Bob, clad in his bathrobe at the dining table, stared in abject shock at the newspaper article while Helen, her hair wrapped in a towel, read over his broad shoulder.
"The reports of your death are greatly exaggerated, honey," she remarked.
Her husband could only mumble, "...cause of death unknown...pending autopsy..."
"If his skin is as tough as yours," Helen observed, "they'll have to use a laser cutter for the autopsy."
Bob slammed the paper down on the table with a force that would have normally slivered any piece of furniture. "So much for our plan," he moaned. "I can't switch bodies with a dead guy."
"What do we do now?" Helen wondered.
The doorbell rang, and she hurried to welcome the callers, half-hoping they would have a helpful suggestion or two. To her chagrin, Ike and Gloria Hamilton were standing on the mat, dressed in plain work clothes.
"I hope we didn't catch you at a bad time," said Gloria, sizing up the towel on Helen's head.
Ike glanced over at Bob and quipped, "You look healthy for a dead man."
"If you're looking for your daughter, she's not here," said Helen firmly. "She spent the night at a friend's place."
Gloria took a tentative step through the doorway, and Helen grudgingly allowed her inside. "That's not what we're here for," she stated. "We just wanted to say goodbye."
Seeing Helen's alarmed expression, Ike added, "No, not that kind of goodbye. We're leaving town. Permanently."
Curious, Bob rose to his feet. "This is so sudden. You're not afraid we'll reveal your identities, are you?"
"No," Ike replied, rather sheepishly. "We're afraid of The Solon."
Helen confronted the man indignantly. "Then help us fight him," she demanded. "That's what Chris is doing."
"You just don't get it," Gloria interjected. "Everyone who has gone up against The Solon has lost. It's suicide."
"If that's true," said Bob, "then you just sent your daughter to her death."
"At least she'll die for something she believes in," was Ike's response.
"She was unhappy with her life anyway," Gloria reflected sadly. "And maybe that's our fault. It's not easy to raise a girl who can turn into a boy at will."
"Take good care of her," Ike urged the Parrs. "And now, finally, we shall trouble you no more."
Helen closed the door slowly after the Hamiltons exited. "Don't worry," she said confidently to Bob. "They'll show up at the last minute and save our butts, possibly at the cost of their own lives. It happens in every movie."
She hoped so, at any rate. The departure of her supervillain neighbors would remove a bothersome thorn from her side--yet in another reality, she might have welcomed them as allies.
She turned away from the door, and noticed that Bob was dialing a number on the telephone. "Who are you calling?" she inquired.
"Maggie," her husband answered. "I have a new plan."
----
The bedroom was attractively decorated, with green paisley walls and an ornate full-length mirror. The queen-sized bed with down pillows would have been comfortable for anyone else, but Chris Hamilton slept awkwardly and with difficulty.
"Wakey-wakey," said Mirage in a sweet voice as she knocked on the closed door. Knowing that her new young charge would certainly desire privacy, she wandered to the kitchen of her palacial winter home, and started to prepare breakfast.
Chris appeared as she was cracking an egg onto a skillet. The girl's usually flowing blond hair was straggly, and she wore a corduroy robe. "Good morning," Mirage greeted her. "Did you rest well?"
"No," Chris replied in a drowsy voice. "I've never spent the whole night as a boy before. It was weird."
"Hungry?" Mirage asked.
"I could eat an elephant," said Chris eagerly. "If I were still a boy, I could eat two."
Shortly the two ladies sat down to a meal of sausage, eggs, and pancakes.
As she watched Mirage lather her pancakes with margarine, Chris remarked, "I'm surprised you can keep your figure."
"Keep it?" Mirage chuckled. "I'm trying to get rid of it."
After a few ravenous bites of sausage, Chris ventured a bold question. "Why are you helping us against The Solon? What's in it for you?"
The corners of Mirage's mouth dropped, as if she was embarrassed.
"I'm sorry," said Chris uncomfortably. "I shouldn't pry."
Mirage gazed seriously at the girl and took a deep breath. "All my life I've been surrounded by men," she began. "They all want the same thing. I've been propositioned three times this week alone--and they were men who knew they would see me again. Sometimes I have to beat them off with a stick, or worse, with my powers."
"You're lucky," Chris responded. "When men look at my face, they just stand there and do nothing."
"When they look at me," Mirage lamented. "all they see is a blond Barbie doll who used to be in pictures. But that's only part of what I am. I have a brain. Syndrome recognized that. While other men wanted a purely physical relationship, he desired one that was purely intellectual. It was going well, until that one fateful moment--that moment when Mr. Incredible held me in his arms, and threatened to crush me. It was then I realized that Syndrome had pulled things out of his nose that he valued more than my life, and that Mr. Incredible couldn't bring himself to hurt me, even when he thought everything he loved was gone." She sighed wistfully. "When I was a girl I told myself, if I ever found a man like that, I would follow him into the depths of Hell. Elastigirl is the luckiest woman in the world. She doesn't know how I feel about him. She wouldn't understand. For all she knows, I'm just a homewrecking bimbo."
