit, especially with Violet, who obviously had some apprehension about her powers in the movie. Though I do use the Incredible's characters, I didn't adopt the plotline for better freedom on my part... Sorry! As for timeline, this is somewhere early on in the Xmen: Evo series, which I hope you all can notice! Thank you for taking the time to read this, I hope I do alright.
Disclaimer: Incredibles b'longs to Disney Pixar and Xmen: Evo belongs to Marvel. Read and Review, please! Cheeribye!
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Chapter 1: Getting Started
The water pipe stretched long into the darkness beneath the earth, a channel of concrete and metal jutting out from a steep bank to trickle water into the sea. A tall, cloaked man stood at its mouth, holding onto one rounded side with a gloved hand, letting the stream of old water flow out from between his two boots. Before him the shadows shifted against the moving water, illuminated only slightly by the moonlight shining down through the clouds from the night sky above. No other living soul was around, no one to see him, to hear him, to sense him as he lingered there, staring into the gloom of the old abandoned waterway with a strange sort of interest evident in his eyes.
Dante listened as the water dripped into the ocean: the only sound to be heard but for the chirping of crickets. Perfect.
The man stepped into the pipe, boots splashing against the slimy water. He sidled up against the curve of the wall, giggling insanely as he ran a graceful hand against the dirt and graffiti, the memories of old hideouts he'd owned once upon a time in a better era, in what was probably a better place too, coming up into his mind. People had known him then, to a point that his name would pop up during quite a few dinner conversations. Dante giggled again. Yes, he remembered those days, when he'd walk down the street and people would run away, screaming in terror, ducking into alleyways, crying and begging him not to hurt them or their children. Yes, those were the days to remember, the days that he had lived for!
But that was before he, that person, came along to ruin everything. The thought creased the man's face with anger, and age became obvious on his pallid face, found in the wrinkles carved around his eyes, in his creaking growl, in his stare. It had been twenty years since that had happened, and now…
A burst of flame screamed into the waterway, taking with it a hot wind that fluttered the man's cloak and singed its already frayed edges. For a moment it remained, burning searing and forceful as the man's fingers clutched into a fist, angry memories igniting into fire, his breath short and hissing. And then, all at once, it flickered away into oblivion, leaving only a few falling embers to sizzle as they landed in the water, their floating smoke invisible in the gloom.
Dante let out another chuckle.
"Oh, this is perfect, absolutely perfect," he said, pushing off the wall and making his way in an insane half-skip further into the piping. "At least I know that I want to do what I'm going to do! And I've found a lovely hideaway to plan it all out in," he added, patting the round walls with a slight giggle.
Around him, the partial darkness found at the channel's mouth made way for an almost tangible mass, nothing but black shadow visible on all sides of Dante's person. For a while, he continued forward diligently, humming to himself without care with his fingers running up against the walls to guide him. He seemed, at first, unfazed by the surrounding darkness; Dante admitted easily to years of lurking in these sorts of undesirable places. After all, it had come with the job and the life he had chosen.
After a while, however, he stopped, the splash of his boots halting into silence. Dante leant against the wall, letting out a tired sigh, wanting to go no further. With a snap of his fingers, a slight tuft of flame appeared floating above his hand, wavering slightly in the muggy air. Dante pulled his hand away slowly, letting out a low breath as his fingers lowered and left the fire in its place before him as he reached into a pouch (newly stolen) that hung off his side from the leather belt he had wrapped about his waist. His hand reappeared after a moment, illuminated by the dim and flickering orange light, with a torn bit of paper pinched between his fingers.
Dante looked down at it with a sneer, lost somewhere between a smile and a frown, and he read the words scrawled across its wrinkled and stained surface.
Mr. Incredible
Bayville, New York
Memories once again flooded into his mind, some recent, some from times past, some that made him happy, some that made him angry. All connected to that famous name and that not so famous place that stared up at him in his own messy handwriting, nothing but graphite on paper, but meaning so much more than all that.
