Title: Comics, Cookies, and Revenge
Category: Movies » Incredibles
Author: LejindaryBunny
Language: English, Rating: Rated: T
Genre: General/Romance
Published: 11-30-04, Updated: 05-12-06
Chapters: 24, Words: 82,165
Chapter 1: Broken Oasis
Comics, Cookies, and Revenge
By Lejindarybunny
A/N: Yes, the title is a little whimsical. I like it. Call it CCR if you must. I intend for it to be long, well written, and hopefully the dominant Syndrome-fic on the net. So I’m arrogant. Sue me. Mary-Sue me even.
Hope you enjoy
Chapter One: Broken Oasis
Buddy Pine was dead, oh yes. His assets? Frozen. His name? Ruined. His dreams? Shattered.
Again.
Buddy Pine was as dead as a doornail.
But Syndrome, on the other hand, was very much alive.
How could that be? Simple. He was a careful man, and one who was not particularly well disposed towards personal injury. Perhaps this stemmed from an innate trepidation, or perhaps it had been instilled there by impressionable years filled with peer abuse. In any case, he knew better than to put himself into a situation that there was a possibility he might not walk out of.
Especially when there was a wicked robot duplicate that needed testing.
That’s right, a robot duplicate, controlled by remote from a super-secret location miles away from his island base. His former base, as it was now in the possession of the United States Government.
Why bother with a back-up plan? After all, the first plan had been foolproof, nothing could possibly go wrong.
Syndrome was vain, grandiose, pompous even, but he wasn’t a fool.
Okay, okay. Mirage had thought of it. Wouldn’t stop nagging ’til he’d implemented it, in fact.
Syndrome had merely been humoring her.Good thing she did, right?
Wrong.
If it wasn’t for her his plans would have worked perfectly. She had betrayed him. Sold him out.
And why? Because she didn’t trust him. Didn’t have any faith in his prowess.
Sitting now in the stylish penthouse apartment, set aside months ago in a false name, he realized that she never had. Her praising words and admiration meant nothing.
Mirage had been nothing but lip-service and a pretty face, leeching off of his money and power. Power in which she didn’t even put any real stock.
It had not been his failure he had witnessed from remote camera and then later on the six O’Clock news only days ago.
He hoped she got what was coming to her. Cast adrift in a cold world that alienated her. Maybe the police would even arrest her as his accomplice, she’d have to spend days in jail before Mr. Incredible could call in the right favors to have her release.
Syndrome enjoyed an evil chuckle at this thought. Yes, he’d been a fool for trusting her, even maybe loving her, a little, but that was in the past. The bigger fools were those spineless heroes, and the law, for thinking he could be beaten so easily. Thinking he could be dead, or if not, that taking away all of the money and property belonging to Buddy Pine would cripple him.
Did they think he was that stupid? Even the most ignorant of villains new about false papers and Swiss bank accounts.
Sitting in the squashy maroon armchair like a throne, the young man began to grin sadistically.
They were unprepared now. No one would be looking for him, and no one would know where to look if they were. They were giving him all the time he needed, and when he had made his plans, Syndrome would rise from the ashes of defeat like a black phoenix and crush them all beneath his heel.
And crush them he would. Grind them, break them, subjugate them even. Gone were his idealistic dreams of economic conquest and a world full of supers. This final humiliation had taught him what he had been trying not to face since he was a small child. That there were people with power, and people without it, and the person with the most power ruled everyone else. That person was going to be him.
That’s right ladies and gentlemen, he smirked, eyes twinkling, Syndrome wanted the world. And he was going to have it.
If the world wanted to paint him as the villain of the piece, oh, how he would oblige them.
Syndrome stood up suddenly from the chair, a few stands of red hair falling in front of his face (he hadn’t been keeping to up recently, too conspicuous), and strode out of the living room and into the small kitchen/dining room area. He laid a hand on the handle of the fridge door, intending to open it, but instead, just stood there. Doubting.
Yes. He still had his life, his mind, his money, his inventions. But he had lost an empire. Seen it squandered and toppled so easily, so fragile.
He stared at the back of his hands, the freckle-adorned knuckles, hating every inch of them and their weakness. He saw his distorted reflection staring back at him in the door, white sleeveless shirt revealing bare arms, pale and freckled as well, a pair of black sweatpants falling over his toes, and his red hair falling over his face around his chin. At least he had his contacts in, rather than his glasses, he thought. He looked so unimpressive out of his costume, weak and frail.
Human frailty.
There was no justice in the world.
He ripped open the fridge and pulled out a can of coke; hooking his finger under the tab he opened it with that gratifying tchss–thock that meant that sharp, vital caffeine was forthcoming. He took a long drink of the dark liquid as he leaned broodingly against the cool, white appliance. The lights in the room were at an attractively dim, orange glow that suited his ominous mood.
Yes. He could and would start again. But it would be different this time. Before he hadn’t quite known what he was doing, it had all been touch and go, his own ideas, mixed with what worked in the comics.
He hadn’t even intended to make Mirage his lieutenant. She had just been some girl he’d picked up in a bar one night, years ago. He’d gotten extremely drunk and told her his plans as a come on. Oddly enough, it had worked. After they’d been involved for a while, she’d decided she wanted to help him, and he decided to humor her. But by the end he’d somehow let her gain an awful lot of power over both him, and his plans. All the while she had never really understood him or what he wanted, or why he wanted it.
And that, in the end, was what tore them apart, and brought him to his knees.
If she had understood him at all, or if she had understood the mentality of a super hero at all, she would have known that she was in no danger. She would have known that he was using the moment to hurt Incredible, not her. To throw it in his teeth that he had just witnessed the death of his family and still didn’t have the spine or the ruthlessness to hurt the person responsible the same way and never would.
Of course he cared about her! Or at least he had then. She should have known that. But she didn’t. At her heart she would always be pretty cheerleader Maggie Jenkins.
He should have known. He had known. He just hadn’t accepted it. And why not? Because they had met before that night at the bar, though she never remembered, and he had never told her. They had gone to high school together, and not just for one year either, but from freshman year, to graduation. He had had the biggest crush on her, and she had evidently not even known that he existed.
He shouldn’t have done it. He’d thought he had finally become a person worth noticing when she’d gone with him. Having her around was a constant ego boost, telling him he had finally overcome the powerless geek he had been as a child. But in reality it was only more proof of how shallow and deceitful she was in the end.
Buddy Pine had been beneath her notice, and she had proven herself an unfit companion for Syndrome.
The first step in rebuilding what he had lost, the first part of his new and improved plans, would be to replace her. And he knew just the girl.
Or rather, he knew the type of girl, and where to look.
He needed someone who was everything Mirage was not.
He needed someone who was reasonably intelligent, who understood what made super heroes tick almost as well as he did, and also understood where he was coming from, and why he was doing it, and sympathized with him. He needed someone who was both willing, and in possession of loose enough morals, to do anything that was required of her as his lieutenant. And foremost he needed someone who was completely loyal to him and trusting in the utmost, preferably bordering on the fanatical.
He needed a fangirl.
But not just any fangirl. No, most of them were squealing little blondies with posters of fairy boys and pretty cartoon heroes, who wrote bad fanfiction and beat you with a spork at the mere suggestion that their fandom wasn’t the be all and end all of civilization. But there were a few, a sort of subspecies within the group, which would be perfect for his intentions. Sneaky little creatures, with a taste for the darker things in life, who had posters of super villains, and evil elves. Who wrote bad fanfiction, and beat you with a spork for looking at them funny. It was a light-side of the force/dark-side of the force thing. The same, but opposite.
A dark fangirl was exactly what he would need and they were easily available due to the miracle of the internet. He already had a plan to choose, and abscond with, his new lieutenant.
He set down his empty coke can and got another out of the fridge, then headed back to the living room. But this time he sat down at the swiveling chair in front of his Mac.
The best place to start his search, of course, would be fanfiction. net. From there he would establish a pool of candidates who fit his criteria, which was simple; they had to be above the age of 16, not be physically self destructive, an unfortunate habit of dark fangirls.
Then, once he had found a few girls, he’d IM them, and pick the best one.
Simple.
To be Continued…
Please note, this is not interactive fanfiction. The story is set, all characters are fictional. FFnet just happens to exist in Syndrome’s world as well.
Chapter 2: Our Lady of Serenity
Comics, Cookies and Revenge
A/N: Hmm, it seems my opening chapter is well received. Yay! That means new chapter! Also, I saw the Incredibles a second time today, so it is fresh in my mind. That is good. Which brings me to the point that, yes, in the movie they drive 1950s cars and live in 1950s houses, but they have really advanced tech, so, to lejindarybunny, that says they have the internet. So nyah. Maybe they just have a very retro sense of style?
Oh, and I have been invited to join some sort of strange Incredibles-related cult. Also Yay!
More notes. Firstly, I mean no offence to any fangirls. Not even the ones who like Legolas. Hell, with my taste in men, I don’t have the right to judge anybody! I love you all, and this is all in good fun.
Also, my OC could fit pretty well into the Mary-Sue category. I freely admit it, in that she is a reflection of myself. I hope, however, that readers can look past that and see that she is not a “perfect” character, and I hope that there is an amusing amount of irony involved and she is well written enough that you all continue to read the story.
It also occurs to me that I forgot something in the last chapter and that is the
Disclaimer: The Incredibles, Syndrome, and all related characters and ideas are property of Pixar and/or Disney. Sharon belongs to me. Seriously. I bought her through the Asian slave-trade. Mwahahahaaha
Chapter 2: Our Lady of Serenity
The problem with Mirage was that she was such a Bond girl. He should have seen it before. That type of woman always ends up betraying you and mooning over the hero. Even when he was balding, and already married, apparently. Pfft.
Syndrome had waded through fanfiction for days, hanging mostly around the comic book and cartoon areas. It was slightly easier than say, slogging through the Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter sections, but still frustrating. Didn’t anyone over fourteen write fanfiction anymore?
It almost made him long for the days of badly circulated fanzines and clandestine conventions.
Almost.
However, if fanfiction was still only printed in zines, there was no way he could pull his plan off, so quality was traded for easy access.
Finding the right type of girl had been harder than he had expected. It seemed that even most of the so called dark-fangirls were hero-suckers at heart, turning a blackguard into some misunderstood hero.
Maybe yesterday, when he had still wanted to play the knight in shining armor, even if it meant breeding his own dragons to slay. Maybe then that would have worked. But the black cloak was more than mysterious trapping now. If the world of heroism had no place for him, he would simply have to embrace its opposite number.
Before his defeat he had still, somewhere in the back of his heart, held the feeling that he was still doing right, and that he could be embraced and loved, like he had the heroes of his youth. Such was his folly.
To hell with justice. Might, it seemed, really did make right, and he would claim all the rights that he could.
And the fangirls who seemed to have a similar view? By and large they were creepy, gothy cutters. Syndrome considered himself extremely intelligent, and fairly open minded, but he just couldn’t wrap his head around someone who derived, or thought they derived, pleasure from their own pain. The pain of others, certainly, but not your own. That was just stupid.
At first it had seemed like his best bet was a writer who mainly delved into Darkwing Duck, and Invader Zim, but, upon further inspection of her art gallery, he noticed that not only was she a little too heavily into ‘slash’ for his tastes, and not only that. She was also, it seemed, married.
But this next girl; she had promise. She was a consummate lover of darkness, with half a dozen finished works, and twice that number in progress were stalled. Her tastes seemed to run in the field of mad geniuses, dark lords, and cruel wizards. She was 17, only had a sprinkling of slash (some was almost inevitable), she seemed reasonably intelligent, and her livejournal revealed that while she was dark, and rather bitter, she didn’t have any serious suicidal tendencies.
And, she wrote copious amounts of ‘mary-sue’ type stories. She was practically begging to be kidnapped and made a lieutenant. In fact, she really was! No, really! That was what most of the stories were about!
She was perfect!
Now he just had to make contact.
Sharon was late to math class. She was inevitably late to math class, because she had it right after chemistry, and rarely managed to tear herself away from the lab before the second bell rang. The shaven headed math teacher, Mr. Coffie, raised an armed-services eyebrow at her, but she just shrugged and collapsed into her seat in the back. Well, middle, technically, but it was behind everyone else. It was a small class, only eight people, including her. Because it was advanced, ya know?
The teacher started saying something, and writing an accompanying something on the board, while Sharon studiously doodled in her notebook. She’d get whatever he was saying out of the text book later, a good excuse to avoid coming downstairs for dinner, anyway.
She sat, Sharon Mitchell, bent over her notebook, strands of dark brown hair failing from her pigtails onto the desk. He round, large spectacles glinted in the bad fluorescent lighting. She wore a long-sleeved button-down white shirt, and a pleated knee length navy blue skirt, which was perfectly normal for someone who attended Our Lady of Serenity catholic high school. Not that she was actually a catholic, though her parents were. Nope. In fact, concealed beneath the breast of her shirt was a heavy silver pendant with the Norse runes for Loki, god of mischief and chaos, inscribed in it. Not that she strictly believed in him, either, but it was a pretty idea, and a pretty pendant, and even the semblance of paganism in a catholic school was certainly good for intimidating people when she didn’t want them pestering her.
She was lucky, after math class was homeroom and free class, she could run to the library and take another look at the schematics for that tazer she found on She had been thinking, after her initial look, that it would be pretty easy to modify the design into a pair of gloves, which would be infinitely cooler than its traditional shape.
She felt eyes on her, and looked up slightly, glaring under hooded eyes. It was Anna, peeking at her notebook again. Sharon didn’t know why she bothered; there was nothing really useful to anyone but her in it. Whatever.
“You want something?” she asked the blonde girl in a low voice.
“Ah, no.”
“Good then,” she looked back at her paper and tapped her pencil on the notebook. What to do? Waves of boredom washed over her. She contemplated actually listening to the teacher for a few minutes, but that was not going to happen. Are you kidding?
So the minutes passed slowly, but bearably, as she roughed in a bit of artwork in her notebook. Nothing exciting, just a doodle of a a girl, who looked suspiciously like herself, in a cape, posing dramatically. She should have been writing another chapter for her most recent fanfiction, but she just wasn’t inspired.
The bell rang, finally, and Sharon picked up her books and hurried down the hall. In the hallways she was bustled and jostled, and even deliberately shoved into a locker by someone. She glared, rubbing her bruised arm, as the offending girl walked away.
She finally made it to homeroom, which she only ducked into for a second, to make sure that the teacher knew she wasn’t skipping class, and hurried on to the library. She paused to nod an acknowledgment to the librarian, and then collapsed into the chair before the computer, as the announcements came on the PA.
The first thing to check was her email, Vexxation, although she shouldn’t have been able to. She’d found a way to slip through the school tech guy’s firewall a while ago, and used it to her best advantage. She had a couple of new messages. most of which turned out to be fanfiction reviews, always a good thing, and one email…from someone she didn’t know.
Someone named DarknessSyndrome.
Dear Vexxation,
I have been reading your fanfiction, and browsing your art gallery. It is very interesting, and I would enjoy speaking with you. My Aim is Syndrome.
And that was all that was written.
To be continued…
Sorry it was so short, next chapter will be longer. Also, next chapter, I will start responding to reviews.
Chapter 3: Internet Safety goes Out the Window
Comics, Cookies, and Revenge
By Lejindarybunny
A/N: This chapter is longer, and much more in detail than the last chapter, which I think kind of sucked. My apologies, it was rushed. This one is better.
Disclaimer: The Incredibles, Syndrome, and all related characters and ideas are property of Pixar and/or Disney. Sharon belongs to me
Chapter 3: Internet Safety goes Out the Window
‘There,’ he thought, after sending the email. Let her come to him. And she would, because fangirls were such praise hounds. Gotta love that.
It was the middle of the day on a Friday, four days after the humiliating end of project Kronos. Sunlight was streaming through an open wedge in the heavy curtains, promising and ‘absolutely beautiful’ day that Syndrome wasn’t sure he was equipped to deal with at this point. Birds singing, children playing. Blech. So why would he even be thinking of going outside? Easy, he hadn’t eaten since sometime yesterday, and that hadn’t been much. Large amounts of fanfiction had put him in the mood for twinkies and pixie stix. All very well and good, but…
His stomach grumbled.
He did a bit of mental calculation, and figured, what with being in the same time zone as the girl, that she would be in school for a few hours yet, and as such, wouldn’t be IMing him any time soon, so he could run out for some lunch.
Well, that settled it. He pushed away from the computer, the swiveling chair rolling a few inches back from the desk, stood up, and stretched languidly. He was still in the same sleeveless shirt, which it being November, was completely inappropriate to be going out of his apartment in, and in all honesty, it was getting a bit iffy as well. He strode into the bedroom, the fizzy maroon carpeting squishing under his bare toes.
He walked over to the dresser, and pulled off the swiftly-growing-funky shirt, and tossed it onto the bed. Or rather at the bed. In actuality in landed in a heap on the floor. riffled around in the drawers, until he came up with a soft, dark blue sweater, which he pulled on. He kicked off the sweatpants too, and pulled on a pair of black jeans.
In the bathroom he scrubbed his teeth brutally, and leered into the mirror. His hair was still bushy from having been up for so long, and didn’t look at all impressive, like when he had it up, or even presentable. He opened the mirror cabinet and fished around until he found a hair tie, and then pulled his hair back. Except he pulled to hard, and the band broke, stining his fingers.
“Ow!” he complained, grimacing, and triend again, more gently this time with a second tie. And all was well with his hair. Or as well as it could be if he didn’t want to attract attention to himself. The fiery ‘up-look’ was Syndrome’s trademark, or at least it was in his mind, and he didn’t want anyone to know who he was today. He just wanted lunch.
As he walked back out through his room he picked up his keys, and a pair of flashy black sunglasses, which he perched rakishly on his nose (the glasses, not the keys, obviously) and sitting on his bed, pulled on a pair of socks, and expensive black boots.
Then he headed out the door, but not before grabbing a floor length, black Armani jacket from the closet, and putting it on. It billowed almost as dramatically as his cape as he headed down the hallway to the elevator. He had it to himself, it seemed, which was nice. Close quarters with strangers didn’t make Syndrome happy.
Riding down to the first floor he set his mind further into the future. His lieutenant, so he believed, was already in the bag, and therefore it was time to start thinking about what he would do afterwards. It was always best to keep plans a few steps ahead.
He could do as he had promised, and steal Jack-Jack. This idea was wonderfully evil, and Syndrome savored the thought of the delicious irony of raising Incredible’s own son to be his enemy. Oh yes, wouldn’t that be sweet revenge, to have the super her who had rejected him, looking into the eyes of his own son as that son did away with him?
Unfortunately this plan had several drawbacks, the largest one being that it would require Syndrome to actually keep and raise a child, which was not something he wanted to be doing. He was a patient man, or so he thought himself, but he didn’t think it would extend to keeping a screaming brat at his side.
So cross that off the list. Maybe if he ever had a clear path to the infant, he’d take it, but he wasn’t going to expend the energy it took to get him, lovely as the end result would be.
What could he do? He tapped his foot on the floor, and brushed a index finger against his nose. Hmmmmm…
He’d seen in the news that the government ban on Heroism was being lifted, and while on the surface that didn’t mean much, since he’d killed off all but a tiny handful of the old supers, seeing Incredible’s kids had made him realize something. It had been fifteen years since people had been able to display their powers in public, and now, with Presidential permission, every lucky kiddie who could light a match with his pinky was going to be racing to put on a mask and save the world. The bastards.
Theoretically he could recruit them into an army to do his bidding, if they were impressionable enough, and some undoubtedly would be, but Syndrome wouldn’t be able to stomach having supers around, even if they were serving him. And what would keep them loyal? No, they’d get all self superior, all ‘Oh, we have powers, we ought to be running the show, we’re better than you’. It was inevitable.
So he would have to deal with the pre-teen power-punks in a more traditional manner.
The elevator finally reached the bottom, it had to go down 50 floors, so it wasn’t unreasonable to take so long, and he stepped out into the lobby.
The guard nodded to the man he saw as a nothing more a rich young man, but Syndrome studiously ignored him as he left through the building’s great glass doors and strolled down the metropolitan street. He was glad he’s worn the sunglasses, as it was extremely bright outside. He headed to a small bistro he liked not two blocks away.
The apartment he was staying at had been rented several years ago when he’d first started making money from selling his weapons. It was, in all honesty, the first place he’d lived out of his parents’ house. He kept the rent up after he’d gotten his island partly for brief city stays, and partly for sentimental reasons. Now he was glad he did.
His poor island. His baby. The government was probably picking his lair apart and dismantling it at that very moment. He had loved that island, it had been perfect, and its loss made him very, very angry.
So angry in fact, that he didn’t notice he was about to walk straight into some woman until it was too late.
“Ex-cuse me!” the woman bitched irately. “Why don’t you look where you’re going?!”
“Yeah, sorry,” Syndrome muttered sullenly, stepping out of her way. As she walked away, he turned to watch her go, and lifted a hand, making the gunfire gesture with his fingers.
“Bang,” he grumped, and continued on his way.
It was a shame she hadn’t figured a way to use AIM at school, or else Sharon would have tried to AIM the emailer immediately. Loved her fics huh? As in more than one of them? Most people, even those who really liked her writing, only read one or two, the ones that applied to the fandoms that they were into. So that meant one of two things, either this DarknessSyndrome was into all the same fandoms as she, or they were an editor who wanted to offer her a job.
