"That's a little dark for you, isn't it?"
"It would be easy. Like snapping a toothpick!"
- Syndrome and Mr. Incredible, discussing breaking Mirage in half
MONSTROUS"Mr. Incredible, they're getting away!"
Bob turned to see a pair of motorcycles blast out of a nearby garage and go tearing down the abandoned streets of Metroville's industrial district. "Follow them, honey, I'll finish up in here!" Without another word, his wife stretched and twisted, and three leaps later she was pursuing the fleeing criminals from the rooftops, four stories up.
Bob turned back to the derelict building he was standing in front of. It was an old factory, long since abandoned, made of brick. Its windows had been boarded up and its door had been replaced with a thick steel barrier, locked like a vault. The only way to open it was from the inside.
The superhero stepped back and slammed his arms into the door with all of his might. The door bent inwards, the steel unable to resist his extraordinary strength. A kick sent it flying off its hinges to crash against the dilapidated floor of the room. The only way for normal people to open it, anyways.
These particular criminals were amongst the worst he and Helen had faced since they had restarted their crime fighting careers – drug dealers and human traffickers, murderous thugs who smuggled narcotics, weapons and desperate people into the country from Eastern Europe and South America. Violet and Dash had been flatly forbidden from participating in tonight's raid – not just because of the danger, which was considerable, but because Bob and Helen, as parents, didn't want their children to be exposed to this kind of horror any more than they had to be.
A foul smell assaulted his senses, and a blast of polluted air made his eyes water behind his mask. The old factory had been gutted, and where once had been an assembly line were long, narrow rooms. They were filthy, and only dimly lit by the bare bulbs dangling overhead. The worst, however, were the array of dilapidated cots that lined the walls.
It was a dormitory of hell. Small, mostly still forms lay nestled in the mold-eaten sheets. Some tossed and turned, and there were whispers and sobs and whimpers up and down the narrow room, all coming from the forms in the beds. The combined noise was almost below the level of hearing, but echoed and reechoed from the bare iron walls until one couldn't stand it.
Mr. Incredible pulled an air filter from his utility belt and wrapped it around his face so he could breathe. As the rush of cool, clean air hit his lungs, he shook off his nausea at the stench and entered the room. The nearest cot was only a few feet away, but as he reached out to the covers, some primal terror screamed in the back of his mind. He knew, knew, that he did not want to examine the still form in that bed – but he was equally compelled by his duty to swallow his unease and pull back the sheet.
There was a brief choke and Bob Parr looked away in horror, the bile rising in his throat, threatening to pollute his breathing apparatus. He shut his eyes tightly, but the brief image was seared in his mind – it was a little girl, and she was dead.
Her brown eyes were open, staring at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. Her mouth was agape, still trying to get a last gasp of oxygen when she died. That she was dead was tragic enough, but Bob had seen death before – the true horror was far beyond that. She had been stripped bare either before or after her death, and her dark skin was mottled with horrible bruises and crisscrossed with livid pink scars. There were black bloodstains on her lips, across her chest, and staining the sheets between her legs.
She was handcuffed to the bed.
No… Bob choked back the contents of his stomach again, and covered her nakedness with the stained linens. There was nothing more that he could do for her, but he blinked the tears from his eyes and stood straight. There were others here who were still alive, who could still be saved. Though perhaps death would be a mercy for these girls, after what they had been through.
His breathing came unnaturally harsh and quick, rasping in his ears. She couldn't have been older than thirteen… Violet's age. The thought send a horrible shiver through his system as he imagined his beautiful daughter brought to a room like this, handcuffed to a filthy mattress, and…
"NO!" he screamed out loud. Immediately the whispers and moans in the room stopped, and only a muffled sobbing echoed through the metal corridor. There was a clang and a shuffling noise in the darkness at the back of the room.
There were more than a dozen beds, each occupied. He moved from cot to cot, desperately talking to them. "It will be all right," he whispered brokenly, fighting back sobs. "I'm here to help you…" In some beds, the girls who were awake flinched away from him, pleading to him in languages he didn't understand. In others, they just stared at him with empty eyes.
The last bed had a girl who was slightly older, and unlike the others, she had pale skin and black hair. Black hair… like my daughter, my baby… "Oh my God," he said hoarsely. "It will be okay," he lied. "I'm here to help you."
The girl, unlike the others, stared him directly in the eyes. "Please… don't hurt us… any more…" she pleaded in thickly accented English. Oh my God, she looks like my daughter…
"No one will ever hurt you again," he promised through clenched teeth. His breathing quickened as the rage bubbled up within him. A red curtain fell over his eyes, and he felt his heart hammering in his chest. "Who did this to you?"
The only thing he could see before his eyes was his daughter, pleading and screaming at her tormentors. The only thought in his mind was ensuring that no one ever hurt these little girls again. He needed a target – he would find the scum that did this and tear them limb from limb, and then he would rip this vile building apart with his bare hands.
Wordlessly, she pointed to the back of the room, where a middle-aged man behind a pile of refuse was trying to hide and scramble back into his trousers at the same time. Mr. Incredible tore the breathing mask from his face, ignoring the reek that rose up about him as the man give a tiny squeak and scrambled back against the iron wall. There was a desperate fear in the man's eyes as he stared into the black mask and saw the wrath of an angry God coming right at him.
The scum grabbed an iron bar from the floor, staggering under its weight, and swung it at the superhero's skull with all his might. He might has well have saved himself the effort.
Bob caught the makeshift weapon in his left hand, tore it effortlessly from his quarry's quivering hands and bent it in half. He tasted blood in his mouth, and realized that his nose had started bleeding, his pulse was hammering so hard. With a contemptuous snarl, he spat the blood onto the decaying floor and took another step closer.
