The Incredibles - Incredible life
By BenRG
Disclaimer
The Incredibles were created by Disney/PIXAR. They are the trademark property of their creators. This is a non-profit work for free distribution through the World Wide Web.
Author's Notes
This story starts as the rubble settles and the Parr family can, at last, relax after the most horrible few days of their lives. This story is fairly plot-free. Basically, it is an attempt to answer the question of where the Parrs will go from here. Will they take up the mask and the spandex again? Will they be 'relocated' again? And what kind of future awaits the kids?
There will be some familiar faces here and a few new ones. You may see stuff that is strongly reminiscent of other 'The Incredibles' fan-fictions. This is not cheap plagiarism (honest!). The fact is that the other authors inspired me. Without their imagination, this story would not exist.
One point: I haven't written 'superhero' stories before, so give me some slack.
Censor: PG (Fantasy violence and teen emotional angst)
Prologue – Incredible!
"That's my girl!"
Violet Parr smiled at her father, Robert, in her usual shy manner. However, this wasn't a proud father congratulating his little princess on a good report card. No, the crusading superhero known as "Mr. Incredible" was congratulating his super-powered daughter on deflecting a piece of falling debris from the destruction of aircraft belonging the villainous mastermind, Syndrome, with her force field before it could crush them all.
With a brief act of concentration, Violet modified the geometry of her force field bubble, making the lump of smouldering duralinium roll off onto the front lawn. "Man, this is going to take forever to fix," Violet's brother Dashiel (universally known as 'Dash') remarked as he examined the smouldering ruins of their small house in the suburbs of Metroville.
"Awesome!" Five heads turned as one to see little Timmy from next door on his little tricycle, staring at the family of superheroes with undisguised awe. Five pairs of eyes met and suddenly they were all laughing, even little baby Jack-Jack, safe in his mother's arms.
Shakily, the four super-powered people staggered to their feet. With a 'pop', Violet dispelled her force field bubble, turned to her mother, Helen (aka 'ElastiGirl') and buried her face against her side. Helen hugged her daughter with one hand as she kept hold of her baby son, with the other. Reaction was setting in, she realised grimly. Little Jack-Jack was sobbing inconsolably. Violet was trembling like a leaf and Dash was holding onto Bob like he would never let go.
Bob smiled and squeezed his son's shoulder in an attempt to reassure the 10-year-old boy before looking up, tracing the grey trails of smoke left by the bits of falling debris. Was it finally over? Was Syndrome finally defeated? It was hard to believe what had happened over the last few months as a result of the lunatic plot of one single obsessive fan. Hard to believe that the pesky kid in a self-created 'IncrediBoy' outfit could have come so close to killing them all.
No. It wasn't over yet. Buddy Pine was many things – murderous, obsessive, sadistic and insecure, for example – but he wasn't ever the sort of man who would let himself go unprotected and Bob would stake his life on the quality of the villain's technology. The amount of effort it had taken to defeat his 'Omni-Droid Mk.10' was enough proof of that. If Buddy could design a robot capable of resisting almost everything a quintet of Superhumans (as well as a significant number of American soldiers) could throw at it, he was certainly capable of surviving a little misunderstanding with a jet aircraft's turbine blades…
At that point, Rick Dicker, the NSA agent who had long been responsible for trying to keep the Parr family hidden away as 'normal' people, rushed over. "Bob… er… Mr. Incredible! What happened? Those explosions, that flying man and that aircraft…?"
"Syndrome was here," Bob replied in his gravely 'Mr. Incredible' tone of voice. "He tried to kidnap that baby; God knows why." Of course, Bob knew why. So did Rick. It was Buddy's obsession with him at work. However, out in the street, certain niceties about the maintenance of secret identities had to be observed.
"Well, I don't think he'll walk away from this one," Rick remarked grimly. He pulled out a mobile 'phone. "I'll get the clean-up squads to clear away the wreckage and start on the cover story…"
"He's alive." Dicker looked up at the tall superhero in surprise.
"Dad, he was sucked into that plane's engine!" Dash protested. "He must have been… shredded! Which is cool, in a gross way."
