Listening to the Incredibles soundtrack right now. I am so obsessed. It's not even funny. But anyways! On to the story!
"So I'm not going to remember any of this?"
"No…"
Violet and Tony were sitting together in some rather uncomfortable chairs. They were in a painfully dull hallway lit by lights that were too bright. After picking up Dash from the 'crime scene,' the Incredibles, Frozone, and Tony had gone straight to the closest NSA department. There, the supers had changed back into their everyday clothing, and Violet had been left to explain things to Tony while Bob and Helen got Rick. Frozone waited with Dash and Jack-Jack. It was going to be a long night.
Tony was staring at the door across from the chairs in which he and Vi sat. His foot was tapping the floor uncontrollably. Obviously, he was a little rattled by the whole situation and a little nervous about what was to come.
"Kari's done this before?"
"Yeah…"
"Was she…you know…" Tony pointed to his head and twirled his finger in a gesture suggesting insanity. "…before or after that?"
"Before," Vi said, laughing a little.
"W-what exactly do they do?"
"I don't really know."
"My parents are gonna kill me."
"Not as bad as mine…"
"Hm," Tony agreed, nodding his head. His foot continued to tap the ground. The door loomed over them, like a dark force. Violet kept beating herself up inside her head. Stupid stupid stupid!
"How (ahem)," Tony began, starting a couple octaves high, "how're you gonna fix that tear in your suit?"
Violet thought about the tear from one of the rats. Her arm was now bandaged tightly. "I don't know. I think my mom made them, so I guess she'll just fix it."
"Your mom?"
"I guess."
"Huh…"
The sound of footsteps echoed through the hallway. Both teenagers looked in the direction of the sound as the owner of the feet turned the corner into the hall. A short woman walked through the hall, looking at a clipboard. Neither teen said a word. Again the silence brought the gray, steel door seem alive and more threatening than an Omnidroid.
More footsteps; several people. Two Violet recognized as the footfalls of her parents. Before they could turn the corner into the hallway, Violet turned to Tony and looked guiltily down at her shoes.
"Sorry about all this."
Tony shrugged. "No big deal."
Sure enough, Agent Dicker, Helen, and Bob were walking down the hall towards them, Rick in the lead. The three adults stopped in front of Tony and Vi. Rick looked down sleepily at Tony.
"Tony, right?"
Tony nodded. His foot had finally stopped.
"I'm Agent Rick Dicker. Please follow me." Agent Dicker opened the gray door. Inside was a dark room in which Tony could just make out a table, some chairs, and a projector thing on the ceiling. Rick held the door open as Tony walked inside and shut it behind the boy. Above the door, a red-lit sign turned on: Do no disturb.
"Hey kiddo," Bob said to his daughter.
Violet stood up and looked at the door. It all seemed so unfair.
"His parents will pick him up, Vi," Helen said.
"His parents?"
"Don't worry. They'll get the same story as Tony."
"What's that?"
"The two of you went on a date, the theater was attacked, you both managed to get out, and the Incredibles saved the day. Then they brought you both here so you'd be out of danger."
"… Okay."
The ride home was silent. It wasn't until they got home that things got back to normal. Well, normal for them anyways.
"Uh, Dad?" Dash asked, looking out the window at the front of their house. "Who's that guy sleeping on our front porch?"
"Uh oh."
Bob parked the car in the driveway and they all piled out. Dash and Vi looked down at the man in blatant shock, while Helen, who held the sleeping Jack-Jack, was trying to remember where she'd seen that face.
Bob bent down next to Dean. "Dean," he said softly. "Dean wake up." He gave him a gentle shake. Mind you gentle for Mr. Incredible is not-so-gentle for the rest of the human race.
"Wha- What?" Dean yelped, sitting up. He wiped his face with his hand. "Mm." He looked up at who had woken him. "Hey, Mr. Inc is back."
"Heya buddy."
"Carter?" Helen asked the young man.
"And Elastigirl! Well what d'you know."
"This isn't Carter, hon," Bob said, helping Dean stand up. "This is his son, Dean."
"Dean? Little Dean?"
"That's me, Ma'am."
"It's been ages! The last time I saw you, you were-"
"Twelve?"
Helen did the math in her head. "Yeah."
"Fifteen years has a tendency to change that."
Dash and Violet looked 'little Dean' over. If it had been fifteen years since he was twelve, that mad him twenty-seven. That seemed right. He wore blue jeans- not tight and not baggy, a black t-shirt from some rock concert, and a jean jacket. He had a sleepy, laid-back look about him, aided by his poorly combed black hair.
"So, uh, who are you?" Dash asked, interrupting the conversation of the adults.
"Well lookit here. More customers. Less sleep."
"You are just like your father."
Bob looked down at Dash. "This is Dean."
"We figured that much out."
"Well, he took over his father's business, which was… uh… he was an 'engineer of vehicles and… mechanisms meant for abnormally, uh, super-"
"I make cars," Dean interrupted. "Among other things, for supers. Weird ones." Dean sat on his haunches next to Dash. "Like your mother. Once my daddy got a call from her asking for a jet that could, and I quote, 'withstand the explosion of the sun.'" Dean smiled from Dash to Helen then stood up. "Now, since his acclaimed majesty Mr. Inc is back, perhaps he could give me my cash for his new car so I could call a cab an' get home."
"Oh, sorry," Bob said, counting out the bills and handing them to Dean. Helen made it a point not to look.
"Well," Dean said, swinging around on his right leg so he could face the entire family as he walked backwards off the porch and across the lawn. "It was a pleasure meeting y'all. I'll be reading' about ya in the morning paper tomorrow, no doubt. So, I-"
ZOOM!
