Helen Parr slid into the drivers' seat of her husbands' lush new car at 3:10 that afternoon, ready to make her way to the school to get her children. She made a point of borrowing Bob's car whenever he was away. Usually she felt ok with it; he wasn't using it, so she might as well make the most of his absence. This time though, she felt a twinge of guilt as she grasped the soft, lightly textured wheel.

It was, she reasoned, Bobs' absence that had her feeling like this. He had been gone for weeks, but had made no effort to contact her. Not even given her any way of contacting him… She couldn't stand it. They had never been apart for this long, even when he had been captured by Syndrome. There was something in her that railed against their separation – screaming at her to do something about it. But there was nothing she could do.

Eager to distract her mind from its endless torrents of worry, she threw her handbag on the passenger seat, and started examining the interior of the car. There was a small red button under the dash; she knew, though she had never tried it, that pressing it would transform the car into the Incredimobile. The car still smelt new, after almost a year of use. Its interior was of soft, deep blue leather, that soothed Helen just to sit on. Between the seats was a small nook full of loose coins, and bits and bobs Bob had gathered over time there, plus a voucher for fuel. Helen pressed gently on a tab where the glove box was, and it slid smoothly open. Inside were useless car manuals, and auto-repair brochures, and underneath… She gasped as she looked closely at the bas of the glove box. There was a thin seam, running all the way around the carpeted container… and a tiny latch in the farthest corner. A false bottom! Curious, she opened it.

Inside were a set of ipod-like devices, with a single largish button on the bottom half of its face, and a wide glossy screen that stretched across the top half. Each of them had a small label attached to it:

Helen.

Dash.

Violet.

Jack-Jack.

Bob.

Recognizing the devices, Helen selected the one labeled 'Bob'. It was a GPS tracker, linked to their suits. Helen remembered Edna showing her one, and using it… She didn't realize Bob had kept them in his car. Her finger hovered over the button, realizing that the last time she had done this; she had thrown his secrecy into jeopardy, and almost killed him… Surely it couldn't happen again? They already knew he was there. She pressed the button.

The screen flashed into life, showing a spinning globe, which came to a halt, with the Pacific Ocean right in the middle. A radar-like scanning bar flashed across the screen, and the image jumped in further and further, steadily zooming in on an unnamed island in the middle of the Pacific, shaped like a cross. On it, a small flashing dot indicated the precise location of Incredible, along with latitude and longitude figures. Suddenly the image vanished. SIGNAL LOST, the screen helpfully indicated.

Helen threw the device down onto the passenger seat in frustration. No matter. She had memorized the numbers. She had an old friend who would lend out a plane for her. Hers and the kids' suits were in the boot, and Jack-Jack was spending a night in Kari's care… It was a good day for a family outing. Like a woman on a mission, she jammed the key into the slot, and revved the car angrily. She took off down the driveway, and blasted away in the direction of their school.

Across the road from the Parr residence, a surveillance team had spent the past few months crammed into a tiny van hidden in a bush. Anonymous Thug 247 was hunched over a keyboard, listening closely to every word that Helen spoke.

"I don't get it, she's just sitting in her car, not doin nufink!" He complained.

"Shhhh!" His counterpart, Anonymous Thug 351 urged him "The big boss is on the phone. Hello, yes, Solidus, Sir! What would you like us to do?"

Mr. Incredible loved to jog. Since breaking out of his 15-year stint stuck behind a desk, with a rapidly expanding belly, slowly outgrowing his diminished cubicle, his spare time had been absolutely consumed by his workout routines. For two years straight now, he had started every single morning with a few hours jogging, as the sun was rising. Breakfast, just after dawn, took up a quick 15 minutes before hitting one of several of his favorite weight-lifting spots. It was tricky to get his hands on things that were heavy enough in places that were remote enough for him to really burn on his muscles; quarries and rail yards just outside his city became his haunts for several hours of each day, although as time went on he found the physical effort he had to put in to drag a loaded train 10 miles along a track became less and less exhausting. And they hadn't been so much of a challenge to begin with.

After a break for lunch, his routine gave way to a more flexible existence. Some days, the mayor would call him in, or the police, the air force, the senior citizens club… you name it, Mr. Incredible was there to save them all. On quiet days, he would remain Bob Parr for the day, perhaps go to lunch with an old Super colleague, or help his wife with the housework… At nights, his duty to the people took over. Small accidents, and petty crimes, although more infrequent than in the past, still tended to occur consistently at night. Family outings were the word of the hour. Mr. Incredible, Mrs. Incredible, The Incredible Dash and Violet, out in the city together, fighting crime, helping the world… These were the most rewarding times of Bobs new life.

