Comics Cookies and Revenge
By Lejindarybunny
A/N: CCR should be back to it's normal schedule tomorrow, I apologies for the delays and the short chapters, unfortunately, I unlike Vex, am not free from my parent's tyranny just yet.
More lovely fanart for CCR can be found at ookami-ayane's lovely deviantart page, make sure you check her scraps too, for a pic of Vex in her costume! Also, at deviantart beth-star has also done some! Make sure you have a look!
Disclaimer: Incredibles and all affiliated characters are property of Disney/Pixar.
Chapter 13 part Two: Means
The weather in Siberia had never been friendly to man in his natural state, hence the reason he had invented clothes before deciding to migrate up north. Mikhail didn't have that luxury. He had awoken in the middle of the snow covered landscape, unaware of how he had come to be there, and without any sort of protection against the environment.
'A lesser man would have frozen to death now,' he thought to himself, as he trudged through the snow, trying to make it to a road. 'A lesser man would not have survived what I have been through at all.'
His skin was blue with a cold he didn't seem to feel, and his feet trudged along with a calm that had nothing to do with reason.
He had nothing now to distinguish him from the level of beats; no family, no home, no money, no possessions. Only a heart that was unwilling to say 'give up', only that that tingling in the back of the mind that urged him on. Survive!
Normal men could not survive on will alone, but Mikhail had never been such a man.
Vex turned the tap on with her clean hand, and cool water poured from it. She put her other hand, the one that was covered in blood beneath the gentle flow and watched as it was stained red for a moment as she did so. She had convinced herself that it was just a hallucination of some sort, her fingers passing through the glass of the mirror as easily as through the air. As a child she had pretended that she could step through mirrors, walk through walls...
She had been under an enormous amount of stress in the last two days, whether it was positive or negative didn't matter. The mind could only take so many changes in a short amount of time, before it began to deal with them in odd ways.
A hallucination of passing through a mirror was a perfect candidate for such a thing, because obviously there was no other explanation. And obviously she had cut herself on a bit of paper, in her excitement over unwrapping her new clothes.
All the blood gone, she turned her hand over, to find the wound. She inspected each finger, and especially her palm, expecting to see a white tear somewhere in the flesh. But there was none. She stared.
That couldn't be right. Blood had to come from somewhere; it didn't just appear on your hands for no reason. Not unless you were Lady Macbeth, or something. What, will these hands ne'er be clean? She quoted in her mind. Maybe there was no blood at all, except that it was Syndrome first who'd spotted it.
She clenched her hand hard into a fist, her nails digging into her palm, almost piercing the flesh. Then she realized what she was doing, and relaxed it.
There was no need to be upset. Everything was fine. And Syndrome, she reflected, Syndrome liked her! That was definite; why else would he have grabbed her, held her? Demanded to know what she thought of him.
She rubbed her hands together nervously, one more time, and left the wash room, to find Syndrome waiting outside for her.
"Well, are you ready to get going?" he asked.
She nodded him, and followed him out of the building, and back into the city of Paris. As they climbed in the car, Vex inspected it for any dents, or scratches, but found none. Frankly she was amazed that someone could drive as poorly as Syndrome did, and get away with it. Or maybe he didn't drive poorly; maybe he drove that way deliberately. Come to think of it, Vex couldn't imagine a man as intelligent and technically inclined as Syndrome would not be able to drive properly. It had to be a conscious choice, a choice to be fast, and dangerous.
She felt safer, as she realized this, sitting in the car beside him again. After all, he couldn't possibly get into a car accident, if he was driving deliberately.
"So, where are we going?" she asked.
"I was going to leave that up to you," he replied, pulling away from Maurice's shop.
"Oh. Uh, okay," Vex tried to think of where she would like to go, but all she could think of were the same landmarks that everyone associated with France, none of which were great places to buy clothing, which had seemed to be Syndrome's intention. "Um, could I maybe get a list of choices? I'm not really familiar with Paris, you know."
"Uh, well, there are all these little shops," he said, gesturing as they practically flew past. "Or we could go to the 'Galleries Lafayette'," Vex cringed as he mangled the soft sounds of the French, "if you're looking for the Paris version of a department store."
"Well, that sounds like a good place to start," she agreed.
"Good," he said, whipping through the next turn.
Vex regarded him, and his sure sense of direction. Whether he knew the names of the stores or not, he seemed to know the city of Paris quite well. She wondered what sort of business would bring him there. "Are you in Paris a lot?"
"Yeah, a bit. Mirage was always wanting me to come along."
Vex felt a pointless stab of resentment towards the woman she had seen only briefly, and not in person. "How long were you two together?"
He shrugged. "About three years."
Vex was taken aback. Three years? It seemed like forever to her. "And she just, betrayed you? Just like that?"
"Yeah," he replied darkly. "Look can we talk about something else?"
"Sure, sorry," Vex assented, not bringing up the fact that he'd been the one to mention her. "So...what did you do while I was with Maurice? Besides buy me clothes."
"Oh, I bought a few other things. Some DVDs, some games. Well, a lot really," he admitted, "Mostly replacing the stuff I lost on Nomanisan."
"Nomanisan?" Vex asked, wondering what he meant.
"My island," he informed her, getting a sort of faraway look in his eyes. "Possibly the most beautiful place on the planet."
'Nomanisan...Island...' Vex thought, why does that sound familiar? Nomanisan, noman...isan...
Vex groaned loudly. "Syndrome, that's terrible!"
Syndrome chuckled wickedly. "So you got it, huh?"
"No man is an island," she nodded. "That's just a horrible, horrible pun."
"Glad you like it," he grinned.
"Did you name it that just to be cruel to mapmakers?" Vex asked wryly.
"It wasn't on any maps," he replied.