"Syndrome was… is smart and tough, son. Believe me, he is smart enough to beat something like that. I won't be sure until I've seen the body." Bob turned to Helen, who, realising that the battle might not be over, had tightened her grip on Jack-Jack and Violet, her face pale with fear. "ElastiGirl, keep the kids with you. I'm going to scout around." Bob turned back to Rick. "Call in everything you've got, Agent Dicker," he said in a commanding tone of voice. "If Syndrome did survive, he will probably still be extremely dangerous."
"Dad! Take me with you!" Violet called out, suddenly slipping out of her mother's grip and reaching towards her father, fear and determination filling her expression. "I'm sure I can block those energy beams of his with my force-field!"
"Yeah! We're a team, right?" Dash added in a rare moment of agreement with his older sister. "'All for one and one for all' and that stuff! You need our help!" He looked up at his father with a determined expression that Bob remembered seeing in the mirror on many occasions.
Bob dropped down onto one knee to look his oldest son in the eye. "Dash, you and Violet have already done more than enough today," he murmured, squeezing the boy's shoulder again to emphasise his words. "Stay with your mom."
"But…"
Bob silenced his son by putting his finger over his lips. "Son, the best thing that you can do to help me is to stay with your mom, your brother and sister. I will be better able to handle this if I know you are all out of the firing line."
Dash was about to protest again, but the look in his father's eyes stopped his words before they came out. The boy looked down. "Yes sir," he murmured.
"Mr. Incredible? I have our Special Powers Task Force troops on the way." Rick was just putting away his mobile 'phone. "How do we play this?"
"Form a cordon," the superhero announced. "We'll only start an evacuation if we don't find him by nightfall. If he's seen, your people should contact myself or ElastiGirl. Do not try to tackle him yourselves. He's already murdered over two dozen Supers since he started his rampage." Bob looked around for a moment, making calculations based on the direction of the fall of the wreckage from Buddy's 'plane. "You aren't getting away, kid," he murmured to himself before launching himself down the road, a human juggernaut.
As it turned out… all these precautions were not necessary. Bob found his quarry less than a city block away, crumpled at the base of a tree that had apparently broken his fall… and most of the bones in his body.
"Mary, mother of God…" Bob could feel his most recent meal worming itself up his throat. It was Buddy alright, but if so much of his costume hadn't survived… it would have been difficult to tell.
Bob looked on sadly as the tattered form of Buddy Pine, now encased in a body cast and with intravenous drips in both arms, was loaded onto an Army ambulance. "As near as I can figure it, Syndrome's costume was armoured; some kind of super-strong material, an order of magnitude tougher than steel," he was explaining to a grim Rick Dicker. "It was tough enough to protect his body from the moving parts of a jet engine, but his face was exposed, so the fireball and concussion wave when the 'plane went up did a lot of damage. Worse for him, his boot jets weren't as well protected; they were destroyed and he couldn't slow his fall in any way. Two hundred feet, straight down."
Bob shuddered. He'd seen Supers die from injuries this severe. Buddy was just a Normal with a few technological gimmicks. The villain had broken virtually every bone in his body, the explosion of his plane had practically burnt off his face, apart from a strip protected by his mask, and a combination of high-velocity shrapnel and a concussion wave had done untold damage to his internal organs. "In some ways, I think it would be a mercy if he died," Bob grated. "He would hate to live as a broken cripple."
"There was nothing that you could have done, Mr. Incredible," Rick said at last, patting the taller man on the shoulder. "Everything that has happened to Syndrome was as a result of his own actions. He made his choices a long time ago."
"Maybe," Bob replied. "But I'll never shake the feeling that I could have helped him make his decisions a little more wisely."
After one in-depth look at their house, the Parr family all agreed that it would be best if they could find somewhere else to stay until the NSA had fixed the place. Between several tons of exploded aircraft crashing onto the roof, the small problem of a hole where Syndrome had thrown the four older members of the family through a wall and a large hole in the roof through which he had attempted to make his escape, the building wasn't strictly up to Metroville building regulations anymore. So, after packing a bag each, the family emerged, now in their civvies, ready to travel to a hotel or some other temporary accommodation arranged by the government. The cover story was that Syndrome, for some reason best known to his deranged thought processes, had tried to kidnap the Parr baby and the building had been severely damaged in the ensuing struggle with the Incredibles.
