XIV
Dale must have had a mind like a steel trap – which was saying quite a bit in his case – because he led his fellow Rescue Rangers and their new friends, Scrooge McDuck and Heather Kelley, straight to the home of Bob Parr (a.k.a. "Mr. Incredible"). While the pint-sized heroes were flying in their makeshift aircraft known as "The Ranger Plane," Scrooge and Heather continued riding in style through McDuck's fancy car. During the ride to Parr's home, Heather was on the phone with Fenton Crackshell, who voiced his displeasure in not being able to accompany them in their conversation.
"There's no need, Fenton." Heather assured. "We're just goin' by Mr. Incredible's home and gettin' some answers on how to obtain what we need to save my mother."
She heard him sigh in despair over the phone. "Alright…whatever you say, Heather. I just…I just feel so darn helpless right now."
"Aww!" She felt genuinely bad for him, so she came up with a helpful task right off the top of her head for him to do. "Well, how 'bout this? Get in touch with Clark Kent at The Daily Planet and go to the hospital to check in with my brother. Have Clark take him to the best hotel in Metropolis, so you can watch over my mother for a while? Cool?"
"Really? That's great!" Fenton gleefully said. "But, uh, wouldn't your brother be more satisfied staying at that nice house of yours?"
Heather sighed in disappointment. "No, I don't think he would, Fenton." She suddenly felt the car come to a halt and looked out the window to see how they were right in front of Bob Parr's home. The Ranger Plane was perched atop the roof of the house, signifying that it was in fact where their "mystery man" lived. "Okay, Fenton. We're here. Call me back as soon as you guys get to the hospital, alright?"
"Sure thing, Heather."
Hanging up the phone, she followed Scrooge McDuck out of his car and headed towards the front door of Bob Parr's home. "He's gonna be confused over our visit. What're we gonna tell him?"
"Let's just be honest." Scrooge suggested. "He knows and we know what involved he had an involvement in their very project that resulted in your creation – so, as far as I'm concerned, there are no secrets here."
Heather nodded in agreement with that sentiment of Scrooge's. As soon as they arrived at the front door, Heather braved herself to be the one to knock. Waiting for someone to come and answer, she looked above to see the Rescue Rangers peeking over the edge of the roof to see what was going on. She figured that this would be their only way of getting in on the action, as their presence within the house would be too alarming for the person living there.
After a brief moment, the door finally opened. However, the person who answered it wasn't Bob Parr; it was his wife, Helen. At the moment of Scrooge and Heather's arrival, she was carrying her infant son, Jack-Jack. Her appearance within Bob Parr's home surprised Heather, Scrooge, and the Rangers, as none of them had any recollection of Bob Parr even being married or having a son.
"Who is it, Mom?"
Scratch that – two sons.
"Oh, my god! Don't tell me it's Tony!"
And a daughter?
"Tony doesn't even know that you exist, butt-brain!"
"Shut up, Dash! This is none of your business!"
"Then stop announcing it to the whole house, Violet!"
Helen groaned over the bickering amongst her two older children. "If I have to come back there, it's not gonna be pretty at all! SO PIPE DOWN!"
The house immediately fell silent again, after Helen gave her harsh warning. It was quite a surreal scene for the group standing outside, witnessing it all in front of them. For a second, Heather wondered if they were even at the right house…if Dale had made a total mistake in his discovery. It just couldn't be possible that the world's most legendary superhero had such a crazy life after retirement. I guess we all hit rock bottom once in a while, Heather imagined.
"I am really sorry you had to hear all of that," said Helen, leaving the front door halfway closed behind her, so that neither Dash nor Violet would hear of their conversation. "May I help you?"
Heather blinked a few times, almost forgetting what they came there for. Finally, she blurted out, "Mrs. Incredi…I mean, Mrs. Parr…we've come to talk with your husband, Bob."
Helen looked a little concerned, glancing between both Heather and Scrooge. "I-Is he in some sort of trouble?"
"No, not at all." Heather clarified. "We just…we need to speak with him about some information we obtained about his life before his retirement as Mr. Incredible."