As Dean had stepped blindly into the street, a large pick-up truck nearly ran him over. Thus leaving Dean in a frozen state of terror. "I'll just be leaving now," he said in a high-pitched voice. With that, he slowly turned around and walked down the street.
"Well," Helen was saying the next morning at breakfast, "at least he isn't as bad as E." She elasti-placed the plate of pancakes in front of her sleepy while she handed Bob the morning paper and got out Jack-Jack's baby food.
"Who's E?" Violet asked as she leaned away from her ravening little brother. Bob looked up at Helen from his paper.
"They didn't meet Edna when you picked up their suits?"
"No. Remember, I had no idea what she had for me when I got there."
"Edna Mode is the person who made your suits, Vi," Bob said, reaching for a fire extinguisher. Jack-Jack sneezed and was suddenly aflame. Without so much as a second glance, Mr. Incredible extinguished his son and placed the extinguisher back under the table.
"I thought Mom made our suits," Dash said between bites.
"No, I didn't. And Vi, don't let me forget to take your suit to get fixed."
"Okay," Vi said, turning dejectedly to her breakfast.
"Uh oh."
"What is it, honey?" Helen asked as she finally sat down to feed Jack-Jack.
"You don't want to see the paper."
Violet and Dash both had the sudden urge to leave.
Helen had one of her strange faces on, a spoon aloft just out of the reach of Jack-Jack's mouth. Her eyes were closed, bracing her for what was going to come. "What is it?"
"Well, the good news is that the writers seemed to have finally settled on names for the kids."
"Really? What's my name?" Dash asked. He'd been eager to get a name for ages. Even Vi was curious about her name. At a young age, whenever Helen wasn't around usually, Bob had told his kids stories about the glory days. Neither child wanted to have some horrible name like some of the supers they'd been told about.
"Well, kiddo, your name… lessee now. Rapid Fire."
"Rapid Fire?" Dash asked happily. "Not bad!"
"How bout me and Jack-Jack?" Vi asked nervously.
"Jack-Jack… is the Flare, and you are… Shadow."
"Pretty good!" Dash said happily.
"So what's the bad news?" Helen asked through her faces as she fed Jack-Jack.
Bob hesitated a second, then slid the paper across the table to his wife so that the articles faced her.
"Oh no."
McCormick. While names had remained anonymous in accordance to press restrictions pertaining to memory-erasion-involved cases, it was still there. McCormick had gotten word of how 'a young, upstanding American boy had been deliberately put in harm's way by a young super during a get together at a movie theater.'
Helen quickly flipped the paper over when Violet and Dash began to peek at the print. Desperate to change the subject, she turned to Dash. "So, sweety, wanna tell your father and sister about last night?"
"What d'you mean? They were there when we got creamed."
"No, I mean about your meeting with the teacher."
Violet turned to look at Dash suspiciously, if not a little pleased, while Bob also eyed his son.
"Uh… we uh…met-Ms.-Gutchewsky-breakfast-was-great-later!" Dash spat out as he sped away from the table.
"Ah, ah, ah, you come back here," Helen said, Dash's ear pinched between her thumb and forefinger on the end of her elastic arm, which gradually got shorter, thus pulling Dash back into the room. "Now you sit down and tell them."
"She, uh, she wants me to move up a grade," Dash said, glancing from the table to the ground.
Violet and Bob both had jaws drop.
Vi was the first to speak. "What?"
"It turns out he's not just fast at running!" Helen exclaimed, smoothing Dash's hair. Dash just looked dubiously from her to his father, who had yet to respond.
"What do you think, Honey? Don't you think Dash could use some stimulation like this?"
His father's dropped jaw spread into a wide smile. "Congratulations, Dash! This is great!"
Even Vi grinned down at the little twerp. "I've got to admit, that's pretty cool, Kid."
Dash grinned uneasily. Personally, he wasn't so sure. Then again, maybe he could just pass off as some kid who just moved. Then the sixth graders wouldn't bug him about being younger and smaller. On the other hand, he didn't really want any extra 'stimulation,' as Helen called it. What's a kid to do?
The rest of the weekend, the family was trying to make Violet feel better about the whole mess of her date, mostly by sucking up to her. Which only made her more upset due to the fact that she was offended by their thinking she needed to be sucked up to. The weekend was also spent, between Helen and Dash, arguing over this whole moving up a grade thing (Dash lost). Bob spent the days giving Helen a break from watching over Jack-Jack. And job-searching.
Before they knew it, it was Monday morning. Bob was out early for a job interview as a mailroom manager, and Helen was dropping Violet off at the high school, then Dash at the elementary school (where she made a huge fuss over her new sixth grader) before heading out to do errands. However, something was happening elsewhere. Something very big.
Tony sat on the morning bus only half awake. He was thinking about Friday. The Incredibles had really saved Violet's and his skins. Not that Violet hadn't had her own share of glory. After all, she'd taken that hit to the arm helping him out of the theater, didn't she? He'd have to thank her for that, he guessed. Tony felt a little guilty over how the date had turned out, but at least no one got hurt, right? Gosh, how he wished he could sleep in another hour.
The bus turned the corner to where the last stop before the high school was. It was a house across the street from the movie theater. Tony looked across the bus out the opposite window of his own at the yet-to-be-cleaned-of-debris lot. Deciding he'd rather not look, he looked back out his window, where some debris lay strewn across the sidewalks.
But something here caught his eye. He looked closer. Glass, shattered. A small boulder of theater building lay not far from the sidewalk in a grass lot, and in line with it was shattered glass. When his eye followed the line of the glass, it came to the broken and bent frame of a phone booth. He looked at the phone, still whole and unharmed…
Dun dun dun… I dunno. You'll see next chapter.
Review…?