30! We are on a thirty! …I should go make pop-tarts before I start typing…

Okay, I'm back! Let the Mayhem begin!

"Bob, who is this kid?" Lucious asked, loudly, as Dean led the confused man into Bob Parr's house.

"Dean, what're you doing here?" Helen asked, passing through the room with laundry.

"That's a good question," Bob commented. He watched utterly befuggled as Dean dug through the cds by the family computer.

"Dean?" Lucious asked. "Who's Dean?"

"Where is it…" Dean was saying to himself.

Just then, Violet and Dash walked through the door, both looking more than just a little frazzled.

"Kids? I was going to pick you up from the zoo in a few minutes. Wait, how did you get here anyways?"

"What're Dean and Lucious doing here?"

"Yeah, I have a project to work on!"

"Wait a minute. Violet, why is the car outside fuming? And why isn't it in the garage where I parked it?"

"Yeah, Vi, why is that?"

"Shut up, Twerp."

"Who the heck is Dean!"

"Where the heck you put it, Mr. Inc?"

"Bob, what on earth is going on here?"

Too… many… questions!

"STOP!" Bob shouted.

(crickets chirp)…

"Okay," Bob said quietly. "One at a time. Lucious, this," Bob said motioning to Dean, "is Dean. Dean being Carter's kid."

"Carter's?… you mean YOU'RE LITTLE DEAN!" Lucious exclaimed.

"That would be me," Dean said impatiently.

"Kids," Bob went on, trying to remain patient, "care to explain why you're home from the zoo that, as far as I know, is ten miles away?"

Just then, the program on the TV in the next room was interrupted for a special report involving forcefields, tigers, and screaming little boys.

Helen rubbed her forehead. "You didn't."

"I had to," Vi said, feeling very small.

"How'd you get home?"

"Uh-"

"I hotwired the car!" Dash exclaimed proudly. "Ow!"

"Keep your mouth shut, you moron!"

"Mom, ground Vi!"

"Oh Lord…"

"Last but not least," Bob shouted, "Dean, what're you doing here?"

"You know that cd I gave you? With the Underminer?"

"Huh?" Violet and Dash looked at each other in confusion. Lucious also looked a little 'out of touch,' so to speak. Helen, on the other hand, was glaring at Bob since she also had no idea what this was about.

Bob nodded to Dean. Dean smiled. "Well, I think we might be able to find the Underminer if we just revisit that little disk."

"Really?"

"Yep!" Dean and Bob looked at each other… then dove at the computer desk, searching through cds.

"Hold it! What cd!" Helen shouted, throwing her laundry on the floor.

"Uh… well…"

"You mean he didn't tell you?" Dean asked. Everyone in the room responded a resounding "NO!"

"Bob," Helen said in a scolding voice. "What cd?"

"Um…"

"Yeah, Bob, what cd?" Dean asked.

"Be quiet."

"Dad…?"

"Well, you remember when Dash, uh… when… leg broke, you know?"

Helen nodded slightly.

"Well, Dean here, he uh, went through the rat assassin thing, and uh, found the programming. And he uh, sort of, um, made a cd out of it, the programming I mean."

"Really. And what was on there?"

"Um… well…"

"Three things, Mrs. Inc," Dean said, sitting on the floor. "One, the actual programming, like moving and that stuff, two, a video of sorts from the rat's eyes, so to speak, and three… uh…"

Bob took Helen a little way from the others and whispered to her about the profiles. When he finished, Helen stared up at him. He waited for things to compute… then she exploded.

"HE KNOWS WHO WE ARE!" Helen yelled, practically throttling her husband.

"What the-?"

"Helen, you don't have to shout," Bob said.

"I'M NOT SHOUTING, DO I LOOK LIKE I'M SHOUTING! YOU WANT SHOUTING, I'LL SHOW YOU SHOUTING!" Helen shouted.

"What do you mean, he knows who we are?" Lucious asked loudly so as to be heard over Helen's screams.

"The Underminer," Dean explained to him, squirming as Helen continued to yell. "He has profiles on each of the Incredibles."

Dash and Vi heard this. "He knows who we are?…" Violet asked nobody.

"WHY ON EARTH DIDN'T YOU TELL ME, BOB?" Helen screamed.

"I-I didn't want you to worry."

"Oh, well, THIS sounds familiar! Do you remember the last time you said that to me!"

"I thought this was different!"

"It's never different, Bob! There is no difference in these situations! I thought we'd learned this already!"

Violet, meanwhile, had a very bad feeling about this, and as much as she told herself to shut up, she couldn't help but think of Tony. I should've told them about Tony…

Dash was trying in vain to keep Jack-Jack from crying since the shouting had awakened the sleeping baby.

"HEY!" Everyone turned to Dean. "Look. Do you mind if I go ahead and try to find the creep, or should I come back later?"

"No… no, now is fine, Dean," Helen said.

"Good. 'Cause I just found the cd," Dean said, a twinge of annoyance in his voice. He sat down at the computer and put the disk in the drive. Immediately, he clicked on the cd's icon and went to the video icon from there.

"What's this?" Lucious asked, looking over Dean's shoulder like everyone else there.

"It's a recording of everything the rat saw and heard from the time he got turned on to the time he went kaput."

"The rat that attacked me?" Dash asked. He definitely remembered his leg; after all, the scars were still pretty obvious.

"Right."

"And how are we supposed to find the rat with this?" Bob asked incredulously.

Dean whirled around in the swivel chair. "Think about it! Have you ever hit the rewind button!"

"Uh…"

"If we watch it, end to beginning, how much you wanna bet it'll start with the Underminer!"

"Uh…"

"All WE gotta do is watch the stupid thing and look for places we recognize!"

"Oh…"

"That could work…" Lucious said.

"And it took you guys how long to think this up?" asked Dash.

For the next several hours, Dean, Bob, and Lucious sat in front of the computer watching the video in reverse with little notepads, while Helen, Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack waited for any developments. Which were few.

"Hey! That looks like a McDonald's!"

"There are tons of McDonalds in town, Dean!"

"That wasn't a McDonald's at all!"

"Are they getting anywhere?"

"Not from the looks of it, Vi."

"This isn't working!" Bob shouted, losing his temper and throwing his notes at the wall. Thus denting the wall.

"Bob, cool it!" Lucious said.

"That's the problem! The thing was programmed to get around unseen by anybody! That means avoiding any 'landmarks' we'd recognize! How can we backtrack if all we see are trees!"

"C'mon, Bob, it's all we got."

"Which isn't much."

"Thank you, Violet."

"Hey Dean?"

"What, Dash?"

"Why not just reprogram the rat thing?"

"What?" Lucious asked.

"You know, stick the video back in it and make the thing go back the way it came?"

It took a minute for the eleven-year-old's logic to compute. "Would that work!" Helen asked.

"Uh…" Dean felt dumb. "Yeah… it would…if we did it right..."

"How long would it take?"

"Uh, few hours?"

La da-di daaaa! Now I need more pop-tarts. Idn't that a phooey? BURN HOMEWORK!

Review…?