Thanks again, endlessly for support from Nny11, Xalias and princessmoi.
I'll not hold you up any longer
It gets pretty fraught
The plot thickens and so on and so forth
Read – review if you so wish, I know I would greatly appreciate some feedback though
Enjoy! Love LJ xXx
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Throw Me. Chapter Nine. The Missing
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Helen, Bob and Lucius stand on the rooftops of one of the high-rising apartment blocks in Metroville City. They are gathered around the clamshell-style gadget Lucius holds in one gloved hand. Without warning, a small light at the top of it begins to flash and the device begins to beep.
"Hang on, there's another one coming in," Frozone squints closer at the bleeping object, an ice blue like his whole suit. "A fire, back in Municiberg. 47 South Street." He glances at his two masked friends who shrug their shoulders.
"We can handle the hostage thing, 'Zone," Bob offers. "No problem. You head back and take the fire."
"You are the one of us most suited for it, after all," Helen adds. Frozone nods and sends up small cloud of frost with a smile as he snaps the gadget shut and puts it away.
"Okay I'll see ya around later, then – have fun!" He grins, rolls his shoulders slightly – limbering up for the long night ahead. Then he shoots a long, fast-melting snake of snow ahead of him, snow-boarding off across the city.
They watch their friend disappear for only a moment before switching back to the task at hand and head off in the direction of the reported hostage situation, each using their own talents to skip over the rooftops and above the static cars jammed in the roads below.
The pair arrive together and stand a while outside the office block building at which the events have unfolded. The building is evacuated all but one twenty-ninth floor room in which the police estimated twelve people were randomly picked out and forced into the room to act as hostages. The demands made by the team of five or six were trivial, as always, but hard to meet.
"Just keep them busy," Mr Incredible mutters to the police chief in charge on the scene as Bob and Helen fall into their own roles in the situation as though it were an everyday occurrence; it once was.
As quietly as he can, he pulls the grate off the air vent at the side of the building.
"Air vent? The oldest trick in the book – how cliché," Elastigirl chides him playfully before hopping lightly inside. He only grins after her and begins to scale the towering wall.
The apartment block is ablaze when Frozone arrives on the scene, strategically placing blankets of ice and snow as soon as he gets there.
"How did the fire start, ma'am?" He calls out to a distressed resident standing on the pavement.
"I don't know, I don't know – it just did; you have to help them, there are still people inside," she begs him, wringing her hands unconsciously.
"Don't worry, ma'am, just get to a safe distance," Frozone responds in his favourite epic superhero voice before disappearing into the flame-engulfed building.
Helen Parr slinks with ease through the intestinal air ducts snaking through the building, keeping her mind firmly stuck on maintaining a sense of direction. She stops briefly and crouches in the tiny tube trying to work out in her mind whereabouts she is in the building. Further down the tunnel, gears clank and thick metal wires churn around each other; an elevator rises past one end of the air duct and Elastigirl slopes off over towards it.
She finds herself leaning over the edge of a dark, deep drop but calmly steps out from the duct, reaching her long arms up to hang onto the bottom of the elevator.
"Twenty-seven...eight...nine," she mutters to herself before hurling herself at the air duct entrance just above the closed door to the twenty-ninth floor. With effortless grace and ease, she slips inside the narrow piping and weaves through it, stopping at every grate to check to the rooms for hostages.
And then she sees them: twelve – just as the cops had said – people slumped in submission with two armed and masked men standing guard in a room on her left. She crouches by the air duct grate and begins to quietly turn the screws that hold it in place. They probably haven't been turned since the building was built, twenty-two years ago and one of them screeches loudly as it turns, the sound echoing down the metal duct.
"What was that?" One of the guards turns sharply, cocks his gun. Helen freezes and holds her breath out of instinct and professionalism rather than fear.
"The air conditioning in this place is old. It creaks," one of the hostages speaks up from the floor.
The guards look at each other and seem to accept this explanation as they say nothing further than: "No talking."
Obediently, a silence fills the room once more before being spectacularly broken once more by Elastigirl bursts out from the duct like a coiled spring – in more ways than one. With coolly calculated precision she takes out both guards with one swift and powerful right hook.
She says nothing as the twelve hostages scramble to their feet and gaze at her in astounded admiration. Helen Parr only wriggles her gloved right hand and fingers before running it automatically through her red hair.
