Lum te tum tum tummyyyy, look at all the gorgeous reviews! They were wrong, reviews are a girl's best friend! Thank you much! Chapter 14! We are on a roll! Ever notice how history seems to repeat itself? Or how brothers can be really confusing? Or how whipped cream smells really weird? Maybe I should stop there…

Dash felt… well, not too good. Stimulation, my foot! he thought to himself as he recalled his mother's arguments for moving up a grade. As the eleven-year old walked into his new classroom, he felt very much like rolling up into a ball and staying that way forever and a day. (A/N hey! That rhymed!) Sixth graders seemed a lot taller up close. Since the morning bell hadn't officially started school yet for the day, the students were jumbled about, talking about their weekends and how much it sucked being back in school.

Suddenly, Dash felt someone bump into him from behind. He swiveled around to find himself face to face with a boy who had to be the tallest twelve-year-old on the planet.

"Sorry," the round-faced boy said, stepping around Dash. "Didn't see you there." With that, the very tall boy went to sit with another group of boys (none of which came within a foot of his height).

I can handle this, Dash thought to himself, rather uneasily, as he walked to an empty desk and sat in it.

"Hey, new kid…"

I'm dead.

Dash turned around to see who'd called him. It was a different boy from the one before, with his own gang of pals, but this one seemed pretty tall as well. Slowly Dash walked up to this boy. He had curly red-blonde hair that seemed like it would be a lot of fun to try to get a comb through.

"Yeah?"

"What's your name?"

"Call me Dash."

"You new here?"

"You could say that."

"My name's Luke."

"Skywalker?"

"Very funny."

Dash just smiled awkwardly. It unnerved him that he was this balled up. He was usually the center of attention, or at least confident in himself in crowds.

"You're kinda short," a boy next to Luke said.

"Shut up, Ernie," Luke said. "Well, as a piece of advice, I'd suggest steering clear of those guys." Luke nodded towards the tall boy and the three boys with him.

"Why?"

"They're loony."

The bell rang. Immediately the desks filled, and Dash found himself stuck in the front row, his least favorite spot. A woman ran into the room, tripping over her own feet and into her desk, causing pencils and papers to go everywhere. The students tried to muffle their snickers as the teacher picked everything back in its proper place, smiling knowingly at the class.

"Well good morning," she said.

"Hi, Ms. Niblack!" a girl who Dash assumed to be the teacher's pet said in return.

"How was everyone's weekend?"

There was a general grunt from the class.

"That exciting, huh? Well, I've got a few announcements. For starters, where is…" Ms. Niblack checked a list… "Dashiell Parr?"

Dash stood up, feigning apathy. "Call me Dash," he said.

"Class, this is Dash…"

Oh please don't tell them I'm a fifth grader!

"He just moved up a grade because he was too darned smart for the other fifth graders."

Perfect.

"So let's give him a warm welcome."

There was a small applause from the class, more out of acknowledgement of their teacher than kindness towards Dash. He sat back down and wished very badly he was back in ol' Bernie's class, putting thumbtacks on his chair.

Dash's father, who had left for a job interview early in the morning, was feeling a bit lighter than his son. Robert whistled happily as he went down the sidewalk of downtown, preferring to walk over taking a cab home. He'd finally gotten a job. Sure, it was as a mailroom clerk, but he didn't care anymore. So long as he could provide for his family, that was all that mattered. Who knew, maybe after Congress got some sense knocked into them, he could quit this job and go back to living off NSA checks like in the glory days. But until then…

Bob went over it again in his head. Start tomorrow, seven in the morning to two in the afternoon. He'd get weekends off, too. It wouldn't be so bad. Unless…

Robert's pace slowed a bit, and instead of looking at the clouds as he had been, his gaze turned to his feet. What if… What if the debates in D. C. didn't turn out well? What if they had to remain in hiding? What if the restrictions got even tougher? Eventually the money for Syndrome's defeat would run out, and after that, what? The pay he'd be getting wouldn't be enough to pay for the house, rental car(s), groceries, … And what about his kids? They'd go through their lives without decent training with their powers. They'd never be able to help people in the way they were born to do. Robert sighed as he walked.