Helen couldn't help but wonder why it was that Normals accepted such total nonsense so easily. You would think that little Timmy, at least, would come to some conclusions about her family and their resemblance to a certain newly-emerged family of superheroes, especially after seeing all five of them together. The only reason she could come up with is that people liked their quiet, unspectacular and mediocre little lives so much that they filtered out any experiences that threatened that peace.
As the government-supplied mini-van pulled out of the drive, she saw a City worker putting up danger signs on their little haven of normalcy where, for the last three years, they had tried to live the lives of an ordinary suburban family. Helen shuddered despite herself, inexplicably glad to be leaving the place behind. It was as if she had been released from a horrible, claustrophobic cell. Suddenly, she could no longer understand her own desire to be 'normal' that had sent her marriage tumbling to the point of failure. She couldn't understand why she had wanted so much to forget who and what she really was or why she would try to force her children to hide away their gifts, driving them to increasingly abnormal and self-destructive behaviour. She had no idea why she would try to force Bob to live a life that he loathed, just because it was 'normal'. Did she really hate herself and her family that much?
No, she realised. It was that she loved them too much to see what they really needed to be happy. Sometimes the easy choices weren't the right ones, something that she ought to have known only too well. Out of a desire to spare her family the hardship of facing the tide of disapproval of the Supers, she had tried to force them to deny their fundamental natures, something that had come close to destroying their souls. She now realised that they couldn't keep up a pretence of normality for the sake of their secret identities without any outlet for their gifts. It was like trying to pretend that you were blind or paraplegic. Admittedly, she had only been motivated by a desire that her family should be happy in their popularly-imposed 'normality', but the point was that they weren't happy, and it was stupid trying to keep following a failed strategy.
Helen looked around the interior of the van. Bob was driving with Jack-Jack in a baby seat alongside him. The baby was enjoying the ride and expressing this by shifting his skin through all the colours of the rainbow. In the next row, Dash was playing on his Game Boy Advance his fingers blurring over the controls far faster than ought to be possible. Next to him, Violet was listening to some 'music' on her iPod and spinning a sparkling inch-wide force-field bubble on the tip of a finger. Helen was on the back row, minding the kids. She reached forward… way forward… the bones and muscles in her arm stretching until it was over two metres long, so she could squeeze her husband's shoulder affectionately, feeling the astonishing might tied up in his body.
Suddenly, Helen had an epiphany. As difficult as resisting the tide would be, she wasn't willing to live in fear of her nature anymore. She wasn't normal. Bob wasn't normal. Violet, Dash and Jack-Jack weren't normal. What is more, she preferred it that way. She had tired of the lies, of having to deny to herself and her family the expression of their true natures simply because the unwashed masses feared the superlative and the unusual.
Helen swore, then and there, that her family would be allowed to be true to themselves. Admittedly, you could argue that it had all been in an attempt to serve the greater good, but they had made too many compromises over the years and suffered too much hurt for too little reward. Things were going to change, or her name wasn't ElastiGirl… Hmm… No… No, that was fine when she was 20 years old and still a wild kid at heart, but things had changed. How about: "Mrs. Incredible"? Most people must have guessed she was married to Mr. Incredible, after all… No. No, that sounded corny. No, stick to the winning formula with a slight change to reflect the passage of time. From now on, she would be 'ElastiWoman'.
Helen smiled and retracted her arm slightly to stroke Violet's hair and flick Dash's nose, acts of affection that earned expressions of loving annoyance from her two eldest children. She made a mental note to discuss code-names with them, should they choose to become active immediately.
A grateful government, only too aware of how the Parr family had risked everything to save them from one of their own out-of-control defence contractors, had been most generous with their temporary accommodation. Three luxury five-star rooms on the top floor of the Metroville Sheraton Hotel had been set aside for the 'evacuees'. Bob, Helen and baby Jack-Jack got the largest, while Violet and Dash each got a smaller room. Smaller in that they were just large, rather than gigantic.