Or, thirdly, that she was just getting her hopes up.
Forgive her, she was an excitable person. It probably had to do, she thought, as she sat alone at the far end of the lunchroom, with the sheer amount of caffeine and sugar she consumed. She’d probably be a completely different person. But who would want that? She was a great person! Okay, not by many people’s standards, or she’d have friends to sit with at lunch, and people wouldn’t slam her into lockers quite so often, but that was their problem, not hers.
People, she had learned when she was young, were very cruel. Especially if they thought you were beneath them. And almost everyone in school either thought Sharon Mitchell was beneath them, or was jealous of her talents. Maybe it was because she hated sports, or was good in math, science and English, if not so much at history or Theology. Maybe it was because they sucked.
There was one person who wasn’t so bad. The girl who usually sat with her at lunch, an eighth grader (Serenity school was a combined middle and high school) who didn’t have a lot of friends herself. And she was not usually late to lunch.
But that girl had been different lately. More talkative, and more distant from Sharon. In fact, if what Sharon saw in the hallways was any indication, the girl was actually getting, eyuch, popular.
Well, whatever. Sharon shouldn’t care, wouldn’t care, if Violet didn’t even show up at lunch.
So there.
If Sharon had looked up from her sullen thoughts at that moment, she would have seen exactly where her former companion was, heading toward one of the popular tables, hitting it off with some kid who looked like an Abercrombie model. Luckily for everyone involved, she didn’t. She was much too busy examining the printed specs of the tazer she had gotten during her free.
If she was going to modify it into a glove form, the first thing to do was mount everything on a rubber base glove, so that it wouldn’t shock her when she used it. Put the power source around the wrist, and the contact point at the knuckles. Simple. All she would need was a few parts from Radio Shack.
She pulled her slightly wilted ham sandwich out of a brown paper bag, and munched on it, held in her left hand, while she doodled the schematics of the gloves with her left.
Of course, there was no real point in what she was doing. As a weapon it would work no better than in its former shape and it wasn’t as if she could get away with going around zapping people. She might as well be making an ampped-up joy buzzer, for what it was worth.
It was just an entertainment really, for her own benefit. So she could look herself in the mirror and go, “Oo, look, I have teh shox-power, ph34r me!”, and then laugh at herself and her incredible stupidity.
Because it was stupid. All of it was stupid, the fanfiction, the gloves, the toys, the whole thing. What point was there to desire something you couldn’t possibly ever have? That, my friend, was the reason for the international statute of magical secrecy. She was a muggle who wanted to be a wizard.
No, she thought with a grimace, she was a foolish little girl making bad Harry Potter references to make herself feel better. What a sad little geek she was.
Sharon tore the page out of her notebook, crumpled it up angrily, and tossed it in the garbage can.
It wasn’t fair!
The bus dropped Sharon off an the end of her street, and she hefted her backpack up on to one shoulder as she trudged down to her house.
She opened the door, and tried to sneak up to her room without her mother noticing. She failed.
From the kitchen, her mom called, “Sharon, honey? Did you have a good day at school?”
She winced. “Yeah, mom. It was fine.”
“Come in here for a moment, I want to talk to you for a second.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes, dropping her bag with a thump on the floor, and stomped into the checkerboard-schemed kitchen. Her mother, a short woman, with graying blonde hair, was washing the dishes.
“I got a note in the mail today,” her mom said looking at her sternly, “It was a grade report from your theology teacher, Sister Joan. She says you’re doing poorly on tests, and that you don’t turn in your homework.”
Sharon pursed her lips. It was true. She wasn’t doing her homework. Mostly because it involved examining and writing about bible passages, which, she suspected, wouldn’t have been fun even if she was a strict catholic. And the teacher bugged her. And the class was stupid. She didn’t think it was at all a useful class when compared to Literature, or Science.
“Well?”
She shrugged. “I’m sorry mom, I’ll try harder.” Fat chance.
Her mother sighed, and put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “You’re such a bright girl Sharon; I hate to see you shoot yourself in the foot like this. I know homework doesn’t seem like an important thing to you right now, and you’re so smart that a lot of the classes don’t challenge you. But just think, in two years you’ll be in college, and then who knows?”
“Yeah, who knows,” she said, sullenly. Do your homework, go to college, get a high paying job. Be middle class. That was what her parents had done, that was what her parents wanted for her. But that wasn’t what Sharon wanted. She wanted to be known, admired maybe, she wanted people to thrill at the mention of her name.
That was why she wrote, not only because in her stories she was a figure to be feared instead of ridiculed, but because maybe if she practiced she could be a famous author. And then people would love her stories, and write fanfiction about them.
But that was just a dream.
“Can I go now? I promise I’ll do all my homework.”
Her mom nodded. “Go ahead sweetie. Dinner is at six thirty.”
Sharon scooped her backpack up as she left the kitchen and headed up the stairs to her room, in which she immediately tossed the bag back on the floor, and collapsed in the chair in front of her computer.
As she booted it up, she looked around the room, at all the posters, and pictures of her dashing villain favorites, and the toys, and books, and thought to herself. You stupid, stupid little girl. You’re never going to be anything more than what you are, an angry, disrespected, picked-on, little fan. Give up.
AIM booted itself up to her screen name, and she sat there for a moment. thinking. ‘Do you even want to talk to this person? They’re not an editor, you know that in your heart. They’re just some geek like you who wants to gush.’
Finally she decided that she might as well. At the very least she could use the ego boost. They probably weren’t even on.
‘Hi’ she typed.
And they were on, too. A moment later the reply came.
‘Hello there.’ Syndrome typed. ‘I see you got my message.’
‘I did’
‘Thank you for replying so quickly.’
‘No prob, anybody who likes my fic, ya know?’ Yeah, she thought, get to complimenting me already.
‘It is pretty well written. Better than most of the stuff I waded through.’
Bingo. ‘Oh?’
‘Yes. You are very…emphatic. Like you believe in what you write.’
‘Thank you’
‘Do you?’
Huh? That threw Sharon a bit. ‘Do I what?’
‘Believe in what you write?’
‘Er…in what way?’ This conversation was not going the way that she had imagined it.
‘Lemme explain. I noticed you write about the badguys a lot.’
‘Always’ she responded, with a bit of pride.
‘More importantly, you write about yourself joining them’
She pursed her lips. ‘You’re accusing me of Mary-Sueism, aren’t you?’
‘Well…’
‘lol, it’s okay, I admit it. Yes, those characters are all me.’
‘Well then, my question is, if you were given the opportunity, would you really do it? Would you really follow your “Dark Desires”?’
Sharon winced as he quoted the title of her Gríma Wormtongue fic. ‘Are you with the FBI or something?’ This was a legitimate concern, as, after the school shootings a few years back, some of the kids who didn’t like her had tried to say she was going to do something similar, and she’d spent hours convincing her counselors that she was perfectly stable and didn’t hate anybody that much.
‘LMAO. Definitely not!’
‘Then who are you?’ This person was really starting to annoy, and intrigue her. What was he (or she?) playing at?
‘I am an…interested party, let us say. Do you watch the news?’
‘Not often. Is this some sort of game?’
”Do you want it to be a game?’
‘You’re not answering my questions!’
‘And you haven’t answered mine yet. Please, answer truthfully, “or wonder, til it drives you mad, what would have followed, if you had”.’
Sharon stared at the screen hardly believing what was being thrown back in her teeth. It was a quote, from C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, one that she had used in another one of her fics. Well, that proved he had read at least some of them, what was he, stalking her?! Where was this conversation going? He had her thoroughly hooked.
‘Alright, I’ll tell you,’ she responded, about to admit to someone she had never met, the blackest secret of her heart. ‘Yes. I would. If I ever had the chance to become a super villain. I would grab it, and never let go.’
‘Your livejournal says that you live in Upsateville New York, is this true?’
…’yes.’
‘Can you get to Spotlight Coffee?’
…’yes.’ It was a short walk from her house.
‘Meet me there, tomorrow, five pm, alone, obviously. I’ll be waiting.’
He signed off.
Sharon was left, staring blankly at the screen. Was this person implying, what she thought they were implying? And was she seriously considering actually meeting them?
She was completely and utterly insane, wasn’t she?
Yes, yes she was. A short of manic grin, half terrified of herself, ripped across her face.
Of course, she wasn’t a fool. She wanted to see what this was about, not get raped and dropped in a back alley. It looked like those gloves were going to mean something after all.
Quickly, she saved the conversation, and opened the door a crack. She called downstairs, hearing the tension in her own voice, “Mom, will you take me to radio shack after dinner?”
“Sure honey, have you finished your homework?”
“Eh, not yet! I’m just getting started.”
Oh yes, she was just getting started.
To be continued..
and now, the review responses!
Megan The Vampire Slayer: Glad you like it!
Shadow Fox: Thank you. Heheheh. Secret cults are fun!
Xaviere Jade: I’m glad you like my characterization of Syndrome, as to idolizing evil men? Well, it all started when I realized as a child that the world wasn’t fair, because I dodn’t have any super powers…Hope my character doesn’t disappoint you!
NoNameNeeded07: Happy to make you laugh! I always thought villains ought to put their fangirls to work.
dikiWi: Whoah, that’s a lot of praise there! Well, I will admit, I am a genius…But, it didn’t take a lot of thought to see that Syn didn’t need to die, and robot duplicates are so in fashion this season, you know?
VegetaandAru: I shall strive to meet your demands!
Maya Beebop: Haha. Yeah, after I reread ch1, I decided a disclaimer was necessary, especially after my Who Wants to Be Mrs. Legolas fiasco (don’t ask) If there weren’t any light side fangirls. who would we pretend to be when we didn’t want to scare people? I’m glad you like the buildup, don’t worry, Syn may style himself after traditional villains, but he has the finesse necessary to carry his plot off with so flare!
Chapter 4: With You in the Spotlight
Comics Cookies and Revenge
By Lejindarybunny
IMPORTANT: THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN EDITIED TO COMPLY WITH FANFICTIONNET’S NEW NO LYRICS POLICY. PLEASE VISIT http / www .freewebs syndromefan/ ch4 .htm FOR THE ORIGINAL CHAPTER TEXT!
A/N: Hey everybody thanks for keeping with the story, I actually had to go back and fix a teeny tiny plot hole that I hope nobody noticed. Kudos to anyone who did.
Oh, and btw, this chapter is the longest yet. Yay!
Disclaimer: Disney and Pixar own the Incredibles, Syndrome, and all related characters. Sharon is mine.
Chapter 4: With You in the Spotlight
Sharon had worked herself up into such an anxious state about the meeting that she could hardly force herself to go to school. It was certain that she could have used a few extra hours sleep. She’d been up until past four in the morning, tinkering and testing her tazer gloves, which meant getting up at seven was pretty painful. Ah well, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t pulled late nights before.
Anyway, she would have stayed home except for two things, the first being that her mega annoying little brother had the day off from first grade, because it was parent-teacher conference day. The little boy hadn’t figured out how to keep himself entertained yet, so if she stayed home she would probably get stuck playing friend, fake-sick or not. Secondly, if she did fake sick, it would be a lot harder for her to get to the coffee house that evening. And Sharon wanted that to go smoothly. Preferably answering a bare minimum of questions.
She could imagine that conversation, ‘Yeah, see ya later mom, I’m going to go meet my stalker.’ Ha! That would be a hit.
She cast one last longing look at the rumpled covers of her bed, before pulling her Serenity uniform on over her underclothes. She was wearing navy blue pants today, instead of the skirt, but otherwise she looked exactly the same. She hated having to wear the uniform. It made everyone in school look like little clones of one another, and completely deleted any feeling of personal expression. It also meant that her mother wasn’t forced to buy her any nice clothes for school, and so, on her meager allowance Sharon’s non-school wardrobe was also rather limited. Which in turn made the few days a month that they did get to waer their own clothes a bit of a pain as well.
It was a vicious, vicious cycle.
Sharon’s mind was in overdrive, both anticipating her clandestine coffee-house conference, and trying not to think about it at the same time, hence her brain was doing laps around thoughts of no importance, like her stupid clothing, when they should have at least been thinking about what she was going to tell her Theology teacher about why she didn’t have her homework this time.
Because she didn’t She had spent all her time making the gloves; which were perfect, in her opinion. Except for the fact that, being set on a base of rubber kitchen gloves, they were bright yellow. But they could still zap the hell out of you. She had them set up so that the knuckles sparked when she balled her fist a certain way. It had worked for Spiderman after all. However, she had a little more trouble perfecting it than good ol’ Peter Parker, since hers also went off when she held something the wrong way.
She was confident that she could fix that later, but this was just a prototype, and she didn’t have time to work it out now.
Therefore she wasn’t going to be ale to wear them to school, even though covertly zapping a few people as she ran down the hall was definitely a temptation. And she couldn’t leave them at home either. Mom had asked no questions about what she was planning to make with the parts last night, but Sharon didn’t want to take the chance of her coming into her room to clean and fining the finished product. Or worse, her brother finding them!
So she bundled them carefully in the front pocket of her backpack, wrapped in an old t-shirt, and headed down to wait for the bus.
Syndrome was sleeping late. He didn’t really have anything pressing to do that morning, and he’d been up late after a short flight up to Upstateville, New York, sitting in his hotel, trying to think up a good plan to get his revenge, and set in motion his eventual world domination. He hadn’t really come up with anything good. He supposed he ought to start building up his army again first, but to do that he’d need another base. And to get both of those things he’s need to spend money. And so he couldn’t do anything about that until he had a lieutenant to make the purchases for him.
So it was all back to the meeting that evening.
He lay on his stomach beneath the heavy green comforter, his face buried in large, matching pillows of the hotel bed, awake, but not feeling like moving quite yet. It was somewhere close to noon, so he had a few hours until he had to get to the coffee house. But not quite five hours, since there was a good possibility that the girl would show up early, trying to catch him as he came in. What purpose she thought that would have he wasn’t sure, but he had to be here first anyway. It was all part of the drama. And the right amount of drama and mystique was all he would need to convince her to come with him. Otherwise she would just think he was some sort of whacko, rather than the villain she wanted to serve.
Ah, the joys of a ready made lieutenant. He rolled over onto his back and stretched widely, curling his fingers in the cool air.
The plan was perfect. He couldn’t fail.
It was time to test her, to see if her daydreams matched her mind.
And then a thought occurred to him. He had forgotten, in their brief IMing session, to give either her any way to identify him, or him her. And it was really unlikely that they would be the only two people in the café. Damn it!
How was he going to iron out that kink in the works?
Today was going by even slower than the day before, and this time Sharon felt slightly nauseous. She was going to be serial murdered, she just knew it. She was heading straight towards her own demise. And she couldn’t bring herself to not go. He had trapped her too effectively. Which was obviously exactly what he’d intended to do.
“Or wonder ’til it drives you mad, what would have followed if you had.”
How could she not, now?
Of course, she had to remember what had happened when the character in The Magician’s Nephew had heeded his curiosity. He’d awoken the evil queen. But that, in turn had led to the creation of Narnia, soooo…
Gah! It really was going to drive her nuts! And soon!
The very best case scenario, she supposed, was that it was another fan playing a sort of prank on her, a neat way of meeting up.
The worst was of course the serial killer thing.
Sharon stared across the empty lunch table. This was getting ridiculous; Vi had skipped out on her again. Without even saying anything. Couldn’t she at least give her that consideration? She had thought better of the young girl.
Well, she stared at her brown paper bag, she wasn’t hungry, and there was no one to talk to. So why was she in the lunchroom? She grabbed her things, stood up, and stalked through the sea of students towards the exit, and slammed right into somebody.
“Watch it,” she growled down at the kid.
“Oh, oh! Sorry Sharon!”
Sharon, recognizing the voice, looked down. “Violet?”
“Uh, hi,” the dark haired girl replied shyly.
The older girl frowned. “So you were coming to lunch after all, hmm?”
“Well, um, actually, I was going to sit with…” she looked over to another.
Sharon followed her gaze to one of the most popular tables in school, full of preps, jocks, and cheerleaders. “With them?” she demanded incredulously.
“Well, Tony invited me…”
“Is that where you’ve been these last few days?” she was trying to keep the hurt, and seething anger out of her voice.
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t even feel the need to tell me? I was almost worried too! Some friend you are!” Sharon wheeled around on her heel and stomped away, trying to convince herself she was just angry, and not hurt. She was hurt.
“Wait! I’m sure you can sit with us…”
She stopped dead in her tracks, and turned sharply her head to glare at the pretty, dark haired stick of a young girl. “Ha! Me, sit with the likes of them? You’re joking.” She kept walking.
‘That stings Vi,’ she thought to herself. ‘That really effin’ stings.’
Syndrome had had room service iron the clothes that he had brought for the meeting. He had the long black coat, and jeans, and a white, long sleeved shirt with silver buttons. He was also wearing his power gloves, in case a demonstration was appropriate. And of course, the shades. Inspecting himself in the mirror, he tugged at the collar of his coat. Nicely mysterious and evil, though slightly more ‘The Vampire Lestat’ than he had been going for. He pulled his hair back again, and strolled out of the hotel room.
He’d rented a car for his stay, which he expected would be short, a black Ferrari. He settled himself in the driver’s seat, and started off to the meeting point. He’d picked Spotlight Coffee after doing a bit of research on Upstateville, the café was trendy, but not overly popular, and it had a nice central location that he had hoped would be easy for the girl to get to. He’d been right, of course.
He checked his watch as her pulled in the parking lot. It was four fifteen, right on time. With a smirk on his face he strutted into the café. There was a smattering of people inside, but nobody who looked like they might be his girl. There was a party of four college students in one corner, laughing it up, a young blond boy in one corner scribbling what Syn assumed to be bad poetry into a notebook, and two girls who looked like sisters giggling over frappes.
Syndrome adjusted his sunglasses on his nose, and ordered a plain cappuccino from the counter. Then he sat down in a nice, central location, watching the door. It was bound to be a boring half hour or so, and he was a little regretful that he hadn’t brought his laptop. But it would probably have ruined the effect, so…
He sighed, and rested his chin on one hand, drumming the fingers of the other restlessly ionb the table, and began running over what he was going to say in his head.
The bus had dropped Sharon off as though everything was normal. As though she weren’t about to die for a scrap of impossible silliness. The bag on her shoulder had felt as it always did, unreasonably heavy. Her house had loomed as safely and oppressively as ever. Her mom had greeted her will the same unconcerned care.
As if every moment that passed didn’t bring her closer to some unquantifiable doom.
In ancient Greece, Sharon recalled as she sat waiting on her bed, (or was it Rome?) the word for ‘fate’ was ‘weird’. And in the Norse lands, ‘doom’ was the word for ‘fate’. To be weird was to be fated, doomed.
Sharon had always been weird. And now she was going to meet her doom.
There was a strange sort of acceptance of it in Sharon’s heart. She was about to go to be killed by a serial murderer (she didn’t really believe the gloves would be able to save her) all to prove to herself that she was willing to follow a dream. Her life would become a great and terrible sacrifice to the gods, and maybe, she thought, they would take pity on her and in her next life, they would grant her powers. If only…
For certainly it couldn’t be what it seemed. Couldn’t be what she desperately wanted it to be. Yes, there were people with powers in the world, yes there were villains. But the world just didn’t work that way, didn’t have any justice in it for a small girl who just wanted to be someone special. Life was not one of her silly fanfics.
Of course she didn’t want to die, not if she could help it. And she really did hold out, in the deepest reaches of her thoughts, that maybe…
That was why she was going. Not because she had given up hope for her life, but because she held out that tiny spark of hope, that dream.
For as long as she could remember, Sharon had been unsatisfied with her life. It wasn’t like she didn’t make an effort either. She tried to be happy, tried to love being at school, and tried to make friends, and tried to accept herself for who she was.
All her life she’d been waiting for someone to come and take her away. Someone, anyone, to rescue her from her little mundane life. She had waited for something special to happen to her, and even now, she refused to give up.
The words of a song were running through her head, they had been all day. Avril Lavigne, or whoever wrote her songs, knew what Sharon was feeling. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe Sharon just bent the words in her own mind to match her emotions. Like a badly written songfic.
She cradled her face in her hands. Why, goddamnit, why did everything have to be pretend to her? Life was not a story! Life was life! All having a song stuck in your head meant was that you had heard it too often! Everything didn’t have to follow some story arc! Why the hell couldn’t she get that through her head?
Why was she such an idiot?
The clock on her wall said it was four thirty. Sharon reached under her shirt and squeezed the Loki pendant she kept there.
Yea yea yea
It was time to go.
Maybe this time the winds of chaos had finally blown her a favorable hand.
Syndrome was right to think he’d know her when he saw her, and she was right on time too, there had been no need to get there early. A good sign.
She was a little shorter than average height, with wavy chestnut hair that hung around her pale, pointed, stubborn but fragile-looking face. A pair of large glasses was perched on her nose, glinting, and accenting the determined look in her grey eyes. She wore a violet t-shirt with a big white heart on it. The shirt was, well…
Mirage had been pretty easy on the eyes, but she was very skinny. This girl wasn’t quite fat, but she was definitely curvaceous. The shirt… accented that. She had on a very baggy pair of blue jeans and a short, black pleather jacket, the sleeves of which hung over hiding her hands.
