Sometimes people speak of "waiting for the other shoe to drop," a phrase which here means "waiting in suspense for an action to be completed." My apologies to the readers who have been waiting for the other shoe to drop since the end of the last book, or in this case waiting for all the characters to drop, since I left many of them in the air.
Nevertheless, I still must warn you that sad and disturbing secrets will come out and tragic events will transpire in this book. It would be better to imagine that everything came out all right and go read some other story at once.
First aboard the "air team" jet with the shot-out engine: Quigley's first act was to rush to Colette, Hugo, and Kevin and slice off the hypnotic collars that had kept them thinking they were freaks.
"Huh? What's going on?" said Mr. Incredible (the former Hugo).
"The last thing I remember was being at the Caligula Carnival," said Elastigirl (the former Colette).
"Me too," said Macroburst (the former Kevin). "My hair feels messy, too!"
"No time to explain," said Quigley. "Can any of you fly a jet? We're going down."
"I can," said Elastigirl confidently. First her head and arms and then the rest of her stretched into the cockpit. In no time she had the plane under control.
Mr. Incredible took one look at the situation outside and assumed command. "We're needed, Macroburst!"
He dived out of the door at the bottom of the plane, counting on Macroburst to give him wind-powered flight support.
Outside, Fiona and Jack-Jack were already flying, frantically catching people as they jumped from the burning dirigible: KitFox, Hector, Duncan, and Sir.
"Macroburst, help them get people into the jet. But first, set me down on that sub!" ordered Mr. Incredible.
One on the top of the sub, Mr. Incredible began to drive off the crushing tentacles with furious punches. Then he saw another tentacle about to grab Phil off the pirate ship. With a mighty leap he sprang onto the deck of that ship, smashed back that tentacle, and broke Phil free of the manacles around his wrists. The nearest pirates drew back, jabbering to each other in Finnish.
"That was totally wicked!" Phil said.
Syndrome flew out of the top of the Karimelita with his rocket boots, carrying Esmé Sansweet. "So long suckers! I'll get you next time!" he yelled.
Mr. Incredible snatched up a broken pirate-ship mast and flung it at Syndrome like a harpoon. It knocked the villainous couple far away.
Meanwhile, inside the Karimelita, there was near-panic from the Snow Scouts who were still chained to the oars.
"Don't panic!" yelled Dash. "We'll get you out of here!" He wasn't sure how he could keep that promise, but it seemed like the right thing to say.
Isadora had an idea. She chanted:
"If for these chains there is a key,
I ask you, bring it now to me!"
A key appeared in her hand. "Here, Dash!" she called and tossed it to him.
Dash used the key to unlock all the chains in an instant.
"Now we have to get up through that hole in the ceiling and out of here," said Dash.
"How?" asked Isadora.
Dash swiftly tied the chains together, spun the end rapidly around to build up momentum, and flung the end of the chain up through the hole.
Mr. Incredible, who had leaped back to the submarine with Phil, caught the end of the chain. "Hang on, kids, and I'll haul you out," he called down to them.
"I don't want to be rescued by cakesniffers!" said Kari Melita.
"Oh, shut up and grab the chain," barked Fernald, menacing her with his hooks.
Kari was cowed by this and obeyed.
Macroburst, Fiona, and Jack-Jack airlifted the submarine survivors up to the jet.
Down below, Captain Widdershins was fighting desperately with the sea-monster Surma. Summoning his last strength he exerted his power over water currents and a huge whirlpool formed. It swept the monster, the pirate ship, and himself away from the island and into the zone of the time warp; they all disappeared.
"Stepfather!" cried Fiona from the jet.
"Fifteen years from now, we'll be ready," Dash assured her. "We'll come back out here and kill that monster and save him."
"Really?" said Fiona.
"Really!" said Dash.
She gave him a powerful hug. Dash was a little worried she had taken what he said the wrong way, but this was no time to correct her.
Helen Parr called out from the cockpit, "Is everyone accounted for?"
"Where's Violet?" asked Quigley.
To answer that question, I need to go back to the moment when Violet was pushed out of the dirigible. This was the second time she had taken a fall from this height, so she didn't panic. She saw an eagle flying up with the sugar bowl in its claws. She caught it in a large force sphere and was trying to pull it toward her, with the idea of using the eagle's flight to arrest her fall, when something else flying very fast grabbed her from behind!
"Aaagh!" cried Violet in fright.
She lost concentration and released the force field around the eagle. The eagle immediately dropped the sugar bowl and flew up. When she recast the force field it caught only the sugar bowl, which provided no resistance when the thing that was holding her rocketed away at high speed. Violet almost passed out, but she maintained enough concentration to hold the force field on the sugar bowl so it wouldn't drop.
Before she knew it, she was landing at a familiar beach: Brainy Beach. There was Mr. Poe again, with his weapon drawn.
"I've got you this time," Poe said with a cough.
Another shoe was about to drop.