Helen managed to create a makeshift crib out of towels for Jack-Jack on the second bed in her and Bob's room. The baby was understandably fretful after the day's events, but a soft lullaby and his mother's close presence finally convinced the child to sleep.
Helen and Bob would be utterly inadequate parents if they had not noticed that their older children were stubbornly trying to hide the fact that they hurt all over. Helen looked up at Violet and Dash, trying to keep the exhaustion and bitterness out of her expression. "Bob, can you see to Dash? I want to check out Violet."
Bob sighed and nodded. He knew that code. You couldn't exactly go to a doctor and announce that you had broken an arm while trying to stop an out-of-control juggernaut from knocking a school bus off of an elevated highway. So, the close-knit community of Supers frequently found themselves caring for each other's immediate non-critical medical needs. "Dash, could you take your tee-shirt off, please?" Dash visibly hesitated and shot a helpless look at his sister.
"Violet? Could you come with me to your room?" Helen suddenly announced.
Violet looked more than a little afraid. "I… I'll be okay, Mom," she protested timidly.
"Yeah, we're superheroes! We can take it!"
Bob smiled and knelt before his son. "I don't doubt your courage, son," he said at last, his surprisingly gentle fingers tracing the purpling bruise across the boy's left cheekbone. "But we are as human and as mortal as anyone else. Please let us make sure that neither of you were badly injured."
There was a hint of tears in Violet's eyes. "Mom…"
Helen shook her head forbiddingly and took her daughter by the shoulder to steer her out of the room. She was more than perceptive enough to see Violet wince as she touched an injury.
A short time later, Violet was perched on her bed, her mother kneeling behind her and anointing a series of small circular bruises running across the girl's back. "I'm sorry that I'm so much trouble, mommy," Violet whispered, wincing as the ice cold antiseptic cream bit into the bruises. "I tried to dodge them, but there were so many shooting at the same time…"
"Shh… Violet, honey, don't worry," Helen whispered in reply. "No one expects you to be perfect; you'd never been in a fight before yesterday morning." Helen paused and then shot her daughter an arch expression. "Not that I know of, that is." Violet giggled then winced again as her mother touched a particularly sore spot. "I'm just glad that Edna's bullet-proof material worked as advertised," Helen continued, her Georgian accent, dimmed by her long stay in California, getting more pronounced as exhaustion and fear for her daughter took hold.
"I'm sorry that I wasn't able to stay out of trouble," Violet murmured as she turned around so that her mother could tend to the scratches on her face from flying debris and a high-speed chase through a tropical jungle. "You wanted me to keep Dash safe and…"
"Hey, I know that when you wear the spandex and the mask, trouble finds you," Helen replied with a grin. "We were deep within enemy territory, honey. You both did the right thing when the moment came."
"Then you're not mad?" Violet asked in a hopeful tone. "We aren't… grounded or anything?"
Helen paused and sat back on her heels, looking her child in the eye. "What brings that question on?"
"Well… the thing is…" Violet looked down in a shy manner before continuing. "I know I got hurt and everything… but I have to agree with Dash. It was fun at times. I've never felt so… alive! As if my whole life up to that point had all been a dream and now I was awake and aware for the first time! There is a part of me that can't wait to do it again!" Violet looked down again. "Don't be mad," she pleaded.
"Honey, why should I be mad?"
"You… you said that we should never show off our powers like that… That people mustn't know."
Helen sighed and suddenly leaned forward to hug her daughter. "You listen to me, Violet Elizabeth Parr. The time for hiding is over, do you understand me? I don't want you to live your life hating and fearing the gifts that you were born with!" Helen reached out to stroke her daughter's dark hair from in front of her face. "Your father and I spent fifteen years in hiding because people were afraid of us and what we could do. We nearly drove ourselves mad trying to be 'normal'. Violet, honey, I want you to know that we were wrong. We can't deny what God, providence, genetics or whatever it was has given to us, just because some small, bigoted, greedy people are frightened of something that they can never understand."