She was standing just inside the doorway with her arms crossed, most likely wondering where he was, and how she was supposed to figure that out. He smirked, locking eyes with her, waved her over.
It was time to get started.
Sharon hadn’t quite conquered her doubts and fears on the short walk to the coffee shop, but rather had hardened them into a fierce resolution, and a buzzing anxiety. She was going to do this. She was going to meet this person.
So what if she was a silly fangirl, who wanted to be a dark villain? That was who she was, and she wasn’t ashamed.
She raised her chin stubbornly and opened the door to the coffee shop with her bare right hand (she had decided just to wear one glove was best, the other was in the bag at her hip) and stepped inside.
She immediately realized that she had no way of knowing whom in the place, if they were even there yet, or would show up at all, she was supposed to be meeting. Damn it!
Just as suddenly she realized someone was gesturing to her, beckoning her. Her pupils dilated and her heart began to beat faster. Someone really was there to meet her…and he was really handsome!
He had soft red hair, with golden accents pulled back in a ponytail. His face was a long oval with a smattering of freckles upon which his sunglasses cast a small shadow, like a mask. His clothes were obviously expensive, especially his black, mysterious looking coat. He was poised at a table in the middle of the room, with an amused, almost predatory languor.
Definitely, definitely a serial killer!
Sharon took an involuntary step backwards, but then hardened.
No.
She had come this far. There was no way she was going to back out. For once in her life she was going to be daring when it counted, and if he tried to kill her?
She wiggled the fingers in her gloved left hand. A smirk played on her lips.
She would simply have to take him out first.
Straightening her shoulders, and flicking her hair back, she walked forward, and put a hand on the back of the chair at his table facing where he sat.
“You’re Syndrome?” she asked, courageously.
She saw him try not to wince.
He put a finger to his lips. “Shh, not so loud, okay?”
She furrowed her brow. “Why not?”
“You really don’t watch the news, do you?”
She shook her head.
“Huh. Well, this would certainly be easier if you did…” he muttered. “My manners! Have a seat, my dear Vexxation. Or would you rather I call you Sharon?” He raised an eyebrow.
She pulled the chair out and sat down. “Vex is fine,” she muttered.
“Alright then, ‘Vex’,” he said with a grin. “Why don’t you get a cup of coffee before we start?”
“Uh, yeah…” she said, getting up, and walking to the counter. She ordered her usual, a mocha frappe with caramel, without taking her eyes off of her mystery man. She took the drink, and sat back down.
“So then,” he said, “why do you think I asked you to meet me here?”
“Er…” she wondered how to answer that, and decided to go with the truth. ” Because you’re a serial killer preying on my innocent dreams?”
“Haha! Spunky,” he grinned. “But your dreams can’t really be considered innocent, can they?”
“Well,” she admitted. “I suppose not.”
“But you’re a quarter right,” he took a drink of his coffee, and then swirled it around in the cup. “I am preying on your dreams.”
She stared at him, utterly boggled. “What?”
“You have to watch enough TV to at least know that the anti-super law is being repealed, right?”
She nodded. It had actually put her more on edge than usually. For almost her whole life, the supers had been underground, rather than out in the open. She hadn’t had to deal with the fact that there were real people with real powers. She had only had to be jealous of comic book characters.
“And did you happen to hear what caused this…abrupt shift in opinion?”
She racked her brains, trying to remember. She’d heard her mother and father talking about it a few days ago… “There was some super villain, destroyed a city with a giant robot…His name was-“
Sharon probably looked like an anime character about then, her eyes were so huge. He voice caught in her throat, and the words came out a raspy whisper. “you…y-your’re joking!”
A wide grin split Syndrome’s face. “Nope. No joke”
She stared at him. And stared, and stared. There was no way. “Prove it.”
He looked around the room. “Come outside, then. There’s no way I’m attracting that much attention in here.”
“No way! Not unless you explain yourself a hell of a lot better!” she said, echoing his whispered tone. “Like telling me why the hell you contacted me for starters.”
“You mean you haven’t guessed yet? Come on!”
“Humor me,” she said, taking a drink of her frappe, to try and put a little moisture back in her throat which had gone so suddenly dry.
He rolled his eyes. “Alright then. When I was defeated a few days ago, I lost my island base, and all my minions. But that wasn’t the big ego blow. The thing that really cinches it is I would have won, if my lieutenant hadn’t betrayed me.”
Sharon saw a flash of anger in his nonchalant blue eyes.
“But,” he continued. “There’s an upside. I still have my money, my inventions, and the world thinks I’m dead. They won’t suspect that I’m plotting my revenge right under their very noses! I just need one thing before I can start my new plans…” he locked eyes with her, the penetrating gaze of a wild cat, “A new lieutenant.”
Sharon’s hands were trembling. “M-me, you want me, to be your lieutenant?” she was torn between laughter and tears, and her voice settled on a generic hysteria. “That’s ridiculous. Why me?”
Syndrome chuckled. “Vex, babe, don’t be so modest! You’re perfect! I read your stories, your livejournal. We’re two of a kind! Think of it, the pair us, both outcasts from a world that doesn’t understand us, both longing for the power to revenge ourselves on those who wronged us! A power that the world refused to grant, one we have to take for ourselves! I need a lieutenant who’s intelligent, trusting, loyal, but most of all, someone who believes in the goal that I’m trying to achieve! You, you’ve practically been waiting for this moment your entire life, haven’t you? Haven’t you Vex?” he gestured emphatically as he spoke; letting his last words hang in the air for a moment, before finishing. “Together, we could rule the world…”
His words were enchanting, compelling, they echoed and resonated deeply in her heart. It was what she was asking for all the time. Right here in front of her, being offered sincerely, so it seemed.
But what about the ancient rule ‘be careful what you wish for’? Or in Labyrinth, ‘don’t take anything for granted’?
“What would I have to do?” she asked in a hushed voice.
He shrugged. “Well, first we have to buy a new base, gather minions, and then help me with my plans for world domination. Simple enough.”
Simple enough.
“I’d have to leave my family…friends…school…”
He gave a derisive snort. “Are you really learning anything at school?”
Crap. Useless busy work, all of it. “No.”
“Your family, do they give you the respect that you know you deserve? Do they see how special you are?”
‘Try harder’
‘Don’t shoot yourself in the foot’
“No, they don’t” she admitted.
“What about your friends. You don’t even have any, do you?”
She thought of Violet, her one maybe friend, and how little she seemed to care.
She sighed. “No.”
“Well, then, what do you have to lose?” he asked.
Syndrome reached his hand across the table. A white gloved hand, with mechanics around the wrist.
Sharon glanced down at her left hand, the one with her tazer. They really were the same, weren’t they? And this was what she had always wanted.
Screw careful, screw taking things for granted. Hadn’t she always cursed the end of Labyrinth? Didn’t she yell at the screen every single time, begging Sarah to make the right choice, and go away with the Goblin King?
Wasn’t that the choice she was faced with now?
She took his hand.
“I’m with you.”
To be continued…
And now, the reviews…
Maya Beebop: A pseudonym? What on earth are you implying? Lol Thanks for all the compliments, I really appreciate them!
dKiWi: Insane hmmm? Maybe because that’s because I’m completely out of my mind! Glad you like it!
RavensHaelo: I’m glad you’re making an exception for my fanfiction. Like I said, Sharon is a Mary-Sue, but she isn’t exactly average. Here is more, obviously, and I promise more yet.
Artymas: Loss for words? How about…Incredible? haha. Thanks for your review!
Chapter 5: Running Away from Home with a Stranger
Comics Cookies and Revenge
By Lejindarybunny
A/N: I actually started writing this the minute after I finished chapter 4, and could have posted the same night. But I thought it would be counter productive, since I hadn’t gotten any reviews for the last chapter yet. So up it goes thismorning instead. Also, this is a very fangirly chapter, as Sharon begins to realize exactly what she is doing.
Disclaimer: Disney and Pixar own the Incredibles, Syndrome, and all related characters.
Sharon/Vex is mine.
Chapter 5: Running Away from Home with a Stranger
Syndrome clasped her hand in his. His eyes glinted. See, it had worked perfectly. Much better than picking someone up in a bar, hiring through an agency, or throwing a bag over someone’s head in an alleyway. He was surprised no one had thought of if before him. Of course, he was a genius, so it wasn’t surprising.
“Welcome aboard, Vex,” he said with a grin.
She nodded, also beaming. See that? A happy fangirl; and a happy fangirl was a loyal fangirl.
“Oh, uh, one question,” she said, ending the handshake. “There’s some stuff in my house that I don’t want to leave, can I get them, before we go?”
The look in her eyes was slightly dazed, understandable.
“Of course, of course,” he nodded, “My car’s outside, would you like to go now?”
“Um, sure,” she stood up awkwardly, loosing her balance and almost knocking over her frappe. Syndrome steadied the drink with one hand, and the girl with the other. The shock and amazement would wear off gradually, he thought, satisfied, giving way to a general wonder and gratitude.
She smiled, and flushed embarrassedly. “Sorry. I’m…a little flustered.”
“Hey, hey, it’s fine,” he reassured her, leading her out of Spotlight coffee.
He got how she felt.
Yeah, like that time his favorite superhero made him a sidekick, he thought sarcastically…oh wait that didn’t happen. His gaze hardened momentarily, but he fought off the wave of bitterness with visions of his revenge. Oh yes. This time they would all pay. And dearly.
“This is your car?” she asked, as they stopped at the Ferrari.
“Yeah, oh, I did mention I’m really rich?” he asked with a bit of pride, knowing he hadn’t.
“No!”
“Well, how else did you expect I could buy an island and hire minions?” he raised an eyebrow playfully.
“Uh, good point. Did you inherit the money?” she asked as she got into the passenger sear.
He chuckled. “Yeah, right. That’s a good one. Listen, maybe I should tell you a bit more about myself.”
She laughed nervously. “That would put us on a little more even footing, since you know so much about me.”
“Hey, everything I know about you was available on the internet. Maybe you should think about that,” he smirked.
“Oh, yeah…”
“Anyway,” he said as he started the car. “Oh, I’ll need directions to your place.”
“It’s not far, I’ll tell you where to turn.”
“Good. Now, where to begin…Aha, I’ll just give you the short version for now, okay?”
“That’s fine.”
“Well, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a superhero. I was obsessed. I was president of the Mr. Incredible fan club. I went to these great lengths to get him to make me his sidekick. That was when I made my first invention, rocket boots.”
“You invent stuff?” she asked, captivated.
“Yes. Yes I do. Weapons mostly, oh and sundry other gadgets. That’s how I made the money, selling some of the less inventive inventions to small countries. But I’m getting ahead of myself…where was I, oh yes! I wanted to be Mr. Incredible’s sidekick. I even fought by his side once, or I tried to. See, he didn’t like having me around, because I didn’t have any powers. He berated me and sent me home.”
“That elitist jerk!” Vex sympathized.
He nodded, liking her all the more. “So I went home, angry, and embittered, but not quite disillusioned. I still wanted to be a hero, and if the supers wouldn’t let me, I’d just have to get rid of them.”
“Makes sense.”
“So I spent the next fifteen years inventing, and planning, and building up a power base. I eventually used various versions of my giant robot Omnidroid to covertly wipe out all but a hand full of the original heroes. And after they were all gone, I would be the only ‘hero’ left when I unleashed my robot on the world. That,” he said, pursing his lips and glaring at the road, “was the part of the plan that was supposed to happen a week ago.”
“Oh,” she said, looking at him concernedly. “So you wanted to save the world from yourself?”
“Yeah, I see how stupid that was now. Now all I want is revenge on the heroes who humiliated me, and to conquer the world.”
She laughed. “Oh is that all? Oops! Turn here!”
Syndrome swerved to make the turn, catching it just in time.
“Sorry about the late-turnyness,” she said.
“No problem,” he said smiling again. “We’re almost there, right?”
“Uh yeah. Take the next left, then it’s down this street, number 81. It has big bushes in front of it.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“Hey, can I ask kind of a silly question?” Vex inquired.
“You can ask, but I can’t promise I’ll answer, if it’s really stupid.”
“Okay, um…You said you’ve been doing this for fifteen years, so, how old are you?”
Syndrome laughed derisively. Did he make it sound like he was really old? “I’m twenty-five, Vex.”
“Oh.” She seemed to think about that. “You were only ten?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. Your life’s just been one big disappointment after another, hasn’t it?”
Syndrome cocked an eyebrow at her amusedly. “Whoa, thanks for the ego boost, babe.”
She laughed softly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”
“You didn’t. It’s true.”
“Hence what drove you to be the villain you are today?”
“Exactly hence.”
“And now I’m your henchperson.”
“Nu-uh. Henchpeople are a dime a dozen. You,” he poked her lightly in the shoulder as he said this, “are my lieutenant. My right hand woman.”
“Yay!” she said with glee that was obviously both sincere and ironic. “Look ma, I’m an accomplice!”
Syndrome laughed. She had the same wry sense of humor in person as she did in her writing.
“Oh, speaking of which, how do you want to handle things when we get to your house?”
Sharon paused in her giggles. She hadn’t thought about it. What was she going to tell her mother? Anything? Or was she just going to grab her stuff and run out the door? Or…
“Um… I don’t know. Do you have any ideas?”
“Well. It depends on a) how much stuff you plan on taking and b) if you think anyone is going to try to stop you. If you have a lot of stuff, and/or think that your parents are gonna ask too many questions, we’ll have to do it the more exciting way, which will likely alert the police to the fact that I’m still alive.”
“Oh.” She definitely didn’t want to blow Syndrome’s cover, or do anything that would less than endear her to him. “You’re rich you said?”
“Yeah.”
“So you can buy me a new wardrobe?”
He laughed. “I think I can manage that.”
“Then all my worldly possessions will fit into one lousy backpack,” she admitted with a grin. “Pretty sad…Damn. I wish I could sneak into my room without having to go through the front door Because my mom probably will ask questions. She doesn’t like me going out after its gotten dark, and she’ll be especially suspicious if I go out again after just coming back.”
“Your room is on the second floor, right?”
“Yeah, that’s the problem all right.”
He smirked. “No problem. Do you lock your window?”
“No…why?” she wondered what he was suggesting.
“Remember that demonstration you wanted? Well, you’re going to get it,” a rakish grin spread across his face. “Oh, this is your house, isn’t it?” he slammed on the breaks.
Sharon winced, and was glad she was wearing her seatbelt. “You don’t drive much, do you?”
“Aw man, you can tell?” he chuckled. “Hop out, and point to me which window it is.”
She got out of the Ferrari, and walked around to the back of the house quietly, feeling life a thief in the night. Her heart was beating fast, as she realized this was probably the last time she was ever going to see it. Could she really handle that?
She stood under her window, and pointed. “That’s the one.”
“Good. You’re not afraid of heights, right?” he didn’t wait for a response as he scooped her up in arms, and suddenly, after a moment of propulsion during which the bottom dropped out of Sharon’s stomach, they were hovering in front of her window. He had obviously used those jet boots he had mentioned.
It was only then that she realized how pleasant it was having Syndrome holding her that way.
“Open the window for me?”
That startled her back to reality, and she flushed slightly, glad for the darkness. “Oh, uh sure, boss,” she said with a sardonic grin. She pressed her hands on the window, trying to force it open, but it wouldn’t give. “Damn, it’s stuck!”
Syndrome frowned. “Hmph. Hold on to me for a sec, I need a free hand.”
She nodded, and put her arms around his neck, and watched in amazement as instead of opening the window in a conventional manner, he pointed a white, gloved finger at it.
From his hand shot forth a beam of blue silver energy that engulfed the entire window. He gestured upward, and the window complied, pulling open. Syndrome flew them inside, over her bedside table that was perched by the window, and set her down, then landed himself with a small thunk of the boots on the floor.
She stared at him. “Wow. What was that?” She did, however, remember to be amazed quietly, so that her family didn’t know anyone was there. She was lucky she had left the door closed.
“I call it zero-point energy,” he explained. “Basically it freezes all inertia at any certain point, or series of points, and lets me manipulate it however I want.”
Sharon kept staring. “That’s awesome! You invented that? That’s way better than my gloves…”
He raised an eyebrow. “Your gloves?” he asked curiously.
“Oh, um,” she smiled sheepishly, feeling extremely inadequate. “It’s just something I was playing with for a while, nothing impressive at all.”
“Oh?”
“I basically just built a tazer, but modified it into a pair of gloves because I thought it would be cooler to shock people from my hands,” she said quickly, wishing she hadn’t said anything in the first place.
“Weh-hell, great minds really do think alike!” he said with a boisterous grin. “You wouldn’t happen to have them with you with you now?”
Sharon was self-conscious, and felt terribly out-classed, but the eager look on his boyish face made her hold her left hand up just the same, if painedly.
“You were wearing it? I didn’t even notice with the sleeves,” he peered closer, and took his sunglasses off for the first time. “Hmmm, simple, but effective, and very sharp looking. I like it. The trigger is Spider-Man style?”
She nodded, rather gratified. “Yes.”
“Not too shabby. Anyway, what are you going to be bringing?” he looked around the room. “The longer we stay here the more chance we get caught.”
It suddenly occurred to Sharon to be mortified of the state of her room, and of the fact that Syndrome was in it. It wasn’t that it was a terrible mess (it was only sort of a mess); it was the fact that the walls were covered with all sorts of fan posters, and not a few of her own drawings, most of which portrayed various versions of her in mild romantic poses with comic book villains.
“Um,” she said nervously, emptying her book bag of everything except the vital notebook, and began grabbing things. “Just a few things.”
She grabbed some of her favorite books and comics, her favorite shirt, her CD collection, and the disks with the backs ups of her fan work. And suddenly realized those were the only things in the house that really had any more than transient value to her. What an empty life she’d been leading.
Of course, she wished she didn’t have to leave all the posters behind, but none of them were irreplaceable, so…
“Just one more thing,” she said, and stood over her computer keyboard. She pulled up Microsoft paint, hastily typed something, and said it as her computer background.
All it said was, ‘Bye, love Sharon’, violet letter on a black field.
She zipped the bag and hefted it onto her shoulder, then nodded to Syndrome.
“Let’s roll,” he said, grabbing her again without warning, and flying out the window. He left it open, the curtains blowing in the breeze. Sharon smiled, reminded of ‘Peter Pan’.
Syndrome, it seemed, certainly wasn’t without a sense of flare.
She wondered, as he lowered them to the ground, if it had occurred to him as he had read her fanfiction, that her character always ended up romantically involved with the villain she accompanied? Had he factored this in, or had he overlooked it? If he had noticed, was it maybe part of the plan?
She felt her shoulders comfortable within his warm embrace. One thing was for certain, she already had a massive crush on her new boss!
To be continued…
Ah reviews, like the sweetest chocolate…
Shadow Fox Forever: Wouldn’t we all? Here’s the chapter for you.
RavensHaelo: Haha, thanks! I’ve always had this thing where I love songfics, but know at the same time that most of them are pretty bad.
Maya Beebop: Really? Neat, I’m original! Thanks for all your kind words, I couldn’t do it without you!
Chapter 6: Lieutenant
Comics Cookies and Revenge
By Lejindarybunny
A/N: I’m starting to become afraid of myself. I haven’t been even close to this obsessed since writing Darwinian Rhapsody when I was 15! I love it! Mwhahahahahaha!
Okay kiddies, quiz time. In your next review give me your honest to badness opinion of Sharon’s nickname, Vex.
Disclaimer: Incredibles, Syndrome and all affiliates are property of Disny/Pixar. I own Sharon/Vex, and any characters you don’t immediately recognize.
Chapter 6: Lieutenant
Syndrome got back in the car glad that they had managed to grab her stuff without her parents noticing. He smirked cruelly. Oh boy, wouldn’t they be surprised when she didn’t come home? And that room; he hadn’t seen the room of a person that obsessive since his own as a kid! And it had taken him how long to convince her to come with him? Twenty minutes, give or take. Which meant he had been right, she had been ready all along. Heck, if he hadn’t come along, she’d have probably have turned into a villainess herself, the gloves were a sure sign of that!
He was actually still rather amazed at how easily everything was coming together, considering how badly they had been going before. So forgive him if he was a bit giddy and self-congratulatory. Now, if only the rest of the plan would go as well, they’d be all set.
He’d located the perfect new base over the internet earlier that day, and arranged a meeting with the current owner for the actual transaction. It wasn’t at all like his tropical headquarters, but sadly buying another island might attract unwanted attention. Also, he didn’t want to spend the time in construction that he had prior hq, and the land he was buying came with a fully functional compound.
“So now what?” Vex asked quietly, glancing at him now, and away from her window.
“I’m glad you asked that,” he told her. “First we go back to my hotel; I have to arrange for a flight for us.”
“Oh okay. Where are we flying to?”
“Russia, which is where the new lair I’m buying, is. Well, technically it’s in Siberia, and technically it’s a used lair…”
“Whoa, who are you buying it from? Boris Badinov?” she asked with a quizzical smile.
Syndrome chuckled. Ah, references. “Close, but no cigar. Rather, a certain retiring Russian scientist, name of Dr. Viktor Rasputin.”
