Notes: This was written for a prompt on the Tiger & Bunny anon meme, so the terminology and narrative is weighted a bit towards that fandom, but I tried to do justice to The Incredibles at the same time. Further notes about meshing the worlds at the end of this chapter.
June, NC 1968, Municiberg
For about four more months, Tomoe Kaburagi would be able to say with total honesty that this was the hardest yet most awesome experience of her life: standing around in a room full of superheroes, trying not to completely geek out. She was almost completely sure childbirth would top it on both counts, but for now, this was the undisputed winner.
Every so often, she'd spot somebody who wasn't just a hero but a star, and she'd kind of squeak, and squeeze Kotetsu's arm. He liked to pretend he was above fanboying, now that he was a hero himself, but he'd kind of babbled when he bumped into Gazerbeam earlier, and he was refusing to just go up and say hello to Mr. Incredible no matter how many times she poked him in the ribs.
"Okay, fine, if you're going to be like that," she whispered, finally giving up.
"I just don't know what to say! Like, 'Hi, Mr. Incredible, your powers are kind of like mine except better, what's that like?'"
"His are not even better! His strength is only multiplied by twenty, not a hundred. And having it always on has to have its downsides."
"Yeah, it must suck to have no time limit."
"And... break things..." She had no idea whether that was a problem for him. "Oh my gosh that's Elastigirl!" Talking to Mr. Incredible, in fact. She was wearing the same red sparkly mask she wore in costume, and a red and white dress. No question that was her. She was a little taller than Tomoe had expected - even wearing flats she didn't just look tiny next to Mr. Incredible. "And I think that's Blazestone?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"I wish Antonio was here. He'd make you go up and say hello." She stopped a waitress with a plate of little hors d'ourves that were probably too classy to actually be called pigs-in-a-blanket even if that's what they were, and put three on her little paper plate. "Kaede-or-maybe-Aoi-or-Ren wants to know why they haven't opened the buffet yet."
"I think the plane from LA got delayed," he said. She wasn't sure if that was supposed to answer the first or the second part of what she'd said. Mr. Incredible waved at someone, Blazestone made a face, leaned in to whisper something to Elastigirl, and moved away. Tomoe popped a sausage bite in her mouth and turned back to Kotetsu; he was making small talk with Thunderhead. More time to chew, then. Medusa, one of the Stern Bild heroes, was talking to Gazerbeam. About shooting things out of their eyes, probably. She couldn't think what else they'd have in common. There was Steel Scorpion, another LA hero, and Captain Hammer, so maybe Antonio was somewhere around here after all. And Winged Victory! She tried to elbow Kotetsu, but she hit someone's bare arm instead. She turned to apologize - to Elastigirl.
"Oh my gosh, I am so, so sorry!" she babbled, horribly aware of all the crumbs she must have all over her front, her lack of a mask, the fact she couldn't place Kotetsu so she didn't have an obvious excuse to be here at all.
"Are you okay?" Elastigirl was asking at the same time. "I mean, I'm fine, I'm stretchy."
"I still didn't mean to bump into you," Tomoe said, trying to surreptitiously dust off her chest. "I have no idea where my husband wandered off to. I was trying to elbow him. He's the hero, Wild Tiger. I'm just a civilian."
"Wild Tiger? I know someone who's been wanting to talk to him. Hang on just a second." She turned away, and Tomoe took the opportunity to brush herself off thoroughly. Her new pregnant boob size made it that much harder to eat messy foods without showering herself, and the baby's voracious appetite didn't help either. She looked up just in time to see Elastigirl's neck shrink back down to its normal size, and then her arm stretch over the crowd to tap a massive blond man on the shoulder. Mr. Incredible, who was talking to Frozone.
"THAT IS SO COOL," Tomoe blurted before she could stop herself. She tried to take a moment to get herself under control. "Do you think you could get Tiger that way, too?" she asked, sounding significantly calmer. So cool, not to mention a lot more efficient than trying to catch his attention the non-stretchy way.
"You got it," Elastigirl said, grinning. "Where is he?"
"'Scuse me, coming through," Kotetsu mumbled, edging through the crowd. Elastigirl was talking to Tomoe. Tomoe looked thrilled, and he grinned at the sight. It was nice to see Tomoe so happy, and not feeling awkward or out of place. There were a lot fewer civilians here than he'd kind of expected, maybe because of the secret-identity thing. There was a guy who'd come with Thunderhead, and a woman with Riddlemask, but those were the only ones he'd seen.
"Wild Tiger?" Elastigirl asked, and he nodded.
"Elastigirl," he replied. "It's great to meet you, and I see you've met my wife and daughter. Or son, but probably daughter."
"She's totally a daughter. And I actually didn't make the introductions there. Japanese names are a little hard to explain," she added, to Elastigirl.
"Really? I'm curious, but in a second, it looks like someone who's been taking his sweet time is on his way over."
"Sorry, sorry," Mr. Incredible said, as she stretched an arm around his shoulders and reeled him in. "We got caught up with Motormouth, and, well, you can tell just from the name- Wild Tiger!"
"It's an honor to meet you, sir," Kotetsu blurted, sticking out his hand.
It took a few seconds of crushing handshake for the honorific to sink in. "What? No, no, you're my age!"
"You've been at it longer, though."
"Just by a few years! And with the Stern Bild system, that's not surprising. We've got a lot fewer hoops to jump through out here."
"Thanks for leaving me back there," Frozone grumbled, joining them. "Ahh, you found Tiger."
"H- Elastigirl did."