What about the Underminer? What if things got tougher, like McCormick wanted, before they were able to catch the Underminer? Violet was already down because of the accident on Friday; if they didn't catch the Underminer one way or another, that would only bring her lower. Maybe as low as she was before Nomanisan. Dash, too…

Just then, Mr. Incredible heard something happening behind him, about a hundred feet away, that sounded a great deal like someone robbing someone else of their purse. He froze there on the sidewalk listening, eyes wide with anticipation. His mind analyzed the situation he'd hear a thousand times before. There was the scream of anger and fear, then the fall, and next was the sprinting footfalls accompanied by several 'Somebody catch him!'s, with no one moving.

Wait for it, wait for it…

POW!

Right as the crook was about to pass him, you-know-who held his rock-hard arm in front of the burglar's face. And then his lights went out. Oh dear. Someone call an ambulance. (that's sarcasm by the way)

"Whoa!" A young man nearby exclaimed, running up to Bob (as were others). Bob noticed the boy had a camera with him, and one terrible word ran through his mind: press.

"That was so cool! How'd you- hey where'd you go?"

Bob was power walking away. As people gathered around the fallen crook and not-so-stolen purse, the young man hurried to catch up with the long strides of Mr. Incredible.

"Hey, hey wait up!"

"Not good not good not good."

"Hey that was amazing back there!"

"Uh…"

"Hey, mind if I take your picture? I could run a little article for the paper tomorrow!"

"I'm not really fond of pictures," Bob said, trying to politely scare off the reporter/photographer.

"Oh c'mon! It'd be a great story! The public could really use a story like that, what with the Underminer reeking havoc and all! C'mon, it'll only take a second!"

"Really, I can't. Besides, it was nothing, really."

"Nothing! That was… I dunno!" The reporter struggled to find words that would capture this small-town hero's heart. "It was amazing! …Brilliant, uh… Incredible!"

Bob noticeably flinched. Luckily, the reporter wasn't looking right at him.

"Now there's a title! An Average Mr. Incredible! It'd be a great story! It'd really help out the fellows in Congress, know what I mean?"

"What?"

"You know, McCormick! Heck, he could use all the help he could get. Huh?"

Mr. Incredible had disappeared. Ten minutes later, Bob sat on a bench in City Park, looking befuggled at a tree which he had recently kicked, thus denting the thing.

Helen picked up some bananas and tested their weight in her hand. She and Jack-Jack were grocery shopping.

"What do you think, Jack-Jack?"

The baby ga-gaed.

"Exactly what I was thinking! We'll go with the other ones," Helen said, putting the bananas back and picking up a different bunch and placing those in the cart. "Oh, excuse me," she said to a man who'd been trying to reach the bananas as she left the stand.

"Not a problem."

Helen went on with her shopping, making faces at Jack-Jack and telling him what different things were (and rushing to the bathroom as very quickly as possible when the boy flambéed himself). They were going down the baking-needs aisle when Helen found herself in a bit of a predicament. Jack-Jack had picked up a small bag of flour.

"Sweety, flour's not on the list, although I do appreciate the gesture. Come on, sweety, put it back, please."

Jack-Jack was not letting go.

"Come-on-Sweety!" Helen said between her pulls, finding it very difficult to pry open the child's fingers. She almost had it when Jack-Jack started to cry.

"Oh, baby, don't cry over flour. It's just flour!"

"Ma mowur!" Jack-Jack cried angrily.

"No, store's flour. You can have as much flour as you like at home, okay?"

Not okay. Jack-Jack wanted that flour. Even if it meant going demon-thingy on Helen in a grocery store.

"Whoa!" Helen cried, letting go of the flour bag in shock. The little beast started gnawing on the bag savagely.

"Nonononono!" Helen shouted in a whisper so as to avoid catching anyone's attention. Thank heavens they were the only ones on the aisle. "Jack-Jack," Helen argued with the demon-thingy through gritted teeth. She was now pushing against the cart in which Jack-Jack sat with her feet while trying to pull the bag out of her son's mouth. "Jack-Jack, sweety, Mommy really doesn't wanna pay for this! Mommy just wants to pay for our groceries! You can have flour when we get-"

Pop! The bag exploded.

As flour flew up and eventually settled on the discontented mother, Jack-Jack changed back to his normal self, delighted with the non-cold snow he'd just made.