“Oh! I’ve heard of him, he did experiments in bio-chemistry like ten years ago, right?”
“Very good,” he nodded approvingly.
“See, I do pay attention to some things…” she crossed her arms, and Syndrome couldn’t quite tell if she was really pouting, or just joking.
He was about to say something reassuring, when she laughed. “This is crazy. I’m running away from home with a super villain, who was stalking me over the internet. I must be dreaming.”
“Well,” he said with a straight face. “You’ve got two options, you can either believe it, or I can drop you back off home before your ‘rents notice you’re gone.”
Her eyes grew wide, and her face a little more serious, the desired effect. “No, no! I just mean… I believe it!”
“Good.”
There was a time and place for skepticism, but if Vex didn’t at least try to realize how deadly serious this was going to be, she could make a deadly mistake for either or both of them. And that was not in the plan. Although her fannish delight was refreshing, after Mirage…
“So, how exactly does one go about hiring minions, anyway? You’re not planning on an army of rabid fangirls, are you?”
He had thought about it, but no. One fangirl was one thing, but they tended to get crazier the more of them you put in one room. He supposed fanboys were guilty of the same, but less…giggly. “No,” he said decisively. “There are organizations you can go through. And the lair might actually come with a few, though those might be spies, or there are the want ads.”
“The want ads?” she demanded incredulously.
“Yeah.”
“What does it say, experience lackey seeks evil overlord with plans for world domination?”
He laughed. “Not quite. There are code words.”
“Oh…That makes sense I guess.”
Sharon sat a little uncomfortably in the passenger seat. After all, she wasn’t used to foreign situations; basically the last three years had been a constant merry-go-round of school, home, and internet. Sure, theoretically she should be able to handle this with ease, given all her fanfiction, but it was one thing to write, and another thing to do.
That wasn’t saying she was regretting her decision! Not in the least. It would just take her a little time to get used to the new status-quo. It would probably be easier when they were actually doing something, and not just driving around, getting stuff ready.
Also, it was the first time in a while that she had actually met a new person, never mind that he was a villain. She wasn’t used to his personality yet, wasn’t even sure that she knew what it was, beyond the obvious, and so she wasn’t quite sure how best to act around him. Or even how he expected her to act.
That was another thing, she needed to get a grip on herself and lose the whole hysterical fangirl feeling. Syndrome was right, she needed to either start believing, or go home. It wasn’t just pretend any more. She would have to do her best to by an able and compliant lieutenant for him, or else he’d get rid of her. Obviously he felt that she was capable, or else he wouldn’t have come for her. Or had he just picked any fangirl at random? Was one much the same as another?
She imagined her new boss in front of a computer monitor on FFnet, pointing at the screen and saying ‘eeny-meeny miny moe’. If that was the case though, she decided she would have to be twice as good as he thought she could be.
‘That’s right,’ she instructed herself, ‘You’re not plain old Sharon Mitchell the fangirl any more, you’re Vex, right hand to the evil genius Syndrome. Get serious and act like it.’
She watched the lights by the road as they sped towards their destination; it was only just past six o’clock, but the early November darkness only added to the illusion that it had been much more than an hour since she had walked away from a normal life. And every moment took her farther from the possibility of going back.
Vex looked down at the bag in her lap. This was all that was left of her other life, should she have brought more? She hadn’t been thinking clearly at the time. Was there anything else she really needed? Maybe she didn’t even need what she’d brought? Oh, whatever.
They pulled up to the front of the hotel Syndrome was staying at, Vex had never been there before (it had valet parking!) and walked inside. The inside of the hotel was pretty ritzy, but she made an effort not to stair, and allowed Syndrome to lead her over to the elevator.
“We’re on the tenth floor,” he said. “Have you eaten?”
She shook her head. “No.” She hadn’t really been thinking about food.
“Me either, we’ll order room service before I call for the jet.”
“Thanks.”
“No prob. Gotta eat, ya know.” He grinned.
Vex smiled back. His impish expression set her more at ease, and her mind was warring as to whether to react to him as a boss, or a friend. Both? Neither? Arg!
“How long do you think the jet will take?” she asked, as they stepped out and walked down the hallway. It reminded her strongly of the hotel in Ghostbusters.
“Oh, an hour, hour and a half,” he shrugged. He stopped at door number 1015, and taking a keycard out of his pocket, slid it through the lock terminal at the side of the door. It beeped, and she heard the door unlock.
Syndrome opened the door, and she followed him into the room- no, the suit. She stood in the sitting room, with couch, chair, and large screen TV, and various other amenities.
He must have noticed her bemusement, because he said with a smirk. “I don’t do things half-way. Close the door, will you?”
She nodded, and pulled it shut. In her mind she laughed. Time to get used to taking orders!
To her mild surprise the villain immediately plopped himself down on the left side of the couch, and licked the television on with the remote. Then he picked up the pone on the coffee table and said, “Room service? Room 1015, send up dinner for two. Yeah.”
He hung up, and looked over at her. He was giving her that evilly amused smirk again. “You can sit down, you know. I don’t bite- much.”
“Okay. Uh sorry, I was just looking around. It’s a nice hotel.” She sat down on the couch, not close enough to seem over intrusive, nor so far away as to be rude.
“Eh, it’s okay,” he handed her the remote control. “You go ahead; I’m gonna call for the plane.”
She nodded, expecting to see him pick up the phone on the table again, instead he pulled a small, very new looking cell phone out of his pocket. Why…? And then she realized her was being cautious. The hotel lines might record their calls, in a place like this. And, theoretically when her mother found out she was missing and called the police, they would immediately go investigate the coffee shop. The workers might remember her, and be able to describe who she was with, then they could possibly track them to the hotel, and if he used the hotel phone, to the plane. And then the police would know where they had gone.
Which would suck mightily.
Vex was amused to find herself thinking so blithely about being chased by the police, but was proud of herself for understanding the possible chain of events. It was a good start.
She was even more amazed to find herself almost completely uncaring that her mother would be worrying where she was about now, maybe already having found the note. Pfft. They’d get over it. It wasn’t as if she was an integral member of the family. Not really.
She picked up the remote from her lap, and began switching channels, there was nothing really interesting on, that is, until she was about to flip away from the news, when something the reporter said caught her attention.
“-accomplice to the super villain, Syndrome, known as Mirage.”
And Vex’s eyes were glued on the screen. There was a woman with white hair and tan skin in a black dress, being led out of court with a man Vex assumed was her lawyer.
“The charges against ‘Mirage’ are being dropped, due to the testimony of Mr. Incredible, who asserts that she played a vital role in Syndrome’s defeat.”
“Aw man,” Syndrome whined, after ending his phone call. “I just knew that was gonna happen!”
“That’s your old lieutenant?” Vex asked rhetorically, glaring at the screen. “Why’d she betray you?”
His glittering blue eyes hardened to ice. “She says it was because she didn’t like my methods. But for real? She fell for Mr. Incredible.”
She grimaced. “Ew.” Mr. Incredible, from the recent pictures she’d seen was really harsh looking, balding, and anyway, didn’t he have kids? “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, she had her shot. Not that I wouldn’t mind a little revenge, but now isn’t the time for it.”
“Well,” she assured him, “You can bet I won’t be falling for any hero types.”
“I know.”
‘Not’, she thought to herself, ‘that any would have me if I did.’ Looking at Mirage, Vex was surprised Syndrome hadn’t turned and fled from the coffee house when he saw her. Okay, so she wasn’t really that ugly, but she certainly wasn’t model beautiful like his last lieutenant. Would he have come if she’d had a picture of herself posted?
Why was she even thinking about this, anyway? It wasn’t even likely that he wanted a romantic relationship with her! Hell, she didn’t even know if he’d had a relationship with Mirage, she was just making assumptions.
There was a knock at the door, jarring Vex from her thoughts. Room service had arrived.
“Get that,” Syndrome told her, scooping up the remote, and changing the channel. “Here,” he fished in his pocket and pulled out some money, for the tip, obviously.
“Right,” she nodded, grabbing the bills, and hurrying over to the door. She opened it, and found it was indeed room service, a spiffily dressed bell boy, with an entire cart of food, which he wheeled into the room.
“Thank you,” she said, nodding to him, and handed him the money.
“Enjoy your meal, sir and ma’am,” the bellboy said, before leaving, closing the door behind him.
“Finally,” Syndrome said, clasping his hands together. “I’m starving!”
Vex gave a small giggle and began taking the plates, cups, silverware and platters of food off the cart and arranging them on the larger coffee table in front of the couch. Taking the lids off she found an opulent array of dishes, including T-bone steak, an entire roasted chicken, some kind of fish, and about a dozen side dishes and vegetables, not even counting soup and salad, a pitcher of water, a carafe of coffee, and a bottle of wine with two glasses.
She couldn’t help thinking to herself. ‘Wow. I could get used to this.’
Syndrome grabbed one of the empty plates and began filling in from the platters, and Vex took her cue from him, doing the same, before sitting down beside him on the couch.
“Do you want a glass of wine?” he asked, already reaching for the delicate looking glasses.
“Er, I donno…” she had never actually had any alcohol before. Her parents were really strict about that sort of thing, and it wasn’t as if she had a gaggle of friends running around with fake IDs.
“C’mon, just one,” he coaxed. “To celebrate your new employment, and my new plans.”
Well, when he put it that way… “How can I resist?” she returned his grin.
He grabbed the wine-bottle by the neck, and, rather than opening it conventionally, used his zero-point thing to do it. The bottle made a little ‘thoop’ noise as the cork came out, and Syndrome poured a large amount of the dark red liquid into both glasses, and handed one to her.
He raised his glass, and said, “To world domination!”
Vex raised her own and repeated. “To world domination!”
They clinked their glasses together. Syndrome’s face was alight with wicked glee, and he gave the impression of great power, intelligence, and not a small amount of genuine malevolence. They each took a sip, and Vex found it sweet, and a little tangy, and it left an odd sensation at the back of her mouth.
Syndrome began to chuckle darkly, which quickly became a full blown, rich, throaty maniacal laugh. Vex watched him, her chin resting on her palm, grinning in admiration and awe. How could Mirage have betrayed him? He was practically perfect, at least in her eyes, a genius, handsome, sympathetic, funny, commanding and powerful, a little arrogant, and of so very evil.
She took another sip of her wine, and started in on dinner.
Syndrome, after his laugh, also began to eat. Thoughtful, but not particularly concerned. He was quite pleased at how his new lieutenant was getting along. She had, as he had hoped, quickly lost the hysterical edge and lapsed into an acquiescent respect. She followed simple order like ‘get the door’ quickly, and without hesitation, and even took the initiate of setting the table. Very promising. Not to mention that she had seemed to take an immediate dislike to Mirage, and even before the wine she was beginning to become more comfortable around him.
The plane would be at the airport in roughly an hour, they’d fly to Siberia, and he’d set up shop, hire minions, and outfit his new lab. Outfit… that reminded him. He had plenty of copies of his own uniform on hand, like the one he’d dressed the robot in, but he had the feeling that unlike his former lieutenant who wouldn’t wear one if he begged her, Vex would want a costume for herself. Probably more than she wanted that new wardrobe she had mentioned.
“So,” he began between bites, “what sort of colors do you see yourself wearing on a regular basis?”
“Uh, I’m a big fan of blue, and black. What for?” she queried. He noticed her cheeks were a little rosy, and her wine glass was mostly empty so he suspected she’d never drunk before.
“Well, as my lieutenant you’ll need a properly impressive costume,” he looked at her slyly out of the corner of his eye, and said nonchalantly, “unless you’d prefer plain clothes, of course.”
“I want a costume!” she said quickly, and with some excitement. “I didn’t know you wore one. I kinda thought you always dressed like the evil businessman, Xanatos type.”
Syndrome chuckled. “No way! A good costume is vital in making people respect you, hero or villain. I just couldn’t attract a lot of attention when I was coming to get you.”
“Ooooh, I see,” she nodded. “So, what’s it look like?”
“My costume?”
She nodded.
Hmmm, he could go into the other room and change, but he didn’t really want to go to all the trouble. Maybe…He flipped the channel to another one of the news stations, nothing. And tried another, still nothing. And another-
“There!” he pointed to the screen. They were talking about the return of the supers again on this channel, and thus, about him. “That’s an awful picture, but you get the idea.”
She inspected the picture carefully, before they replaced it, as the channel started talking about a scare of mad cow disease in Wyoming. “That’s so cool! And look at your hair! How much gel do you use?”
“Not gel. It’s a variation of the zero-point.”
“You’re joking? That’s awesome, so it doesn’t get all scrunchy and nasty,” she giggled.
Syndrome smirked, amused, and made a mental note to help her build up a better alcohol tolerance.
So, blue and black then. That worked well. He’d send her measurements to Maurice Defonce the next chance he got. Maurice wasn’t quite as well known as Edna Mode in the fashion circuit, but he asked fewer questions, and was much more compliant with his customer’s wishes, and his suits were just as durable.
When they had eaten their fill, but by no means everything that had been brought, Syndrome poured himself a second glass of wine, and was glad that Vex didn’t ask for one. He didn’t want her passing out before they got to the airport.
“Alright,” he said, standing up. “Time to get this show on the road.”
“Right,” she nodded sharply, and followed him out the door and down to the elevator. They road down in a mutual pleasant silence. Syndrome checked out of the hotel, giving the snobby clerk his keycard and the money. Syndrome glared at him, not liking the way the clerk was looking at him and Vex.
Outside, the night air had grown quite cold, and he saw Vex pull her light jacket more tightly around herself. He turned the heat on as they got in the car.
“Syndrome,” she asked, as she settled into the passenger seat again. She was feeling very warm, and happy; the wine, she surmised. “Thanks for picking me. I promise I won’t disappoint you.”
He smiled smirked at her, but this time she thought it seemed gentler. “I’ll hold you to that, you know.”
She crossed her heart. “My word is my bond.”
He nodded, and they were off again, but this time she was sneaking glances at Syndrome out of the corner of her eye instead of focusing on the road. If she did a good enough job as his lieutenant would he fall in love with her? That was how it worked in her fanfics…
Vex saw the small Upsateville airport looming in front of them as they got closer to it, airplanes landing and taking off above them. She wondered about the jet that Syndrome had called for. Was it as impressive as the hotel, and the car? He seemed to have a thing for prestige. It was actually really attractive, in her opinion, but she knew that she had a thing for arrogance, and Syndrome was not in short supply.
He parked the car, and she hopped out into the cool evening, barely remembering to grab her bag. Was this a good time to mention that she hadn’t flown before, ever, let alone in a private jet? But she didn’t think she’d be afraid, so she didn’t worry about it. And anyway, what use was an evil lieutenant who was afraid to fly in an airplane?
Then a legitimate thought occurred to her, as they were walking towards the entrance. “Syndrome? Hey, Syn!”
He turned his head. “Huh? What is it?”
“I don’t have a passport or anything,” she hissed.
He waved a hand negligently. “Relax babe, I can handle it.”
“Oh, okay then,” she nodded, trusting to him to work it out.
“Hold on a sec, is there anything metal in those tazer gloves of yours?”
She had completely forgotten about them. But thankfully, “No, it’s all plastic.”
“Smart girl.”
Vex could have melted.
She followed him through metal detectors into the hustle and bustle of the airport, and towards one of the desks. She watched Syndrome looking around, taking stock of the area. His eyes came to rest on a fast food nook.
“Go get me a soda,” he told her, handing money again, “and one for you too. You could use the caffeine at this point. Meet me over there.” He pointed at one of the far desks.
She nodded compliantly and hurried over to the food joint, standing in what was a middling to long line. She tapped her foot impatiently, and looked over at Syndrome. Her boss was busy talking to the woman behind the desk, and showing her his identification.
Finally she got the drinks, and walked quickly over to where he stood.
“Thanks,” he said, nodding to her, and he took one of the sodas and immediately spilled it all over her shirt.
“Eep! Cold!” she complained, stiffening as an ice cube fell down into her bra.
“Oh Oops!” Syndrome said, hurriedly using the sleeve of his coat to try and wipe the shirt dry. But what he was really doing, she noticed, was using the gesture to cover what he was really doing, which was toss all the baggage from the baggage claim around the large room with his power gloves, sending all of the security guards immediately running off in the direction of the raucous, and away from them.
One of the heavier bags even flew their way, as Syndrome hissed, “Come on,” and grabbing her wrist, pulled her down a long corridor to where the plane would be waiting. The bag in question hit the woman behind the desk in the face, knocking her out.
They got out to the air field completely unnoticed in the commotion, and there was a pilot waiting in front of a small, expensive jet, to meet them. At least he looked like a pilot, but Vex couldn’t help but wonder if the eye-patch he was wearing was exactly safe.
“This is Jared,” Syndrome explained, as he urged her onto the plane. “He’s flown for me before, and don’t worry, the eye-patch is just a gag.”
She felt immediately relived as she collapsed into one of the large, comfortable airplane’s chairs, a little out of breath from the sudden dash, and her shirt was still soaked. She took off her own coat and toweled at it, but it didn’t seem to be getting any dryer.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” he said. “Had to do it.”
“Oh, it’s okay. You needed cover,” she nodded. “I’m just a little cold.”
He chuckled, and gestured to her bag. “Didn’t I see you pack an extra shirt?”
“Oh right!” she grabbed the bag, and unzipped it, pulling it out.
“Um…” she said.
Syndrome looked away.
Vex immediately pulled off the wet shirt, and on the dry black one with a white monkey ninja of doom on it. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she caught Syndrome peeking.
She blushed, and said. “All done.”
He nodded. “The plane should take off in a minute, and the flight will take a while, so I suggest you just relax.”
To be continued…
Poor Vex, she’s only known him two hours and she’s already hopelessly in love. Awwww…
VegetandAru: Feel free to use all the bad language in your reviews as you like, this fic may not show it, but I swear like a sailor! Love and hugs to you too sweetie!
Maya Beebop: Too realistic? Should I make her a little more contrived? (I am asking this seriously, should I?) I have had practice writing quickly, because I would always save all my projects to the last day. Also, I have a little Syndrome gremlin telling me to write fast or he’ll do nasty things to me (hey, maybe I should slow down…) I feel honored that you would adapt that quote for me! hugs I lurve you!
Shadow Fox Forever: Yes, we really need to get cracking…
Megan The Vampire Slayer: you mean update more than once or twice a day? Honey, I’m not even sure I could manage that…unless, well, maybe I could if you sent me a Syndrome plushie!
Next chapter: To Russia, With Love
See ya later, Space Cowboy
Chapter 7: To Russia, With Love
Comics, Cookies and Revenge
By Lejindarybunny
A/N: Um, just a little note. This is the first chapter with some violence in it. Not too, too bad, but still, you were warned. Oh, and slightly morbid… Hey, trust me, it is necessary!
Oh, and good news, folks, I can finally type ‘lieutenant’ without the spell check having to correct me!
Disclaimer: The Incredibles, Syndrome, and all affiliated characters and ideas are the property of Disney/Pixar. Sharon/Vex is mine, and so are all other original characters in this fanfic.
Chapter 7: To Russia, With Love
“So, how long is this flight going to take?” Vex asked. “Besides ‘a while’.”
“Oh, fourteen or fifteen hours,” Syndrome shrugged. They had taken off a few minutes ago, and were now at a steady altitude. Vex had seemed a little nervous during the takeoff, maybe she’d never flown before? Didn’t matter, since she wasn’t freaking out or anything, but she had gotten a bit quiet for the first time in the evening.
“Wow, I didn’t realize it would be that long.”
“Siberia is pretty far from New York you know,” he reminded her, throwing his feet up over the arm of the chair to his left and stretching out.
“It’s not that I mind or anything,” she assured quickly, “I’m just surprised. I’ve never actually flown before.”
Ah so he was right, he thought smugly. “I suspected that might be the case.”
“It’s okay though, kinda neat I guess.”
Silence. Uncomfortable silence.
“Do you want a crossword puzzle or something?” he asked.
She seemed a bit distant, and distracted at the moment. Was she perhaps having second thoughts? He could afford for her to be having second thoughts. Not at this stage. Maybe he should threaten to throw her out of the plane if she didn’t cheer back up.
“Are you alright?” he asked instead.
“Huh? Oh, I’m fine,” she smiled. “I’m just a little dizzy, actually…” she frowned again.
“Dizzy?” Well, at least she wasn’t airsick.
She nodded. “Its fine, I’m sure I’ll get over it. Actually,” she added, “While it is your prerogative as evil genius to keep me at a disadvantage, I really would like to know any more about you that you’re willing to tell.”
Syndrome considered this. She seemed almost distressed at the fact that he knew so much about her, while she knew almost nothing about him. He supposed it made sense, as that role was always reversed in her stories (in which the girl was generally pseudo-stalking the villain of her choice) and decided that maybe he should tell her a little more, if it would keep her from wavering.
Besides, what harm was there in regaling her with a story or two of his awesome powers?
“You got it,” he said with a grin. “How about I tell you about the first super I wasted?”
“I’d love to hear it,” she said, with real enthusiasm.
“Alright, let’s set the stage then…”
It was a week or so after New Years, that moment in time when the curbs are littered dying Christmas trees; everybody is taking down their decorations, and those people who aren’t look like sad, sad individuals holding out against the graying lumps of snow.