Short of that, exercise still never failed to calm him; no matter how mindless, or how easy it all was. Jogging was particularly easy; after all, the man of iron muscles had only his own body weight to slow him down. And yet, he found it the most relaxing state of all. Perhaps it was because his whole body was in motion. It made him wonder how Dash must feel, whenever he was able to exercise his power. Something that Bob had always felt about their powers; they were like a force that wanted to get out, be free. Cooped up in that office for all those years, Bob's own weight was considerably more than it ought to have been at that stage, and despite all his efforts at reconciling his image, he still had that slight roundness of a beer belly, latched permanently onto the front of his body. Not that he often drank beer; alcohol had no noticeable effect on him.

BORED had offered him fairly little in terms of quality living space. There was a single-room outpost, with a stiff bunk bed at one end, and a complex array of computers and monitoring equipment, which Incredible hadn't yet touched. He had no need of all this ridiculous technology to help him track down convicts. There was a phone, which he had tried using to call Helen, but it didn't seem to be plugged into anything. The providers' fault, he reasoned, because everything seemed to be set up right on his end. He would have to bring it up at the next meeting.

What they lacked in comfort though, they made up for in lifestyle options. Trekking the island on his morning jaunts was an absolute joy, and Bob had ascended several peaks and cliffs, where he would stop, and stand, and stare; the view was absolutely breathtaking. Just being in the environment of this lush island almost justified it in his mind.

Underneath the complex at the centre, dug into the side of the mountain was a large airstrip, where massive planes would land once or twice a week. Although he couldn't care less about the planes, or just what they were delivering, Mr. Incredible was drawn to the massive shipping crates, slowly hauled from the belly of the flying beasts by massive, powerful cranes. Huge monsters of machinery, heaving and bellowing at the weight of these gigantic shipments. Mr. Incredible had volunteered immediately to help unload such deliveries. The workmen had told him it was folly at first; but then they watched in awe as, with considerable effort, this large man in red tights dragged the entire thing down the ramp and into the warehouse, in a time that put their gigantic cranes to shame. And once he was done unloading the crates, Incredible came back every day to move them around, pull them, push them, lift them – reveling in the joy of these huge weights which strained his muscles so.

Eventually, the crates would be emptied, always when Incredible was not around, and he would have to wait several more days before he could have another go. In the meantime, he returned to his daily jogs. He explored the island, mapping it out in his brain. BORED had provided him with several interactive holographic maps, but Bob had always found that knowing the area in his head was far more effective and useful than reading off a screen. The ATV they had provided him with was adequate; quite fast, and reasonably good across the rough jungle terrain. He figured it would be useful if someone needed his help urgently, or if his outpost were overrun by convicts. If there were any convicts about, that is.

Several weeks after arriving, Bob still hadn't managed to track down a single one of the escapees he had been sent to find. He had tried – occasionally even close to finding them. More than once he had come across a grisly dead body of some long-dead criminal. More disturbingly, the table at the weekly gathering of peacekeepers was becoming less and less populated. 'The Enforcers', as BORED members dubbed them, were variously being killed by the rebels, or rebelling against the company. Arguments arose at the table with each passing week, growing more and more heated. Often ended with an awkward silence, whenever Bob tried to calm them down and remind them that 'we're all here for the common good…'

Bob's telephone was never fixed, despite his constant requests to his superiors. He rarely, if ever, came into contact with any of BOREDs' members, except through daily updates and transmissions, detailing the progressive deployment of troops and security guards, although they didn't seem to be doing much to help the situation. The Enforcers were being encouraged to start hunting down the convicts, particularly those who hadn't been observed to be involved in the killings. This confused Bob, although he had been skeptical about the organization of the group from the beginning. In his mind, it should have been an easy task with such boundless resources as they had, to reign in a few escapees. But, as the representative of the United States, among mostly foreigners on this island, he stayed quiet and obeyed his simple, menial instructions. And although he desperately wished he could vent about all this to his wife back home, they remained stubbornly silent on the issue of the telephone. Incredible resorted to venting on his morning jogs instead.

A/N: Here was where Incredible would have met Deadpool, had that fight gone ahead. I'm kind of disappointed it didn't, because that would have been a very interesting fight, had I ever got round to finishing it. My aptitude for procrastinating astounds me.

The stuff in this chapter takes place before Deadpool reaches BORED HQ, as will be the case for the next intermission chapter.

My apologies for the amazingly dense prose in this chapter. Deadpool would have made an excellent quip about it.