The man was balding, with thin brown hair and glasses. Sweat dripped from his plain features – if Bob had passed him on the street, he would not have known him from any other citizen of Metroville. Somehow, that he was so ordinary enraged Mr. Incredible even more.
"You did this," Bob spat. His fists were clenched so tightly his knuckles were white, and his head ached from the adrenaline and tension.
"No, I… I ah, I wasn't a part of this," the man pleaded, cowering against the wall. "I'm just a, a uh… a client! I didn't bring them here, I didn't mean anyone any harm…" He started sobbing into his chest, still looking desperately about an escape.
Bob turned to the girl in the bed, and saw her sitting up, pulling against her restraints, mouthing curses in a foreign language. In her eyes, Bob saw the most complete loathing he'd ever seen in another human being. She saw him looking at her, and, utterly disregarding her nakedness, nodded vindictively at the cowering heap at Mr. Incredible's feet.
"I'm just a businessman," the man was sobbing. "I… please, I, I'll do anything… I want to go home… I'll- ach!" Whatever he was going to do was choked off as Bob lifted him off his feet and pinned him roughly to the wall by his shirtfront. Sweet, sweet adrenaline coursed threw his veins, it's rush drowning out that part of his mind that screamed at him to stop, to not cross the line that separated heroes from villains.
The masked superhero pushed against the wall until the man was gasping, and their eyes were inches apart. "Wha… what are you doing?" the man choked.
"I wanted to look you in the eyes, to see what kind of man would do this to children," Bob ground out. Our respect for life is what makes us heroes, some part of his brain reminded him. He relaxed his grip slightly, but a vision of the dead girl in the first bed, utterly alone and vulnerable, rekindled the rage. "I wanted to see who you really were before you died," he shouted, hurling the man against the far wall. He hit the metal wall with a crunch and crashed to the ground.
Amazingly, the man staggered to his hands and knees, and tried to crawl away, leaving a slight smear of blood from his shattered legs as he clawed his way to the far door. In two steps, Mr. Incredible was over to him, and lifted him off the floor again. The man choked and retched, his useless legs twitching spasmodically.
"Please… please…" he gasped. "Don't kill me… please… I have children…"
That thought seared through the superhero's mind, lifting the red fog enough for coherent thought to struggle through. "You… have children?" How could a man who had brought life into the world do such a thing?
"Yes… a son… Oh God, don't kill me…"
"You have a son." Bob felt the tension in his muscles become unbearable agony. The rage was still coursing through him – it would only take a tiny squeeze and his neck would snap. But he was no killer. He had only killed when his family was in danger…
Bob looked back to the bloodstained cot, where the girl, now wrapped in the thin sheets, watched with a look of unadulterated hatred. He focused on her wrist, where it was chained to the bed. He focused on the bruises, and the thin trickle of blood that ran down her arm, adding another stain to the linens. And he looked back at her face, but didn't see her features. He only saw his own beautiful daughter, shy but so brave, being deceived and broken by scum like the man he currently had in his power.
"You have a son. Well, I have a daughter," the masked man whispered. The rapist's eyes grew wider and he beat uselessly at the fist around his neck. "She's about fourteen. That's right down your alley, isn't it? Wouldn't you love to get your filthy hands on my daughter? Isn't that the way you operate?" he screamed.
It was Mr. Incredible, Superhero, who had knocked down that door in order to save the people inside. But it was Bob Parr, father, who squeezed until he heard a crack.
It was easy. Like breaking a toothpick. He threw the broken pieces away.
Dimly, he became aware of the world around him. He heard his wife swing down into the doorway. He heard her scream at the sight of the tormented girls. He heard rasping laughter from the dark-haired girl, laughter that turned into convulsive sobs. He saw the flashing lights as police and paramedics swarmed the building. He felt his wife clutching him in the darkness outside as ambulances took the surviving girls away. He tasted blood in his mouth.
A police lieutenant in charge of the scene saw the broken body of the businessman tossed in the corner. He took in the huge bruises around the man's neck, his undone belt and unzipped fly, and the naked, trembling girls in the ambulances. Silently, he walked over to where Mr. Incredible and his wife, Elastigirl, were standing, lit only by the flashing lights.
Mr. Incredible saw the policeman approach, and bent down to kiss his wife as they both wept. Then he turned, and, with blank eyes, offered his wrists to be cuffed. The policeman pretended not to notice, and instead stuck his hand into Mr. Incredible's massive fist.
"I'm a father myself," was all he said. "Sometimes, you just need to deal with the monsters, the only way they'll understand."
The superhero was shocked. There was silence for a few seconds as the two shook hands. Finally, the policeman looked up at the sky, where gray dawn was beginning to break over the rooftops of the city. "Shouldn't you be getting back to your family?"
Bob Parr looked at his gloved hands. Monstrous…
AN: I was reading a comic book in Borders a few weeks ago, about a super-team. I don't remember what the team was called, but it had Nightwing and Huntress in it. Anyways, one of the heroines had been lured to the country as a child under false pretenses and then forced into a situation like the one above, until she was rescued by a superhero.
I remember just thinking about that kind of horror being perpetrated against helpless children, and I had an angry reaction so strong that it surprised me. It is a parent's worst fear that their child be subjected to such evil – and as a parent, how would anyone respond if given a chance to strike back at the monsters who commit these crimes?
AN 2: The original story ended at "He threw the broken pieces away." It's a powerful image, and makes for a good conclusion. I didn't like it as an ending, though – it needed more closure, I thought. Do people think that the story was improved by the epilogue, or should I have stopped it at the climax?