I awoke first. The three Parr children and myself were behind bars in a dimly-lit room. I touched each of them gently on the shoulder and they started to wake up.
"Where are we, Lemon?" Dash asked.
"It may be a power-blocking cell," I said. "Like the one in the Villainous Fowl Devotees village. Try to do something with your super-speed."
Dash tried to run in place. "No good. I guess we're blocked."
"What happened with you and Jack-Jack?" Violet asked.
"Zndrome byebye," said Jack-Jack.
"Yes, Syndrome's dead," I said. "But I have a feeling he was the least of our problems."
"You can say that again," said Dash.
The door opened and a hooded man came in.
"A nice catch of supers," he said. "Bait to catch the rest."
"Is that why you kept us alive?" I asked.
"Yes. We want to find out from you where you were meeting the others after your mission. Then we can set an ambush."
"Who are you?" asked Violet.
The man lowered his hood. "I wonder if you can guess?"
Violet stared at him. "You look like the minister at our parent's wedding. I saw you in their wedding picture on the Quohog."
"I'm not a real minister. I'm a scientist, and I was simply setting up an experiment," said the man.
"To see what happened when two supers had children," said Dash.
"Yes. You three exceeded our expectations, or should I say, nightmares," said the man.
"Brrr!" said Jack-Jack, meaning "You give me the creeps!"
"You must be Gregor Anwhistle," I said.
"No! I'm his brother, Ike Anwhistle," he said. "My brother was killed in a fire by a rogue super. I'm completing his work and my revenge, by wiping all of you out."
"Aren't you supposed to be dead? Your wife thought you were," said Dash, thinking of Josephine Mode.
"I faked my death in a leech accident so that I could pursue my revenge in secret," Ike said.
Violet suddenly gasped. "So that's what Mr. Poe meant. I asked who shot him, and he said 'I can...', but what he was trying to say was 'Ike Anwhistle'."
"Yes, I shot Poe," said Anwhistle. "He was a traitor. He found out about the extermination plan and tried to help you. I know now he and Jerome Sansweet had gone soft on supers. I shot him, too."
"What did Mr. Sansweet have to do with it?" asked Dash hotly.
"He and another agent were supposed to guard the sugar bowl at the base on Mortality Mountain. While Sansweet was out on the trail the Pine parents attacked. The agent threw the sugar bowl into the stream to save it. Before he was killed, he just had just enough time to leave a coded message for Sansweet."
"The Verbal Fridge Dialog," said Violet.
"You children are much too clever for your own good," said Anwhistle. "You ate some of the message, but Sansweet learned enough to track the sugar bowl. Either that, or Quigley Rydinger told him the message when Sansweet rescued him from the stream."
"He rescued Quigley?" Violet asked.
"He won Quigley's trust, enough so that Quigley sent him a copy of a telegram which told him where you would be. He sent a tip to Poe, and he also tipped off the Female Finnish Pirates about where to find the sugar bowl. He wanted the truth to come out."
"But why did Count Buddy want the sugar bowl?" asked Dash.
"He'd really blown it with that stupid save-the-city-from-a-giant-robot stunt. We tried to cover for him for a while, with that story in the paper that it was Count Brody and putting all the blame on you three. But he was still unreliable, doing all sorts of public revenge stunts that failed to kill you. So we froze his assets and canceled his contract."
"So when he killed Beatrice tonight it wasn't for money?" I asked, my eyes filling with tears as I thought of her.
"Pure revenge. The agents who caught you heard him say it was for Esmé."
I had heard the same thing, but it hadn't registered through the shock.
"But what did that have to do with the sugar bowl?" Dash asked.
"He wanted the secrets so he could blackmail the government and get some protection for himself," said Anwhistle.
I wept for Beatrice. There was a sour taste in my mouth. Suddenly I remembered my power sometimes works that way when I'm upset. But I shouldn't have been able to use it...
"I must be immune to power blocking," I thought. "They never cared because my power is so useless. But I touched Jack-Jack before we were put in here..."
"So you see, we know everything. There's no point in resisting," said Anwhistle.
I sent a sour taste into the mouths of the three Incredibles. Jack-Jack gave me a quick glance and I knew he understood the implications of what I had done. Jack-Jack's face twisted as he concentrated all his power.
KAWHAMM! A mighty blast of the plasma energy Jack-Jack had absorbed from Beatrice hit the bars. The whole wall of bars blew out and smashed into Anwhistle.
We didn't stay to find out if Anwhistle was just stunned or if he was killed. Jack-Jack morphed dragonfly wings, a part of Beatrice's super-equipment he had also managed to copy. He flew to the nearest wall and blasted through it to the outside. Violet formed a large force-ball around all of us, Jack-Jack attached himself around my back as a set of wings, and Dash ran with the force-ball until we had left every pursuer behind.
We rejoined the others and soon we were streaking out of the country in the jet. I doubt we'll return in my lifetime.
Postscript
We have settled in a South American country and we are keeping as low a profile as we can. Some of us, like myself, would be content to live here in peace. Others, like KitFox, want to build up our numbers and eventually strike back at our enemies. She is pushing for the strongest supers to marry, since only children of two supers are sure to be resistant to mind-control. Her ideal matches for the Parr children are the ones Captain Widdershins suggested: Dash with Fiona, and Violet with Fernald. The young people seem to have other ideas, especially Violet and Quigley. As for Jack-Jack, KitFox and Macroburst have gotten together and there may be a match for him by the time he grows up.
I think only a super could manage to read to the end of this sad and horrifying tale, so if you are reading this you must be one. I used a forged identity to post this story to a fan-fiction site in hopes of reaching supers still in hiding. If you want to join us, go to the Statue of Victorious Financiers at midnight and unscrew the left hand of the third financier. There I have placed further instructions. Hope to see you soon.
With all due respect,
The Lemon