Bump da baaaaaaaaaa BOOM! Hiya! We're outta pop tarts and that really sucks. "And you want to know something else? I never liked you're spinach puffs. Never!" Ha ha heh okay moving on.
Violet was silent in the car. It had only been a day and already she was near her breaking point. What was she going to do? Vi wanted to tell her mother about Tony knowing so badly, but at the same time didn't dare. Especially while the woman was driving.
"Mom, that's a red light!"
"I can see that!"
"Well why didn't you stop?"
It would be suicide to tell her mother right now. Maybe if she could get her alone. What was she thinking? She couldn't tell her mom! If she knew she would be in so much trouble! But if she didn't and Helen found out, she'd be in so much worse trouble.
Helen turned down the radio for a second to listen to a sound in the distance ahead. Sirens. It wasn't long before they saw the flashing lights. An ambulance and three cop cars zoomed by going in the opposite direction.
Violet looked at her mother. She knew it killed Helen to see those cars and not be able to follow. It wasn't until after Syndrome that Vi had started to notice it, but she had realized that every time she heard sirens or saw flashing lights Helen would ache to follow. And after Syndrome, Violet had found she felt the same way. It was strange; wanting to break the law by helping the law.
They pulled in front of an odd gate, next to a kind of video intercom system thing.
"Do you have an appointment?" the guard in the screen asked.
"Yes, for 1'oclock (I think)."
"Hold on a second while I check… Name please?"
"Helen Parr… or Elastigirl," Helen said, thinking of how Edna always preferred to use their superhero aliases.
"Let's see n- OW!"
Violet stared as a short… thing suddenly attacked the guard. With a vengeance.
"Go, get out ov here! Wat do I pay you for? Go take a coffee break like all ze other lazy employees I pay around here!"
"Hiya, E," Helen said to the woman on the screen. Violet was feeling a little edgy.
"Ah, Helen! One of my favorites! Come, come in, Dahling! I simply cahn't wait to meet your daughtar!"
The gate opened and Helen pulled forward. "Little nervous, Vi?"
"Just a bit."
"Good, that means you're ready for her."
Bob looked at the large yellow envelope again. All it had was "McCaffrey" scrawled onto it. He looked once more at the cubby boxes that acted as employees' mailboxes at the company he now worked. There were definitely five different "McCaffrey"s that worked here.
Guess we'll just come back to that one, Bob thought, placing the envelope at the bottom of the pile of memos and letters he had to sort. Problem was what was left of the pile were all letters/memos that Bob had thought "I'll just come back to that one" when he'd first encountered them.
And I thought Insuricare was bad. This job was certainly displaying its downsides. Apparently at this company a "mailroom clerk" is synonymous to "runner of ridiculous and useless errands for anyone else who works here." Furthermore, it turned out his supervisor was some seventeen year old punk who managed to get a summer job at the company and did nothing but play on his Gameboy and shout at Bob to get back to work. If that wasn't enough, the mail room had to be one of the smallest rooms Bob had ever been in. There honestly wasn't any room for him. Which was why some of the file cabinets were now thoroughly dented and the chairs were all smashed to bits. And think, only the first day.
"What d'you say to some football?" Dean asked Dash, tossing the ball in the air. Jack-Jack was presently roaming the room on hands and knees.
"Uh, no," Dash said as he blasted away Bowser on his Gameboy. Unfortunately he blasted away Bowser while Mario fell into a pit of lava. Game Over. Dash started to grumble at the game. Then the batteries went out. "What! I haven't saved in fifteen levels!"
Dash looked up from his place on the couch at Dean who smirked while spinning a soccer ball on his fingertip. "How about soccer instead?"
Five minutes later the boys were all outside and Dash was seriously creaming Dean. Every second it seemed the ball managed to get by Dean and into the make-shift goal behind him. Jack-Jack laughed and giggled at the spectacle.
"What are you laughin' at?" Dean asked the baby, panting.
Jack-Jack giggled. And a bug flew in his mouth. Dash and Dean stared in… in… repulsive fascination, I suppose, as the baby tried to cough out the bug while making some of the strangest faces known to man. Not to mention his head kept switching species. After one very large cough, Jack-Jack shook his head, looked up at Dean. "Wow, that was nasty," he said in a voice similar to news anchor obsessed with his hair.
"WAAAH!" Dash and Dean screamed in unison. Since when do babies talk!
Jack-Jack coughed again, the bug (which looked like it had been deeply sizzled) came out, and Jack-Jack was back to normal. Nonetheless, Dash and Dean both looked like they'd been hit by lightening they were so stunned.
"How bout we go back inside?" Dean proposed.
"Good idea" Dash agreed.
---ten minutes later---
"So how exactly do you make supercars?"
"Now if I told you, I'd have to kill ya."
"No seriously, how do they work?"