Chris' breakfast lay untouched as she pondered the meaning of Mirage's story.
"Eat up," the blond woman instructed her. "We have a full day ahead of us. First we're going to Edna's to fit you for a replacement super suit, and then you'll register with the agency."
"Register?" Chris repeated. "With what agency?"
"All supers have to register with the Bureau of Super Affairs if they want official recognition," Mirage explained. "Unless you do, you're classified as a vigilante, and the police can arrest you for unauthorized crime-fighting."
"Are you registered?" Chris inquired.
"No," said Mirage, drumming her fingers together. "My powers can be dangerous. I use them only as a last resort. Besides, there are people on both sides of the law who think I'm one of them, and I don't want to lose that."
----
In the south end of Metroville stood a secret hospital disguised as an abandoned office building. The lowest floor housed the morgue, where a tall, muscular corpse lay on a cold metal slab. It wore a black mask and a suit of indestructible red fabric, and its blank face and unblinking eyes resembled the familiar features of the city's one-time champion, Mr. Incredible.
Two armed, uniformed agents with dark glasses guarded the morgue entrance against intruders. This was, after all, no ordinary hospital. Wounded and afflicted supers came here to be treated, and sometimes, unfortunately, to die.
"Sure is a shame what happened to Mr. I," remarked one of the guards, a man. "My kids idolize him. My boy dresses up like him every Halloween."
"He just flipped out, started smashing the city, and dropped dead," reflected the other guard, a woman. "Getting hit over the head with girders all the time will do that to you, I guess."
Both were oblivious to the strange mist that was, at that moment, creeping through the ventilation shaft above their heads. It poured through a grate in the morgue, hovered for a few seconds over the dead body of what was presumably Mr. Incredible, and retreated the way it came.
It was early afternoon. In the shadows of an alley near the hospital, the mist settled into a vague shape that was human enough to speak. "He's there," it hissed to a figure in a black robe and obscuring hood. "Two guards. Heavily armed."
"Surveillance devices?" asked the robed figure in an old man's tired voice.
"None I could see," replied the mist.
"Good work," said the robed man. "Now cover me."
He crept toward the hospital entrance, unseen due to the dense vapor that shrouded him. It appeared to the few bystanders who witnessed the scene that a cloud was rolling into the building. They imagined it was steam being released from an air conditioning system.
As the morgue guards were exchanging fond memories of Mr. Incredible's crusade for truth and justice, the hallway ahead of them became drenched in fog. A robed person stepped out from the haze, slowly becoming visible. The guards become anxious, sure that an unknown danger faced them.
"This is a restricted area," barked the female guard, reaching threateningly for her sidearm.
"I'll call for backup," offered the male guard.
The man in the robe wordlessly raised his arm, exposing a jade ring on his right hand. The guards unholstered their guns, but found that the odd glow from the ring was irresistibly attracting their attention.
"You will not harm me," the strange man uttered. Fascinated by the green ring, the two guards lost all thought regarding their responsibilities. They limply lowered their weapons as an urge to obey the bearer of the ring drove all conscious activity from their minds.
"You will answer my questions truthfully," the robed man commanded. "Has anyone other than the hospital staff had access to Mr. Incredible's body since it arrived?"
"No," replied the male guard.
"Has a cause of death been established?"
"No," answered the female guard. "The necessary equipment hasn't arrived yet."
"Very well," said the old man calmly. "Stand aside."
The mesmerized guards complied, and the man in the robe pushed his way into the morgue.
Maggie's temporary death spell was beginning to wear off, and Robert Parr had become slightly aware of his surroundings. Sight and sound were an incomprehensible blur, and the coldness of the slab on which his body lay was barely noticeable. Yet he sensed that someone was standing over him--someone with evil intent.
"You were a good man, Porter," a voice intoned, speaking words he didn't understand. "I'm sorry this had to happen to you. With a tool as powerful as the Philosopher's Stone, I'm bound to make a few greenhorn mistakes." A finger brushed against Bob's wrist almost imperceptibly. "But life and death are only states of matter. By the power of the Stone, you shall live again."
A weird tingling filled his body, starting in his chest and spreading to his head and toes. Warmth trickled into his limbs and digits. Light seared his half-frozen pupils. "Oxygen deprivation may have robbed you of much of your personality," the voice continued, now somewhat more intelligible. "I will preserve what remains, and supplement it with a rudimentary intelligence that responds to my commands."
It was like coming out of a nap completely refreshed. Robert Parr was alive again. He had all of his lucidity, and his original powers. He knew what to do, and how to do it.
Snapping his hand upward, he seized the translucent stone from the grip of the hooded man who stood over him. He effortlessly crushed and ground it in his palm while sitting up and grabbing the stranger by the collar of his robe.
