-1I have no idea what I'm doing. Zis fiction is going to be quite a bit different from its predecessor, eh? Methinks I might need to rewrite some of these chapters. They need some Pop-tarts. I need some pop-tarts. I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM, WE ALL SCREAM FOR POP-TARTS! Meep!
"So, let me get this straight," Helen said to Bob as he got ready to go to work. "You think this girl should get registered, (which makes sense, I'm not arguing there, she can avoid all sorts of legal trouble) but then you want to train her?" she said, motioning towards him with the frying pan she wasn't actually using.
"Sure, why not?"
"Heh, because you already have three other kids to train, and raise, along with a demanding job, your own superhero work, and a wife who needs your help every now and then."
Bob paused as he picked up an apple from the kitchen counter. "True, but this girl needs help, too."
"Well, what about Lucious? He doesn't have anyone tagging along after him!"
"I thought of that, but-"
"But?"
"But I think I would make the best mentor for her." He took a bite out of the apple and began tying his tie.
"You're too busy for this, Bob!"
"If she were flexible instead of strong, you wouldn't be this upset."
"No, I would be just as upset!" The pair walked towards the door.
"Hey, come on, we can do this!"
"'We?' What 'we?' When did this become a 'we?'"
Bob hesitated. "W-when I talked to her father and arranged for her to come meet all of us."
"No. No no no no no no! You can't have a questionable youth knowing who we are!"
Before she had finished her sentence, Bob had already interjected, "Oh come on, Helen! Edna and Dean know who we are and they don't go-"
"They're bound by contract."
"What about Lucious?"
"He's different."
"How is it different?" he asked, taking a peek at his watch.
"He never broke the law in order to-"
"It didn't used to be against the law!"
Helen blew hair out of her face, shaking her head slightly with cynical, detached eyes. Bob sighed.
"Look. I'm bringing her down to meet you all tomorrow. She's trusting all of us with her secret, we can do the same. Now, now, now," he was saying in response to Helen's shaking head. He held her face to look at his with a hand. "If things don't work out, I'll ask Lucious to give us a hand. But don't condemn the girl without even meeting her."
They kissed goodbye, and Bob left for work. Helen sighed and looked behind her at the kids, who were watching the conversation instead of eating their breakfast. She reached across the room to put the frying pan back as she walked around the table.
"What?" she asked the breakfast attendants. "What?"
"Seems to me like you two ought to stop talking about whoever-this-is like she's a car," Violet said as she grabbed the paper from her father's place at the table. Helen looked at Dash, waiting for his judgment.
"Don't look at me, I just live here."
"Thanks."
"Do we not like the car?" Jack-Jack asked.
"No," Helen said, sitting down at the table. "We just want Daddy to tell us beforehand when he's buying one."
"TGIF," Violet deducted.
"Indeed."
Dean was sitting in his "apartment" above the garage late that night, watching TV before bed, when the phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Mr. Reynolds?"
"Yeah?"
"I've been told that you construct vehicles of a different sort for particular clients. Is that correct?"
"Well it depends. I'm usually less likely to take a commission if the client is using a voice scrambler."
"You have a good ear."
"It's not that hard. Whatever it is, it can wait until morning. Good night."
"Mr. Reynolds, wait!"
Dean switched hands and sighed irritably. "What?"
"I think it would be in your best interest if you designed a special vehicle for this client. I simply prefer a certain level of anonymity. Just like some of your other clients, the Incredibles, I believe?"
Dean stiffened. His brow furrowed. "How do you know about that?"
"It was a hypothesis you just proved correct, Mr. Reynolds-" Dean shut his eyes, upset by his own stupidity, "-based off freely accessible facts."
"Look, I-"
"What are they like, Mr. Reynolds? Do they seem like a normal family?"
You might have guessed that Dean's thoughts were not following the PG rating at this point. (A/N déjà vu)
"Is Mr. Incredible quiet? Loud? Outgoing? Supportive? Or perhaps he's unhappy? Or was?"
The vehicle manufacturer felt his heartbeat speeding up while his throat seemed unable to tell this man to stop it.