Helen stood and walked over to Violet's small suitcase. She wasn't at all surprised to find the girl's red, black and gold fighting mantle in the zip-up compartment in the lid. She took the costume and walked back over to her firstborn, who was staring at her mother in shock. She placed the costume against her daughter's chest, as if she were seeing if it would still fit, making the girl look down in a shy way again. "Violet, you were born with the ability to do wonders. You can do things that no other human can do. This is not something to be ashamed of. Having this power brings responsibility, it's true. You have to be sure to use it right, but that isn't a reason to be afraid of it, to hate it or to hate yourself." Helen smiled, put a finger under Violet's chin and slowly raised the girl's face so she could look in her eyes. "Violet, this is something that you cannot hide from, something that you must not hide from. This power is your blessing and your curse. It is who and what you really are." Helen reached out to put her daughter's mask in its place. "It is your destiny," she concluded quietly.
Any doubt that Helen had that she was doing the right thing was dispelled as her daughter looked at her with a gradually growing smile, happiness and relief sparkling in her deep brown eyes from behind her mask.
"Ow! Dad!" Dash squirmed away from his father's questing fingers. "Go easy! You're supposed to make me feel better, not worse!"
Bob grinned at his son's response to having his ribs checked for fractures. Fortunately, the boy seemed to have a miraculous level of resistance to blunt force injuries, possibly as a result of his body's ability to handle the enormous accelerations that he was capable of attaining. Still, super-tough bones or no, the boy's flesh still bruised as easily as anyone else. A combination of falls and several hits from machinegun fire had left Dash's torso a mosaic of bruises.
"Well, you seem to have come out of this in more-or-less one piece. You'll be sore for a while, but I can't find any lasting injuries."
"What do you expect?" Dash puffed out his chest in a vaguely farcical manner. "I'm The Dash! It'll take more than a few creeps to take me down!"
Bob laughed before standing up, grunting slightly (after all, he was pretty badly hurt in his own right). "You really enjoyed this caper, didn't you?"
"Enjoy it? It was great! The greatest thing ever!" Dash was practically bounding up and down in his enthusiasm. "I could finally do what I wanted to do! Beat up bad guys! Save the world!" Dash suddenly stopped and frowned. "Except…" The boy's ice blue eyes had darkened slightly.
"Except?" Bob prompted.
"I didn't like it when those creeps started shooting at Violet. And… And when they were shooting at me… hitting me… I guess I was too focussed on not getting killed to think about how scared I should have been…" Dash sat down suddenly and there were tears in his eyes. "And when Syndrome caught us all and I thought that we were gonna die…" Dash impatiently wiped his eyes. "Jeez! I'm worse than Violet!"
Bob knelt by his oldest son and put an arm around his shoulder. "Being scared isn't anything to be ashamed of, Dash," he said quietly. "You would have to be insane not to have been scared by that. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to protect you from that maniac and his goons. It is easy to forget that this tough little kid is only ten years old." Bob's eyes darkened. "A little young to be fighting for his life."
"It's not as if I don't want to try it again!" Dash protested. "Dad, please! I've only just discovered what it is like…! What it is really like to be a Super!" The boy shook his head. "I know I'm only young, but I'll be good! I promise! I'll do as you and Mom say, and I'll make you proud of me!"
Bob hugged Dash as hard as he dared. "I am proud of you, son. Never think otherwise." The big man sat back to look at his son again. "But you are young, and I don't want you to be hurt like this again!"
"Da-ad!" Dash protested. "You can't make me stop! Please! It is like… it is like…" the ten-year-old's limited vocabulary was running out and he had to keep stopping to think. "For the first time, I suddenly realised what I could do! It was like someone had let me out of a cage and I could run as far and as fast as I could! It felt so right! To have to stop now would be… would be…"
Bob smiled grimly as he thought of a certain cubicle in a certain office of a certain insurance company. "It would be like being imprisoned. Being forced to watch the world go by; to know that you can make a difference and that you aren't allowed to except in the smallest of ways."
