Jack-Jack climbed back up and shook Dash awake.
"Vllt gon!" he said, meaning "They've taken Violet away and we have to find her!"
"Huh? Whussat?" said Dash groggily. The fresh air revived him and he quickly understood the situation.
"This is serious! Let's get Mom and Dad's help," Dash said.
Dash picked up Jack-Jack and they charged back into the hospital. Unfortunately, they found that both Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl were in a sound, drugged sleep. Both Dash and Jack-Jack together could not shake them awake.
"Attention, Attention!" came the voice of Mattathias on the intercom. "Dr. Tocuny and Nurse Budd, report to the Operating Theater immediately for an emergency cranioectomy on a fourteen-year old girl." Then there was a burst of muffled laughter.
"Ectmy?" asked Jack-Jack, meaning "What's a cranioectomy?"
"I don't know," said Dash. "But knowing Syndrome it's something really bad. I need to search this place top-to-bottom at super-speed. Can you get light and floaty so I can carry you easier?"
"Mozzrt?" asked Jack-Jack, meaning "Do you have any Mozart you could play to inspire me?"
"No, I don't," said Dash. "Here, try this."
He grabbed a heart-shaped balloon that the Volunteers Fighting Disease had left tied to the bedside table and let Jack-Jack touch it. Jack-Jack morphed into a balloon-baby. With the stretchiness he had just absorbed from his mother and the strength from his father, there was no danger of popping.
Dash and Jack-Jack zipped from floor to floor of the hospital, looking for Violet or any henchperson of Count Buddy's. Suddenly he spotted Syndrome's two powder-faced female guards walking along a hallway. They were disguised in doctor's coats and surgical masks. One of them was lagging a few feet behind the other.
ZZOOM! Dash charged into the woman so fast he carried her away from her companion, down the hall, and around a corner. She was unconscious before she knew what hit her.
"Can you morph to look like her?" Dash asked his baby brother.
"Gry," said Jack-Jack, meaning, "I'll give it a shot."
Jack-Jack touched her. It was his trickiest morph yet; he could look like a miniature version of her fairly easily, but that wasn't good enough. He had to apply all the stretchiness and ballooniness he had absorbed earlier to make a full-sized copy. He looked a bit like an inflatable doll, but when Dash dressed him in the doctor's coat and surgical mask which the woman had been wearing, the disguise was quite effective.
Dash shoved the powder-faced woman into a supply closet. Then he lifted the balloony Jack-Jack, zipped him close to the woman's original position, and climbed up under the coat. He managed to squeeze himself into Jack-Jack's squashy back without forming too much of an extra bulge.
"Don't dawdle, Budd," said the powder-faced woman who was in the lead. "You know Syndrome will be angry if we're late for this operation."
"Sorry," said Dash, trying to sound like a woman. His voice was muffled under the doctor's coat and it sounded enough like the voice of the powder-face woman's voice muffled by a surgical mask to fool "Dr. Tocuny."
Jack-Jack had barely begun to walk, so it wasn't easy for him to balance in this adult form. Dash helped with his own high-speed reactions, pushing Jack-Jack's legs from behind with his own legs.
They followed Tocuny to the operating theater. It was late, but a small crowd of doctors, reporters, visitors, curiosity seekers, and Volunteers Fighting Disease had gathered to watch this amazing new operation.
Violet was anesthetized on a wheeled gurney in the center of the room. Beside her stood two of Count Buddy's henchmen that they had run into before: the hook-handed man and the bald man with a big nose.
"Ladies and gentlemen," announced the hook-handed man to the crowd, "We are here to perform a history-making operation which has never been done before: a cranioectomy to relieve this young woman of her swelled head. I am Dr. U. Tuncboddy."
"Hooray for Dr. Tuncboddy!" cheered the audience.
"And I am Dr. Dubcutondy, the surgeon who invented the cranioectomy," said the bald-headed man.
"Hooray for Dr.Dubcutondy!" cheered the audience.
"The two lovely ladies who have just arrived are Dr. Tocuny and Nurse Budd. They will perform the operation under our direction," said Tuncboddy.
"Hooray for Dr. Tocuny and Nurse Budd!" cheered the audience.
The bald-headed man handed "Nurse Budd" a rusty knife. "Go for it, Budd," he whispered. "Saw off her head before the anesthetic wears off!"
"I can see the headlines now," said a reporter in the crowd, "NURSE PERFORMS NEVER-DONE-BEFORE OPERATION UNDER DIRECTION OF SURGEON."
"First we should explain everything so we sound like real doctors," said Dash, trying to stall.
"All right, go ahead, but be quick about it," said the bald-headed man.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is a knife," said Dash. "It's used for, um, cutting things." His mind went blank. What else could he say about knives?
"Booh!" said the audience. "Get on with the operation."
