Chapter 3

The twilight wanes as the Parrs pull into the parking lot, hot asphalt cooling in the calm fall night. They step out of their vehicle, eagerly awaiting their celebration. All but one of them wears clothes that fit and flatter their bodies, while the oldest daughter wears a dress that still clings to the notion that its wearer still has a childish figure and has yet to discard to fat of youth. While they are not the only ones celebrating this evening; however, their cause for celebration is arguably the most distinctive of the causes. Anniversaries, engagements and births all pale to the Parrs' cause of celebration, their renewal of public endorsement. While they adjust ties, purses and hem lines a figure stalks ever closer from the darkness of the parking lot, all of the heroes oblivious to its approach. The illusion of invisibility is slowly lost as the figure lets its hands glide over the shoulder of the unmindful Robert.

"With such developed and superior muscles you must be the famous Mr. Incredible." A melodious voice purrs from behind them. Shivers erupt up Robert's spine as he turns to face the source. What he sees almost surprises him, a beautiful woman poured into a seamless dress that left little to imagination. However, he is quick to keep his gaze off the reveled sections of flesh as Helen moves beside her husband, grasping his arm with hers. "Oh, I am so sorry to interrupt you on an obvious family outing, but I have been such an avid fan and supporter of yours I would hate myself in the morning if I did not," she licks her lips, "let my eyes see your Herculean physique." The parking lot fills with silence as Helen tightens her grip,

"Well thank you for saying hello, but we have to get going, we have a reservation." Motioning to her children, the Parrs leave the admirer. Now alone she opens her purse, ignites a cigarette, and blows the addictive smoke into the air.

"Oh, carnal jealousy, how it binds us in darkness, unable to see the true threat that lies in front of our faces." The cigarette dangles from her lips, the tip smeared in a glossy red as she pulls a small device from the purse. Pushing a switch, a dim green lights flickers in spurts, eliciting a smile from her decorated face. "But maybe, the end result would have been the same," she bends over, placing the device in the wheel well of the sedan and begins to slowly walk to the restaurant, stopping only to stamp the burning tobacco out with her heel before opening the door to the restaurant and stepping in.

-I-

The Parrs are quickly shown to their table and immediately start in discussion about their days events; practice, classes and friends are all discussed in little detail. However, the banal small talk quickly ceases as all at the table see the sultry admirer being seated near their table.

"Can you believe the nerve of that woman Robert?" Helen states, sipping water from crystal as they wait for their wine.

"To be honest it surprised me, I mean how many people can recognise us out of our costume?" Robert responds in a hushed tone, causing his daughter to roll her eyes.

"Dad, let's be honest. How many normal men look like King Kong?" Violet answers, causing both Jack and Dash to giggle. Robert simply shrugs while Helen responds,

"The bigger problem at hand is the question of who is she?" Jack raises his hand,

"Maybe, just maybe, she is a Syndrome android come to exact her revenge on us for letting him get sucked into a jet turbine." The rest of the family simply stares at the young man in mocking silence. "Well, maybe it could be true." The conversation quickly halts as a waiter with a pencil thin mustache approaches.

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen, I have been informed by the beautiful madam over there," he lets his hand guide the gaze of the family to Robert's stalker, who waves gently, a freshly lit cigarette hangs between her fingers, "is paying for your supper this evening, feel free to order whatever your heart desires." The entire family stare in disbelief, as Robert's admire leads her hand to her lips gently, causing the trail of smoke from her cigarette to dance in the air currents as her lips pucker around the paper tube. The waiter, unsure of the impact that his words are having and fearing the consequences leaves the table, glancing around at his co-workers who simply offer shrugs and looks that tell him that it is important not to get involved.

"Robert," Helen barely whispers, "you are not honestly thinking of accepting, right? I mean do we really want to owe a favor to her?" She looks to the children for support, but only gets wavering support from her oldest, while the two youngest chat about lobster and bovines.

"I don't know, I mean a meal is a meal and she seems largely harmless," he states with a shrug. This earns him a glare from his wife, "look you know I would never put us in danger." Helen raises her finger to interrupt, "and if I do get us in trouble we will all work together and get ourselves out of said trouble." The whispers achieve their goal and placate the matron of the family. "Besides, I think she is crazy if she thinks she can afford to feed Mr. Incredible," he chuckles as he finally breaks the stone face of his wife.