Dash nodded excitedly. "You see! You do understand! I knew that you would!"
Bob nodded back and looked into his son's excited eyes. "Why?" he asked. At his son's obvious incomprehension, he elaborated. "Why do you want to put on a superhero's costume and mask?" Bob sat beside Dash and continued. "Remember how scared you were when Bu… When Syndrome's goons were trying to kill you. Then tell me why you want to do this."
Dash sucked in a breath. "Well, there is the bit about being famous," the boy said with a weak grin. One look from his father told him that this was the wrong answer. "Dad, for the first time, I felt like I was actually being me! It was fun, it was exciting but… but that wasn't what mattered. All I wanted to do was help you, Mom and Violet; that is what mattered. When we got back to the city, all I wanted to do was make sure that the robot didn't hurt anyone."
Bob nodded. "Those who seek power for its own sake end up corrupted and evil. That is what happened to Syndrome, Dash. For him, all that mattered was that he would be powerful, famous and admired. He didn't care who got hurt, so long as he reached that goal." Bob put a hand on his son's shoulder. "Dash, if this is something that you really want to do, it must be about what you can do for others with your powers, not what you can do for yourself."
Dash nodded, his young face twisting as he tried to absorb these difficult concepts. "I understand, sir," he said quietly. "I want to be a hero, like you and Mom. Not for me, but because I know that I can help folks in trouble. I've always felt that I should do stuff like that."
Bob couldn't help but smile again at his son's attempts to articulate his feelings. "You still have a long way to go, son," he said, ruffling Dash's scruffy blond hair. "But I'll be there every step of the way, to make sure that you get there."
Helen squeezed Bob's hand as the two sat on the couch in their hotel room, looking at their two older children sitting in front of them. The two youngsters were looking up at their parents expectantly. After a moment, Bob stood up.
"Your mother and I have spoken to you separately, but now I want to talk as a family." Bob looked at Helen, who nodded, her face reflecting a sense of certainty that Bob hadn't seen for fifteen years. "In the last few days, you two have had an insight into what our lives were like before the Superhero Relocation Act. You've come to understand that life as a superhero isn't a comic book."
"Well, duh!" Violet muttered with all the assumed experience that only a thirteen-year-old could believe that they possess. One look from her father made her subside.
"The point is this," Bob continued, after making sure that the kids were actually listening to him. "Your mother and I have agreed that we can't let you go through your lives wondering 'what if…?'. You know now what you are capable of; of the good that you can do and of the harm that you could do." Bob sat down next to Helen and hugged her to him. "Since our teen years, your mother and I fought crime, injustice and the unforeseen terrors that can fall on any person. For a long time, because we thought that it is what people wanted, we tried to be 'normal' people and turn our backs on that past. We couldn't and it almost destroyed us. We don't want that to happen to you."
Bob looked at Helen and both adults smiled. "Starting tomorrow, if it is what you want, you are going to learn how to use your powers to the very greatest extent."
"If it is what we want? Da-ad!" Dash protested.
"Mom! I told you that this felt right!" Violet was just as loud in her protest.
"Dashiel Robert! Violet Elizabeth!" Helen's strong voice cut across the kids' objections. "Listen to me. This isn't a game, and this isn't something that is easy. You will have to lead two whole separate lives and never let them mix. You have to understand the costs that come with this lifestyle. Unless you are very lucky, any relationship that you have will be stunted by the fact that you have to keep rushing off to save the day with little or no warning. You will have to dedicate your lives to a degree of discipline and control over your abilities that you can't even imagine right now." Helen looked around and was pleased to note that both kids were staring at her in a fixed way, fear and wonder in their expressions.
Bob took up his wife's argument. "It is not an easy life, kids," he rumbled. "There is fame, glory and honour, true. But there is also pain, fear and uncertainty. You have to live with the fact that every night may be your last; that someone may uncover your secret identity and kill someone that you love, just to hurt you."
"We don't want you to think that this is some kind of great alternative to the life that we've lived up to today," Helen said. "We also don't want either of you to feel obliged to take up the life that your father and I once lived and intend to live again, just because we are your parents and you want us to be proud of you. We want to know what you want."
