Disclaimer: "The Incredibles" owned by Pixar. "Aberrant" owned by White Wolf/Onyx Publishing.

Author's Notes:

Yes, before some of you ask. This is a major editing/rewrite of the original "Aeon: Prelude Interesting Times". Long story short: I've wanted a chance to go back and edit/clean up various typos and errors since I last wrote this a few years ago. Since then, this little fic-verse has kind of exploded into multiple fics instead of the original two I had planned. After looking at everything (and listening to some feedback), I decided to look at what I've written, edit/clean-up any mistakes or errors I missed last time (and...oh hell, there were a lot of little things here and there). I also decided, to cut down on confusion, to put this all into one series. This first story (a prequel) is now considered the first story in my "War of Angels" setting. Also, I realize that FFN has a White Wolf section, but Aberrant is not listed in the worlds that are covered by the White Wolf fandom, which is why this fic is going to placed the main Incredibles folder.

Again, for those of you who are new to this twisted 'verse, I will warn you, I did move up the Incredibles timeline a little bit. The events in the movie (on up to the battle with Syndrome) take place in 1998 (the battle in Metroville being on March 1st). This story takes place the day after Syndrome's defeat. For you old school White Wolf Aberrant fans, I hope you don't take offense at some of the tweaking I've done when merging these two 'verses together (which, oddly enough, didn't take much effort). And, again, to any new readers who might stumble onto this...welcome to a crazy and twisted little world. This is loosely based off an old Aberrant RPG campaign a friend of mind, basically setting the Incredibles in the Aberrant 'verse. It wasa cool game, but only lasted a few sessions...but it gave me a lot of fic ideas.

Oh, and a couple warnings. First off, there are a lot of OCs as well as main canon characters; if that's not your thing, you may want to take off...just warning you. And second, just to warn those of you who seem to think Buddy Pine is a "fluffy" and "redeemable" character that is misunderstood that has to be paired off with a certain female member of the Parr family...you will definitely not want to read ANY of these stories. Buddy Pine was a VILLAIN, a psychotic and evil bastard, end of discussion. However, Buddy's not in this fic, just some of his projects. He does show up in the second story, however, and will be a recurring villain through the series.

Aeon Building

Chicago, Illinois

March 2nd, 1998

1800 hrs.

To most people, the Aeon Society Building represented the headquarters for a world-wide private philanthropic organization dedicated to humanitarian causes and, officially, that was true. The Aeon Foundation was a philanthropic organization dedicated to humanitarian causes around the world and had received many awards and commendations from the United Nations, the Red Cross, and even a few world governments.

To some people, who were a little older and still remembered, the Aeon Society was originally an organization of talented men and women with extraordinary abilities. Their adventures were the stuff of legends and chronicled in newspapers, magazines, and radio. They signaled the beginning of a new age after first appearing in the 1920s. During the 1930s the Society even helped out during the Great Depression, endearing them even more to the people in the United States and throughout the rest of the world. Other heroes, unaffiliated with the Society, began to surface as well and it seemed that the world was about to enter a new golden age.

Then the Second World War happened and everything changed. Many of the heroes fought in the war and many of them died. The Aeon Society, like the unaffiliated heroes, had also got involved. Having expanded and established small "chapters" around the world since their founding and being more organized than most of the independent heroes, they were able to combat the Nazi war machine much more effectively, which made them a major target. In 1943, multiple chapter houses were hit by Nazi strike teams around the world, most of the personnel killed and high ranking members taken for interrogation before being executed or subjected to a worse fate. It was the 21st of December in 1943 when the Aeon Society achieved its victory over its German counterpart known simply as "The Order" and it was where it suffered a crippling blow that shattered the Society and revealed a traitor in their midst and forced two key members to leave while another simply vanished.

After World War II, the Aeon Society seemed to fade away into the background. The adventurous heroes who represented it during its "glory days" were dead, crippled, or had decided to retire. Other heroes, independent and unaffiliated ones, took their place over the next few decades. It wasn't the golden age that Aeon had predicted, but it was an age of wonder and heroes nonetheless. Most of the remaining Aeon chapter houses that had managed to survive the attacks from the war were closed, their members transferring or retiring from the Society. By the mid-1950s, the only Aeon facilities remaining were the three major buildings in Chicago, New York, and London with four smaller facilities located in Athens, New Delhi, Tokyo, and Sydney. The newly renamed Aeon Foundation had become more of a private philanthropic organization and research group focusing primarily on medical advancements. The adventurous "heroes" of yesteryear in that organization were gone, replaced by faceless suits and lab workers who only came out to donate to charitable causes or provide relief during times of natural disasters.