Almost needless to say, I was the only person in the park that day.
What? Oh right, right. I was like fifteen at the time. Yep.
So there I was in the empty, snow-filled town park testing my latest invention, the Omnidroid mark one.
How did I hide that? Well, the mark one was a lot smaller than later models, I had to build it in a basement you understand, yes. Yes, it was my parents’ basement, okay? Anyway, can I continue? This Omnidroid was about the size of a large dog, and fully remote controlled, since I hadn’t invented AI yet.
I had finished work on it a few days prior, and all its basic motor functions were in working order, but I still hadn’t tested the weapons systems, since, ya know, I couldn’t very well do that inside. I mean come on.
I was in the very deepest section of the park, where the leafless trees were so well bunched together I thought I had enough cover to get my work down in peace. I would have been able to, too… except…
“Let’s see,” I said, punching some of the buttons on the remote. It looked a lot like a TV remote. Okay it was a reprogrammed TV remote. Look, I didn’t have a lot of tech to work with in those days, and anyway, mom and dad would just think they’d lost it in the couch.
The Omnidroid responded perfectly. I was thrilled. I could crush rocks in it’s vice arms, small ones, granted, had wonderful control over the saw mechanism, oh, and she handled like a dream.
“Time to test the best part,” I grinned, adjusted the weapons setting, and punched the big red button.
A bright red laser shot from the Omnidroid’s ‘eye’, and burned clear through the trunk of one tree, and through a second, before dissipating.
“Haha! Dude!” I was thrilled. “Fire all phasers!”
I was actually able to fire it like three or four more times before that stupid accident happened. You see, one of the screws had worked itself loose on the base where the laser was mounted, and by the fifth time I fired it, the aiming system was all messed up, and the laser fire straight up into the sky.
“Aw man,” I glared at the thing, and shut it off. It was just a minor setback, but I was still kinda ticked. I pulled my tools out of my bag to start repairs.
That was when I was so rudely accosted.
The guy flew out of the sky like a bullet, and poked his finger roughly into my chest. “You!”
The guy wasn’t really in standard super hero gear, his main wardrobe piece was a very heavy long, grey coat, which I attributed to the weather (he musta been one of the types that wasn’t cold resistant) but beneath that he did have a bright yellow and red spandex outfit, and he was wearing a mask. I’d never seen the guy before, actually.
“Me?” I demanded, taking a step backwards.
“Yes, you!” he said, harshly, gritting his teeth. “It vas you that fired that laser at me, vas it not?”
“Hey, chill out, it’s not like I-“
I noticed two things at that point, one, he had some kinda funny accent, and two, that he had what at first seemed to be a minor head wound, a scrape between his left eye and temple. The only thing was, it wasn’t bleeding or anything, no it was sparking.
“Hey! You’re a robot!”
The hero reached up and touched the wound. “You, are mistaken. Now, vhy did you fire that weapon on me?”
I did some quick thinking at that point and came to the conclusion that he had to be some kind of advanced war robot, and that if I could take him out I could do amazing things with reverse engineering.
“Well, gee, I’m really sorry, I certainly didn’t mean to…” as I said this, I reached into my pocket and switched the Omnidroid back on. The lasers might not be operational, but the rest of it was.
I jumped back out of the way as the Omnidroid pounced on him, bowling him over into a tree. He struck out at my machine, and grabbed two of its arms as I tried to impale him with them. Determined, I forced its strength setting to stay at its highest value as it wrestled with the guy, and brought out the saw. It was getting closer to his chest, and it didn’t look like he had any chance when, suddenly, he let go of one of the arms, blasted the Omnidroid with a laser from his palm, tossing it backward a few feet and lunged at me.
I was lucky, I’ll admit it. The guy slipped on a patch of ice that sent him careening head first into a tree. I took my opening. The ‘droid jumped onto his back, and before he could respond, drove its arm like a spike, tearing right through the guy’s chest.
He choked, seized up, and stopped moving. I grinned with triumph. Now I just had to take the thing apart and…
But what I had mistaken for a robot was bleeding, profusely, from the giant wound in his chest cavity, staining the snow below him a deep crimson. Much as I would like to say otherwise, I have to admit, I was…disturbed.
I went home, quickly, taking the Omnidroid with me, and snuck inside. Down in the basement I cleaned the droid, repaired and recalibrated the laser, and thought.
I couldn’t just leave a body there in the park. And besides, I was burningly curious to find out exactly what it was I had… killed.
I waited for cover of darkness, and snuck back to the park, desperately hoping that body had not been discovered. I was lucky again; it was there, exactly as I had left it. I threw a sheet over the thing, and used the Omnidroid to carry it.
I couldn’t take it back to the basement; that was obvious. I didn’t have the proper tools, and I didn’t want to get the room, well, messy. I found myself wandering towards the morgue. The man who worked there at night was in his late thirties, and had an obscene number of piercings. I hid the droid and it’s burden in the shadows of the side of the building, and entered the morgue.
Just as I expected, the guy was sitting with his feet up on the desk, reading a magazine. He didn’t even look up at me.
“Hey,” I said. “You the only one here?”
He nodded.
“You look hungry.”
He raised a heavily pierced eyebrow at me, didn’t even say a thing.
“Why don’t I give you say, a hundred dollars, and you go get something to eat for an hour or two.”
The morgue guy smirked, nodded and held out his hand. I pulled two hundred dollar bills out of my pocket.
Where did I get the money? I mentioned the laser on the droid, right? Well, I sold the same laser weapon schematics to a small African nation a few months prior.
Anyway, he took the money, saluted me mockingly, and dutifully left the building. A few minutes later, I called the Omnidroid in and got to work.
I’ll spare you the grisly details. Suffice it to say, Morgue man kept his end of the bargain, and I had plenty of time to find out what was going on. The guy was human, had been a super in fact, as I could find no mechanism to fire the beam that had come from his hand. The only mechanical parts on him were a strange sort of body suit around his chest which functioned as respirator, and a chip I found in his left temple, with a tiny camera.
I was peering into the camera, when I realized that it was still transmitting a signal. I immediately dropped it, and crushed it under my shoe, afraid that someone was going to come after me. But no one ever did. I put the chip in a plastic bag and that in my pocket. The body I burned in the morgue’s crematorium, and left.
Later, I learned the chip was some sort of personality augmentation device, and it helped me get started of my artificial intelligence work.
And the death of the unknown super? That showed me that with the right technology I could be the match for any super around.
“And that’s how the ball really got rolling on my plans,” Syndrome finished.
Vex, having been listening in rapt attention, took a moment to reflect on what she had just heard. Another person might probably have been horrified by the story, what with the murder, which was only semi-accidental seeing as he thought it was a sentient robot. And then there was the bribery, and the impromptu autopsy, Syndrome’s complete lack of remorse, and his plans to do more, completely intentional, murder. Any normal person might have thrown up the next time they looked at him.
This was however, not the way Vex saw it. The first ‘murder’ of course, was in the name of science. If she thought somebody was a robot, she’d want to know what made it tick, too. The bribery, in her opinion, was hardly even worth mentioning. The autopsy was pretty damned cool, and she was impressed that he’d been able to effectively conduct it without any formal medical training. Of course he didn’t show any regret, what was done was done, and he used it to his best advantage. The later killings of other super heroes were both revenge, and necessary to his larger plan.
Yes, to her the story proved that he just might be daring, resourceful, and ruthless enough to do what many had tried, but none had succeeded at; take over the world.
“That’s pretty cool,” she told him with a grin. “But weren’t you afraid that the guy at the morgue would say something to someone?”
“That did occur to me…later,” he admitted, “But then he went to jail for selling organs on the black market, and I stopped worrying.” He grinned at her. “Turns out I am an excellent judge of character.”
Most of the time, anyway, she thought to herself, recalling his former lieutenant.
She asked another question that had been bothering her. “What about the respirator thingy, did you ever figure out why he had that?”
“Oh yeah. Didn’t I mention it? The guy had no lungs.”
Vex squinched an eye shut. “That’s weird.”
“Yeah, kinda, huh? I never did figure out who the guy was, either.”
“Maybe he was a foreign super? You said he had a funny accent,” she giggled. “Was that how he really talked, or do you just suck at doing accents?”
Syndrome pursed his lips at her, pouting. “Hey, I do not suck at accents, that’s how he sounded! He was all ‘Vhats’ and ‘Vhys’. I was surprised he wasn’t like ‘Ahll be bhach’, ya know?”
She almost choked on her laughter, and was happy to find that when she caught her breath, Syndrome had been chuckling as well.
Vex brushed her hair out of her face. “That was pretty cool how you took the guy out without even using the lasers, too.”
“Well, I couldn’t really, the stupid things were busted,” he grimaced slightly, as though still annoyed that the lasers hadn’t been perfect the first time around. “So, do you feel like you know a little more about me now?”
She nodded. “Yes, lots.”
“And?”
“I like what I hear. I can see now that you’re cunning, imaginative, audacious, decisive,” she ticked them off on her fingers, “as well as brilliant, and a bit ruthless. In short, a great man, with the makings of a great leader. I think you actually have a good shot at the whole world conquering thing.”
“Why, thank you,” he said, grinning broadly at her, “It’s a nice change to have someone around who can appreciate my obvious talents.”
Ah wonderful, Vex thought gaily. Here was a man with whom flattery would get her everywhere. But best not to overdo it.
“Just calling ’em how I see ’em,” she said nonchalantly. “Sooooooo…hey, did you say there were crosswords around here somewhere?”
Despite a valiant effort to get through the entire book of crosswords Syndrome had handed her, Vex had soon fallen asleep. Without her cheerful banter to keep him at least half-occupied Syndrome had soon grown restless, and began searching the cabin for something to do. None of the magazines really held any interest for him, and he’d had enough crosswords for the evening, helping Vex out.
“The thing about crosswords,” she had said while she was still awake, “Is they take such a wide variety of knowledge to finish them. I mean, you need to have pop-trivia as much as you need to know synonyms for things, and occasionally they’ll throw a real curveball at you. Yeah, you can use the ones you’ve already figured out to help, but it’s still impossible if you don’t actually know the answer somewhere inside your head.”
It had been a long day, Syndrome decided, and he didn’t want to stretch his brain, so much as he wanted to relax. He looked over at the girl’s sleeping from, soft and tranquil bundled beneath a blanket. Syndrome was amazed, when he really thought about it, when he saw her delicate and at peace like that, that she was there at all. That she had been able to make the decision to leave her entire life behind.
He had suggested horrible things to her, in the coffee house, to get her to come with him, manipulated the feelings that he had found in her writings. She was alone, unloved, unappreciated and powerless. But they had to be true to some degree, at the very least, for her to believe it enough, even for that one moment, and agree to come with him.
It wasn’t just pretend. She really wanted to embrace the dark side and serve the face of evil. And let’s face it, he was evil. Syndrome had come to accept that.
That had been his motive behind telling her the particular story about him that he had. It was riddled with things that the general populace would find not just Machiavellian, but amoral and abhorrent. And, carefully watching her face as he had told the tale, he had not found evidence that she found his actions either. Quite to the contrary, she seemed amazed, captivated, and admiring. She’d confirmed that herself, when he asked her.
Here was a girl who was intelligent, and fairly pretty, who was obliging and flattering, who seemed, so far, to enjoy his company, and actually liked him for his personality and for who he was, not who she thought he was, or who she thought she could make him. This was actually a little twisted, when he thought about it, especially when reconciled with her cute form. And it was obvious that she had a thing for him.
He wondered if kidnap counted as a first date.
Vex found herself being shaken awake, but without any person doing the shaking. The whole plane was tremmbling violently, and suddenly in a great jolt she was tossed from her seat, and right onto the floor, just as Syndrome was thrown similarly. She found herself almost on top of him, in fact.
“What’s happening?” she squealed.
“It’s just some turbulence,” he said, trying to sound reassuring as he grabbed her by her wrist, and dragged her up into the seat beside his. She could tell he was irritated though, and by the look of his hair, he had been rudely awakened as well.
“Belt yourself in,” he instructed, doing so himself as he sat down.
She nodded, gripping the arm of the chair with one hand as she strapped herself in with the other. The shaking was still going on, not as much as that one large bump, but still quite jarring.
Syndrome stabbed the intercom with his finger, “Hey pilot! What the hell!”
“Sorry sir,” Jared apologized. “A spot of turbulence. We’ll be out of it in a moment.”
“We better!” he let the button go angrily, then turned to Vex. “Are you okay, babe?”
She rubbed her right shoulder, which had been the part of her to hit the floor the hardest. “A little bruised, but fine…”
The shaking subsided, and they were flying normally again.
“Well that sucked,” Syndrome said, rolling his shoulders back and forth to get the kinks out. “No, don’t take your belt off; we’ll be landing in a few minutes anyway. I was about to wake you when we hit that bad spot.”
“Oh, okay, thanks,” she smiled, releasing the clasps that she was about to undo. She looked out the window, and found it was still dark. “What time is it?”
“Here or in New York?”
“Um, both I guess.”
“It’s around eleven in the morning in New York, but in Siberia it’s just past midnight.”
“Well that’s likely to throw off my sleep pattern,” she laughed.
“Beginning descent,” Jared announced over the PA.
“Oo,” Vex winced, feeling dizzy again, and pressed a hand to her face.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” Syndrome asked again.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just…dizzy again. I got over it last time. Like I said; I’m not used to flying.”
“Eh, you’ll get used to it,” he said, assuredly, but Vex was quite surprised when he put his arm around her, too.
She certainly wasn’t going to complain however, and took the opportunity to scoot just a little closer to him. After all, she rationalized, it was fairly cool in the cabin, and her blanket was all the way on the other side of it. And Syndrome was nice and warm. If he wanted to put his arm around her, she wanted him to do so.
“I’m sure I will,” she replied. “So, are we going to have to sneak through customs this time?”
“Nope, the place has its own airfield.”
Vex looked out the window, “Funny, I don’t see any- Syndrome?”
“Yeah?”
“You know we’re about to fly straight into a cliff face, right?”
“Look again,” he told her, sounding amused.
Vex peered out the window, and watched in relief as the snow covered cliff opened up, and the beginning of a runway folded out, upon which Jared touched the plane down.
“Huh. I guess Jared really is a pretty good pilot.”
“Yeah, wanna know the really big secret?”
“What?”
“The eye-patch is real.”
“What?!” she squeaked, her eyes growing wide.
“Fooled ya,” Syndrome laughed, hugging her tighter around the shoulders.
Vex flushed, and pouted at him. “You scared me.”
“Just keepin’ ya on your toes,” he said as the plane rolled to a stop.
She gave a short giggle, and shook her head.
“The plane has landed, sir,” Jared announced.
“Pffft, duh,” Syndrome muttered.
Vex rolled her eyes sympathetically, and began to unbuckle but stayed sitting, loathe to remove herself from under his arm.
He had to move it anyway, to unstrap himself. “Don’t forget your bag,” he reminded her.
She nodded, standing up, stretching and grabbing it. She watched Syndrome stand, stretch, and try to smooth his hair out.
“Er, I think I have a comb,” she offered, digging around in her backpack until she found the small item. Thinking clearly or not, at least she had put one or two useful things in it.
“Thanks,” he grabbed the comb from her, pulled the band out of his hair, and began to rake through it.
Vex fluffed self-consciously at her own hair, but luckily it hadn’t gotten particularly messy, though she did run the come through it once or twice when Syndrome handed it back to her.
She looked at him, thinking he looked pretty good, if rather disheveled. Hey, it had been a fifteen hour flight. Which reminded her to be hungry. Ah well.
Jared opened the door, and she followed Syndrome down into a large, fluorescently lit hangar bay. At first she thought they were alone, but then she saw a man running up to greet them. He was quite tall, and gangly, with a thick mane of curly, dark brown hair. He was wearing an extremely loose green sweater, and was smiling broadly. He skidded to a halt a foot or so in front of them.
“Ah, my friends,” he said in thick Russian accent, “My apologies, Doctor Rasputin vas unable to be here to meet with you. I am Mikhail, the caretaker. Vel-” He paused for just a second, as he looked at them, and saw his smile falter, then it was back. “Velcome! You must be Syndrome, and this lovely lady is?”
“Vexxation,” Syndrome answered for her.
“Uh, hi,” she gave him a small wave.
The Russian caught her hand and kissed her on the back of it.
“A pleasure to meet you,” he intoned.
“Er, same here.”
Syndrome put a hand on her shoulder almost possessively. “Enough pleasantries. Are you going to show us the base?”
“Certainly, certainly,” the caretaker chuckled. “Please, follow me.”
The two of them followed behind him, deeper into the side of the Siberian mountain.
To be continued…
Esunamoon: A little dark? I didn’t think it was particularly, before this chapter anyway, but I guess I see what you mean, what with the whole badguy thing. I’m glad you like it. Thank you for pointing out my little mistakes, I tend to get excited and not notice them, even when I read the chapter over. I will go back and fix them shortly. The Incredibles will make appearances in this fic, but they’re not actually that huge a part of it, at least not in the beginning…Yes. That’s right, this fic is going to be long. Like, intensely long. You think Sharon should rethink her decisions hmm? Interesting. All I can say as to where the fic is going is that it might not be going where you think, or end up in familiar territory! Hehehehe. I’ll try to use Vexxation’s full name a bit more for ya.
VegetandAru: I’m really glad you’re reviewing my story! Your reviews really make my day! Aw, not all other fanfictions are shit…there are some really good ones. I haven’t read any for the Incredibles yet, but that’s because I never read in the fandom that I’m writing for, to avoid contamination. If you can’t tell by now, I think Mirage should have stuck by Syn, too!
Shadow Fox Forever: Yes. Yes it is. hearts
RavensHaelo: Hmmm, thanks! I’m glad you think the name fits! Haha. I allow myself to write Mary-Sues for the simple reason that I have no shame. I am glad people like the fic though, and see past it’s self-derivative character. I like to think I’m doing a service to the fan community by writing wish fulfillment like this.
In regards to the name Vex/Vexxation, I’m so glad to hear that people don’t hate it. It took me a while to come up with, since she didn’t have any powers that I could really base the name off, I wanted it to sound evil, but also kinda fangirly. And face it ladies, to the unitiated, we can be pretty Vexing.
Next chapter: Setting Up Shop.
Chapter 8: Setting Up Shop
Comics, Cookies and Revenge
By Lejindarybunny
A/N: Line breaks were being evil on ffnet when I posted that, so I put 000 in instead. I”ll go back and fix it when the site decides to cooperate.
Disclaimer: The Incredibles, Syndrome, and all related characters and ideas are the property of Disney/Pixar. Sharon/Vexxation, and Mikhail belong to me.
Chapter 8: Setting Up Shop
“All of the doors are controlled by access code,” Mikhail told them, as he tapped out a short series of numbers on a panel, opening the elevator doors. “The codes are controlled in the main security terminal, and you can set them all the same, or separately, for different levels of access.”
Syndrome was watching him closely, he had the man pegged for a weirdo, and what’s more, his stupid accent was already getting on the super villain’s nerves. He hoped to be rid of him quickly.
“There are five levels to the base, however, as an extra precaution, this elevator, vhich is the only conventional entrance, only goes down to the first level, the barracks.”
Syndrome nodded approvingly. Whoever had designed the place knew what he was doing, it sounded like. They stepped into the elevator, Vexxation following close behind them, and descended to the next floor. Mikhail led them out into a long grey corridor, with doors on both sides.
“These are the vorkers quarters; this floor also has a fully function kitchen and dining hall, gym and recreation room. The elevator,” he smirked, “is through the gym.”
“Doctor Rasputin was a careful man,” Syndrome commented.
“No,” Mikhail spat. “Rasputin vas completely paranoid. But he had his reasons.”
“You sound like you don’t like him much,” Vex said.
“He vas a great man, but he vas driven mad by tragedy. I respected him, but I did not like him, no. And I vill be glad to leave this place, vonce my business in concluded.”
“Oh?” Syndrome raised an eyebrow, “And vhat, I mean, what business would that be?”
“Vhy, getting you settled of course. The doctor left me vhith strict instructions not to leave until you vere completely comfortable your new surroundings. Unless, that is, you vish to throw me out in the cold.”
“Riiight,” he nodded. Oh no, he wouldn’t chuck the guy out just yet. Not until he’d found out what was up with him.
They came to the next elevator, and Mikhail typed in the same code as before, Syndrome caught the whole thing this time, and memorized it quickly. The first thing to do of course would be to change it.
“The next level down vas the technical laboratories, there is a freight elevator connecting it directly vith the hangar. This floor is almost completely empty at the moment, however, and you may use it as you see fit. The third level vas the Doctor’s personal laboratory, it also houses the master suite as vell as the guest quarters. It is the only floor vith another ving.”
“Lets see that, then,” Syndrome commanded.
“Certainly,” Mikhail complied, pressing the button on the elevator. “Oh, it may go vith out saying, but of course all of the floors are monitored by multiple camera feeds, vitch are collected in the security chambers of the command center on the fourth level. Except of course, for the master suite.”
“What’s the fifth floor for?” Vex asked, speaking up again.
“Ah, that vould be the brig, lady,” he replied carefully. “A most unpleasant location.”
Ha! Syndrome snickered to himself. So the old doctor had kept a torture chamber huh?