"So we've been wanting to ask you," Frozone turned to Kotetsu, "do you break things as often as he does?"
"I wasn't gonna put it like that! And I wanted to ask about the points system, too, scoring and everything."
"I don't know how often you break things," Kotetsu began.
"Constantly," Frozone supplied, and Mr. Incredible protested. Tomoe was snickering and trying, not very hard, to hide it.
"Are you asking about accidents, or on purpose?" he asked.
"If it's on purpose, it's not breaking things, it's collateral damage," Mr. Incredible said. "Like knocking down a wall to get someone out of a building? Collateral damage."
"That's good!" Kotetsu said. "I like that! Help me remember that one, honey."
"I think Tsubasa and Elastigirl and I need to go lie in wait by the buffet," she said, on the verge of giggling again.
"Wait, Tsubasa? That one's new," he said, but she kissed him on the cheek and left. "Don't know if I like that one. Anyway, about breaking things and collateral damage. It's funny you should ask..."
"So four years in Stern Bild before I'm ever in any kind of danger, my husband's a top-ranking hero, and who comes to my rescue? The Purple Panther!"
"You know, I can't blame her, though," Elastigirl - Helen - replied. "I always try to rescue women if I have a choice too. You save a guy, and he either starts up with 'hey can I have your number, you need a sidekick?' or he gets all macho about it, 'I woulda been fine, I could handle a broken bone,' like, yeah, you would've just hit your skull, pretty sure it wouldn't have damaged anything important!"
Tomoe laughed. "Do you think you'd ever date a civilian?"
"I dunno." Helen swirled her drink in her glass. "It's complicated no matter how you look at it. I know some women who date other supers and it's just constant drama, like Blazestone and Frozone-"
"Oh my God that was true?!"
"Shh! Yeah, it was. They broke up, though, probably for good, when she went to prison. He's seeing someone else now."
"Honey Hammond? The news anchor? He keeps rescuing her."
"You're like an encyclopedia! It's kind of scary."
"Sorry. I - don't judge me for this, okay? - I quit my job a couple weeks ago and so I've just been eating up hero news pretty much every waking moment. It's just that with Tiger working as a hero, we can't coordinate schedules too well, and we'd been thinking it'd work out best to have me stay home with our kids anyway, and then commuting in Stern Bild can be just a nightmare, partly because of Tiger, and after the car blew up..."
"Don't worry about it. You don't need to defend any of your choices to me. I'm a superhero and I figure being a mom's a lot harder than that."
"This part of it's pretty easy, but calm before the storm, right?"
"That's what I'm told... but yeah, Frozone and Honey are an item now. I like her, but don't tell Blazestone."
"So you and Mr. Incredible..." Tomoe grinned, leaning her chin on her hand, as Helen looked around furtively.
"I really don't want that getting around, okay? Not yet, anyway. It's still pretty new, and you know, I like him a lot, so I don't want to jinx it? And I mean, all this time I've been telling everybody, no, I don't need a partner, I don't need a sidekick, I like my independence, and no, I don't want to breed a race of superbabies or anything-"
"Who was that?"
"Gamma Jack."
"Really?"
Helen nodded. "Thinks we're superior. Supers, I mean, NEXTs. Anyway, Bob's different. He doesn't expect me to take second billing to him or anything, he's not trying to 'help me out' or steal my targets, he hasn't been chasing me like a creep for months like some supers, we just... started talking. And it was nice. And after a we'd had a couple of conversations he asked me to dinner, you know?"
"Amazing. Like a normal person."
"Seriously."
"Not like I'm one to talk, though. I mean, a rescue was how we... okay, not how we met, we met at school, but things kinda... changed after that, you know?"
"I don't think there's anything wrong with that either, it's just the ones who are all 'I've only seen you on TV but you saved me so now I love you'... mostly guys. I've gotten a couple of women who did that too, but with guys it's almost like they need to come up with some kind of way to not feel threatened that they got saved by a girl, and that's just..."
"Insulting. It's not even about you."
"Exactly! Hey, who's the guy in the weird helmet over there with our guys?"
"Oh, that's Ant- Bison. Rock Bison. I was wondering where he was!"
"Ah, so you know him out of costume."
"Yeah, we go back to high school, believe it or not."
"Must've been something in the water where you lived."
"I wonder... Maybe I should waddle over there and say hello. Once you get him into a conversation about weight training it pretty much takes a nuclear blast to get him out again."
"There is another option," Helen said, with a sly grin and a stretch of her wrist, and Tomoe's eyes lit up.
For the purposes of this fic, I'm working on the assumption that Stern Bild is a separate country from wherever the Parrs live, and I placed the Parrs in the US for lack of other ideas. I ended up disregarding the dates given in The Incredibles,though not the timeline itself, so as to match things up with Tiger & Bunny. The named superheroes and villains come from a variety of sources: many, of course, come from the Incredibles bonus materials, some I invented, some I got from random name generators, Winged Victory is from Astro City, and Captain Hammer, of course, from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
The worlds of The Incredibles and Tiger & Bunny mesh surprisingly well; they even have similar types of schizo tech, as with Kari putting a CD in the hi-fi or Kotetsu watching B&W newsreel footage of Mr. Legend on a laserdisc. It's indicated within the movie and on the bonus DVD that heroes were managed by a National Supers Agency - the NSA the characters will refer to throughout the fic - and that, prior to being forced underground, the biggest superheroes held celebrity status. It's also pretty clear from the way the public turned against supers that there was a considerable amount of prejudice and resentment towards people with powers.