"Um…"

Within a second, Helen had cleaned the flour all up, resealed the bag, and put it back on the shelf. And was smiling awkwardly at whoever had addressed her. It was the fellow she'd bumped into at the banana stand.

"Yes?"

"Uh, I was just wondering, would you be interested…"

Helen was making a very odd disgusted face, unsure of what to expect.

"… in a career in modeling."

Hold it. Helen looked around her. Yes, she was the only one in the aisle. It took her a couple tries to get her mouth around the only word the could express her. "What!"

"And you're baby too!"

"What?"

"You see," the man began, taking a business card from his pocket and handing it to her, "I work for a home-decorating magazine, and we're always looking for new faces in the pictures!"

Helen took the card, blinking a few times with a cocked, confused eyebrow. She glanced at the card. She had a subscription to this magazine.

"Of course you'll want to think it over, and I'm sure you'll want to call the magazine and double check stuff. But we really are looking for a new look for this day and age, and I gotta say, you and this fellow here would be great for the job." With that, the man continued with his shopping, calling over his shoulder, "Don't forget to call!"

"But- Wait- What-? Ahh!" Helen heaved a sigh and looked down at her thirteen month old son. Who giggled in return. "Ho boy."

"Hey, Vi, what's got you down?" Sarah asked Violet as they walked to their first hour class.

Violet made a grunt in response.

"Ah, so the date didn't go too well, huh?"

Violet shook her head. "We went to the theater."

"You don't mean the movie theater that-"

"That's the one."

"Oh, that sucks! Well, it could be worse."

"How's that?"

"At least you're both alive (Tony is alive right?)! And at least the date wasn't awful just because you two didn't hit it off or something."

"Yeah I guess." Violet did like looking at it that way. Maybe things wouldn't turn out so bad. As the bell rang and she took a seat in her classroom, she absently wondered what kind of memories they'd given Tony instead of what really happened.

Half an hour later, Violet came to a very important decision. Never again would she take a math class during the first hour of school. Like everyone else in the class, at 7: 30 in the morning her brain was not on. And what was truly remarkable was the fact that the teacher's brain seemed to be awake, peppy even. Vi guessed coffee had something to do with that.

It seemed to take forever for that first class to go by, but finally the bell rang and hallways began to fill with liberated teens. Rodney and Catherine, two acquaintances of Violet's, walked with Vi on their way down the halls to English class. Meanwhile, Tony Rydinger was walking in the opposite direction, towards the science room across the hall from their geometry class. Tony's head was swamped with everything he'd seen and everything Vi had told him at the NSA office. But through the hustle and bustle of passing time, Tony saw Violet headed in his direction.

Tony panicked. He couldn't handle lying to her face right now; he didn't even know if he could lie at all with all the thoughts swimming around his head. So he decided (rather quickly) he would avoid the problem. "Avoid the problem" being he sprinted to the stairs to the lower level of the building and threw himself over the banister, landing painfully on the stairs and losing his balance so he rolled down the stairs and into the feet of the freshman class principal.

"Uh…Sorry about… that." Tony stood up awkwardly and tried to hurry to his next class via a different route. But the principal stopped him.

"Rydinger, correct?"

Tony turned around. Please God, please don't. "Yeah."

"Yes, I could tell, you look much like your older brother, Jason. How is he, by the way?"

"Jason? Uh, he's… fine," Tony said, shuffling his feet. He did not want to be talking to his principal right now.

"I take it he's adapted well to college life?"

"Yes."

The principal walked up next to Tony and began to talk quietly and gravely into his ear. "Tony, don't do that ever again. Otherwise I'm going to have to send you to an emotional counselor. I'll keep my mouth shut once and only once. Suicide is not the answer to your problems, Tony."

What-! What-? What the heck is he-? "I wasn't-!"

"Talk to Jason. He'll be glad to listen I'm sure. And say hello to him for me won't you? Good day, Rydinger." With that, the principal was gone.

Tony stood dumbstruck at the man's … what the heck was he supposed to call it! He was expecting to be getting in trouble for 'creating a disturbance' with his 'rough-housing.' Now he was supposed to be one of those depressed suicide-person! What the-! Tony couldn't handle all this anymore. Just go to class, he told himself. The bell rang.

"Great."

So what'chya think? You know, I'd like a pop-tart. Later.

Review…?