AN: 226 readers back in April when I last updated this story. You guys are amazing. Thank you. Sorry this chapter is so short and it's taken so long.
I don't own The Incredibles, but all the OCs are mine. You can use them if you ask.
"Hey, Incredibrat. Wake up."
Cara's voice had been the last one Violet had wanted to wake up to, but apparently she didn't have a choice. She lifted her head groggily to find the black-haired woman grinning at her.
"Having fun? That little stunt of yours earlier really hurt, you know. It'll cost you. But, seeing as you're Little Miss Altruism, I guess hurting him would be more painful, wouldn't it?"
Violet glanced over to her left to find that her nemesis was hooked up to the very same machine. He appeared to have been conscious for a while, though.
"Seems familiar, doesn't it?" he mumbled. "Except instead of your family, you have me here. And I'm probably less helpful."
"Oh, much less, of course." Cara giggled, nodding at Syndrome. With the slight movement, the limbs Violet presumed to be mechanical started to shake violently.
"Stop it!" the Incredible shouted.
"And what will you do if I don't?" Cara sneered. "You're just as trapped as he is." To demonstrate this, a jolt of electricity ran through Violet's body, making her body have a spasm for a few seconds with the sudden pain and disruption. "Face facts, Incredigirl. You're going to die here. Your friends are going to die here. Syndie is going to die here and maybe, eventually, your family will die here too."
With the mention of her family being killed, Violet's usually controlled powers burst to life with a fervor they'd never had to see before. Whether or not there was another way to be rid of Cara was suddenly irrelevant. She would have no more of this. Whether it was against the code or not, for the sake of everyone, this villain was one that could not be saved. Cara's life had to be ended. While there was good reasoning toward it (she'd break out of prison anyway, nothing can ever hold her, she'll do the same thing if we don't stop her, do you REALIZE how many lives are being lost? will be lost?) much of her abrupt, brief, and specific change of heart was given strength by pure fury.
Violet's sudden rage caught Cara off guard, her anger-induced forcefields popping all around the room and bursting test tubes and syringes alike. A few computers fizzled and died, the pressure on their circuit boards enough to snap them. Yet the bonds remained strong, and Violet was just as trapped as she was before.
"What the hell was that?" the villain mused, walking over to her desk and examining the spilled chemicals, some of which had mixed and were starting to melt a hole in the table. "Was that your trump card? Ha. Let me show you a real display of power!" She whirled around, fingertips sparking, when suddenly the energy died.
"Is this another one of your tricks, Buddy?" Cara spat, clearly seething. "I'll turn up the electricity if-"
"You can't." He smirked. "Your powers are gone. At least for now."
"What?" she shrieked. "That's impossible!"
"Nothing is impossible."
As if on cue, the door swung open to reveal the girl Violet had formerly seen in "stasis." Cara whirled around to face the android, glaring at the newcomer with a blonde ponytail and a death glare.
"Is this it? You brought in a new hero to save you?"
"You could say that." The villain smirked.
"Does everything you create have to enter at the most on-cue moment by law?" Violet whispered to her nemesis as Cara sized up Genesis.
"Hey, if I'm planning for a deus ex machina, I want it to be dramatic. I don't want it to be all like, oh, I'm in danger, but suddenly I'm saved. There has to be some climactic buildup. Things have to happen on cue. I'm almost certain we probably could've gotten out without her, since you've done this sort of thing before, but it just makes things so much easier."
"You're such a dork." Violet rolled her eyes and made an elliptical forcefield around the two, disconnecting them both from the electric prison before Cara noticed what was going on.
Distracted as she was, Cara still figured out she was surrounded with relative quickness and glanced around. "So I guess this is the part where you think you have me cornered. Well, you'll have to catch me first!" With a cackle, she dashed out the door and slammed it behind her.
"Are we going to chase her?" Violet asked just after thanking Genesis for helping them and pressing the button to release their unreasonably heavy bonds.
"You go on ahead." Syndrome was on his knees, clutching his side. "I can't fight her like this anyway."