"Stay quiet; I'm going to get you out of here but you have to be quick," she orders them in hushed tones.
They nod eagerly and watch as she runs to one of the huge windows at the side of the building. On the outside ledge, she sees her husband clamber up and grins as he prises the floor-to-ceiling window from its frame and scrambles into the room.
"You got this? Get them out of here – I can take it from here," Mr Incredible says to Elastigirl.
"Of course you can – the hard part's already over," She replies coolly, bantering again for old times' sake. "It's so nice of you to make an appearance."
She approaches the empty window pane and, peering down, she beckons to the nearest person. The middle-aged man in his business suit leans over the window ledge and turns to the masked woman, uncertainly.
"But – it's twenty nine floors down – " he stammers. Elastigirl smiles kindly at him and grabs his hand in her gloved one.
"Just trust me, okay?" she tells him and, gripping the ledge tightly with one hand, vaults over the edge bringing the man down with her. The stretch is long but she's an expert by now and the businessman comes to a gentle halt, twenty-nine floors down. Letting go of his hand, Helen springs back up to the twenty-ninth floor, leaving him stare after her in amazement.
Eleven leaps later, the room is clear except for the two superheroes and the two knocked-out guards.
"Wow," Mr Incredible remarks, peering over the unconscious armed men. "Fifteen years of marriage and you still surprise me."
"I know," Elastigirl keeps up the act with a slight smirk as she heads towards the door. But as she does, he grabs her wrist and turns her around.
"Oh come on, do you want to do this the easy way or the stylish way?" he asks her, grinning. Helen only raises her eyebrows.
Midway through debating their demands with the police over loudspeakers, an almighty crash comes from the hostage room and the four of them race up to the twenty-ninth floor. As the lift doors ping open at level twenty-nine, the step into the room that should've been full of hostages. Now their two associates lie on the floor and, in the centre of the room, poised and ready to fight, stand Mr Incredible and Elastigirl.
Emerging less than ten minutes later, the two supers strut calmly out of the building, six bound and unconscious men piled on top of Mr Incredible's shoulder.
"Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl – the city owes you. Thanks again," the police chief nods at the pair as the other cops rush to arrest the unconscious felons.
"All part of the job," Bob quips. Helen notices his voice deeper than usual and glances at him with a slight knowing grin at the act they both put on.
"Shall we get back soon? It's kinda late," she reflexively slips her arm around his when they are far enough from the crime scene.
Bob runs his eye along the city skyline, from which the sun sank hours ago, scanning for any signs of trouble that might erupt. The city is calm and running smoothly so he turns to his wife with a smile.
"Sure – catch up with the kids, have dinner, be normal – why not?"
"So what did you do at school today, Vi?" Helen prompts, trying to break the silence in the dining room. Violet looks up at her with pained eyes.
"Nothing," she murmurs.
"She went mental at lunch!" Dash supplies the information gleefully. Violet turns to him in open-mouthed outrage. "Yes, Vi – even the elementary school kids know all about it."
"What?" Violet shrieks.
"What?" Helen asks, narrowing her eyes.
"Dash?" Bob scrutinises his son.
"What!" Dash protests, widening his own eyes in innocence – it was his most reliable look that got him out of most sticky situations with strangers and drew old ladies to him like moths to flames.
Helen sighs finally, seeing how distressed this topic has made her daughter and decides it may be better to look into it sometime later.
"Leave your sister alone, Dash." She scolds in exasperated tones. And then again, the doorbell rings. Bob glances across the table at Helen.
"Elizabeth has her own key," he murmurs at her.
"And you don't go bowling anymore..." she adds to which Bob looks slightly shifty.
The bell rings more urgently and, on opening the door, the Parrs see a distraught Honey Best standing on the doorstep. She rushes into their house, a look of franticness on her face.
"Helen – Bob – Helen," she turns to both of them, confused in her panic. "Is Lucius here?"
"...No." Bob answers slowly, suspicion creeping into his voice.
"Oh God – oh God," Honey whispers, her eyes darting between the concerned Helen and Bob. Violet and Dash watch with baited breath from the dining table until finally Honey's eyes fix their nervous gaze at the blank wall ahead of her.
"He didn't come home," she tells them, drawing in a deep breath. "Do you know how scared I've been of this happening for so long? He didn't come home."
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