The next day, as Violet was waiting at the curb in front of the high school for Mrs. Parr to drive up, a most surprising thing happened. A boy stopped to talk with her.
The boy was tall and well-built, and had long blond hair tied in a ponytail behind his head. His face was smooth, devoid of stubble, and of moderate attractiveness. He wore a pinstriped shirt, tan slacks, and casual shoes. A dark red book bag was strapped to his back. "Hi," he said warmly. "My name's Marvin."
"I'm violent," the black-haired girl replied. "Uh, I mean, I'm Violet."
"Are you new here?" Marvin inquired. "I just noticed you."
"Uh-huh."
The boy spoke without a hint of nervousness. "So...what do you like to do?"
The same wasn't true of Violet, whose stomach was filling with flying insects. "Um, uh, I like to, uh, read, and paint, and take pictures, and, uh, listen to classical music."
"Cool," said Marvin, brushing a blond hair from his face. "Who's your favorite artist?"
"Van Gogh."
"Favorite author?"
"Hawthorne."
"Favorite composer?"
"Shostakovich."
"You have good taste," Marvin complimented her as Helen Parr pulled up to the curb in the small family car.
"It was nice to meet you, Marvin," said Violet with an embarrassingly toothy grin.
"We should talk again," the young man said eagerly. "Can I get your phone number?"
Violet nearly dropped dead from the shock. A boy was asking for her number. She would remember this day.
"Uh, sure." She repeated her telephone number to him, requiring three attempts to get it right due to her anxiety.
Helen lowered the car window and stuck out her head. "Let's go, Vi. Dash is getting impatient."
In the back seat, the blond fifth-grader was squirming in his seat belt. "Mom, I gotta go real bad," he whined.
Bidding farewell to Marvin, Violet climbed into the passenger seat. "Mom, you won't believe this," she recounted. "That boy you saw me with? He asked for my number."
"That's wonderful, dear," said Mrs. Parr, staring forward at the street ahead.
"It's the end of the world as we know it..." Dash began to sing.
After watching the vehicle disappear around a bend, Marvin hurried to the empty school gymnasium. Glancing about to make sure he was unseen, he reached up and started to peel what looked like a layer of skin from his face. A moment later he was holding a lifelike mask in his hands, and his visage had changed from unremarkable to intensely gorgeous. His transformation didn't stop there, however--as he pushed open the door to the girls' locker room, his entire body started to decrease in height.
He--now a she--emerged several minutes later as Chris Hamilton, clad in a blouse and skirt, the left side of her face covered with long, straight hair. She whistled nonchalantly while walking the seven blocks to her house.
"How was school, dear?" asked her mother, Gloria Hamilton, who was reading a parenting magazine in the study.
"Fabulous," Chris replied. "Violet, the girl next door, goes to Shadowglen. I would've talked to her, but I was too busy with my friends."
"That's the spirit," said Mrs. Hamilton.
Upon retiring to her bedroom, Chris pulled from her bag the shirt, slacks, and shoes she had worn as Marvin, and squirreled them away in a secret closet compartment where she kept several changes of boy clothes. "If my parents find this stuff, they'll kill me," she muttered to herself.
----
Time passed.
In the Parr residence, Bob and Helen called their school-age children, Dash and Violet, together. Their somber expressions suggested that they were about to make a serious request.
"One hour from now," Bob told them, "an armored car will drive through downtown Metroville, protected by a police caravan. The official story is that the car will transport a shipment of gold bullion to an undisclosed location. In reality, the car will be empty. It's a setup to lure out Metroville's most dangerous team of supervillains--Triple Threat!"
"Whoooa," Dash marveled. "Time for a rematch, huh?"
"Exactly," said Helen. "Only this time, we want you and Violet to help us bring them to justice."
"Sure," said Violet eagerly. "Shouldn't be much of a fight. Four of us, three of them."
"It'll be dangerous," Bob warned her.
"Danger is my middle name," Dash boasted. "Dashiell Robert Danger Parr."
Mrs. Parr opened her mouth to speak, but the sound of a car gunning its motor stopped her. Through the picture window they saw the Hamiltons in their station wagon, pulling out of their driveway and zooming away at supra-residential speed.
"They sure are in a hurry," Dash remarked.
"Who did you get to watch Jack-Jack?" Violet asked.
"Phoebe's busy tonight," replied Mrs. Parr, "so I asked Marcie to come over."
"A wise man once said, 'To defeat your enemy, you must know your enemy,'" Bob lectured the kids. "So before we go out and get our butts kicked again, we need to develop a strategy for dealing with the individual members of Triple Threat."
"The toughest member is Anna Konda," Helen related. "She can turn her arms into giant snakes. These snakes have super strength and can move very fast. If one of them hits you or coils around you, you'll be lucky to survive, so stay away from them."