"What-" Violet stopped cold as he moved his hand. A light red tinge was starting to seep through the silver portions of his costume. "What did she do to you?"
"I'll live! Just go!"
"Not until I know you're going to be okay!"
"It was just a slice from before you woke up. I'm more likely to be in danger if you don't tail her, now. So please, just go. Oh, and if you go the same way she did, open up the drawer with Gemini on it, would you?"
Violet bit her lip, then left Syndrome with his creations and bolted after Cara.
The room she was in now was nothing like the room previous. It was cramped, cold, and tidy, with an unsettling precision that chilled Violet to the bone. What seemed to be large filing cabinets lined the walls, each one labeled with a name and three numbers. In particular, one set stood out to her, glaring at her in red ink on white lined notecard.
Gemini. 11.16.10.
It occurred to Violet at this moment that she was staring at what was probably that Super's resting place. And Syndrome was asking her to violate that? She didn't want to dishonor Gemini any more than Cara already had, and besides, looking at people who had passed creeped her out. Yet a combination of trust for her nemesis and overwhelmingly morbid curiosity made her open it anyway.
There was no body there at all, simply a mess of metal and circuitry. A small slip of paper clarified what this was about, written in Syndrome's handwriting.
I have more respect for the dead than you think. I made sure Charlie gave her a proper burial, just as he's done with all the rest of them. He's pretty great, but I digress. I kept a few projects in here that Cara didn't know about. None of them are particularly refined, and most of them have exposed wires, but you should be able to use all of them safely. All of them should be able to stop her in her tracks, one way or another. Some are more violent than others. You'd best pick your poison before Cara does it for you. Violet frowned, then pushed the drawer shut. She was an Incredible, she could- no.
She was Ultraviolet, and she could handle villains on her own, without any fancy gadgetry or brothers on the sidelines. She had her wits, she had her powers, and she had circumstance. And if she'd asked her father, he would've told her that was all she needed.
Ultraviolet crumpled up the paper, dropped it in the nearest trash can, and went through the next door.
"I see you took your sweet time chasing me down," Cara retorted, her back turned as she mixed up something into a new syringe. "I thought you were more prompt about this sort of thing."
"You tortured my friends," Ultraviolet stated flatly, ignoring Cara's insult. The villain turned in shock while the hero continued to approach her.
"You did unspeakable damage to a man I've come to fall in love with, before AND after I fell for him."
"So you and Syndie WERE-"
"SHUT UP!" she demanded, and Cara went silent. "But most of all, you threatened to kill my family." With a gleaming, bitter hatred shining through in her expression, Ultraviolet grabbed one of the needles on the table.
"I don't know what's in this syringe. But no matter how painful, no matter how torturous it is, you deserve it and more for how many people you've killed. How many lives you've ruined, and how many people have suffered at your hand alone."
Cara smirked coolly. "You're Miss I Can't Kill Anybody. You wouldn't-"
Before the villain could finish, Ultraviolet had injected the entirety of the needle into Cara's bloodstream, and didn't back down when the other girl began to twitch and grin maniacally.
"So this is what it feels like," Cara said, an eerie smile on her face. "I had no idea the pain was this... fire-like. Like lava through my veins!" She let out an odd sound that sounded like a strangled combination of a laugh and a pained scream.
"And it's so much more intense! Then again, I've never been injected with four times the lethal dosage, so I suppose...!" Her squeaky shriek-cackling got louder and louder, until it reached its fever pitch and the girl collapsed on the ground, her spasmodic flailing becoming suddenly violent. Ultraviolet watched as the seizing slowed down, then reached a complete halt at the same time the laughing died out. Cara's breathing stopped, and her face was frozen with its lethal grin and cold, dead eyes.
It was finally over. Her foe was vanquished. No one else would have to suffer because of Cara, ever. She had taken down a villain with little more than aid on Genesis' (and by default Syndrome's) behalf and a handful of emotions packed tightly into a monologue. This was what she was meant to do, and she had just proven that she could do it just as well as anybody else.
Her father would have been proud.