Her concern look then melted into one of irritation. "Are you people with N.S.A.?"
The puzzled expression on Heather's face was enough of an answer, if not her response and the way she answered, "N.S.A.?"
"National Supers Agency." Helen said. "And if you have no idea what that is, then that pretty much eliminates any possibility of either of you having affiliation with them, the F.B.I., C.I.A., D.I.A., I.N.R., D.H.S., M.I.C., K.E.Y…." In the midst of all the acronyms, she could've sworn she heard a small voice spell out the word "mouse," followed by a low bonking sound. "…or any other organizations that are spelled with less than four letters. So if you both don't mind, show yourself off my property, before I have the P.O.L.I.C.E. escort you off it."
Following on that warning, she shut the door right in their disgruntled faces. They glanced up at the Rescue Rangers, who looked to be just as disappointed as they did. "Well, that certainly could've gone better," said Chip, whom Heather couldn't have agreed more with.
Right then, the sound of a car pulling up to the driveway caught their attention. They turned and shielded their eyes from the bright headlights of a sleek black vehicle, driven by Bob Parr – Mr. Incredible himself. Heather's face lightened up with excitement upon seeing her childhood hero exit the sporty car and looking to be still in decent shape for a man his age. As he approached his home, he stopped in his tracks upon noticing Heather and Scrooge there; needless to say, it was quite a surprise.
"May I help you?" He asked.
Heather just about froze when she watched him walk up to her, feeling as if she were caught in a dream that she had since she was a child. Of course, reality soon struck, as soon as she heard Scrooge McDuck clearing his throat, signaling for her to address her childhood hero. Snapping out of her trance, she stammered a reply, "Duh…um…M-Mr. I-Incredible…it…it is a real honor to meet you, s-sir."
It had been so long since he heard someone address by his superhero name that he was nearly spellbound by it. With a cautious glance, he asked Heather, "Have we…met before?"
Heather wanted to tell him that they did, although it was just through the news broadcasts she watched as a girl. She wanted to tell him how huge of an inspiration he was to her and all the good she had done with her special abilities. She wanted to show him just how super she was like him. She wanted to do it all that very second.
But then a surprise occurred…
BOOM!
Bob Parr's sporty car suddenly erupted in flames right near them. The heat from the explosion came their way like an open oven. After shielding their bodies from it, they looked to see the extreme damage that was caused to it. No way would it ever be driven again at the amount of fire that consumed it.
"MY CAR!" Bob screamed.
Unfortunately, he didn't have any time to grieve over his loss, as he and the others discovered a tall, muscular man dressed in all black clothing, complete with a ski mask, standing right on his lawn. His eyes were glowing eerily in a red hue and were darted directly toward Bob, Heather, and Scrooge. Heather had seen eyes like those before; it was the same effect hers had when she unleashed her "heat vision." Immediately, she forced Scrooge, Bob, and herself to duck down, as a blast of extremely hot energy escaped his corneas and struck the front window of Bob Parr's home.
From inside, Helen and the kids could hear the shattering glass and instantly became alarmed. Violet and Dash screamed and Jack-Jack cried, while Helen set her infant son down in his chair and went to the damaged window. She could see her husband and the two visitors crouching down on the porch, but her focus then shifted to the darkly clad stranger on their lawn, as well as the black van that pulled up in front of their house.
"Bob?" She frantically exclaimed.
Hearing her voice, he stood up straight and acknowledged her presence, which came a caution to him. "Helen! Stay inside! I'll handle thi…"
CRASH!
Another dark figure had flown out of nowhere and tackled Bob directly into the house, their bodies crashing through a wall and into the room of his oldest son, Dash. Seeing his father wrestle with the man right in front of his Lightning McQueen racecar bed, Dash bounced up and down excitedly, rooting for his father. "Get 'im, Dad! Kick his butt!"