At least, that's how it appeared to the general public. What the public hadn't known is that the Aeon Society had nearly fallen apart. After the incident in December of 1943, the group found itself divided. Doctor Primoris, one of their founders angrily walked out on them, declaring them to be a major part of what was wrong with the world and that he had no interest in contributing to it. Max Mercer, the main founder and chairman of the Society had mysteriously disappeared shortly after the December incident. There were some in the Society who believed that, had Mercer stayed, Primoris would have returned to the fold.

Another key member was a young Sergeant from United States Marine Corps who had joined the Society at the beginning of the war. Because he was an "outsider" who had been attached to the Society by the US government, he wasn't well liked by the other members of the group, particularly Doctor Primoris. However Richard Dicker proved to be a valuable member of the group and he managed to earn their trust and respect throughout the war…until December of 1943 where they discovered that he had been turning over some of Aeon's notes and research to The Order.

Or so they were led to believe.

Evidence had surfaced at the beginning of December that he was the one who had given the Germans some of their research notes and the locations of various chapter houses. The rest of the month consisted of them trying to track him down as he ran for his life. However, Richard Dicker wasn't running because he was guilty of the crime. He was running because he knew someone in the Society had set him up and if he got caught, whoever betrayed him would have him killed before he could clear his name.

The end of this crisis came crashing down when Dicker was tracked down in Paris by Doctor Primoris and Annabelle Lee Newfield aka "Crackshot". After taking a sniper around in the leg and being beaten partially to a pulp by Doctor Primoris, Dicker finally admitted what he had discovered: Newfield was the one who set him up, she was the traitor.

Aside from Primoris and Dicker, no one else in the Society knew what exactly happened that night, but it ended with Newfield being killed and Primoris kicking the doors of the London chapter house open where he left Dicker to receive medical attention. He then stormed out of the building and into the foggy London Night. Max Mercer shortly vanished after that night, it was witnessed that he was in a troubled state of mind, saying, "This is not what was supposed to happen, something changed."

Though he was cleared of the charges against him, Dicker, upon recovering from most of his injuries, told the remaining members of the Aeon council they could go fuck themselves and hobbled out on a pair of crutches.

The Aeon Society was in danger of collapsing and would have if a young French-Canadian member and former soldier named Phillip Lavielle hadn't stepped up and assumed control of the group. Deciding that Aeon needed to "adapt to this new age", he streamlined the organization in an attempt to reunify it. He ordered most of the chapter houses closed down, their personnel transferred or discharged with appropriate compensation. He then reorganized the Society into what he described to the media as a "philanthropic think tank and research organization" and renamed it the Aeon Foundation.

Over the next few decades, Aeon conducted their own scientific and medical research based on data gathered from promising recruits they brought into the fold or from data gathered from the Hammersmith notes and the archives they had managed to acquire from The Order. They had made many advances over those years and quietly allowed some of those advances to be made available to the rest of the world. However, Phillip knew that despite what Aeon claimed to believe in, he knew the dark truth. This wasn't a Golden Age, and it never would be unless direct action was taken.

As he made his way down the main hallway of the top floor of the building, Phillip couldn't help thinking about the irony of it all. In many ways, the Aeon Society had become like The Order and that did bother him to the point to he would occasionally have a sleepless night thinking about it.

Yes, we are doing some of the things they did, but not all. Unlike them, we've seen the future; we know what's going to happen. We have to make sure it doesn't.

The future; those were two words that haunted him as well. He had really come to rue the day when the society first discovered what had been called "the Oracle artifact" in 1938. Unearthed in some underground ruins in Greece, it was a small metallic sphere that, according to experts, had been buried for nearly three thousand years. But what stunned people were the markings on it, particularly a large one that looked frighteningly similar to the Aeon Society's logo.

It was Doctor Primoris who had initially discovered what it truly was and even managed to make it work. It was a data-storage device and console…a very advanced computer. The technology of the Oracle made the current technology of 1998 look like antiques of the past. So when it was activated in 1939 by Doctor Primoris, even the stoic Doctor was taken by surprise of the phantom holographic images that erupted from the object. They had learned much from the sphere, even learning of the oncoming war with Germany.