They represented Dante's failure and his redemption. His final chance to put to rest all of those memories of catastrophe that had run through his mind those many years spent in that place, when he'd been trapped by concrete and fireproof doors, lingering in his own failures and increasing insanity as the years pounded down upon him unmercifully. The place where he had put him, that person that had ended his years of happiness, who had lived a full twenty years more than Dante had, lived a real life outside in a society devoid of bars and dark nights lurking in the shadows of a jail cell, devoid of that maddening loneliness…
Mr. Incredible…
Dante let out a small laugh at the thought, his eyes crazed and wide, staring down at the paper as if it epitomized all he thought evil. In a moment, it ignited, dropping from his hands as ashes into the near-stagnant water below and dissipating into nothingness.
The Morningstar was back.
- - - - -
"Vi, hurry up!" Helen Parr stood at the foot of the stairs, hands on hips as she stared up the carpeted steps at the floor above. "I've got breakfast ready! If you don't hurry up, you'll be late for your first day at your new school!"
An incomprehensible mumble floated downward, sounding incredibly tired and emotionless, but an apparent reply. Helen sighed, brushing a lock of short brown hair away from her face.
"That girl," she muttered with a shake of her head. She set her jaw, starting to walk away before turning back to the stairs a final time. "This is your last warning, Vi! Hurry up, or you'll be late!"
Up in her room, Violet Parr sat up in her bed, hair falling before her face like some black and tangled curtain. It was dark in the room, the door closed and the blinds drawn before the window, morning light pressing up against the vinyl, dusty and golden. The fifteen-year-old girl rubbed a hand against her tired eyes, fingers brushing against the prominent bags beneath them, and she yawned, something quiet, sounding strangely mournful as it escaped her mouth like a breathless sigh. Outside, the birds twittered busily along, and the sounds of her family carrying out the morning routine came, muffled, through her bedroom door.
Helen, her mother, hard at work downstairs in the kitchen, with the clanging of pots and pans against the stove and the clack of plates being set on the breakfast table, mixed with the sounds of her father, Bob, marching along the downstairs hall, inquiring loudly about the location of several important papers that seemed to have disappeared from his suitcase during the night, and of course the patter of Dash's quick feet as he rushed about his room. Violet let out a sigh. She hated mornings.
"First day of school," she muttered to herself, coughing and grumbling like a cantankerous old man who'd had his nap interrupted. "Almost forgot about that…"
Violet let out a sigh, swinging her legs over the edge of her bed.
She hated thinking that she'd forgotten something like that, something so obviously important that no one in their right mind would've let it slip from their brain. But, then again, no one in their right mind probably experienced as many moves as Violet Parr did in her fifteen-year-long life so far. First days of school came too often to be counted in her life, all thanks to her father and his nostalgia, which caused relocation after relocation whenever Bob Parr let slip his capabilities. The government could not allow people to know the existence of people like them or those special things that made them different from everyone else. Violet felt her stomach tighten at the thought.
Too many first days of school. Too many to count, to be excited about, to remember. In truth, she'd become quite sick of it all, and she would've much rather stayed in bed that day than go downstairs and admit to everyone that, yes, she had moved again, had had to leave behind whatever speck of a legacy she'd built up in her old town Metroville and pack up for this new, different place. Bayville, New York. One of those hundreds of specks staring up at you on the map, dots with names beside them that you don't bother to read at all because New York state had so many much more interesting places whose names you could read.
But what could she say? What could she do? This was her home now, this Bayville, and unless her father had the urge to pull another stupid stunt, the Parr family would stay here.
Violet felt a sneeze coming on and reached to a Kleenex box sitting on her bedside "table", which was, in truth, little more than another cardboard moving box filled with belongings she'd yet to unpack. They littered the whole house, these boxes, stacked almost to the ceiling against the walls of their barely-furnished rooms, blocking ways in the halls like those pesky unmoving people who take up space in store aisles doing nothing but standing. The family had just moved a week or so ago, after all, and with Bob busy with his new job (appointed, as always, by the government) and Helen working hard at cleaning away the cobwebs in the attic so that they could move the boxes there when the chance came around, no one had any motivation to unpack at all. Violet was too bitter about the whole situation, and Dash, too lazy.