Bob didn't pay much mind to his son's cheers and instead focused on pounding his fists against the face of the intruder. However, the punishment didn't last long, as the man threw the super-strong being off of him, forcing his body to smack against the wall opposite of the one they crashed through. Angered over what happened to his father, Dash ran to the intruder, moving at such a remarkable speed that he came as a blur to him. Dash then unleashed a series of fast punches all over the man's body, from his groin to his head, attacking him while he had him down.
Not taking any more of the super-fast onslaught, he pushed Dash right into his bedroom closet. This, however, was a huge mistake. Dash found a baseball bat in his closet that he immediately picked up and charged at the intruder with it. He jumped onto his bed, bouncing onto it to give him enough height to match his opponent's, and smacked the bat right over his head, breaking it into two pieces. The blow was strong enough to send the man into unconsciousness, his body falling to the floor with a huge thud.
A recovered Bob noticed at the last minute what his son had done to the intruder and smiled proudly at him. "That's my boy!"
Back outside, Heather found herself face-to-face with three different masked men, one of which was the "red-eyed" stranger with the power to project heat waves from his eyes. He attempted the attack once more; but Heather quickly retaliated by blowing a massive gust of wind that sent both him and his two accomplices sprawling over the ground. While they were down, Heather dashed towards them and grabbed one, leaping high in the air with him. At about fifty feet in the air, she dropped his body and left it crashing right on top of a Porsche that was parked right across the street. The impact left the masked stranger incapacitated.
As soon as Heather landed back to the ground, she was met with the barrel of a gun that was pointed directly at her head by another masked man. She looked at the gun and then to the man, grinning confidently. "I should let you know that no bullet is gonna stop me, dude."
The masked man bellowed with laughter. "I know what you are, freak. There aren't typical bullets in this gun. It's loaded with kryptonite bullets that'll tear right through your skull, as soon as I pull the trigger."
Heather's confident grin quickly faded; she knew what kryptonite was – one weakness of Superman's. And considering that much of her abilities were shared with the Man of Steel, there was a definite chance that she had his weakness as well. Whoever these men were, they undoubtedly had connections with Lex Luthor, Flintheart Glomgold, and the experiment, if half of them unleashed powers similar to hers and Superman's and knew all about kryptonite. They could be the ticket she needed – that was, if she didn't have one of them aiming a gun at her head.
"Say goodnight, Superwoman!" The intruder told her.
Just when he was about to pull the trigger, something flew right in his face, distracting him from Heather. It was a fly, buzzing all over his nose, eyes, and mouth. Of course, it wasn't just any fly that spared Heather's life; it was the tiniest Rescue Ranger known as Zipper. The man was doing all he could to swat him away, which included using the hand he held the gun in to do it.
Zipper flew away from the masked man, although the gun-toting thug wasn't finished with him yet. He aimed the gun at Zipper, attempting to waste his kryptonite bullet just to defeat the bug. Unbeknownst to him, he was aiming his gun towards his companion with the red glowing eyes who was getting back to his feet. And once the thug opened fire on Zipper, he missed the bug horribly and ended up killing the masked, super-powered being.
The stranger saw what he had done and was none too pleased with himself for doing it. "Aw, sh…!"
His obscenity was drastically cut short when Heather reached forward and snatched the wrist of the arm he used to hold the gun. With one quick twist, she cracked his wrist, forcing him to let out a bloodcurdling scream and drop the gun. She grabbed by the collar of his black shirt and threw his body against the side of the van that he arrived in, putting an imprint of it in the process. Removing his ski mask, she saw the thug's true face, although she had no idea who he really was. He appeared to be young Hispanic-born stranger with a face that screamed "tough guy."
"Who the hell are you?" Heather aggressively interrogated him.
After a few deep breaths, the young man finally gave in and said, "I'm Detective Gonzalez of the Gotham City Police Department…or I should probably say former detective, since my bosses think I'm dead by now."
"And why's that?"
"Because of an explosion at a warehouse that your cousin was in at the time. An explosion that resulted in the death of a detective named Elisa Maza, and she's been catching heat for it ever since. She's so desperate that she'd even turned to David Xanatos for help…but she doesn't know the truth."
"The truth about what?"
Gonzalez chuckled boldly. "I ain't tellin' you, freak!"