Dean walked into the room with the pop-tarts he'd been fixing and some baby food Helen had left him. "It depends on the car. Like your dad's old one. That was what my pop called a transformer cause it could go from supercar to 'normal car.' Those are the real tricky ones. Except for some of the bizarre things you're mother asked my pop to make sometimes. But in order to make a transformer, you gotta get this special kinda metal that bends to a certain shape but can unbend and stuff, and you gotta use this special chemical I call bleach to fuel the transformation process because normal gas won't work and you gotta have all the wiring done with this other kinda metal so that when the get near magnets they don't fuzz out because that's the only way to get the wiring to move in a car short of sticking a Spanish Super Meaker in there!" Dean chuckled at his joke.
Dash was lost. No, not lost. He was past lost. Lost was when you took a wrong turn and wound up in the wrong town. This was taking a wrong turn and ending up in a totally different continent.
Dean gave the boy his pop-tarts and placed the baby-food and spoon next to Jack-Jack for him to feed the baby in a minute. He looked at Dash for a second, waiting for what everyone always said.
"Forget I asked." With that Dash started to chew on his pop tarts.
Dean just shook his head and smiled. He walked back into the kitchen, tripping every now and then on some of the junk on the floor. "You want anything to drink, Champ?"
"What d'ya have?" Dash asked as he ducked out of the way of Jack-Jack's laser vision.
"Lessee… milk, apple juice, soda…"
"What're you gonna have?"
"I'm fixin' myself some coffee."
"I'll have that."
Dean walked into the room and leaned over the couch so he could look at Dash. "Excuse me?"
"What, it's only coffee."
"Have you ever had coffee?"
No. "Yeah, sure."
"I dunno, even I get a little weird when I drink this stuff, I don't know how a speedster would react, Dude."
"It's just coffee!"
---10 minutes later---
Ever hit the fast-forward button on a VHS tape while it was still playing? You know how the people walk a lot faster and their voices go up a few octaves? Dash and that… same thing!
Dash was pacing back and forth in front of Dean (so fast he was wearing a whole in the smoking carpet), coffee in hand and sooooo out of his mind. "So my mom thinks I should move up a grade cause I was getting all good grades like all As and stuff so she's like 'you need stimulation' and I'm like 'I don't need stimulation, I'm stimulated enough right now!'"
"Heh, that's for sure!" Dean said, spooning Jack-Jack another bite of baby food. Jack-Jack wasn't eating though; like Dean, he was entranced by the ball of caffeinated boy in front of him.
"But she's like 'no you need stimulation' so now I'm stimulated! I'm stimulated right outta my lunch money cause of all the big moochers that wanna pound me cause I'm a shrimpy dork who thinks I'm smarter than them."
Dean sat way back in his chair as Dash moved nose-to-nose with him.
"But I don't think I'm smarter than them!" Dash stepped back. "I just do the stupid homework! If they would just do the stupid homework, they could move up a grade and get pounded too (Dash sat down) Is there anymore coffee?"
Dean chuckled and put down the spoon and empty baby-food canister. "So it's kinda rough huh?"
Dash nodded so quickly Dean thought the kid was gonna break his neck. "And then there are these guys Mickey and Luke-"
"Mickey Mouse and Luke Skywalker?" Dean asked.
Dash glared at him. Dean put up his hands saying he was just playing.
"So these guys are both really cool and all and they hate each other and I don't know why and Mickey likes to run like me and all that stuff and Luke does do the stupid homework like me and it's really confusing cause I can't figure out why they don't like each other and why is Dodger so shy anyways it wouldn't kill him to speak his mind from time to time you can see him wanting to say stuff but he just won't and it's annoying and Ernie is such a jerk I don't know why Luke hangs around him and here I am caught in the middle and I don't know what to do!"
"So why not just ask?"
"Huh?"
"Why not just ask 'em why they hate each other?"
"Cause I don't feel like getting pounded cause both of them are like a zillion times my size."
"So you're afraid?"
"Me afraid? I'm not afraid of nothing I'm brave I'm brave just like Dad ain't nothing that scares me except for when Jack-Jack gets in a really bad mood I think he gets it from Mom cause she can be pretty scary too especially when she's driving have you ever seen her drive she is nuts and Dad does not look at the road at all I really don't wanna know how Vi's gonna turn out after they teach her how to drive."
"I think the subject got changed in there somewhere."
"I wish we could find the Underminer and catch him cause Vi is so stinking down and she's no fun when she's down cause it's harder to annoy her and so are Mom and Dad cause of some stupid politician isn't it funny how adults get down over some stupid things like when their coffee ain't made right I was reading about some celebrity that had a fit cause there weren't enough sprinkles on his birthday cake or something it was really weird."
"All right, I know the subject just changed."