"What about he children? Shadow must be nearing the age where she will be leaving home. Or has that time come and gone? Is she smart? Pretty? Dark and mysterious? Does she earn glances from men, or does she seek them out? Neither? Are the boys happy? Perhaps Rapid Fire is a bit violent?"
"Buddy, I can- can trace this call if I want to."
"And what of Elastigirl? Or, as she is more commonly known among the older generation, Mrs. Incredible? Does she have a day job? Is she happy? Is she taken care of, or ignored? Loved at all? Does he appreciate her? Do her children give her grief? Her husband? Does she enjoy poetry? Does she enjoy the mountains? Or would she prefer the beach?"
Who the heck is this guy?
"Tell me, Mr. Reynolds," the voice said, as though he were sneering, "does Ms. Elastigirl's heart belong to that-"
He slammed the phone down. Dean breathed heavily for a moment or two, holding the phone down on its receiver, the television bringing him back to the present. "Oooohhhh, man," he said, rubbing his eyes. "Oh, Bob, what'd you do this time?" The thirty year left the TV on, along with a lamp, when he went to bed that night, deciding to call Bob in the morning.
"Sounds like a smart fanatic," Lucious said the next day at a pancake house where he, Dean, and Bob had decided to have breakfast.
"You think?" Dean asked.
"Sure! Think about it. The Incredibles work in this city alone. You are known as the son of the fellow who used to build cars and stuff for supers, and rumor has it you've continued the business. It's probably just some guy who lives with his mom that has a thing for your wife, no offense Bob."
"Huh. Well, I have no idea who it is, Dean," Bob said, being careful not to get syrup down his front. "Could be more trouble."
"Heh, yeah, we haven't had trouble since the Underminer."
"Well I had trouble last night, and I'm thinking you two ought to keep your eyes peeled," Dean said. The other two looked at each other; Dean wasn't the sort to let idiots get to him.
"You said he had a voice scrambler?"
"Definitely. Either that, or someone taught a rabbit-monkey how to speak."
"Look, let's just eat and you two can stop worrying over nothing, hm? Remember that mess we had before?"
"Which one?" Dean and Bob asked in unison.
"I was about to say, the thing with that boy at the movie theater. We were all so worried that he'd end up unmending like that Kari girl did and figure out who the Incredibles were. Did it happen? No!"
Yes! As a matter of fact, he knew exactly who the Incredibles were!
"And look at it now. Vi's still dating him, am I right?"
Yes.
"Yeah," Dean said. "He dropped her off at the garage a few days ago to beg for a job some more since Helen was using the car to pick up groceries."
"Heh, she's more like you then you know, Bob."
"You think?"
"Oh yeah. Doesn't know when she's being overworked."
"Or underestimated."
Just then, the waitress came up to ask if the food was all right, and after she left, the conversation turned to sports. Apparently, Bob was very offended that Dean and Lucious weren't cheering for the home football team this season on the grounds that they sucked.
It was about one in the afternoon when Bob was pulling onto the street where Megan's father said they lived. As he looked at the houses, he noted that the neighborhood wasn't terribly different from his own. Each family with its own quirks, but not necessarily suspect of super activity.
He pulled into the drive of the specified house and walked towards the door. Two bikes sat in the lawn, and he could make out a swing set in the back through some dying hedges at the side of the house. Bob rang the doorbell just as he heard something crash inside.
"Tim, what're you doing to his hair!"
Uh oh.
"Oh shoot, it's already one. DAD!"
That had to be Megan.
"Meg, you can't just leave me with these guys!"
"Sorry, Danny! DAD, I GOTTA GO! SEE YA LATER AND… whatever!"
Bob could barely make out a boy in the house saying, "At least help me separate these two first!"
More crashing.
As footsteps approached the other side of the door, Bob stepped back from the door. Megan came out and ran straight into him, sending her careening back into the freshly closed door.
"Omph!"
"Uh."
Megan looked up. She studied him for a moment, trying to place him. "Mr. Incredible."
"Ms. Hunter."