"Are you up yet, Violet?"
Dash's high, mocking voice came into the room along with the boy himself, who opened the door casually, leaning against the jamb with the usual air of self-worth he'd maintained over the years. He was short, only ten years old (ten and a half if one asked him directly), all blonde hair and blue eyes and freckles that came together to form something far from the usual cuteness these traits came with. He'd evicted all aspects of adorability early on, taking, instead, that smugness of someone who truly did think that they were the best, created by years of quick-witted fast talk.
Violet let out another raspy groan. She did not want to deal with Dash this early in the morning.
"What do you want?" she snapped, tossing her Kleenex in a wastebasket sitting not too far away from her mattress, eyes resting on Dash with the acuteness of a hawk.
"Mom's been screaming at you to get downstairs for forever already, Vi," Dash told her, looking somewhat miffed. "It even woke me up, and I'm not supposed to go to school until to—"
"—morrow," Violet finished for him, her voice and expression showing off her extreme annoyance. "I know, okay?" She let out a huffy sigh, rubbing her eyes again to allay the sleep that she felt coming up again. "You don't have to keep pushing it in my face."
Dash's face became red, obviously embarrassed. "Well, it's true!"
"And I don't care," Violet replied tersely, rather vexed. "Get out of my room, Dash."
Dash pouted, half-way joking. "Man, Vi, you're cranky."
The girl wrinkled her nose, her held stare intensifying in anger. "I said get out, you little insect."
"Okay, okay, I'm going," Dash said, holding his hands before him like a shield. "Sheesh… Ms. Dark-and-gloomy over here…"
For a moment, it seemed he'd turned from the door to return to the hallway, when he paused, peeking back over his shoulder with a smile. Violet barely had time to register the mischief glinting in his eyes before her brother disappeared in a blur of speed, just as her blinds mysteriously snapped open and sunshine blasted into the room, bright and blinding compared to the past darkness. Violet shrieked, shielding her eyes like some nocturnal beast.
"Dash!" Violet fumbled for the strings, pulling them desperately, hoping for the blinds to drop. The only thing she got in reply was a haughty laugh, breaking past her room like wind.
Violet sighed, falling backwards onto her bed with a groan. She hated mornings.
- - - - -
Fred Dukes made a face.
He couldn't believe he was doing this.
Well, of course, the reasoning behind the decision was that he had nothing else to do, and the fact that Mystique, for some reason, didn't like them skipping out too often. But, seriously, school?
He looked over the Algebra textbook that he'd already torn up considerably, despite its general lack of use, making another face as he crammed it into his disorganized back pack. He had no idea how he'd ended up in that class, or why "Principal Darkholme" had him taking it anyway. He didn't understand a bit of it, and the thought of spending another day in that cramped classroom, in a chair he barely fit in, going over things that made as much sense to him as advanced astrophysics didn't seem like something he'd do if he were sane.
But, Mystique had told him to. How much more insane would he be not to listen to her?
"Yo, Fred!" Todd Tolensky jumped in, scratching his head. "Man, you seen my backpack? It's gone missin', yo."
"Nah," Blob answered, shouldering his own pack with some difficulty. "I ain't seen your backpack anywhere."
"Man, that's what happens when you don't use something for forever, you know?" Todd slumped onto the floor, scratching at his head lazily. He sat there for a moment, only slightly lamenting his loss, when a spark of an idea became evident on his face. He fell back, tucking his hands behind his head, a yellow-toothed smile spreading across his face. "Guess that means I can't go to school, heh. Tell Mystique there were some, uh, 'complications in the preparation process.'"
Fred laughed, looking down at his skinny little friend, starting to look thoughtful. "Yeah," he began, swinging his own backpack from his shoulder and tossing it out the open window onto the lawn outside. His grin widened when he heard the thump of that algebra book hitting the lawn like a rock. "Me too."