The elevator stopped, and they stepped out into the wide main chamber of the lab. At least, it would have been wide if it hadn’t been cluttered with all sorts of scientific apparatus and computers.
“Whoa,” Vex seemed stunned. “Why’d he leave all his stuff here when he left?”
Syndrome’s eyes narrowed. Good question.
Mikhail was quick to answer. “The doctor is retired; he had no further use for it.”
Bullshit, if Rasputin was so paranoid, he wouldn’t leave equipment here for the next person. And why would the technical labs be empty, even if he did? Syndrome smelled a rat in his new abode, and he was just going to have to chase it out.
“Oh,” Vex didn’t sound like she believed it either.
“Vould you like to see the suite?”
“Not just yet,” Syndrome said. “I’d like you to show us around security quickly, and then I think we’ll go back to my plane to close the deal.”
“As you vish,” he nodded, and waved a hand. “Of course, please then, just step back inside the elevator.”
The first room on the security floor was completely empty.
“What’s this space for?” he asked Mikhail.
“Vhy, security, of course,” the Russian smirked maddeningly. “For the purposes of your arrival, I made certain to disarm the usual precautions, however. They are set in the main control room, vhich is down this corridor.”
Security, when they stepped out into it, quite dim, bathed only in the light of a large number of monitors and screens, lighted control panels and blinking dials and readouts. At a glance Syndrome could see that functionality could be spread out across the terminals so that it took ten coordinated people to operate, or consolidated for a single person.
“You have the access codes for all of this?”
Mikhail nodded. “They vill be given to you vonce the deal is signed.”
Syndrome frowned, and glanced at one of the walls, which was dominated by several dozen small screens, each of which showed the live video feed from somewhere on the base. He wanted to get started reprogramming, already! “Then let’s go do that. I need to get the money out of my plane.”
They had turned to go, and were almost out of the room when he noticed that Vex wasn’t behind him. He whirled around, “Hey, Vex!”
She was standing at the camera feed looking concerned. At the sound of his voice, she snapped out of it and hurried to his side.
“Sorry,” she said quietly. “I…thought I saw something move on one of the cameras.”
The Russian, it seemed, had sharp ears. “Nonsense, ve are the only vones here” he chuckled loudly, “I believe this room is, as you Americans vould say, ‘creeping you out’, dear girl.”
He glared at the man, and then glanced at his lieutenant. She shook her head just slightly, and he nodded. They’d discuss it later.
They made their way back to the large hangar at the surface of the base, where Jared was refueling the plane.
“There’s a briefcase under my seat on the plane, go get it,” he told Vex.
“Sure,” she nodded, and hurried off to get it.
Syndrome stood alone with Mikhail.
“So, I trust this tour has shown that the base vill meet your needs.”
He shrugged. “Oh, it’ll do just fine after a little tweaking.”
“Of course. If there is any vay in vhich I can help you vith these adjustments, you have merely to ask.”
“I don’t think we’ll be needed any help, though I’m sure the doc relied on you for a lot.”
“Ah, I am afraid you are wrong vith this assumption.”
“Then why’d he leave you in charge?”
“Again, you are mistaken. I am merely a hired caretaker.”
“I see.”
Vex had returned with the briefcase, and proffered it to him. “Here ya go.”
“Hold on to it for me,” he instructed.
“Now,” Mikhail said with a grin, “Shall ve adjourn to a comfortable location to complete this?”
000
Mikhail’s green eyes, Vex noticed, were a study in friendliness and assurance, and, except for that one moment when they stepped off the plane, had been the entire time.
He was completely charming, and it made her wonder if she was just being overly suspicious. She might have accepted that, except for a gut instinct that there was something he wasn’t saying. That and the fact that Syndrome definitely didn’t trust him.
And of course, the camera, though she could chalk that up to an overactive imagination. It wasn’t as if she had seen someone walking around inside the base or anything, but as she was turning to leave, she had thought she’d seen a flash of movement, low to the ground. She wasn’t even sure what part of the base that particular camera had been aimed at.
The caretaker had led them down into the near empty tech floor, and into an office, which was furnished with comfortable chairs, a desk, and even a coffee pot, with freshly brewed coffee. It looked so perfectly normal that Vex was taken aback.
“Have a seat, please,” Mikhail asked pleasantly. “Vould you like a cup of coffee?”
“Not right now,” Syndrome answered quickly, sitting down in one of the chairs by the desk. “Lets finish this up alright?”
“Yes, certainly,” he sat down at the desk, and pulled two large manila folders out of it, full of papers. “These are all of the base schematics,” he said, pointing to one, “and these are all of the access codes, and other computer related matters.”
Syndrome nodded, and then looked over at her expectantly. She set the briefcase on the desk, and he opened it, showing it to Mikhail.
“Payment in full of two point five million dollars,” he said, and Vex could hardly believe how blasé he sounded about the figure, “Make sure your boss gets it, okay? I don’t want any problems.”
“Certainly, certainly,” the Russian assured, and offered his hand.
Syndrome took it, and Vex watched them shake hands briefly and roughly.
“Very vell, I vill now return to my quarters. I vould appreciate if you not change the access code to that on me, eh?” he chuckled. “If there is anything that you require, merely page me on the intercom system.”
He got up to leave.
“Wait,” Vex said quickly, and he turned around, to look at her quizzically.
“Yes?”
“Er, is there anything to eat around?”
Mikhail laughed. “I believe that the doctor left the stores in his quarters quite vell stocked.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
The caretaker left, the door hissing shut behind him.
Syndrome, who had been flipping through the top folder, looked up at her now.
“So, what’s your take on Mickey there?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Well…” Vex considered. “I think there’s definitely something he’s not telling us. About the doctor. I think.”
He nodded. “I think there’s a good chance that the doc is dead. That guy probably offed him in fact.”
“So, do you think he’s got something up his sleeve besides that?”
He snorted. “I intend to find out. That’s why I’m not kicking him out right away. We’ll see if he slips up.”
“Good plan. So we watch him?”
“Like a hawk. Oh, speaking of which, what did you see on that camera?” he narrowed his eyes, looking around, trying to spot where the camera in that room was, Vex assumed.
“It was probably nothing, but I thought I saw something move. I don’t know where the camera, but I can point out which monitor it was on.”
“Good. We’ll go down to security now, I gotta start reprogramming the whole system. Make sure it doesn’t have any spyware or nasty surprises waiting for us.” He stood up, and she followed him out of the room.
“At least the layout’s not too complex,” she observed.
“Not a first glance,” Syndrome said quirking an eyebrow at her.
“Oh?”
“I was leafing through the copy of the blueprints, and it looks incomplete. I think there’s more around here than meets the eye.”
“Like secret passages, or rooms?”
“Wouldn’t be an evil lair without them,” he mused.
Vex laughed.
Syndrome tapped the access code into the panel by the elevator, and the clambered in. A thought occurred to her, as they rode down. “Syndrome, Rasputin used to be a respected scientist, didn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, then what’s with the secret base of doom?”
Syndrome chuckled. “‘Used to be’ is key in that sentence. You heard what the Russian said about him going nuts?”
She nodded.
“Nobody knows why it happened, but oh, about ten years ago, he just flew off his rocker. He stole the huge sum of money from the government grant he’d been given, and disappeared off everybody’s radar, to here, looks like. He popped up every now and again, I think he had some ties to the Russian mob, but mostly nobody’s seen him since.”
“Geez,” she wondered what could have happened to the guy.
The doors of the elevator parted as they reached the fourth level, and Vex started to step out.
Syndrome put his arm in front of her chest, stopping her. “Whoa, whoa. Hold it.”
She looked quizzically at him, taking a step backwards.
“He said there were deathtraps in this hallway. It’s entirely too possible that they have been reactivated since we were last here, if you catch my drift.”
“Oh, right. Thanks. I didn’t even catch that,” she beamed admiringly at him.
He fished in his pocket and pulled out a quarter Vex watched him toss it deftly down the hall so it skated all the way across the floor until it hit the wall. No lasers fired, no pits of crocodiles opened up. In short, it seemed safe.
“Okay, now we can go,” Syndrome said, strolling out ahead of her, “But stay alert.”
“Definitely,” she agreed.
Syndrome unlocked the door to the control chamber, and Vex adjusted her eyes to the darkness. Weren’t there any lights in here? She looked around, but didn’t see any evidence of anything.
Syndrome sat down immediately at the main terminal, setting the manila folders down beside him.
“How are you with computers?” he asked, taking off his coat, and draping it over the back of the chair.
“Er, I’m fair to middling, but I’m no ‘leet haxor’,” she sat down backwards in a swiveling chair, draping her arms over the back of it. “If you tell me what to do though, I can do it.”
“Hmm…” he considered, brushing the side of his nose with his thumb.
Vex’s stomach growled suddenly, and she blushed.
Syndrome smirked. “Why don’t you go up to the suite and see if you can find that food ‘Mickey’ mentioned. Oh, and why’ll you’re up there, I left another bag on the plane, get that. Then come back down here, and I’ll show you how to go through the database.”
“Righto,” she nodded, standing up again. “Oh, what’s the pass code for the doors?”
“It’s 12-34-10,” he told her, and then he lifted his left hand, and tapped the wrist plate of his glove, taking off a small device. “This is a two way communicator, if you see anything out of the ordinary, just hit the blue button and tell me.”
“Can do boss,” she grinned, taking the device and putting it in her pocket. “Anything else?”
“Nah, that’s it,” he said, focusing his eyes back on the large screen, and typing something out on the keypad.
Vex turned and walked out of the room, back through the supposed deathtrap hallway to the elevator. So far Syndrome had only been asking her to do little things, but it wasn’t if there had been much for her to do. Fetching and carrying would eventually be taken care of by minions, and or robots, she assumed. Not that she minded fetching things for him, and she certainly wouldn’t ever say ‘no, get it yourself’, but she did look forward to doing something more important for him, to prove that she could. Well, he’d said that she could help with the computers when she got back, which was a little better.
She road back up in the elevator, honestly glad that she had the little communicator. She wasn’t scared, as such, but she was nervous what with Mikhail lurking around, and whatever she had seen on the camera too.
She still needed to point that one out to Syndrome, too.
The elevator stopped at the third level, and she wondered, what had the Doctor needed with a brig anyway? The whole setup was really suspicious in her mind. After all, it was perfect for the uses of an evil overlord, which Syndrome was, and Rasputin, supposedly wasn’t. She shook her head, stepping out into the Doctor’s lab, and picked her way across it being careful not to trip over any of the many cords twinning their way around the floor like serpents.
There was only one door out of the room, so Vex opened that one, and immediately found herself in a very incongruous setting. It looked like the foyer of an old Victoria manor. There was one door, and a spiral staircase. Opening the door, which rather than being the sterile metal of the rest of the base was a rich mahogany, she found the kitchen and pantry. That was easy. Oh! But she’d almost forgotten the bag from the plane. She should get that first, before she tried to fix anything to eat. But before that, she wanted to see what was upstairs.
She mounted the stairs, which had a thick red carpeting, put her hand on the intricately carven banister, and started up. The hallway at the top of the stairs was long, and lighted by several small chandeliers. The first door she peeked in was a library or study, or both, filled with large, old looking books, all of which, as far as she could tell, were in Russian. There was a large, expensive desk, and several couches and chairs. The next door was a bath chamber, with a large, almost pool-like tub set in the marble floor, and several taps, all accented in gold and crystal. How much money had Rasputin stolen? She wondered, backing out of that room.
The next door must have been the master suite, because it, unlike the other doors, did have an access panel, and the code that she had didn’t work in it. The last door was the guest suit, and peeking in on it, Vex wasn’t sure how the master suite could be much better. The large bed with its long green hangings looked so comfortable in fact, that she had to hurry herself out of the room. Having slept in an airplane seat that night, even though it had only been an hour or so ago, made her want to lie down and not get up again for several hours. Which she couldn’t do on any account. She hurried back down the stairs, and through the lab.
“Hello,” said Mikhail with a grin, as the elevator doors parted to let her in, revealing him.
Vex took a step back, startled to see him. “Er, hello.” She forced a smile.
“Are you going down or up?”
“Oh, up,” she nodded, resting her hand on her pocket, and feeling the small, but reassuring bulge of the communicator.
“You are so on edge, Miss Vexxation, vhat is there that might do to set you at ease.”
She frowned. “I’m sorry Mikhail, I don’t even know who you are.”
“Ah, of course. Forgive me for my intrusion,” he nodded, and looked down, then said a moment later, “It is merely in my nature to inquire vhen a lady is in distress.”
She laughed. “I’m not in any distress.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Like you said, this place just sets my teeth on edge. I’ll get used to it.”
“I see.”
The elevator stopped at the second floor, and Mikhail stepped out, Vex followed him. After all that, elevator didn’t go to the surface…
Vex walked down the hall, hoping that Mikhail would leave her alone. No such luck. He followed her all the way to the other elevator, but didn’t get in.
“Why are you following me?” she demanded, as she punched the button to take her up.
“My name is Mikhail Rasputin, the doctor vas my father,” he said, as the doors closed, parting them.
“What? Hey!” Vex complained as the elevator continued upwards to the hangar. If Mikhail hadn’t been behaving strangely before, he certainly was now.
The thing in her pocket beeped, and she pulled it out.
“What was that about?” Syndrome’s voice demanded, an image of him appearing on the tiny screen.
“Mikhail accosted me on the elevator,” she explained. He must have been watching her on the security cameras.
“I saw that part, what was he saying?”
“Not much. He called me a ‘lady in distress’, told me he was Rasputin’s son, and then ran off.”
Syndrome frowned. “I think he wants to tell you something or other.”
“Maybe what his game is?”
“Maybe…But it might be anything. You still have the tazer on you?”
“Yeah,” she had taken it off to sleep, but both of them were safely in the satchel at her hip.
“Good. If he tries to talk to you again, go along with him. If he tries anything funny you can zap him at your own discretion.” Syndrome smirked.
“Okeedokee. But I think he knew you were watching, and didn’t like it.”
“Good point. I’ll look out for camera blind spots, malfunctions and such. You keep this communicator with you.”
“You got it.”
“Syndrome out,” the screen shut off, and Vex put the device back in her pocket.
000
Syndrome sat in the semi-darkness of the security room, distractedly going through the database for bugs. He was more concerned with watching Vex on the security cameras, thinking, if he’d paid more attention to what Mirage had been doing he could have stopped her from ruining his plans. Maybe not from betraying him, but from betraying him effectively.
Not that he wanted to think that Vex was going to betray him. He didn’t think so, in fact. He was actually more concerned for her safety than her loyalty. Who knew what this freaky Russian guy was up to? A glance at the monitors to him Vex was in the hangar bay getting the bag, and Mikhail was in the barracks TV room, apparently watching TV…
The computer beeped. The first thing that had annoyed Syndrome was that he’d had to install a Russian translation program on the whole system, though he should have expected it. Now that it was all translated he could comb the files for anything suspicious, or potentially useful. But if was bound to take a while. He’d have Vex go through the actual documents, to see if they could find anything about what was up with the doctor, while he looked for spy programming or viruses.
Vexxation disappeared into the plane for a moment, and then came out again carrying the bag. There wasn’t anything particularly heavy in it, just his suit, and his laptop, which would make weeding through the computer much faster. She got into the elevator, and suddenly, five or six of the security monitors went dead, including the ones with Mikhail and Vex were on.
Immediately Syndrome reached to tap the communicator in his glove, but then he stopped. ‘No,’ he thought, ‘let Vex handle it. She’ll radio you if she needs help. That’s what you told her to do.’ If he contacted her now, all he would do was ruin her chance of finding out what Mikhail was doing. They already knew he was Rasputin’s kid, or said he was. Why miss the chance to find out more?
Instead, he booted up the security files on the computer, determined to find the source of the black out.
000
The elevator stopped suddenly with a jolt. Vex gasped, and braced herself on the left wall of the elevator, as the wall behind her parted, revealing itself as a door. Something skittered from it into the small compartment with her. It looked like a rat, but with red and orange skin like a newt, rather than fur, and it was the size of a small dog.
Vex bit her lip, backing away, and pulled one of her gloves out of her bag.
The rat-thing hissed at her, as she pulled the glove onto her hand, and it powered it with an electrical crackle.
“He von’t hurt you,” said Mikhail, stepping out of the shadows to going them. “Nor vil I.”
“What do you want?” she demanded, wiggling her fingers inside the glove to reassure herself that she was safe. If he tried anything, she’d zap his ass like Syndrome said.
“You vanted to know who I vas, and I vant to tell you. I merely do not vish , to be avare as vell. See?”
She nodded slowly. “But why?”
“How long have you been vorking vith him?”
“Not long…”
“I thought not. You do not have the look of a hardened criminal.” He nodded. “Let us saw for now, that I simply do not like him.”
“…I can accept that I guess. Where does that passage go?”
“It is the emergency stairs. They travel all through the base.”
“I see. And what it that, thing?”
“A…pet of mine.”
“Did your father create it?” she asked, recalling Rasputin’s early bio-engineering experiments.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“What is it you want to tell me?”
“About my father. You know vhat his field of research vas?”
“Bio-chemistry.”
“Ah, but that vas not his original field, no. He originally studied as a simple medical doctor, but, vhen my elder brother vas born, he became…othervise interested.”
“Why?”
“Because my brother vas a cripple! He vas born vith a terrible disease, like a cancer, that spread from within his body. Numerous surgeries vere preformed many by my father himself, but none of them vould help. Eventually my father located the source of the disease, and created a treatment to correct it. My brother vas finally fully alive, oh how my father doted on him. He sent him abroad to study to travel, to become great! But, in the United States, only months after my father had cured him, my brother vas brutally murdered!”
“That’s terrible…”
“Yes. It vas my brother’s murder that drove my father insane, and who can blame him? His favorite son vas lost, after so many years of keeping him alive.”
“Were you, jealous of your brother?”
“Of course I vas! And angry, especially after he died. Vith him traveling, my father had finally begun to value me, but vhen he died, my father retreated here, obsessed vith his vork. He vanted to clone my brother, and bring him to life, strong and full. He vas no longer my father.”
“Did you, kill him?” she asked cautiously.
“Vhat do you take me for, I monster, like your boss? He vas killed by his own experiment, several months ago. Disgusted, I planned to sell this base, and use the money to find and kill the person that I truly hate. My brother’s killer.”
“Is that what you’re going to do?”
Mikhail laughed. “Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, before I could even find a buyer, I found myself robbed of my revenge. My brother’s killer had been slain by another. It seemed I would have to be content with living my life a rich man.”
There was a crazy, triumphant kind of glint in Mikhail’s eyes that made Vex worry. “So, everything’s fine then?”
“It soon vill be,” he said with a smile.
The lights flickered.
“Ah, it must be beginning,” he commented.
“What? What’s beginning?!” she demanded. She grabbed the communicator from her pocket and switched it on. “Syndrome? Syndrome!”
There was no response.
“Please do not be alarmed, lady. I mean to spare you from this.” He moved forward to touch her.
Vex balled her fist and swung at Mikhail. He didn’t even bother blocking, thinking such a weak little girl couldn’t do any damage. He got a face full of tazer. Electricity crackled, and the Russian’s hair stood on end as he collapsed to the elevator floor, unconscious. Vex though she was safe, but then the rat-thing strange at her like a rabid bat out of hell.
She screamed and swung Syndrome’s heavy bag at it, knocking it out of the air. It hit the wall of the elevator, but rebounded, leaping at her a second time. This time she caught it with her tazer glove, the creature shrieked and fell to the floor, lifelessly.
Vex scrambled over the two bodies to the stairs at the back of the elevator, and sped down them, through the near darkness, taking as many steps at a time as she dared without falling. She only hoped that she would get to Syndrome in time.
To be continued…
Yes! Hahahahahahha! Evil cliffhanger of DOOOM!
Maya Beebop: It’s okay, I forgive you! hug Okay, I will keep going with Vex as she is. (I didn’t really want to change her) I certainly don’t want her to end up unlikable. Heheehe. About mad butt kissing skills, don’t worry, she doesn’t plan to abandon them! Hmmm, I donno, Syndrome does like getting praised, maybe he could take 24 hours of it! Lol. As to if Vex has any powers, I can’t give away the plot of the story, but like I said, I know what’s going to happen all through the story. I think you’ll like it. And I think it will surprise you.
Shadow Fox Forever: Actually, I am neglecting my family and real life boyfriend to get the story up this quickly. The sad thing? I don’t care.
Megan The Vampire Slayer: Good to see you again! You know, I think they actually do make Syn plushies…I have to go to KB toys. …But what if I like pushing myself!?
VegetandAru: Is this soon enough for you? I am able to write the chapters this fast, simply because I am completely obsessed/divinely inspired, and am letting the fic eat my life. I literally have not done anything except eat, sleep, go to work, and write this fic since the first say I started writing it. I am so glad you like the way I write Syndrome, isn’t he wonderfully callous? I’m so glad I inspire you. Love and hugz babe.
I’m so glad everyone likes how fast I’m updating. This way, it’s kinda like a TV show, eh? Except you can’t really miss an episode.