"Wanna race?" Dash asked energetically.
"I beg your pardon?"
Twenty minutes later, if you were parked alongside the country road Dean lived off of, you would have seen two things. One was a small red blur about as tall as a boy and the other was a very huge jet propelled supercar.
"You are not gonna beat my car!" Dean shouted at Dash (well, technically at the windshield because he could see Dash zooming just ahead of his car). Jack-Jack was in the back… Somehow he'd sensed the danger of this whole situation and had gone into demon thingy mode so he could use his claws to hold onto the seat cushion for dear life. Smart kid.
Meanwhile, with Helen and Violet…
Violet was under the microscope with Edna Mode. In fact the only reason she wasn't actually under a microscope was because Helen was there to keep Edna from taking things too far.
Violet could only watch as E zoomed around her at lightening speed measuring her, pinching her, asking questions, etc.
"Wat's your favrate color? You like tea? Cream and sugar like your mother or do you prefer Tabasco sauce like Mr. Incredible? Wat do you think of your suit? How did you tear it? Do you know how to fly a jet?"
Finally E stepped back next to Helen and looked Violet over.
"WHAT!"
"She looks nothing like you, Helen Dahling."
Helen took in a deep, trying-to-remain-calm breath. "Violet, I'd like to introduce you to Edna Mode. E, this is my daughter Violet."
The three began to walk down the halls of E's classical/modern mansion. Violet was thunderstruck by the place. Eventually they reached a medium sized room with a very, very high ceiling. The theme seemed to by Greek gods meets red velvet meets modern. They each took a seat.
"Yes, your suit was quite tricky, one of my hardar assignments I must admit, and now you've gone and ripped it! I guess I'll just have to make you an entire new set of suits for the family," Edna said, not hinting at anything at all, of course.
"Wait, what?"
"No, no E! No new suit! We just need the rip in V's suit fixed! That's all!"
"Of course not! Miss Vi here could not have her own suit and be left to stand out of ze family theme! So we make all new suits! For everyone!"
"No!" Helen exclaimed in a panic. She knew perfectly well if she didn't draw the line quickly Edna would end up making a whole wardrobe of suits. For each family member.
"You could get a new one for junior to accomodat his different shapes and sizes. Or you could get some for the kids for when zey grow."
Helen paused a second, then shook it off. No. She just had to keep telling herself that. "No!"
"But Mom, that's smart," Violet said.
"Don't-!"
"Ah, see? The child is smart!" Edna exclaimed as she hopped onto a table. "We get started right away!"
"E, no!"
Edna began to pout and Helen began to feel guilty. Violet looked between the two and for a second wondered how these two had met.
"Zis is a problem," E said to herself, although she obviously meant for Helen to overhear.
"Why?"
"Nothing, nothing," Edna said politely to Helen. Nothing my foot.
"E, w-what did you do?"
"Nothing at all, Dahling!" Edna said, smiling ever so slightly. "I just assumed you'd be wanting extra suits so I went ahead and made them for you!" Edna said as she pulled on what Helen and Violet had assumed to be a decorative curtain tassel. However, when she pulled on it the huge curtains that covered up the wall behind E suddenly pulled away to reveal an awful lot of Incredibles uniforms.
Helen, with no words to describe to the… whatever of this situation slumped back in her cushiony chair, gripping her forehead. Violet had spit out her tea (although part of that was because it tasted like Tabasco sauce with cream and sugar).
Oh, and not only were there tons of suits, but it went on. "You see, ze idea came to me late at night ze other day and I couldn't help myself. Why not make everyday clothes that accommodate your super powers!"
Violet decided Edna mode was something else. And how she'd known her taste in everyday clothing was beyond her.
Helen tried once more to get control of the situation. "E, while I do appreciate the gesture, this is all so much!"
"Yes yes you can thank me when you win ze Super of ze Year Award, Dahling, now let's discuss the bill." E snapped her fingers twice and a guy who looked like a four-star-restaurant waiter walked in with a bill.
"Super of the Year Award?" Violet asked aloud.
Helen gulped and picked up the bill, nodding to the waiter dude.
"Helen, Dahling, you really must teach your children about ze culture of ze world fifteen years ago for when ze supers are allowed back…"
Helen chocked on a cracker sandwich when she finally reached the bottom of the bill where the price was. Violet scooted over and peeked. Her jaw dropped. Since when does that much money exist!
"…it's absolutely insane!"
Helen looked at Edna over the top of the bill. "I couldn't agree more."
Ta da! That was much fun! Now how the heck am I gonna top it? I guess I could always throw in a dinosaur driving a corvette.
P.S. see if you can find a little 'ode' to one of director Brad Bird's previous works in the chapter
P.S.S. holy mackeral, I broke fifty! You guys rock! (runs to store to buy everyone pop-tarts!)
Review…?