Phillip remembered that night very well, when Max Mercer himself had called the entire Aeon Council to a meeting, the twenty seven heads of all the chapter houses and the chairman all in the same room. There was a decision to be made; should they intervene and head off the war that was to come? Of course, they were going on the information they were able to pull from the Oracle and it was incomplete, but a good portion of the council voted in favor of intervening, but it was not enough. A majority of the council felt that preventing this war could possibly lead to something even uglier. In fact, Mercer was convinced of it, as was Primoris. When it became apparent on what decision those two were choosing, a majority of votes went in their direction.

The Oracle artifact was locked up and archived by Primoris, but Phillip always suspected the man knew more than what he was telling and that maybe he saw something that he did not reveal to the others. Then the war happened, all hell broke loose, and when it was all said and done, Phillip was left in charge of a broken organization with most of its founders dead or missing. One of the first acts he ordered as overall Director of Aeon was order the Oracle artifact out of storage. In the five decades since then, they had learned many things from the Oracle and the various information that was gathered was given to whatever department specialized in that. One of the medical advances discovered from the artifact helped retard aging, which allowed Phillip and various other members of Aeon to live a more active life. Granted, he still appeared to be a physically fit man in his early sixties, but that was impressive since he had just celebrated his ninetieth birthday.

Unfortunately, they hadn't been able to crack some of the built in firewalls that prevented them from accessing about ninety-five percent of the artifact's data. Aeon continued to hire the best and brightest minds they could find and slowly began to make progress. All that changed, however, in 1990 when a twenty year old mega-genius named Buddy Pine made a breakthrough and managed to bypass the various built-in firewalls in the Oracle's database. Within an hour, they had downloaded all sorts of data; medical, technological, and historical. But before it could be entirely decrypted, a young woman suddenly appeared in the lab in a flash of light and took the device. Before she could disappear, she said three words that were picked up by the security cameras before she vanished.

"Not this time."

Not this time; three more words that also haunted Phillip. He shook his head to get rid of the memory and bring himself back to the present. He stopped in front of the large oak doors of the Aeon Boardroom. He was certain the others were there; waiting to hear what he had to say regarding the latest crisis that threatened their plans.

Standing off to the side of the doors, waiting patiently, was a young blond haired woman in her early twenties with ice-blue eyes. She nodded and smiled at him before stepping forward and giving him a hug. "Hello, Uncle," she said.

"Phillipa," Phillip replied, unable to keep the surprise of seeing his "niece" here. He returned the hug and gave her a kindly smile of his own. "What brings you here?" he asked. "I thought you were still in London, continuing your studies."

"Taking a small break," Phillipa replied as she pulled away from him. "It is good to see you again, Uncle Phil," she said, then her smile faded a little. "We heard the news over at the London house…is it true?"

"I'm afraid it is, child," Phillip. "Pine's actions might have breached our carefully crafted cover."

"How bad is the damage?"

"That is what we are here to assess."

The young woman paused for a moment, a thoughtful expression on her face. "Why weren't the safety protocols engaged at the facility?"

"For all I know, they were, but apparently they were disengaged."

Phillipa frowned at that response. "How is that possible? Even a deranged nutjob like Pine wouldn't leave his base of operations unattended like that."

"He did have several security measures set up, but someone…or something…had bypassed them."

Phillipa arched an eyebrow. "Something?" she repeated, the hint of smirk on her face. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

Phillip smiled grimly at her as he reached for the doors. "There are a lot of things," he said to her, pulling open the doors to the boardroom. "And this is where we confront them."

The meeting started off smoothly enough, but Phillip harbored no illusions about the can of worms that opened over the weekend. After all, the news footage from what the media had dubbed "The Syndrome Incident" from the day before was still fresh in the public mind and as he played a montage of footage on the video screen, he could hear gasps and some obscenities muttered by various council members. Like Phillip, they didn't like the turn of events. As the images on the screen dissolved to the AEON logo, Phillip stood up from his position at the table to address the other members of the council.

"So, as you can see, the heroes have returned," he said. "Not like we intended, but they are here nonetheless. So the next question is what do we do now?"

Phillip looked up and down the table at the various council members, mentally starting a countdown.