Tomorrow: The Piper and his Payment
Chapter 9: The Piper and his Payment
Comics, Cookies and Revenge
By Lejindarybunny
A/N: Good morning. sucks on coffee I put some art for ccr up at my gallery. Greer-the-raven .deviantart. com Go see it.
I am going to warn you that this is a very dark chapter possibly the darkest in the fic, and if anyone under the age of thirteen is reading this fic, that they might want to ask themselves just how mature they are and possibly seek entertainment elsewhere. Not that I want you to stop reading if you’re twelve and having fun.
Line breaks still aren’t working for me, so it’s 000 again.
Disclaimer: The Incredibles, Syndrome, and all other affiliated characters are the property of Disney/Pixar. I’m not making any money off this (just losing sleep) so there’s really no reason to try to sue me. Unless you really, really want my Sonic comic collection…
Chapter 9: The Piper and his Payment
The first thing Angelica Mitchell had done, after her first few hours of panic, had been to delete the goodbye message from Sharon’s computer. Then she had called the police, making no mention of either it, nor any personal items missing from her room.
The police were treating it as kidnap, and that was exactly how Angelica wanted it. The note and the bag would have screamed ‘runaway’ to the police, and they never did anything about a runaway. Besides, as far as she was concerned, her daughter had been kidnapped. There was no reason for her to just up and leave.
She had felt especially justified in this assertion when an investigation of the coffee shop had turned up that Sharon had met a man there, one that none of the workers had seen around before. This man, whom occupants had described as red-haired and well dressed, was of course the police’s prime suspect.
Yes, Angelica was confident that her daughter would be found. Some mothers became ineffective and hysterical when they were grief stricken, but not Sharon’s mother, the key for her, to avoid an emotional breakdown was to keep busy, doing things to ensure her daughter’s safe return, and not give herself a moment to reflect on what had occurred.
She had of course, phoned Sharon’s school and told them to tell her classmates, in case any of them knew anything.000
The whole school was talking about it, Sharon Mitchell was missing. Had maybe been kidnapped. Was abducted by aliens. Etcetera.
And Violet Parr couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit very, very bad. And worried.
She hadn’t thought much about it when she’d gone to sit with Tony. Didn’t really think that Sharon would care. After all, the girl was like four years older than she was, shouldn’t she have friends in her own year? She’d thought all the older kids were friends with one another.
But Sharon had seemed really mad when Violet had talked to her yesterday. Okay, so maybe it was kinda rude to leave without telling her…
What if she’d run off and committed suicide or, or joined the circus or something?
When Violet had started middle school a year ago she hadn’t known anybody. She had been very lost, and very alone. And very surprised when the high school girl had simply plunked herself down at Violet’s empty table like it was completely socially accepted.
Okay, so they hadn’t been best friends or anything, at least Violet hadn’t thought so. She’d never been over to the older girl’s house, or even hung out with her at all out of school. Not that her mom would have been comfortable with her hanging with a girl so much older than she was. And anyway, Sharon was way too boyish and loud for Violet to be totally at ease around her.
But for a year and a half they’d sat at the same lunch table. Was it really that big a deal when Violet up and left? And what was Sharon’s issue that she got all angry when she had been invited to sit at the other table? Didn’t she want people to like her? It wasn’t as if the table was full of eighth graders, if that was her problem.
At the time Violet had felt like saying ‘Fine, be that way’, but later she’d started to feel like maybe she had been wrong. She had even made the decision to take a break from sitting with Tony, and sit with her again for today, if Sharon would let her.
Now she wasn’t going to get a chance.
000
Vex snarled angrily at the control panel that blocked her way into the next level of the complex, as she tried to get back to the Security room where Syndrome was. The access code wasn’t working! She didn’t have time for this! Well, brute force had been working for her so far in this little emergency.
She punched the terminal with her glove, sending a jolt of electricity through it. The doors parted obligingly. She would celebrate her knew found violent solutions later. She dashed through the entryway, and down another flight of stairs.
What could Mikhail have done? Set off the death traps? Syndrome could handle these kind of things, right? Didn’t they happen to him all the time? But usually he had all kinds of weapons and robots didn’t he? Why hadn’t he thrown Mikhail out as soon as he had looked suspicious? What the hell did the guy want, anyway?!
Vex hit the forth level, broke the terminal, and burst through the secret door into the security room.
000
Syndrome had not been expecting an attack. He had not been expecting the rest of the cameras to go dead, followed by a good three quarters of the computer monitors, leaving him in almost total darkness.
Then there were the little pairs of glowing red lights that winked on from every corner of the room. Then the lights had shrieked and leapt at him.
Syndrome managed to most them with his zero-energy. In its blue glow he saw what he was being attacked by, giant rat things. One of the two rats that he hadn’t caught on the first pass flew at him from an odd angle and bit right through his glove to his left hand, freeing half of it’s brethren as the glove shorted and the villain yelped in pain.
From his wrist, he heard Vex’s voice calling him over the communicator. “Syndrome? Syndrome!”
He slammed his hand, the creature still latched onto his flesh, against one of the computer units, stunning it, and freeing himself from its grip. But the communicator was dead.
Two more of the things leapt at him, he knocked them out of the air with the bunch that he still had contained, throwing them against the wall. As he was turning, another one hurdled towards his face, and he didn’t bat it away quick enough to avoid its nasty claws digging into the flesh right below his left eye.
The thing recovered quickly and leapt at him again, lower this time, and he kicked it away. Okay, that was what, seven down? There should only be a few-
Except there were more now. He still had the same number in his energy field, and the ones he had taken care of still lay immobile. But now there were like five more.
“Aw shit,” he swore, and edged backwards, towards the door, as several of them tried to jump him at once. He knocked them out of the air with the floating bunch again, and quickly punched in the access code to the door.
Leaving the lab was not a viable option, as the white hallway was now filled with large swinging blades. He started to whirl around when he was knocked to the ground by a rather large object.
Three rats sailed over his head, and where sliced and diced out in the hallway. Syndrome winced as he was splattered with blood.
As Vex, for that was who had accosted him, pulled him to his feet, he realized he’d let go of his hold on the five rats he had captive. They swarmed him en mass, and Syndrome shoved the girl out of the way, and caught most of them in his field again with his good glove. He slammed them as hard as he could against the wall, which he should have done in the first place, and looked for more.
He heard the sound of electricity twice in quick succession and saw that Vex had taken out the two that had escaped him, and come after her.
They stood there, staring around the room, making sure there were no more of the things. The room was silent except for the swooshing of the giant blades in the hallway, and their panting. There didn’t seem to be any more creatures coming.
“Are you alright?” they asked one another simultaneously, and then both answered. “I’m fine.”
Syndrome chuckled.
“You’re bleeding,” Vex pointed out.
He pulled off his malfunctioning glove, and inspected the wound on his palm. It wasn’t deep, in fact, it was barely bleeding. The glove had absorbed most of it. “It’s nothing.”
“I kinda meant that one,” she corrected, pointing at his face.
He reached up, and felt the hot, stinging moisture on his face, he’d forgotten about that. “Damn,” he growled, wiping away the blood with his sleeve, and kicked the body of one of the creatures. “Well, it’ll heal. I do this kinda thing all the time. What about you?”
He had been surprised at how well she had handled herself.
She shrugged. “Just like Legend of Zelda,” she said wryly, “except for the part where all I have to do is tap the ‘A’ button to kill the damn things.”
“How did you know what was happening?” Syndrome asked her, pushing the strands of hair that had escaped his pony tail out of his face. “And how’d you get in here?”
“Mikhail caught me in the elevator again. He was babbling something about his brother being murdered, then the lights flickered, and he said ‘its happening’ or something like that. I tried to call you, you didn’t answer, so I figured I should see if you needed help.”
“And he just let you go?”
“Well, not exactly. I had to knock him out, at least, he didn’t look dead, but I didn’t really stop to check. He had one of those rat things with him, too. Can a tazer to the face kill a guy?”
“Well, not unless you really held it to him,” he shook his head. He was becoming even more pleased with her. “Did you learn anything more specific from him?”
She took a moment to repeat what Mikhail had said about his father’s obsession with his brother’s disease, the brother’s demise, and his father’s madness, and death.
“Huh. Nothing else?”
“No, that’s all he said before I had to tackle him.”
“What about the passage?”
“Mickey used it to get into the elevator; the access codes didn’t work in the terminals I had to get through, so they, uh, kinda need fixing now. Sorry.”
“Hey, hey, do not apologize. Frankly, I’m pretty impressed with you, ya know?” he grinned at her.
She blushed, but looked quite thrilled as well. “I’m sure you’d have been okay. You almost had them all when I got here…”
Honestly, he wasn’t sure if he could, though he wasn’t quite going to admit that. “Maybe, but I appreciate your help. Unless I specifically say so, do not hesitate to help.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” she beamed.
“So, let’s go see what our Russian friend has anything to say for himself, shall we?”
“Sounds good to me. This room’s a little depressing at the moment, anyway.” She glanced out the hallway. “Do you know how to turn those off?”
“Not while the controls are out,” he gestured to the dark screens.
“Then I think we’re stuck taking the stairs.”
As they walked up the stair case, Syndrome noticed that Vex had removed her glove and was massaging her wrist. He cocked an eyebrow at her, and she grinned sheepishly.
“Hitting things is all well and good,” she mused, “But I think I could use a long range option.”
He smirked. “I’ll see what I can do.”
As they got to the first level, Syndrome saw Mikhail’s feet sticking out of the elevator limply. He bent down and checked the guy’s pulse. “He’s alive alright, but you sure knocked him out good. And look at that hair,” he snickered at the ball of brown frizz around the man’s gaunt face.
Vex giggled. “So what are you going to do with him?”
“I think it’s time we took a tour of the doc’s brig, eh?”
She nodded, as he surrounded their attacker with a field of blue energy, hefting him into the air, and started back down the stairs. At the very bottom, Syndrome nodded at the access terminal.
“Vex.”
She nodded, and tried the code first. When it was rejected, she put her yellow shock glove back on and fried it. The door opened.
For the most part, the brig looked very… well, there no other way to describe it. It looked Trekkie. There were at least a dozen small holding cells, each with a glowing energy field in the doorway, rather than conventional bars. At any rate, Syndrome didn’t have the access codes for them at the moment, so that option was out. He was beginning to think that they might just have to tie the guy up, when they rounded the corner into what could only have been the interrogation area.
Contained in the white, shiny alcove were two retaining tubes, a chair with various straps beside a table with various needles and chair for the interrogator, and, Syndrome couldn’t help but laugh, out of both luck and amusement. Doctor Rasputin had bought one of Syndrome’s own Force Racks! The same device that he’d held Mr. Incredible in a week ago. It was an older model, but no less effective.
He dropped Mikhail to the floor unceremoniously. “Watch him, in case he wakes up,” he instructed, walking over to the Rack’s controls.
Vexxation nodded. “What is that thing?” she asked.
“Force Rack,” he explained. “It holds the prisoner immobile, and administers painful impulses to him, for interrogation. I invented it.”
“Sounds pretty useful.”
“I thought so,” he smirked. Rasputin had passworded the access, but that was fine. Syndrome included an emergency override code in all of his weapons that only he knew of, in case they were ever used against him. The machine came to life with a hum.
“Put those on his wrists and ankles,” he told Vex, nodding to the large restraints.
She picked them up, and clapped them roughly to Mikhail’s appendages, checking to make sure each one was locked. “All set,” she nodded.
Syndrome pointed a finger at the body, and lifted him up into the energy field, securing him in place.
Vex looked from Syndrome, to Mikhail, and back, and crossed her arms. “So how long do you think it’ll be before he wakes up?”
“Oh, an hour or so at least. You really put his lights out good, babe,” he sneered scornfully at the limp Russian.
“Thank you,” she beamed, flattered. “So, we wait then, or what?”
Syndrome frowned. On the one hand, he didn’t want to leave the prisoner unguarded, on the other hand, just waiting in the brig for the hour or so it took for him to wake up sounded equally unpleasant, if not as risky. Not that he thought Mikhail could escape, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
“Hmmm, you found the doc’s kitchen, right?”
She nodded. “It’s the only room on the ground floor or the suite.”
“Right. So, you watch the prisoner while I go get us some breakfast,” he tried to think of how long it had been since they’d arrived. A few hours at least.
“Okay.”
“I don’t think there are any more of those pests around, but watch out anyway. And be warned, my communicator isn’t working.”
“Dually warned,” she nodded.
Half an hour ago he might have been more worried about leaving her alone under such circumstances, but he definitely felt that she had proved herself at least somewhat capable in a fight. Which was more than he could have said for Mirage.
“I’ll be back in a few,” he assured her, and then headed back towards the staircase.
000
Vex sat in the brig, alone except for the company of the man that she had knocked out. She didn’t feel bad about that either. He had attacked Syndrome, and might have attacked her too. She wondered what exactly Mikhail had against him. It seemed like it must have something to do with his dead brother. But what exactly?
She shook her head. Too much had happened too quickly for her to sort it all out. For she was just glad that both she and Syndrome were safe, and she was pretty much assured that they would get the full story from Mikhail himself when he woke up. Whether he wanted to tell them about it or not.
She smirked, resting her chin on her hand and watched their prisoner for any signs of movement, all the while, thinking to herself. She and Syndrome made a pretty good team, didn’t they? And she had managed to show him that she could fight a bit too, if she had too, although, she would have been more comfortable with an edged weapon, given that she’d taken fencing lessons for a few years when she was younger.
She thought of Syndrome’s boyish, freckly face twisted in that assured smirk, and sighed. He liked her, right? He had, after all, put his arm around her in the plane, and Syn didn’t seem the type for meaningless supportive gestures…But then, they had only known each other for a day at best, and, under his arrogant surface, he did seem to be a bit shy. But then, he also was a very dominating type of person, so being forward would just alienate him…
Mikhail groaned, and Vex snapped out of her reverie, and glared at him, standing up. From behind, she thought she heard the squeal of those rat-things again, and whirled around, but there was nothing there. She adjusted the glove on her wrist, just in case.
He moaned again, and she trained her eyes on him, but stayed attentive for movement from other places in the room. It looked like he was waking up sooner than Syndrome had expected.
His eyes parted slightly. “Vhy…” he began in a hoarse voice. “Vhy did you attack me?” The thing was, he sounded genuinely disbelieving.
“You’re joking, right?” she demanded, glaring at him.
“I do not understand, vhat loyalty do you owe to that monster?”
“My own,” she snapped.
“But vhy? Do you not know vhat he is? A killer?”
“So?” she crossed her arms.
“I see. So you are the type of voman who is best charmed vith vicked viles.”
Vex winced at this, but it was because of all the mangles ‘w’s in the sentence, rather than it’s content. Yes, she thought, thank you very much. “And what if I am?”
“Then you are a fool!” he accused. “Can you not see he is a man who cares for nothing but his own?!”
“Well, you’ve got me there,” came a voice from the door way. Vex whirled around to find him standing in the door way. However, he wasn’t in normal clothing anymore, instead he was in the black and white outfit from the news, with his cape billowing behind him as he walked forward, and his hair standing up above his head. The effect was mangled though, by the fact that he was carrying the duffle bag that Vex had dropped in the elevator, and a tray of sandwiches.
He strode across the room, and put the sandwiches down on the table, brushing the needles aside, and the bag on the floor.
“You just left out one important detail, that’s all. Vexxation is mine.” Syndrome sneered, putting his arm around his lieutenant’s shoulders possessively.
A thrill went through Vex’s whole body and she drew closer to him almost involuntarily. It was nothing compared to the next moment when he lifted her chin up to his, and began to kiss her. She melted, and her world spun as he parted her lips with his tongue and began to caress the inside of her mouth forcefully. She kissed back, their tongues twining against each other as she pressed herself to him, wrapping her arms around his body, the soft fabric of his cape falling around her shoulders.
“You dog!” Mikhail spat.
Syndrome pulled away from her gently, and laughed in the Russian’s face. “You think I’m wrong?”
“I vill not accept it!”
Vex’s body was warm, and tingling, and she was surprised that she was still able to stand up. It felt like someone had grabbed her by the wrists and swung her around and around. In a good way.
“Vex,” Syndrome snapped with a smirk. “You see the dial on that panel?”
She blinked, forcing herself to be functional. “I see it,” she nodded.
“I think we ought to prove to our guest how wrong he is about you, shall we?”
She nodded, and strode over to the control panel, putting her hand on the dial, ready to turn it. “What number?”
Syndrome shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know, whatever you feel is appropriate. Ten will kill him, though, and we don’t want that just yet.”
“Lady, do not do this! It is wrong, you must know tha-“
His speech was suddenly cut off by a strangled yell, and jerking spasm, as Vex turned the dial to six.
“Shut you pie hole,” she quipped.
Syndrome nodded at her, with a smirk of approval, and clasped his hands behind his back, pacing in front of the Force Rack.
“So, Mickey,” he began wryly, “Vex tells me you’ve got a little childhood trauma to deal with, why don’t you tell us about that.”
“You ruined my life, bastard!”
“Funny, I don’t remember ever meeting you before. Maybe you should be more specific.”
“I vil not! You make me sick! You know very vell vhat you did!”
Syndrome nodded to Vex, and she activated the dial again, at the same setting.
Mikhail’s hoarse cries echoed through the whitewashed, brightly lit torture chamber.
“Now,” Syndrome asked, after the prisoner’s shouts had subsided to panting. “Would you like to tell me why you hate me so much?”
“You killed my brother! And my father!”
Vex and Syndrome’s eyes met for just a moment, and the super villain grinned rakishly, before quickly straightening his face, clearing his throat and turning back to Mikhail.
“No,” he said in a deep booming voice, “I am you father.”
Both Syndrome and she doubled over into hearty, amused laughter, unable to resist the pull of a perfect Star Wars reference.
Mikhail glared straight at her, and, deeply offended. “Vhat are you thinking?! Is this some sort of game to you?!”
Vex’s peals of laughter subsided to giggles that she tried to quell completely. “That was too perfect,” she muttered to Syndrome.
“Why thank you,” he grinned, and then turned his attention back to the prisoner. “Yeah, yeah, you’re deadly serious. So I killed your brother, huh? Funny I don’t remember killing any-“
And then he stopped, and slapped his fist into his palm. “Oh, I get it, I get it! Your brother, he was a Super, right?”
“That is vhat you Americans call us,” Mikhail growled.
“Us? No, wait, we’ll get to that in a minute. So your brother. Did he wear a red and yellow outfit? And shoot lasers out of his hands?”
“So you remember now, do you? You are so careless with murder; I almost did not expect you to.”
“Hey, hey hey, it’s not my fault your big bro never stopped to tell me his name,” he held up his hands defensively.
“How could he? You attacked him!”
Syndrome ignored him. “Okay, after all these years I gotta know what was his name?”
“My brother’s name was Piotr.”
“Piotr Rasputin?” Vex snorted.
“Yes!” Mikhail snapped. “Vhat is it you find amusing now, frivolous girl?”
“Aw, you wouldn’t get the joke,” she shook her head.
“Anyway, as I was saying,” Syndrome continued. “So your brother was the unknown Super, that makes sense now.” He nodded, “And the respirator was your father’s cure for whatever was wrong with the kid.”
“Ha! You are wrong! That device was to act as my brother’s lungs after they were removed.”
Syndrome frowned. “Hmmm so that wasn’t it, huh? Well, why don’t you just tell me why he had that chip in his head, I bet that’s it.”
“I vil not humiliate my brother in his death!”
“Ah, so we’re getting somewhere. What if I say please?”
“Never!”
“Okay, what if I say eight?”
Vex took this cue, and turned the dial up two notches. Again, the room rang with Mikhail’s screams.
“It vas a disorder of the brain!” Mikhail gasped.
“And that’s why papa needed to spy on him with a camera?”
“It vas a precaution for my brother’s safety. It is thanks to that my father saw his death! That he replayed it over and over until the sight of your face drove him mad! That is how I knew you vhen you came.”
“Interesting, but not the info I was looking for. Let’s change subjects, shall we? You implied you were a super?”
“Yes. I have powers.”
“The rat-things,” Vex realized.
“Correct. They manifest themselves at my command, to defend me.”
Syndrome chuckled. “What do they call you, Mickey, the Pied Piper of Moscow?”
“I grow weary of your banter. Question me if you must, but your jokes are worse than this machine.”
“Tut tut tut, you need a sense of humor, don’t you? Wanna help him out Vex?”
She zapped him again, but this time, in the middle of his screams he gave way to a choking cough, some blood trickling from his mouth out onto his chin.
“Please, stop,” he rasped, staring plaintively at her with his glazed eyes.
“Hey, hey, Piper, I’m the one asking the questions, how about you beg me?” Syndrome sneered at him.
“Never.”
“You’re prerogative, man. Mind telling me exactly what was wrong with your brother in that case?”
“Vhy do you care?”
“I’m curious.”
“I vill not tell you.”
“We’ll try this one more time. Come on, I’m dying to know here.”
“I vil not tell you!”
“Nine, Vex,” he instructed.
There was more screaming and coughing and Mikhail’s body jerked like a harassed marionette.
“Now will you tell me?”
“You can take your curiosity to the devil in hell!” Mikhail roared defiantly, using what looked like the last of his strength.