"You'd better, or else…"
"Or else what? You'll kill me? We know all about you, Heather Kelley. You don't have the guts to kill another human being. You're nothin' like your psycho cousin. She was literally born to kill. You…You're just chicken sh…"
POW!
One punch right across his face was all it had taken to knock him unconscious. It was the last insult that she was going to take from such a lowlife figure. She threw his unconscious form away from the van and on the Parr family's lawn. Just as she was done with him, she looked up and noticed Bob Parr and his family running out of their partially destroyed home and confronting Scrooge.
Approaching them, she didn't need to be too far away to hear Bob's furious voice shouting to McDuck. "What is going on? My family was just put into extreme danger!"
Helen added onto his frustration by giving the duck a scolding of her own. "You people come here with those…those…weirdoes in tow? Who are you?"
Scrooge attempted to answer, but he was interjected by Heather. "They were here because of some vital information we know about the project that LuthorCorp funded decades ago. The same project that took place durin' the time that Mr. Incredible was Lionel Luthor's bodyguard."
Bob stared at her in surprise, just as he had done so before; only this time it was more dynamic. "How do you know about that?"
Heather sighed and said, "Because that same project is what led to my birth. It's what helps me to do somethin' like this." She turned to the inferno that used to be his car, took a deep breath, and let out a chilling gust of wind that extinguished every bit of flame on the car. The sight astounded Bob and his family, as Heather displayed an ability that was identical to Superman. Once she was finished, she turned back to Bob and told him, "Don't ask me all of the details, because I'm still learnin' quite a bit myself. But with each passin' moment, I'm learnin' more and more about what these scientists did to my mother at the time of my conception, including how it's resulting in her deteriorating health."
"Your mother's dying?" Helen reacted in surprise to this fact from this stranger she just met. "How long does she have?"
Heather shrugged. "The doctors don't know…but I'm worried that it could be very soon. That is, if I find the cure, which I believe is with the very people who sent these men after us." She focused on Bob with pleading eyes and said, "I know they're still experimentin' on this thing, Mr. Incredible. You have to help me know where they're conductin' their research, so I can retrieve this cure and save my mother's life."
Bob just couldn't resist seeing the torment in this young woman's eyes. She was practically begging for the assistance of the superhero he once was in saving the life of a loved one. But how could he oblige with his wife and kids – the very people whom he pledged to protect and be with – standing there and witnessing all of this? It was horrible enough that they were almost killed that evening; he didn't need to see them in such danger again. Then again, Dash did defend himself pretty well against that one masked intruder.
It was still a risky mission to accept. He was about to tell Heather that he unfortunately had to decline, until his wife suddenly spoke out. "He'll help you." Bob glanced at her in surprise, not even realizing that he was smiling just as proudly as she was. "We will help you."
"Sweet! We're gonna fight more bad guys!" Dash cheered.
"No, no, no! When I say 'we,' I mean your father and myself." Helen reiterated. "You, Violet, and Jack-Jack are going to stay at a neighbor's house and be babysat while we're away."
This information wasn't met with much zeal from the two oldest Parr children. "WHAT?"
"Mom, I'm too old for a babysitter." Violet indicated. "Dash, on the other hand…"
"Watch it, Violet!" Her older brother warned.
As much as Bob wanted to side with Helen on her decision, he had no choice but to disagree for important reasons. "Helen, they can't stay in this neighborhood. What if these people come and attack them again? They know everything about us, including who our neighbors are. We can't take that risk."
"I won't have our children's lives at stake, Bob."
"Who's saying that we're getting them completely involved in our mission?"
Helen looked at him with a disapproving glare, which Bob wasn't all that fazed by. Eventually she knew that he had a point and groaned a reply. "Fine. They can come. But only if he watches over them." She pointed directly at Scrooge, who was taken aback from her suggestion.
"Me? Why me?"
"Oh, come on, Mr. McDuck. I've seen how you handled Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Webby." Heather pointed out. "How are these kids any different?"
"Simple…they're not ducks!"