10…9…8…

"Entrusting Pine with Phase One was a bad idea," said Nigel Braddock, representative for Aeon's London chapter. Phillip inwardly sighed, not surprised at Braddock's criticism. He was one of Pine's few critics, claiming the young man was too ambitious and too unstable. Phillip, along with others of the council, assumed it was just jealousy and anger on Braddock's part. But now...now he was wondering if Braddock saw something everyone else missed. "I knew he was trouble, even with a handler to keep him in line. The boy was too rabid a dog."

There were murmurs of agreement from other members of the council, though a good number were silent.

Wow, only three seconds before criticism and blame got thrown around. Phillip managed to hide the smile that threatened to form on his lips. That has to be a record.

"Be that as it may," said one middle-aged woman, "he did accomplish most of Kronos' goals."

"Perhaps, Thetis," conceded Kaleb Xerek, "but was it really necessary? One hundred and fourteen supers killed, including one of our own. This could have been avoided if we had let Miller in on Phoenix."

"And do you really think he would have gone along with Project Phoenix?" Thetis asked. "That he would willingly let his own kind be slaughtered."

"Perhaps not, but he deserved a chance to choose, especially if he knew what was coming." Xerek leaned back in his chair and shook his head. "I still can't believe that we've even gone this far."

"Don't develop a conscience now, Xerek," said another member, a man in his early thirties. "You didn't seem to care about the other one hundred thirteen."

"Shut it, Lansing," Xerek snapped. "Miller was one of us, and I'm sure he would have sided with us."

"He was a risk."

"He was my best friend."

"And you actually think that would have mattered to him? Your friendship versus the eradication of a good portion of his community; trust me, he wouldn't have the guts to go along with Phoenix."

"That's enough," Phillip said, putting enough force in his voice let everyone know that the blame game session of the meeting was over. "You can argue and fight on your own time, but it's time to look at the bigger picture. Has Phoenix been compromised and how does this change the overall plan?"

A few seconds of silence followed as all the members pondered the question. It was Braddock who cleared his throat and spoke first. "According to one of my operatives in the NSA, it doesn't seem likely. Yes, they may have procured most of his assets and toys, but the Aeon hub was clean."

Again, silence filled the room and Phillip could sense the tension. He wasn't sure he liked how that sounded.

"Clean?" he asked. "It was wiped already?"

This time, Braddock hesitated before he answered. "It looks that way, but according to our agent…we think it might have been uploaded to an independent local server."

What? How is that possible?

Phillip felt his strength momentarily drain out of his legs and leaned forward, putting his arms on the table for support. That revelation almost floored him. To upload the data available would mean that Pine had to have some sort of link established to another server…one that Aeon was not aware of.

But if anyone could find a way to do it, it would be Pine. Dammit, Braddock was right.

"Okay," he finally said. "The database was transferred to an 'independent server'. Do we have it?"

"No," replied Braddock as he began tapping on the small data pad in front of him, "because I think it walked out before we could claim it. This was footage our agent managed to get for us from the security cameras in the facility."

As the Englishman spoke, the vid-screen flashed to life to show high definition footage of some sort of lab containing a cylindrical chamber that looked like it had been broken from within, surrounded by nutrient fluid and several broken cables and wires dangling from the inside. The camera panned further out and the sound of someone coughing could be heard as it began to focus on a small figure on their hands and knees, convulsing as he coughed out a blue gel-like fluid, severed ends of the cables and wires from the tank were still protruding from his back.

"Oh…my…god," Phillip heard someone say, though he wasn't entirely sure if it wasn't himself because he was certainly thinking it.

Then the camera zoomed in on the boy. He appeared to be about ten years old and had red hair. He coughed/vomited a couple more seconds, spewing out the last of the sickly blue gel before taking a couple gasps of air. The camera framed around his upper body as he brought himself up to his knees. He then brought one hand up and clenched it in front of his face to make a fist.

"It's real," the boy said, looking around the lab in an almost dream like state. Then he turned and looked directly at the camera, a haunted look in his eyes as he raised his arm and pointed at the camera. "I can see you."

Then the screen flickered for a moment, pausing in a field of snow before suddenly replaying the footage in a loop.

"I can see you."

Flicker.

"I can see you."

Flicker.

"I can see you."

Flicker.

"I can see you."