"Just an in-joke then?"
"You could call it that."
000
Vex was asking him all the questions he didn't want to answer. Why Nomanisan? It was a reminder, and an admonition. Without support, even the greatest men fell. Lack of support had been his own downfall as well, when someone he thought he could trust had turned traitor.
And they were the words, that if Syndrome time's master, that would constitute his reply to that rejection spoken long ago.
'I work alone.'
No man is an island.
Syndrome doubted that Incredible had even understood the barb, or if he had, that it was directed at him. Even after all these years it still stung like salt on a fresh wound. To devote yourself to the emulation of a man you thought was a hero, only to be brushed aside as a nuisance, a pest.
To this day, he remembered the hours of time he had spent in dedication, the clipping of newspapers, the merchandise, the careful study of motive and desire. The care he put into designing and making his costume; even coercing his mother to let him bleach his hair, just to be that much more like the man he admired.
But most of all, he remembered the dream that lay in stark contrast to the hash reality.
'You always say to be true to yourself, but you never say which part of yourself to be true to! Well I've finally figured it out, I'm Incrediboy, your ward!'
Mr. Incredible's eyes would have softened with recognition, just for a moment, and then, determined again, holding Bomb Voyage roughly by his collar.
The would have nodded, 'I'll hold this villain here, you go get the police, Incrediboy'
Incredible claimed to be fighting for justice, but in a just world what he would have seen in the young boy that Syndrome had been was a person not unlike himself, someone ready to give everything they had for an ideal, to fight for it, and if necessary, to die for it.
"Are you alright?" Vex asked him concernedly, after he had been quiet for a moment.
But this was neither a just, nor an ideal world. It was a world where dreams could fail in an instant, and shatter into a broken, cold reality, as Buddy Pine had discovered so early.
"I'm fine," Syndrome replied.
000
Violet sat on her bed, her knees curled up, with her elbows resting on them, leaning against the headboard, trying to think of a plan. Sharon was obviously not dead, as Mirage had so rashly stated. Syndrome, from what the young super could tell, was not the brightest pin in the box. If he had been, he'd have executed all of them, when they'd been captured, instead of locking them up, and leaving them to their own devices. No, if anything, Sharon was probably locked up, being told hourly news of how terribly worried her parents were.
The only thing that stopped Violet from immediately rushing off to save her from the clutches of the villain was the small problem that she, like everyone else, had no freaking clue where he was.
She turned over and lay on her stomach, hands propping up her chin. And there was nothing she could do about it. Not for the first time, she wished she had a more effective power. In this case, the power to read minds anywhere in the world would have helped out a lot. Unfortunately, wishing for something she didn't have didn't do her a lot of good.
So what was she good at? Sneaking in and out of places...and that was about it. Which didn't do a darn thing if she didn't know where it was she was supposed to sneak in to.
Or did she?
Mirage had given Vi's dad her phone number and address, before leaving, in case he had any information to share. Violet, however, didn't believe that Mirage was telling everything she was knew. So maybe if Violet followed her, she would find out, or at least get a clue to where Syndrome was hiding.
It wasn't a sure-fire plan, by any means, but it was the best that she could come up with on short notice.
000
The driver of the truck honked at the man standing in the middle of the road, long before he was close enough to tell that the man in question was completely unclothed, not to mention, his skin was a shimmering, icy blue. Both curious and concerned, though he ordinarily would have never stopped for hitchhikers, he pulled aside.
"What the hell are you doing, man?!" he demanded in Russian, rolling down his window. "You are going to die!! In fact you look like death already!!"
The blue man held out his hand calmly and suddenly several strange creatures appeared, like wingless bats from hell, and attacked the driver. Scrabbling, and pulling away from the beasts, he cracked his head against the side of the window, and fell unconscious.
"I feel like death as well," Mikhail replied conversationally, as he reached through the open window and unlocked the door. He unbelted the man from his seat, and methodically stripped the limp body of all of its clothing, and donning it himself.
Almost as an afterthought, he tore the arms off of the inner shirt, and bound the driver's hands and feet, before tossing him into the back of the truck's cab.
000
The Galleries Lafayette was no ordinary department store. It was six floors of glorious high fashion. Things Vex had never been able to dream of ever being able to afford. It was true Haute Couture, and though she didn't quite want one of everything, it felt like she came close.
Syndrome didn't seem to mind however, in fact, indulging her this way seemed to both amuse and gratify him, and Vex wasted large quantities of time popping in and out of the dressing rooms, making sure Syndrome got to see everything she tried on.
Her eventual purchases were chosen mostly on the grounds of how he reacted to them, in fact. If an article of clothing seemed to bore him, she immediately put it back. Except, of course, for a few key articles that she absolutely could not live without once she saw that she could have them. The most indulgent of these affects she had laid eyes on as they were passing through the men's department.
It was a coat, floor length, and olive green, exactly like the coat that Doctor Octopus had worn in the Spider-Man 2 movie...minus the tentacle rips of course.
Syndrome noticed her oddly veering direction, as she stopped walking, and craned her neck to see it.
"Can't...resist...fangirl senses...tingling! Must... have Doc Ock coat..!"
The villain snickered
"Do you know what the girls on deviantart would do if they saw this?" Vex demanded.
"The same thing you're doing now?" he wagered amusedly.
"Exactly!" she nodded. "I can't not get it. It would be a blasphemy."
"Well, go ahead then," Syndrome grinned. "But I draw the line at welding metal tentacles to your back."
To be continued...
And that concludes chapter 13! I'm afraid I've had too many reviews in the interim to reply to them all, the practice will resume next chapter.
I'd just like to say I'm glad everyone has been enjoying the story! Welcome to all you new reviewers, and thanks for sticking by me, to everyone who's been here since the beginning.