The waiter seeing his table talking and smiling decides the time is ripe to resume his duties, orders are quickly taken and no indulgence is considered too over the top this night. The evening proceeds without pause, wine, champagne, caviar, veal, lobster and all other edible luxuries are brought before the Parrs, who all take turns sampling everything. As food and drink fill their stomachs, the ill omens and tensions of the twilight melt, while they discuss the plans for future endeavours. While the boys do not appreciate the special treatment, their sister receives this night promises are made for future independence of the two young men. All the while, the woman simply watches, smile and lifts a glass to her accomplishments. It is the children that break the festivities first, leading their parents out and into the car. Slowly it pulls away with a tense Violet behind the wheel, while two slurring parents offer advice to the inexperienced driver and hero. The waiter approaches the women with a small leather billfold,

"I trust, madam that you will be paying in cash for their copious consumption," the smile melts from her face as she gives the man a look of ice.

"Of course, but I find a lack of trust in my payment method, vexing." She pulls her purse out and passes a wad of bills to the waiter, "see to it you take a generous tip as well." The waiter nods and walks away and begins to calculate the change after a twenty percent tip, just as he finishes a feeling of morbid curiosity creeps over him and he looks over his shoulder to see the table empty and the woman gone.

She grins as she gets in her vehicle and drives away; the lights from the lampposts create dancing shadows over her red grin. Licking her lips, she hopes her boyars are ready for what comes next.

-I-

Groaning Hugo throws the remainder of his hot dog on the crumb-covered plate,

"Are you positive you could not have gotten real food, maybe potatoes, beets or even onions?" He pushes the plate away.

"Oh you are a foolish boy," the older and experienced Peter states as he cleans a small pistol, one of many disassembled on the table, "those are traditional Slavic foods, had anyone been suspicious we would have been ratted to the FBI or CIA, take your pick." The younger man groans as he slams his head into the table,

"While I agree you have more experience, you say the stupidest things. You do know there is such a thing as Slavs who emigrated to the Americas." Raising his head he continues, "in fact I believe potatoes are a food native to these blasted continents." This stops the Peter's brush as he contemplates, finally shrugging,

"Nope, still too risky." The young man groans again and lets his face fall into the cheap table as the door opens and Katherine steps in.

"Well," she starts observing the mess of the kitchen/dining room, "at least you're not drunk."

"Would prefer to be drunk right about now," Hugo grunts, turning his head to Katherine, "would wash this taste out of my mouth now."

"Anyways, the bug has been planted. We have their movements on demand and as for you Hugo, you need to get ready." Hugo sits up, his eyebrows arching in a quizzical fashion.

"You think the daughter will be out tonight?"

"I think not, but it is best if you start making your presence felt in the underworld here, so that when it does come time to meet up with her you will appear professional rather than amateurish." She sits down, looking over the feast and sighing, "Tomorrow I teach the two of you how to buy vegetables."

"Do not blame me for this travesty," Hugo says as he gets up and walks down the dingy brown hall and takes the first door on his right. He leaves the door open as he prepares, talking without pausing, "I for one advocated for vegetables, but apparently that would have reveled ourselves to the CIA." Katherine shoots a venomous look at Pater, who is re-assembling his handgun; the only response she gets is a shrug as Hugo emerges from his room and stands awkwardly in the grimy kitchen, the shadows in it dancing to the tune of the flickering lights. His large frame tightly wrapped in a green unitard, which conforms to the shape of his over developed muscles and visibly wraps around several deep scars on his back and arms, completing Hugo's green wrappings is blue gloves, shin protecting boots and a mask covering all his face but the area surrounding his mouth and eyes. The skin-tight uniform draws a look of disgust from the young man and suppressed chuckles from his 'parents'.

"I look like some sort of sadistic degenerate, not these 'super heroes' that Americans talk about," he looks at the gloves and smile as he notices the metal studs placed over his knuckles, "then again, maybe I could learn to like some things about this get up." Katherine walks over and smiles, gently rubbing his back,

"Trust us, you will blend right in."

"Yes, Americans like to see the body proudly displayed such as you are doing now," Peter adds, chewing his glowing cigar butt.

"Well then, I trust that you two will conduct further research and information gathering while I am gone," Hugo states as he starts to climb out of the four floor window, "because I despise going out blind like this and will require that you provide me with more information upon my return." With that, he jumps out the window on to the roof of the neighbouring apartment and runs off into the night.

"Demanding little bastard aint he?" Peter mumbles as he slides the clip into his newly reconstructed pistol.