There was a long pause.
"I never realised what having powers really meant until two days ago on Nomanisan Island," Dash said quietly. The boy looked up at his father, desperately trying to find the words to explain how he felt. "Dad… it just felt so… right."
"I never thought that I could use my powers to actually do something important," Violet added. "I never felt so… fulfilled… before then." The girl sucked in a breath. "Mom, you said what we are is something in our blood. I think I understand that now. I want to live up to what I really am."
Dash grinned. "I'm not letting my sister get ahead of me," he added. "Not that she will."
"Eat my dust, fungus," Violet replied, poking her tongue out at her kid brother. Dash nudged her on the shoulder with a fist and she grinned unrepentantly, tickling him on the belly and making him jerk back. Both suddenly remembered that they were around their parents and turned their attention back to Bob and Helen, blushing brightly. "Um… That means that this is something we both feel that we should do," Violet explained. Dash nodded eagerly.
Bob nodded, managing to keep the urge to laugh at his children's antics out of his expression. "You have no idea how proud it makes your mother and I to hear you both say that." The man stood with his wife and the two approached the kids, who also stood up. "We are going to do this together," he said quietly. Bob Parr raised his hand and held it out level in between them.
Helen put her hand on her husband's and squeezed briefly. "Together," she agreed.
Violet put her hand on her mother's. "Together," she said quietly.
"Together!" Dash concluded, putting his hand on top of Violet's. Then the boy jumped up and punched the air. "Look out world! Here we come!"
Rick Dicker shook his head as he considered the two Superhumans sitting on the couch in front of him. "Bob, you know that this would go against both the spirit and the letter of the Relocation Act."
Bob sighed. This was the bureaucratic brick wall that he feared. "Thank you, Rick, we do understand that," he replied. "The point is that we've discovered that we can't live by the terms of that stupid law; we realise now that we never have been able to live by it."
Rick shook his head. He had been expecting this confrontation for some time. Frankly, he was surprised that it had taken fifteen years for it to have reached this point. "Bob, you are forbidden…"
"Actually, we aren't," Helen interjected. "The Superhero Relocation Act of 1989 only stipulates that we must give up all superhero-related activities if we want government cover and support for legal liabilities arising from our past actions. Well, we've decided that, if we must, we'll handle our own liabilities."
Rick looked at Helen in some shock. Of the two, she had always been the most conciliatory. Helen had kept Bob under control for years when Rick had suspected that the man was itching to say 'damn the Act' and put on his mask and spandex again. To have Helen demanding the right to start superhero activities again was a shock to say the least. "And what about your children?" he asked at last. "Have you considered how this will affect them?" At that moment, Rick realised that he had asked the wrong question to the wrong audience. A blur of motion and billowing curtains suggested that someone super-fast had just ducked behind a chair out of his sight… and was that a tee shirt and a pair of cut-off jeans floating in mid-air diving behind another chair?
"We are doing this because of our children," Helen said firmly.
Bob shook his head. "Rick, our kids are being driven crazy by having these abilities and being told that they cannot use them ever. They have the right to explore these abilities and know how to use them."
"So, you are going to throw them in the line of fire, Bob? Helen? Wasn't Pine's killer robot enough for you?"
"The alternative is to force them to repress a part of their fundamental natures," Helen responded. "That is a time bomb and you know it. Eventually, they are going to lash out against that control and there is no telling what will happen if we wait for that."
"Well…" Rick sat down and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "If it is just a matter of you wanting to train your kids so that they can control their abilities, I think that I can get that past the Administration without too much trouble."
Bob waggled a finger reprovingly. "It is more than that, Rick. We are going to give them the chance to see what constructive good they can do with their abilities. We are going to show them how they can help people."
Rick sucked in a deep breath. "Didn't those lawsuits teach you that people don't want you Supers interfering in their business?"
"It taught me that there are too many people who want something for nothing," Bob replied, a dangerous undertone to his voice. "However, the response of the people of this city to my family saving them from Syndrome's Omni Droid suggests that they would welcome someone powerful willing to fight on their side!"