"That's right!" Todd said, sitting up with his usual sly smile splitting his squashed and frog-like face. "There's been some sorta weird backpack theft goin' on, yo. We're only innocent victims."
At that moment, something heavy and backpack-like slammed into his stomach, and Toad fell backwards onto the floor, groaning in pain. At the door of the room, his own pack hanging off one shoulder, stood Lance Alvers, gloved hands fisted and his mouth frowning in its usual, annoyed way.
"Get up off the floor, and let's go," he snapped, stepping into the room to tower over Todd.
"Aw, come on, man," the smaller boy begged, clinging to his backpack before him like it could protect him from what seemed slightly-more-annoyed-than-usual Avalanche. "School bombs, yo."
"Yeah," Fred agreed. "What's the point in going anyway? Everyone's just gonna look down on us. Like usual," he added with a hint of resentment. He remembered too many days at Bayville High when he ended up the butt of some fat joke or other… everything after that usually ended as a blur, but he recalled a lot of picking up of things and throwing things of things at other screaming things. Not something that Mystique appreciated either…
"What are we supposed to do there anyway?" Todd asked sardonically. "Learn something?"
Lance only cast them a sour glance and made his way back to the door. "I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to end up on Mystique's bad side again," he told them.
Pietro arrived, dressed and ready, leaning against the door jamb. "Yeah, you guys," he spoke smoothly, grinning. "You want a repeat of Mystique's little outburst from last week?"
Todd and Fred shared a shudder, the memory of that one nightmarish afternoon spent suffering beneath one of Mystique's most horrific tirades, the experience intensified by the visuals of some horrible transformed monster that only the shape-shifter's sadistic imagination could concoct. That memory wasn't going to disappear anytime soon.
"I couldn't eat for a whole day after that," Blob muttered, face twisting in disgust.
"And that's something coming from you," Todd added, flipping onto his feet in one fluid movement. He grabbed at his bag, swinging it onto his back, and pushed past Pietro and Lance to get to the front door. Fred watched in silence, finding school wriggling its way back into his day plan, and he blew out a huffy sigh.
He stalked away, following Todd's path out of the room. "I'll get my bag off the lawn."
- - - - -
Kurt wandered down the halls of Xavier Mansion, yawning sleepily as he pulled the his backpack's straps around his shoulders and combed his fingers through his blue hair in hopes of taming it before school. He was tired, Kitty begging him to stay up and study with her to help cram for some Geometry exam that had her worried enough to mumble random formulas beneath her breath as she walked down the halls. He'd, of course, agreed, being the nice blue smart guy that he was, sacrificing the precious sleep he needed for Kitty to help Kitty understand how Sines, Cosines, and Tangents worked out in the great scheme of Geometry.
Thank you, conscience.
Kitty barreled down the hall, stuffing a book into her bag as she approached, still having the same look of worry that she had the day before.
"Okay, so, like, c squared is equal to a squared plus b squared minus the—" she mumbled, twittering nervously to herself as phased another book through her pack.
"Hey, Kitty," Kurt greeted her, waving with a slight smile on his face. "Are you ready for your—"
"Yeah, hi, Kurt," Kitty replied offhandly. She twitched a finger or two in his general direction, phasing through him to continue down the hall despite his objections.
"Hey!" he exclaimed, turning round. He pouted. "No thank you or anything? I stayed up half the night helping you with your Geometry."
Kitty stopped, glancing over her shoulder at Kurt. The German smiled. Finally, some thanks for his sacrifices.
"Yeah, Kurt, thanks," Kitty shrugged. Kurt frowned. That barely sounded sincere, if at all. Definitely not the type of gratitude he deserved for spending his time drilling her on formulas while he could've been asleep dreaming of some Geometry test he didn't have. Still looking indignant, he teleported with a powdery bamf in front of the girl, hands crossed before his chest.