He was now standing, towering over the mysterious old man, whose feet were elevated more than a foot above ground. The sensations in his body proclaimed unanimously that he had been perfectly restored to his super state. While allowing the powder that had once been the Philosopher's Stone to drift through his fingers onto the tiled floor of the morgue, he probed the man's half-covered face with his fully functioning eyes. A white beard was evident--was it the beard of Calvin Turnmire, billionaire philanthropist, as Edgar Best suspected?
"The Solon, I presume," he said triumphantly, wiggling the helpless man so that his feet swept back and forth.
"Release me," the robed man commanded.
Bob spontaneously let go of the man's collar, and The Solon dropped to the floor, spryly maintaining his footing.
Figuring he had experienced an involuntary reflexive action, Mr. Incredible lunged forward, trying to wrap his hands around the robed villain. "Stop," ordered the Solon.
Bob's muscles slammed to a halt. He slowly straightened up. His arms fell to his sides like weights.
He didn't comprehend what was happening. His body had never disobeyed his brain's imperatives before. Try as he might, he couldn't will himself to move against The Solon, or to move at all.
"Positively brilliant," the old man commended him. "You replaced Porter's body with your own, and used some sort of incantation to make yourself look dead. Even I didn't see it coming."
Although Mr. Incredible lacked the power to budge from his statuesque pose, he was still able to talk. "What's wrong with me?" he demanded.
"Silence," barked The Solon. "You will not speak unless I command it."
Bob tried to retort, but now his lungs, vocal cords, and lips were betraying him. He felt helpless as a puppet.
"When I brought you back to life, I planted a new personality in your brain," the evil mastermind informed him. "A personality that responds to simple commands. My commands. You are my slave, and your first task shall be to destroy all the supers in Metroville."
Horror and despair welled up in Bob's heart. He struggled to throw off the foreign will that had invaded his mind, but his determination was only subverted into a lust for killing supers. His very thoughts had finally turned against him, rendering him only vaguely aware that he had a problem.
"Do you understand your orders?" The Solon asked him.
"Yes," Mr. Incredible choked out. "Destroy...all supers...in Metroville."
"Then go forth, and destroy."
At the sound of these words, the mighty Mr. Incredible leaped into action, bursting out of the morgue, speeding past the dazed guards and through the cloud that filled the hallway.
As he rushed through the glass doors of the office building, he was compelled to think about which super to start with. Helen and the children, being the nearest and dearest to his heart, naturally entered his mind first, so they were the obvious choice. Helen was at home with Jack-Jack. The children were...
"Wait," called out a voice at the back of his mind. "There are supers in the city I don't know about. To destroy them all, I need a list. The only place where I can get a list is the Bureau of Super Affairs. It's a bit out of the way, but that may give me enough time to fight this...no, mustn't fight...must obey..."
The interrupted thought was enough to change his direction, and he raced down the street toward the center of town, where the Bureau offices were located.
In one of those offices, Chris Hamilton was turning in her super registration forms to a Bureau employee, a young woman with curly black hair whose nameplate read "Sally Cohen". Mirage stood near the window, grinning proudly at her young friend. About a dozen people stood impatiently in a queue behind them.
"It says here," reported Sally as she examined a computer readout, "that The Transfixer is a known supervillain."
"Er, yes, that's right," acknowledged Chris, who had once again parted her hair to blanket half of her face.
"I'll have to send you to another office," said Sally, punching some buttons on her phone. "Hold on."
While Chris and Mirage were holding on, they heard a tremendous crushing sound. Splintered wood and shattered drywall flew across the large room, striking some Bureau patrons and eliciting terrified screams from others.
Mr. Incredible had entered the office through a brand new hole in the wall. He wore a dazed expression that showed evidence of internal conflict.
"I want a list of all the supers in Metroville," he bellowed, marching toward the registration counter while frightened patrons fled from his path.
"We, uh, can't give out that information," Sally croaked nervously.
"The real Mr. Incredible wouldn't behave like that," observed Mirage, who had pulled Chris aside. "He must be another phony."
"Let me handle him," Chris offered. Drawing aside her parted hair, she called out, "Hey, Mr. Incredible! Over here!"
The mind-scrambled man of muscle turned his angry glare away from Sally, and looked straight into the stupefying visage of The Transfixer. His face softened, and his jaw fell open. A faint voice in his head exulted, "Yes! Yes!"
Mirage, trying to be helpful, stepped between Chris and Mr. Incredible, and waved her fingers in front of the immobile superhero's eyes. "Out like a light," she joked upon seeing that there was no response.
"Mirage, get out of the way!" Chris shrieked.
It was too late--Mirage had clumsily placed herself in Mr. Incredible's line of sight, blocking The Transfixer from his view. Overpowered by an urge to destroy the super who had treated him to a horrifying illusion, Robert Parr seized Mirage by the throat and lifted her a foot and a half from the floor. Chris stifled a scream.
"This time," snarled Mr. Incredible while the blond woman gagged and wheezed in his hand, "I really will crush you."
----
to be continued