"Bob, that's different!" Rick protested. "That thing was a threat beyond any reasonable scale! Only a Superhuman could have stopped it! There has never been any objection to you offering your assistance in exceptional circumstances…!"
Helen exploded. "So, basically what you are saying is that you want our children to hide in the dark, not allowed to be what they are meant to be, until some unforeseen menace emerges. Then they will be expected to fight, bleed and maybe die so that you Normals can continue to live your nice, safe, unspectacular existences! Then they will be expected to disappear again so as not to offend your taste for the mediocre until the time comes to fight for you again? Is that it?"
Rick's mouth dropped open in a very undignified way. He was stunned. Not so stunned that he didn't hear what was definitely Violet and Dash giggling quietly, but he was still shocked at the way that Helen had described the policy he had spent a decade and a half enforcing.
"It isn't going to be that way, Rick," Bob said, in a way that brooked no disagreement. "If you want Superhumans to protect society from unusual threats, then you have to let us be around to help ordinary people whenever we can. Don't you understand that we aren't asking to interfere? We are asking to be allowed to help people who are in trouble, like any other moral person would want to help."
"You aren't like any other moral person, Bob," Rick said with a ghost of a smile. "Maybe that's the point." The NSA agent stood and paced around for the room for a moment, noting out of the corner of his eyes another blur of motion and a hint of floating clothes that indicated the two older Parr children were present.
There was no doubt that something had been missing these last fifteen years. Seeing the raw news footage of Frozone and the Incredibles fighting Pine's little applied science project gave Rick a thrill that he didn't expect to feel at his age and level of cynicism. "It won't be easy," he announced at last. "There are people who feel threatened by the very existence of Superhumans, let alone their being active throughout the country. Some people would fear the consequences of one of you abusing your powers."
"It doesn't take Superhuman abilities to become a threat to society," Helen pointed out quietly.
Bob nodded sadly. "There is good and bad in every race of humans, Super and Normal alike. Syndrome was proof of that."
"The question, in the end," Helen concluded firmly, "is one of trust. Are we trusted, Rick? Or are we a threat to be put in a cage?"
Rick Dicker did something that shocked both adults. He smiled, openly and broadly. "I've never seen you as a threat, Bob, Helen," he said. "I've always believed that the President was mistaken in proposing the Superhero Relocation Act. I've always believed the good that those Superhumans who choose to act on the stage of the world can do far outweighs any potential harm that could come from their actions." The old man looked around. "By the way, Violet, Dash, you might as well come out. I've known you were here since I stepped into the room."
A rather abashed-looking Dash blurred out from behind a chair and bounced onto the couch next to his mother. The tee shirt and cut-off jeans emerged from behind another chair, hovering above a pair of sandals. There was a blur of some kind of optical distortion and Violet materialised, walking over to her father.
Rick couldn't help grin at that so astonishingly natural demonstration of power. He always thought that forcing these people never to use these powers outside their homes was an act of bureaucratic sadism – like pulling the wings of a butterfly or something. "I can't promise anything in the long term, folks," he announced. "However, I have been made aware that the President has declared that the time for a reconsideration of Federal policy in this area is long overdue. He has communicated to the agency his intent to propose the repeal of the Superhero Relocation Act." Rick shook his head at some thought. "The Constitution specifically insists that all citizens have the right of the pursuit of happiness. And how could we possibly justify preventing that, simply because what some citizens require to fulfilled and happy is so very…?" Rick paused and smiled again. "So very… incredible."
To be continued…
Concluding Author's Notes
Woah! That was a lot longer than I was initially expecting.
There is more where this comes from. I want to address the kids' training, their first solo adventures, some adventures for the whole family and even the ultimate fate of Mirage and Syndrome. However, I would like to know whether my approach to The Incredibles is… for want of a better word… credible.
I would be grateful for comprehensive reviews, especially regarding my characterisation of the main characters, as I am aware that I may have strayed outside their canon portrayal in places. I would also be indebted to anyone who would point out obvious continuity errors or other problems.