"To be fair, he is right in a way. How much would you like being told to go out with no information about where your target is, whom you may be facing and what equipment they have? All I know is that," Katherine states as she takes a small bite of a hot dog, causing a face of disgust to appear, "besides Hugo being dedicated to a fault is that you can never be trusted to buy groceries ever again."

Peter frowns, "well what do you expect, I have no clue how to do woman's work, so in your refusal to gather groceries this afternoon you are the fault of this travesty, so Hugo would call it."

"You know dam well that I had to ensure they were watched, since you did not want to watch them I had to!" her open palm slams the table. Silence fills the room as they stares bore into each other's eyes.

Peter relents first, "I take it I am sleeping in Hugo's bed tonight then."

"You are correct, where are you going to put Hugo?" Katherine responds as she begins to pull off her gloves, a smug smile creeping across her face.

"In the tub."

"The tub?"

Peter nods, pushing himself from the table, "for the second time, the tub."

"So you are going to make Hugo, the product of Soviet research and muscle growth experiments sleep in the tub. This I think I would like to see."

"I hate to disappoint, but since I am his superior it will be a rather dull order." As he finishes he steps into the young man's room and closes the door. Left alone in the kitchen Katherine looks out the window into the apartment across from hers. The door hangs open letting in light, filtered through the yellow and black police tape, to an older woman's apartment. Sighing she quickly lights a cigarette and begins to contemplate a proper grocery list for the morning.

-I-

Moving from rooftop to rooftop is easy for the young Serbian; the night wind that rushes by is cool on his body wrapped in the tight spandex of his costume of an American super here. He stops after several blocks and walks to the edge of a tenement. He looks up and down the street, the moonlight mixing with the lamination cast by both street lamps and the light spilling from windows. Sighing he moves on, finding little of interest in the asphalt of the street.

Blocks pass in a blur as he runs, jumps and tumbles over the rooftops until finally he stops as the sounds of struggle and fear reach him. Coming to the ledge of an apartment, he looks down into an alleyway to see two men forcefully dragging a young woman, who rather unattractive to his eyes, into the dark corridor. With little other options available the young man jumps down just as the brutes draw out steel blades to disarm the woman of any protection from their leering eyes. However, with the loud landing of Hugo on the pavement, which causes small cracks to appear unbeknownst to the thugs, both look up, immediately they begin to laugh at the oddly dressed youth.

"What the hell you supposed to be?" One of them asks, throwing the girl to his partner as he advances on the youth, his blade dancing slowly. "The green condom?" This joke at the expense of the Soviet agent draws an uproarious laugh from his friend and darknes the face of Hugo with a scowl of anger that twists his lips and bars his teeth.

"Let the woman go and you may go to the police unharmed." Hugo's deep voice resonates off the bricks, startling the two men, leaving nothing but silence in its wake.

"Hey, aint it supposed to be let the girl go and we can leave unhurt. Man I know you supers been out of the game for a while, but I thought you would at least keep your lines straight." The thug restraining the woman heckles the young man. Barely a moment passes after the last syllable leaves the chapped lips of the thug before Hugo leaps into action. His right arm launches into a powerful hook that craters into the ribs of the knife wielding man. Pain, disbelief and fear flash across the eyes of the thug in quick succession as the audible crackle of ribs, while a grin of satisfaction, pleasure and brutality grows across Hugo's face. Quickly the woman is pushed to the ground and the other man charges forward, he throws his calloused left fist at the temple of Hugo, but the youth quickly bends his torso to roll with the punch, avoiding any possible immediate and lasting damage the punch could have had.

As the second thug's momentum throws him off balance he is startled to find that his weight bearing leg sinks into the pavement, a sinkhole having formed immediately under the gaze of the green clad youth. "What the hell?" Hugo lashes out with his right leg while his doe's guard is down and he is distracted with this geological event. It connects with a weight bearing femur and the sound of absolute agony leaps forth from the mouth of the criminal, his weight collapsing, as the leg can no longer support his own mass.

The woman, shocked and disoriented, looks up at the youth and trembles at the sight of his face. There is no look of reluctance or displeasure, but rather pride and bliss as he stands over the crumpled and broken bodies of his aggressors and targets. "Who are you?" Her voice is barely a whisper as she wipes away the tears of fear.

"The Geomancer." Is Hugo's only reply as he walk out of the alleyway and into the cold night and yellow lamp light, leaving the woman confused, afraid and thankful.