Heather smiled and shook her head at him, before telling Helen and Bob, "He'll gladly watch over your children."
Scrooge wanted to scream out another retort, but he didn't want to ruin a good deal. Instead he just turned around and headed to his fancy car, grumbling on his way there, "I'm gonna have Duckworth call the police to handle what happened here, and then I'm gonna tell him to go back home – because there is no way I'm havin' any children in my car!"
Heather did her best to try and not laugh at how the "Richest Duck in Duckburg" was reacting to his new responsibility. Meanwhile, Bob turned to Helen and told her, "We're gonna need some air support to get us where we're going."
"I've got a friend who can hook me up with an aircraft. Let me give him a call." Helen handed Jack-Jack over to Bob and headed back in the house to use the phone. Watching her go, Heather was relieved to finally be one step closer to saving her mother's life. She only hoped that nothing would go wrong at this point in her progress.
Fenton Crackshell walked proudly down the hallway of the Metropolis hospital that Heather Kelley's mother was kept in, with Clark Kent by his side. He hadn't felt this proud before in his entire life, mostly because he was given such an important task that he couldn't have possibly screwed up as himself and not his superhero alter-ego, Gizmoduck. And to be doing it with the greatest, mild-mannered reporter from The Daily Planet was a bonus in itself. Somehow, having Clark there with him made things a little easier to handle.
"Thanks for agreeing to come with me, Mr. Kent." Fenton expressed his gratitude. "You and Heather must go back pretty far for her to trust you with helping me out on this assignment."
Clark smiled. "It's my pleasure, Fenton. Heather and I do go back pretty far. In fact we're much closer than you think."
Fenton wanted to ask if that meant what he actually thought it meant, but he was suddenly stopped cold at an alarming sight in the room that Alicia Kelley was being kept in. Apparently it seemed that her son, Sean, was nowhere in the room with her. She was practically in there by herself, with the exception of a nurse who walked in to check on her stats. In dire need of getting answers, he walked right into the room and asked the nurse, "Excuse me, ma'am. But did a young, tall black man come into this room recently to visit this woman?"
The nurse turned to Fenton and shook her head. "Not recently, no."
Clark looked very puzzled at this, while Fenton was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. "Oh, no! Now Sean's missing! Heather's gonna explode when she hears this! She'll never leave me with another task to do, as long as I live!"
"Fenton, calm down. This isn't your fault." Clark assured him. "Listen, just contact Heather and let her know that Sean didn't arrive as planned."
The nervous duck nodded in agreement with the idea. He noticed how Clark was heading away from him and curiously inquired, "Where are you going?"
"To do some investigating." Clark answered. "You said that Heather and Scrooge McDuck were heading to the house of Mr. Incredible, right?" Fenton nodded in confirmation. "Well, what a better place to start finding answers."
As he watched the news reporter leave the scene, Fenton realized how much of a point that he had. And as much as he wanted to do what Clark suggested and tell Heather that her brother hadn't reached the hospital and unexpectedly went missing, he felt in his heart that it would be the wrong thing to do to worry her of something possibly greater than her mother on the verge of death. So he decided to take the alternative – transforming into Gizmoduck and going to Mr. Incredible's house to investigate, despite the fact that he had no idea where it was. Thankfully, Gyro Gearloose installed a function in the suit to track down the homing beacon in Scrooge McDuck's hat, allowing him to track down all his current and future stops.
While heading to the rooftop to transform into his suit, he wondered just how Clark Kent was going to find Mr. Incredible's house, when he was unaware of its location himself. It wasn't like he had a homing beacon to follow. This was all the better reason for Fenton to go against his idea of calling Heather and staying at the hospital, because there was no way he would get everything accomplished in time to find out where her brother had disappeared to. As Gizmoduck and with all the necessary tools at his disposal, he could get the job done much faster.
Only what Fenton Crackshell didn't know about Clark Kent was when there was trouble happening, he wouldn't respond as a mild-mannered reporter. Instead, he would switch into Metropolis's most powerful superhero to date. But on this particular mission, he would be getting some unexpected assistance from yet another powerful hero.