"Are you losing your nerve?" demanded the real powder-faced woman. "Let me do it if you won't."
"Peeper wrk!" said Jack-Jack suddenly.
"What did you say, Budd?" asked the hook-handed man.
"Paperwork!" said Dash, interpreting Jack-Jack's idea. "The most important thing we do at Hemoglobin Hospital. No job can be completed until the paper work is done."
"You're right," called a doctor. "How could we forget the paperwork? Call Halley from the Library of Records at once!"
"You're ruining everything!" hissed the bald-headed man.
"No need for Halley," called a new voice. "I can clear this whole thing up."
It was Esmé Sansweet, and she had with her the powder-faced woman the two Incredibles had replaced.
"That nurse is an impostor!" Esmé said. "Here's the real Nurse Budd!"
"The game's up," whispered Dash to Jack-Jack. "Get ready for action."
Dash jumped down from the Jack-Jack's back and assumed a fighting stance. Jack-Jack morphed to original form and took a stance beside him.
"It's those killer supervillains, the Inconceivables!" yelled the reporter.
"We're not supervillains or killers!" Dash yelled back.
"I can see the headlines now," said the reporter, "VILLAINOUS KILLER KIDS ATTACK HOSPITAL, PROVE THEY ARE INCONCEIVABLE."
"Vizzini!" Jack-Jack cried, which meant, "Stop using that word. I don't think it means what you think it does."
Halley Hogenson burst into the room. "When I got home I checked my keys and I found out you tricked me," she said angrily. "I rushed back here and found my Library destroyed!"
"Sorry the filing cabinets got tipped over, Halley," said Dash. "It wasn't our fault. We're just trying to clear our name."
"You didn't just tip them over. You set the Library on fire!" said Halley. "I don't care what you do to clear your name. In my book you'll always be supervillains."
Dash didn't know what to say to that. There was no time, anyway, since the goons onstage and some bold people in the crowd were closing in.
The hook-handed man made a swipe at Jack-Jack, who decked him with a powerful blow from a fist on a stretched-out arm. Pleased with this, he sent more villains flying with elongated punches.
"Gow gow gow!" Jack-Jack said.
Dash knocked over the two powder-faced women with rapid-fire punches, then grabbed Violet's gurney. "Hop on!" he yelled to Jack-Jack. He ran the gurney down the hallway as fast as he could without tipping it.
"Attention! Attention!" came the voice of Mattathias. "Supervillains are running around the hospital. We must catch them and turn them over to the police. By the way, the hospital is on fire. The fire is spreading to the Nasty Rash Ward, the Stubbed Toe Ward, the Exhaustion and Exposure Ward, and the Accidentally Swallowed Something You Shouldn't Ward. After catching the supervillains, consider evacuating the hospital."
"Esposha!" said Jack-Jack, meaning "Mom and Dad are unconscious in the Exhaustion and Exposure Ward!"
Violet moaned and lifted her head. The jostling of the gurney was waking her up.
"Violet, are you strong enough for a force field? We have to get upstairs and I see fire ahead!" Dash said.
Just before they reached the stairs, the huge guard that could have been either a man or a woman leaped out at them. Violet put up the force-field just in time. The person bounced off of it and hit his or her head on the wall. Dash raced them all up the stairs through flames, protected by the force-field ball that enclosed gurney and all.
They passed two more walls of flame and then they were in the Exhaustion and Exposure Ward. It was filling with smoke and heat. Their parents were still in bed, unconscious.
Jack-Jack touched them again to recharge his strength and stretch. He encircled Bob and Helen with strong, elastic arms and lifted them up.
Flames were outside the door now, so the children headed for the window.
"Down nogo," said Jack-Jack, meaning, "We're too high up for me to break our fall with strength if I jump."
Instead, Jack-Jack stretched up to the roof and hauled the family out of immediate danger. He figured that they could look around from there and find the safest side to descend.
Nothing looked very good, but Syndrome's plane was parked on the roof with no-one inside. The children ran for the plane and hid behind boxes in the cargo compartment.
It was just in time, because Syndrome, Esmé, and the guards came rushing out of the building.
"Sir, we left a man or woman behind," said the hook-handed man.
"Forget it," said Syndrome. He sounded short-tempered, possibly because of the bandaged burns on his chest. "We've got to get out of here."
The plane took off, leaving the flaming hospital below. The Parrs knew they would get the blame. And yet, in a few things they really were to blame. Dash remembered how Halley had called them supervillains. The lines between heroes and villains were no longer so clear.
"Do you think we're villains, Vi?" Dash whispered to his sister.
"Villains lie, steal, and destroy things. We did a little of that, but our intentions were good," Violet said.
"Guddy too?" asked Jack-Jack, meaning, "Maybe Count Buddy thinks his intentions are good, too?"
There was no answer as the plane continued to race through the air.