"Is that any way to thank someone who gave up sleep for you?" he asked, trying his best to come across as joking. He forced a playful smile onto his face, holding back the urge to rub at his tired eyes. "It's Monday! Do you know what it's like to be sleepy at school on a Monday?"
Kitty stopped, looking like he'd just snapped her out of deep concentration. Instead of the apology and the real thanks Kurt expected, however, he found the girl's face morphing into anger. "You're not the only one who stayed up studying for a geometry test, you know," she snapped, not going though the trouble of phasing through him this time around and just pushing him. "I'm totally not taking jokes right now, Kurt. I'll, like, thank you if I pass that stupid test!"
She stalked away, leaving Kurt standing shocked in the middle of the hallway.
"All I wanted was a thank you," he muttered, rubbing at the back of his head in a slightly guilty fashion. He hadn't meant to annoy her, but of course, he should've known better. Never bother Kitty when there's a test involved.
With a surrendering shrug, Kurt turned back down his original path through the hall, adjusting the straps of his backpack. He wondered whether or not Kitty would lighten up later on that morning, maybe after her test, when her worries past. No, probably not; she'd get worked up about what grade she probably got, maybe condemn herself to an F and blame him for it, which didn't seem so nice to him either. He continued down the hall, so deep in these thoughts, that he nearly crashed into Xavier as the man came round a corner in his wheelchair.
"Careful, Kurt!" the older man said warningly.
"Huh?" Kurt looked dazed around him for a moment before realizing his current course and teleporting out of the way just before any collision. Appearing on the other side of the Professor, Kurt stopped his course, apologizing profusely for his inattention. "I had…some things on my mind," Kurt told him, laughing embarrassedly. "But, you would probably know that, right, professor?"
Professor Xavier, dressed in his usual jacket and turtleneck, passed Kurt a genial smile, that usual knowing look coming over his pleasant face. "Well, you wouldn't be the only one," he assured him, chuckling slightly.
"Oh yes, I'm sure of that," Kurt said with a laugh, his mind jumping back to the stressed girl who was probably bothering some other people downstairs with her constant formula quoting. Well, at least he wouldn't be the only one yelled at today. "How has your day been so far, Professor?" Kurt asked this out of politeness, feeling uncomfortable about his earlier negligence.
"Oh, pleasant, as usual," Xavier answered cheerily.
"Well, that's…good," Kurt said, beginning to feel awkward.
"Thank you," the Professor smiled. "Don't let me hold you up; you'll be late for school," he said, as if he could sense the boy's uncertainties with a single look.
"Oh yes, thank you, professor," the young man said, thankful for the dismissal. He hurried out with a wave, as Professor wished him a good day, chuckling inwardly to himself. Xavier continued down the hall, meeting Wolverine on his way.
"You seem awful cheery today, Charles," Logan muttered, following alongside the Professor's wheelchair as he usually did, hands tucked deep into his jean pockets while a weathered scowl took his face.
"Do I?" the man asked. "Well, I suppose I should be. I've just come from Cerebro, Logan, and I've made a wonderful discovery. An old friend is back in town."
Wolverine released a hmph at the news. "Old friend as in a friend o' yours from way back when, or old friend as in someone who tried to kill you way back when?"
"The former," he replied. "Used to be quite the crime fighter fifteen or so years ago. A very noble spirit."
"So, you gonna invite him over for tea or somethin'?" Logan asked.
"Oh no, I don't suppose he'd want to be bothered," Professor X replied. They'd arrived at the elevator at the end of the hall, and the man stopped to punch in the controls. "He's been in hiding for the past decade or so."
"He do something nasty?" Logan asked, the slight traces of a smile evident upon his whiskered face.
"To some, he may have," the Professor remarked, starting to look somewhat serious. Something heavy seemed to fall upon his mind. "His only wrong was being born a mutant. And that was enough for some."
Wolverine nodded, understanding the meaning of those words with an utter completeness, his face falling into a slight shadow. At that moment, the elevator arrived and the two of them stepped into the compartment in silence, the doors closing behind them with a metallic clang.