"Megan."
"What, uh…?"
"Twins got in a fight."
"Right."
Sitting in the car, Bob was able to get a good look at the girl for the first time (and she seemed to be doing the same to him, anyways). She was short compared to his family, probably five foot four, making her only taller than Jack-Jack; both Dash and Violet had outgrown Helen in the last year. Her hair was long, like Violet's. It was almost as dark as Violet's, too; in the dark lighting from before, he had thought it was black, but now he could just see that it was dark brown, and when the light hit it, it looked red. Like a Coca Cola bottle, he thought. Brown eyes… and awkward silence.
"So Megan, what's your father do?"
"He's the manager of a pancake house downtown."
The irony.
"And your Mom?"
"Lawyer. Well, a state prosecutor."
"Gotya." This girl did not seem quite as responsive as she had been a few days ago. "What're your brothers' names?"
"Charlie is two, Luke is six, Brandon is seven, Tim and Arthur are eleven, Danny is fourteen, and I'm sixteen."
"Ah…" He did some math. "I thought you said you have seven brothers?"
"Oh, Simon. He's twenty-six."
"Oh? What's he doing?"
"He's in France, teaching English to pre-teens."
"That's interesting."
"That's the polite way to put it, yeah."
Oh-kaaaay…?
"Here we are," Bob said, pulling onto his street.
"You think Mrs. Elastigirl's going to mind that her trainee-in-law drives a motorcycle?"
"Heh, she might." Bob pulled into the drive and turned the car off.
Quite suddenly, the sounds of a loud scream, a trumpet blatting, and a small explosion echoed from inside the house, producing astonished looks on both of the faces in the car.
"Did we come at the wrong time?"
"I had no idea you could hear that stuff from out here."
As they walked in the door, smoke billowed out around them.
"Honey?" Bob called, Megan following close behind.
"We're in here!"
"What happened!" Bob asked through coughs as he and Meg walked into the kitchen, where the smoke was too thick to see.
Someone- Violet they saw a moment later- opened the windows, allowing the smoke to escape, thus producing visibility.
A giant, burnt hole in the ceiling was above where Dash and Jack-Jack stood. Dash looked as though a bomb went off in his face as he held his equally blackened trumpet, and Jack-Jack had a face Bob could only guess to be a mixture of "oops" and "uh oh." Meanwhile, Helen was fanning out the smoke with several various cooking sheets, and Violet had just snapped a picture of Dash's astonished, blackened face before resuming her fanning as well.
"What happened?" Helen repeated back. "Why don't-" she said between fannings, "you ask… your… sons!"
"It was an accident!" Dash cried.
"Ah made a boo-boo!" Jack-Jack defended.
"I- I was just- we just- I just wanted to- to-"
"Yes?" Violet inquired with a smile.
"I wa- we were- I was showing him how to- to-"
"Play trumpet!"
"Yeah! And he wanted- wanted to try blowing in it, so I picked him up and held it up for him, and he blew into it, and- and- and-"
"Dragon's breath!"
"We exploded!"
"Well Grasshopper," Violet said, clapping the middle child on the back, "you apparently have not been studying your chemistry."
"But I-"
"Young man… men," Helen started in, "that hole above your heads is going to cost us a fortune!"
"J-just take it outta our hero money! It- it'll be easy! Just tell the fixer dude we put soap in the microwave or something!"
"Dash…" Bob said, holding his forehead.
In the midst of this, the family suddenly became aware of a stifled laugh in the background, and as they turned to face its producer through the smoke, it became evermore unrestrained. It was Megan.
"This is great!" she said as she looked between each family member and the hole in the ceiling. "You're all… strangely normal!"
The Parrs looked at each other, and quickly found that laughter is contagious.
Merk! Sorta went all over the map with ze mood of that chapter I do believe! Bodacious! So, you think this one's going to be a shorter story than last time? Think again! Ha ha! I'm doing nothing! LA DE DA DE DA WONDERFUL! Let's see where I take us! (Somewheeeaaare ooover the rainbooow…)
Review…?