"Gotcha, Mom," said Dash unworriedly.
"Then there's Impregnable Man," Bob added. "He can make a barrier around himself that stops any force--except for gravity, or else he'd float away. It's obvious that his barrier has a weak spot at the bottom, otherwise it would neutralize the force of the ground against his feet, and he would sink into the earth."
"Gotcha, Dad," said Violet.
"There's one other member," said Helen. "A boy. He called himself The Transfixer. I'm not sure about the exact nature of his powers, but when I looked at his face, I fell into some sort of trance. So try not to look at him."
"Especially you, Violet," Dash joked.
"Zip it," his sister grumbled.
"Suit up, kids," Bob ordered. "The Incredibles are going into battle!"
----
On Commerce Street in central Metroville, terrified bystanders witnessed a bizarre tableau. A Brinks armored car, along with the squad cars and police motorcycles that accompanied it, had come to a stop. All of the male officers and drivers gazed mindlessly into the face of a petite blond girl who stood in the middle of the street, barring their way. The few policewomen present left their vehicles, bewildered by the caravan's sudden halt.
Without warning a masked, spandex-clad woman appeared from an alley, propelling herself on two fifty-foot tentacles that took the place of her arms. As she swatted aside several of the police cars, the female officers drew their guns and opened fire blindly. The bullets failed to penetrate the tough skin of Anna Konda's snake arms.
While his wife distracted the police, Mr. Hamilton, a.k.a. Impregnable Man, rushed across the street toward the armored car. As passers-by watched in disbelief, he plowed into the side of the vehicle, crushing the protective steel panels like so much cardboard. He appeared to their astonished eyes as an unstoppable human battering ram.
Yet despite his incredible power, he had come up empty-handed. As he extricated himself from the wreckage of the car's wall he demanded, "Where's the gold?"
"No gold?" Anna Konda realized the truth in horror. "It's a trap!"
As the bullets fired by the policewomen bounced off Impregnable Man's mentally-generated shield, his wife lowered a tentacle and wrapped it around his midsection. Her other snake arm coiled around The Transfixer, who had released her hair and allowed it to conceal half of her face again. As she retreated she held her husband in front of herself and her daughter, so that his barrier protected them against the officers' weapons.
They fled into the alley from which Anna Konda had emerged, only to find their way blocked by a quartet of defenders. "The Incredibles!" cried the snake woman.
"And they've got backup!" Impregnable Man observed.
Indeed, Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, Violet, and Dash had donned their super suits and placed themselves in the path of the three criminals.
Dash looked up at his mother. "I thought you said The Transfixer was a boy."
"Wait," muttered Violet as she tried to examine the girl's face through the dim light. "She looks familiar..."
Anna Konda spoke a few words of strategy to her spandex-sporting husband and daughter, and then all of a sudden, the blond girl grew a foot in height. Her costume stretched in some parts and shrank in others as her form changed from female to male. The Transfixer pulled back his hair, revealing his whole face.
This time both Elastigirl and Violet became motionless, victims of the boy's enchanting good looks. Before Mr. Incredible could decide whether to attack his enemies or attempt to bring the girls out of their trances, Anna's right snake arm rocketed forward, slamming into his belly and hurling him backwards. Her left arm flew at Dash in a similar manner, but the quick-moving boy evaded it by running backwards at the speed of sound.
He failed to watch where he was going, however, and his back collided with a brick wall, knocking the breath from his lungs. He recovered and regained his footing quickly, then had to dodge as his father's body, still sailing through the air after Anna's punch, smashed into the same wall.
"Dad!" Dash called to Mr. Incredible, who lay on his side under a pile of crumbling bricks.
"I'm...okay...son," the man of muscle grunted. "Go...help...the girls."
Dash was young and inexperienced, but far from stupid. It was clear to him now that The Transfixer could only entrance females while in his male persona, which meant his mother and sister would be back in the fight once he took out the pretty boy. His actions as rapid as his thoughts, he hurtled forward at top speed toward the spot where he had last seen The Transfixer.
Sadly for him, Impregnable Man had anticipated his move, and stood between his son/daughter and the young speedster. Unable to stop himself in time, Dash forcefully struck the villain's impenetrable shield and bounced backwards. One of Anna Konda's tentacles coiled around him before he had a chance to hit the ground.
By this time Mr. Incredible had returned to action, but only to face a hopeless situation. The Transfixer still held Violet and Elastigirl in his thrall, Impregnable Man was leaning against a wall with a carefree expression, and Anna Konda was waving one of her snake arms in the air, the barely conscious Dash wrapped in its coils.
"Stand down," the villainess barked, "or the boy dies."
----
The battle continues in the next chapter!