“Hmmm,” Syndrome pretended to consider this. “I’ve got a better idea, how about you go do that for me, and I’ll look up the information I want in your dad’s files?” He turned to Vex, his eyes glinting behind the black mask that obscured his face. “Set the dial to ten.”
“No!” Mikhail pleaded with her. “I vould have spared you life!”
He would have, too; Vex knew that. She wasn’t the one he had a grudge against. But Syndrome wanted him dead, and frankly, she didn’t like him all that much herself. After all, he had attacked Syndrome, and she didn’t care what his reasons were.
“Well that’s your bad taste,” she sneered at him, and turned the dial up to ten.
It was the shortest the screams had lasted, but there was more coughing, and more blood issued forth from his mouth. Mikhail’s body twitched violently for several moments, and then fell completely still.
Sharon Mitchell, age seventeen, had killed a man.
“Well done,” Syndrome congratulated her with a grin. He strode away from the limp body in the machine, over to the table, and picked up the tray of sandwiches. “On second though, why don’t we eat upstairs, huh?”
“Okay,” Vexxation agreed, and followed him up the stairs.
To be continued…
Okay, a few extra notes here. One, this is probably the darkest chapter in the entire story, so if you didn’t like it, I’m sorry, please bear with me, for the mood quickly lightens.
Also, I always update either by 6 pm eastern USA/Canada time, or midnight. Usually 6.
Be warned as well, that I am going to visit my best friend tomorrow and force her to see the Incredibles with me, so she can read this fic. Yes, it will be the third time I’ve seen it in less than two weeks. I will try to finish the chapter before I go, but may not be able to. Please excuse this irregularity, and note that I will be back on schedule on Thursday. Same bat time, same bat channel.
And now, to the reviews.
DJ Caligula: Yay! I am so happy to have you reading my fic! I really, really, really enjoyed your Gríma fic, Not Worth More than Rubies, and I wish you would update it. Not to mention your essay, which has become a classic. Yes, I thought having Syn actually recruit a fangirl off ffnet was something that hadn’t been seen in a fic before. The references to shows and stuff amuse me, at least, I hope they aren’t annoying anyone. As for Syndrome’s hair, easy it was red to begin with! As a child he obviously dyed it blonde to look like Mr. Incredible.
Artymas: Yes yes, updating steroids aplenty, it’s called caffeine and obsession. Haha, I’m sorry about the cliffhanger, here’s another one for you!
Krystal-Image-Ki: Um, I’m not sure what art you’re talking about, since I only have two little doodles up at my deviart account, but thanks for reading the fic! Always good to addict a fan.
WormmonABC: I am proud! Thanks for reading!
Maya Beebop: Hahaha, you got zapped by the ffnet censors! I hope you liked this chapter.
Megan The Vampire Slayer: As to a romantic scene, obviously, the answer was yes!
RavensHaelo: Yep, I am on deviantart. Yay for the Syndrome club!
Shadow Fox Forever: Sorry again, about the cliff hangar. Hey, I have to have a way to get people to read the next chapter, right?
Chapter 10: The Peril of Wearing the Real Green Dress he Bought
Comics, Cookies and Revenge
By Lejindarybunny
A/N: Yes, the title of this chapter is a reference to the Bare Naked Ladies song ‘If I had a Million Dollars’. If you haven’t heard the song, the lyrics go “If I had a million dollars, I would buy you a green dress, but not a real green dress. That’s cruel.”
There is a new pic of Mikhail up at my deviantart gallery greer-the-raven. Also on deviantart, ookami-ayane has done a wonderful doodle of Vex for me, it’s in her scraps section. I will also be drawing Vex shortly, so check d-art tonight for updates.
Disclaimer: The Incredibles, Syndrome, and all affiliated characters are property of Disney/Pixar. Sharon/Vex belongs to me.
Chapter 10: The Peril of Wearing the Real Green Dress He Bought Her
Vex had never thought of herself as an extreme sociopath, but apparently, she was. After all, sitting calmly at a dining table eating a ham sandwich shortly after you had tortured and killed a man simply was not normal behavior. Torturing and killing man was not normal behavior in and of itself. She was stunned by her own lack of hesitation. And of remorse. She pitied Mikhail, certainly, but his death had been necessary. After all, he was a super, and not only that, he wanted Syndrome dead. If they had let him go, chances were he would have come back to attack them. His death had been precautionary, if not exactly self-defense.
But the torture? That didn’t sit quite as well with her. None of the questions Syndrome had asked seemed particularly vital. Syndrome had just wanted to cause the man pain. Then why not do it himself? Vex realized she’d had the answer all along. It was to prove a point to the Russian, that she was completely loyal to Syndrome. And she had jumped at the chance. But she didn’t buy that the villain was trying to prove it to Mikhail; rather, she guessed that he had been proving it to himself, and with a traitorous woman so close in his past, how could she blame him for testing her?
Still, though she hadn’t been shaken by the sight at the time, the memory of Mikhail’s screams and spasms disturbed her a bit. But more than that, the fact that it didn’t affect her more seriously worried her. What sort of person accepted that she had to torture and kill a man to gain another’s trust was a fair bargain?
Perhaps it was the sort of person who became the lieutenant of a man who wanted to take over the world?
And yet, it had never been this complicated in her stories. She had never killed a man, even in fanfiction. Her heart was heavy with guilt that sprang from not feeling guilty enough, and she needed reassurances that she couldn’t give herself.
“Syndrome?” she asked slowly.
He looked up from his sandwich, his peaked hair swishing, his ice blue eyes shining out from behind the dark mask. “Hm?”
“Do you trust me now?”
He seemed taken aback, and for a moment, Vex saw his face soften, and become almost childlike. The he nodded confidently. “Yes. Completely.”
Then she didn’t regret it, not a whit. She’d do it again in an instant, just as thoughtlessly.
000
Syndrome felt slightly ashamed of himself, for testing her that way. Especially when she brought it up that way. Had he been wrong to do so? Had it been too obvious? Would it alienate her?
The next thing she asked surprised him.
“So, when do I get my costume?”
He blinked at her, well, she certainly bounced back quickly. “I’ll order it later today, kay? It’ll be ready in a few days, I’m sure.”
She nodded. “Sounds fine.”
“In the meantime,” Syndrome decided, finishing up the last bites of his sandwich, “I’m going o try to get security back up and running.”
“If you like,” he shrugged, standing up. He held out his hand to her, and pulled her up. They left the late doctor’s dining room, and headed down the back stairs again.
The damage, they discovered, was not extensive. It was merely two crucial wires that had been cut, or rather, chewed through by Mikhail’s rats. They would have to be replaced. Syndrome was going to simply remove a couple of unimportant wires of the same type, and use them as replacements, but he didn’t have to when Vex discovered a tool and repair kit underneath one of the workstations.
“Will this help?” she asked, proffering it to him. He lay on his stomach on the cold floor, half inside the wall, where he had removed one of the cover plates.
“Yeah, lots,” he took it from her, did a little rewiring, and rebooted the system. One by one the monitors and terminals began to light up with renewed life. “All systems are go,” he announced, holding a screwdriver up triumphantly.
Vex giggled and clapped amusedly.
“Now, where were we before that little mishap, hm?” the red haired man sat down at the main terminal, and began to access the files he had been looking through. Now that the threat had been dealt with maybe he could actually get some work done. “Sit there.” He nodded to Vex, gesturing to the second commuter. “I found some of Rasputin’s personal files, I want you to go through them for me and tell me if you find anything that looks important.”
“Okay,” she nodded, calling up the first file. “Wait, he wrote everything in English?”
Syndrome chuckled. “Yeah I wish. No, I had to translate it while you were upstairs.”
“Oh, okay.”
The first thing Syndrome did was find the controls for the hallway deathtraps, and shut them off. He also discovered that there were similar halls throughout the base, which could be keyed to be triggered by any number of responses. He’d deal with those later, for now he wanted to make sure he was the only one who was controlling the system.
They spent the next several hours sitting beside one another in silence, either absorbed, or seemingly absorbed, in their own work. Vex’s was the more engaging, he assumed, since all he was doing was checking programs for malicious coding. Pretty mindless work in his opinion.
So his mind wandered onto other things. For instance, how was he actually going to go about taking over the world? Even with all of his resources it would take a hell of a lot of conventional military might to take the straightforward approach, especially with the supers back in business. He was going to need some kind of doomsday weapon to hold the world hostage with, make them turn over control willingly…
Yes, it was cliché, but it was the only way that Syndrome thought of that could work. Should he begin work on a new Omnidroid? Maybe a fleet of Omnidroids? Oh but then they’d all know it was him. And anyway, he’d have to completely redesign them for pilots, because artificial intelligence was not an option. Maybe he could design a whole new kind of robot, one with a pilot in mind, giant fifty foot behemoths to strike terror in the hearts of mortals…
Or just remind them of Power Rangers.
He smacked his fist disgustedly on the desk. Why was this so difficult? Maybe he should concentrate on killing the Incredibles, before he talked such a complicated problem. Revenge should be a simpler task than world domination. He could lure them into a trap and crush them one by one.
Except that was exactly what he’d just tried to do, at the peak of his power, with minions and robots and an entirely functional base. And look how well that had turned out.
Okay, okay. Before anything, he needed to concentrate on getting his headquarters up and running. Self-sustaining was preferable, but he wasn’t sure how feasible that was in the middle of Siberia. So, first he’d need about fifty or so goons, before or with his first shipment of weapons and parts. Then, technicians and so forth.
000
Vex was getting a little annoyed. After nearly four and a half hours of work she still had yet to turn up anything remotely interesting or significant. Most of what she had found was schematics, and designs, all of which Syndrome already had in hard copy in his folders. She was starting to think that maybe the doctor, or Mikhail, had taken the trouble to delete all of his research before they got a hold of it. But that didn’t make any sense, not when the doctor’s lab was still full of stuff.
That was it. After this one last file, she was going to ask Syndrome if she could take a break.
The file was labeled ‘bwstat01’ and Vex expected it to be full of the precise measurements of Rasputin’s lab coats, or something equally useless and redundant.
It was a brief document, and the first thing that Vex spotted was a comparison of three charts, each with four wavy lines on them, red, green, yellow, and blue. On all the charts the red, green and yellow lines were fairly similar. On the first chart however, the curves of the green line were long waves, short and even overshadowed by the other colors. On the second chart however, the green lines were much taller, overlapping the other lines, and bunched close together like the coils of a spring. But on the third chart the green line was completely erratic, now short, now tall, spiking, and jumping, and even disappearing altogether in a few small spaces.
Even without knowing what the charts showed, Vex could tell that if chart number one was the comparative norm, then whatever the third chart was doing was bad. Possibly very bad. She scrolled down, and found some notes on the diagram.
‘Parawaves, previously thought to be simple psionic background noise, as they occur in all centers of the brain, can now be fairly surmised to have some linkage to the bodies metabolic system. Diagram one expresses the typical ratio of brain activity, in which the parawaves exert no influence over the rest of the brain, and can be understood to in this instance, have no significance whatsoever. Diagram two expresses an extraordinary intensification of parawaves activity, seeming an exact correlation to the subject’s remarkable metabolism. It can not be given that these two factors are in fact related, without further research pertaining to others with the same extraordinary metabolism, however if one assumes that the two are in fact related, then the results of the third diagram can then be linked to the third subject’s dire physicality. If one then assumes cause and effect, it is possible that stabilizing the parawaves in subject three will also stabilize the physicality.’
‘Stabilize the physicality?’ Vex pondered to herself looking over the notes again. She wasn’t positive, but it sounded like the document was talking about Rasputin’s son’s illness. Mikhail had said that it was a disorder of the brain. And what was this about an ‘extraordinary metabolism’?
“Syndrome?”
“Yes?” he asked, looking up at her.
“Have you ever heard of parawaves?”
He furrowed his brow. “Nope. Why, what are they?”
“Er, I’m not sure, but, you better have a look at this.”
Syndrome nodded, standing up, and stretching, shaking one leg out. It had probably fallen asleep, Vex guessed, from sitting down. She wasn’t all that comfortable either, but she was used to sitting at a computer for hours at a time, from all her fanfiction writing.
The redhead stood over her, peering at the screen.
“Is it just me,” she asked, “Or does it sound like they’re talking about supers?”
He frowned, and seemed to skim through the passage. “Hey. Hey, yeah. It does…” He rubbed his chin in consideration. “Are there any more about this?”
“Uh, not sure. I’ll check.” She backed up to the root folder. Sure enough there were more ‘bwstat’ documents. She pulled up the next one.
There were several more brainwave charts, each of them with the same type of green line as the second chart.
‘Procuring other samples for comparative data has proved difficult, but with the co-operation of certain associates, the necessary evaluations were eventually made. As previously hypothesized, conclusive evidence suggests that an excess of parawaves in crucial brain centers is in fact the source of various extraordinary metabolisms. No cause, however, has yet been determined as to why some develop excess parawaves.’
Vex opened the third part, or tried to. An error message appeared on screen.
‘File not found.’
“Damn it,” Vex grumped. “Looks like it was deleted.”
“Or corrupter, or encrypted, or moved,” Syndrome suggested. He didn’t seem upset, quite the opposite in fact. “Try the next one.”
The next several documents also produced error messages, until she got to the eighth one.
‘Early attempts to stabilize the subject’s parawaves have failed. It has become apparent that raising the level from its natural state produces a violently negative reaction, as wave channels must be formed inherently. Attempts to artificially induce higher parawaves in subjects have proved fatal in most cases, and worse than such in others. Suppression to normal levels has been more successful, however, given the main subject’s weakened state, it would be unwise to enfeeble him in such a manner.’
Two more documents were missing, but the last one was fine.
‘Implementation of the stabilizer chip has proved effective in negating the ill effects caused by the main subject’s erratic metabolism. However, certain emotional changes have been noted as a side effect. The subject will be watched closely.’
“Interesting,” Syndrome commented,” Very interesting. So super powers originate from brain wave, and Rasputin found a way to control them…”
“Too bad we don’t have any more of his research.”
Syndrome smirked. “I wouldn’t make any calls on that just yet.”
Vex raised her eyebrows, but he didn’t say anything further on the subject. He put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m almost done with reprogramming this, why don’t you take a break?”
“Okay,” she nodded. “What are you going to do after you finish?”
“Gotta make some calls, get this place operational,” he sat down back at his own terminal. “You’re welcome to the guest room, by the way.”
“Alright,” she stood , but didn’t leave right away. Instead, she lingered behind where Syndrome was sitting. Decisively, before she could talk herself out of it, she bent down and hugged him quickly. “See you later,” she said, and hurried out of the room.
000
Down in the brig, the body of Mikhail Padosev Rasputin hung limp and dead. His chocolaty brown curls hanging over his still white face, arms and legs still spread-eagled in the instrument of his death. He had been a young man of twenty, his youth stolen by obsession, his father’s, and his own.
In life Mikhail had possessed what his father had called an ‘extraordinary metabolism’, and it was the reason that his own father had hated him. His first son’s metabolism was killing him from the inside, why should his second’s not bear such a curse?
His talent had been to manifest from nothing creatures who were separate from his body, but carried out his intent. It was a psychic bond of sorts, the creatures didn’t really have minds of their own, they were guided by his. He could sense where they were, and what they were doing, and they carried out his wishes. Oddly, the bond strengthened when Mikhail slept, and many times in his younger days he had experienced what he believed to be dreams, in which he fully inhabited the body of one of his creatures, only to find himself when he awoke, away from his bed; often where he’s last dreamed himself to be.
A creature, the size of a small dog, with a rat’s form and a lizardlike tail sat staring up at the body, feeling strangely detached. Its whiskers twitched, and its tail flashed, as it spotted a ventilation duct. Escape now, and later?
Payment.
000
Vex found herself growing quickly bored as she sat on the great bed in her new room. There was a TV, yes, but all of the channels were in Russian. She could take a nap, she supposed, but she really wanted to try to avoid messing up her sleep schedule. Syndrome had mentioned that he’d turned off all the deathtraps, so she didn’t think there would be any harm if she got up and explored the base a little herself. After all, they’d only really seen the main areas; there were all sorts of alcoves and subsections that she hadn’t even seen yet.
She stood, and sauntered out of the room, stopping beside the unopened main suite.
‘I wonder what it looks like in there,’ she thought to herself. ‘But I better not touch it. If I guess the password wrong, I’ll probably get shot at, or dropped into a pit of alligators, or something. And if I did get in, Syndrome might get upset. It is his room now, after all.’
So she left the apartments, into the dark cavern that was Rasputin’s lab. As she picked her way carefully through all the scientific equipment, she wondered if any of it had been used in his experiments on his son. Vex wasn’t sure .After all, the doctor had not built the mountain retreat until after Piotr’s death, then again, he’d been obsessed with his elder son, so maybe he had continued his experiments. What else would he have been researching?
She wished there had been more of the data available. Syndrome seemed confident that he could find it, or repeat it, at least, but Vex wanted to know now. Had the doctor ever figured out why some people became supers, or not? It was one thing to say it was caused by brainwaves, but that still didn’t tell her what determined the lucky few to have these ‘parawaves’. Why, for instance, didn’t she?
It was with some trepidation that she approached the elevator. They were running normally of course, but still, her last memory of being on it was not pleasant. Of course, Mikhail couldn’t jump her again, he was dead.
‘I vould have spared you,’ she heard the echo of his voice in her mind, and felt a twinge of guilt. Then one of anger. How dare he? How dare he assume that she’d just stand by and let him kill Syndrome? What was that? Especially since Mikhail couldn’t have known that she’d only been with Syndrome for a day. And he assumed she’d let him do that, just because her own skin was safe? No, as he had no doubt discovered, anyone who wanted Syndrome was going to have to get rid of his first.
The elevator hummed to life as she stepped inside it, and she rode up to the barracks level, intent on wandering around the most complex honeycomb of rooms in the base. Most of the rooms were pretty much empty, except for a bit of furniture. It seemed that whoever it was Rasputin had employed, they’d all had time to take their personal items with them when they’d left. Personally, Vex was currently regretting not having brought more clothes when she’d been asked to pack quickly. She didn’t know exactly how long it would be until she would have something different to wear.
This made her wonder what the costume that Syndrome was getting her was going to look like. She thought of the various outfits of her characters, and things she had drawn, but they all seemed too showy when compared with Syndrome’s simple, yet elegant design.
She thought of the way his cape swished when he walked, and how intense his eyes became when they shown out from behind his mask.
But what about the question that she had been trying not to let creep into her mind. It was unaskable, just rude. What was she supposed to do, walk up and ask him ‘So, Syn, was that an “I like you” kiss, or a “ha, in your face prisoner” kiss?’ Even in her head it sounded stupid. She’d been rude enough asking him whether he trusted her or not, though she was glad he’d said yes. It was comforting, to know that he was at least pleased with her so far.
And besides, did she really want a straight answer? The ‘in your face, prisoner’ option would be horribly disappointing, not to mention embarrassing. And the ‘I like you’ option threatened to be…complicating. Sharon had never had a date before, or even come close. She had no idea what to expect if she became entangled in a romantic relationship with the man who was really supposed to be her ‘boss’. Besides, he was a whole eight years older than her, which didn’t seem like a lot when compared with the fact that the men in her fanfictions were often in their thirties or forties. But that was a story, this was real life. She was practically a kid compared to Syndrome, which was probably how he thought of her. Yes it was almost definitely an ‘in your face, prisoner’ kind of kiss. But that didn’t stop her from savoring the memory of his vicious embrace, and secretly hoping that he did like her, even if it wouldn’t work out well.
As she had been wandering through the barracks, Vex was surprised to come to a room that hadn’t been emptied of all of its contents. Its furnishings were slightly more expensive than those of the other rooms as well, though nowhere near as grand as her room. This must have been the room that belonged to Mikhail. Unlike the other rooms, his was carpeted, and had such extra amenities a writing desk with a computer, a dresser with a mirror on it, and a bookcase. Some of the books, she noticed, were even in English. This made sense with what she knew about foreign countries though; they made a lot more of an effort to learn English, than Americans made at learning their languages. One book was sitting open on the desk, set face down, as though he’d meant to come back to it quite soon.
Vex picked the book up, noticing first that it was quite old, and worn, and the pages were yellowed. It was a well loved book, obviously, and then that it was in English. It was a copy of ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Caroll.
Of all the strange things that Alice saw in her journey Through The Looking-Glass, this was the one that she always remembered most clearly. Years afterwards she could bring the whole scene back again, as if it had been only yesterday – the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the Knight – the setting sun gleaming through his hair, and shining on his armour in a blaze of light that quite dazzled her – the horse quietly moving about, with the reins hanging loose on his neck, cropping the grass at her feet – and the black shadows of the forest behind – all this she took in like a picture, as, with one hand shading her eyes, she leant against a green, watching the strange pair, and listening, in a half dream, to the melancholy music of the song.
Vex set the book down, immediately wishing that she hadn’t touched it at all. How cruel of her to touch the things of a man that she had killed. How cold of her to think she could leaf through his possessions.
Was Alice his favorite, she wondered. She turned to leave the room, when something caught her eye sitting on the bed. It was the briefcase full of money that Syndrome had given him. Of course it was still here, Mikhail had never left, and Rasputin had been dead when they’d arrived. So, in essence, the base had been free, because they had killed the owner.
Vex picked up the briefcase, with the intention of taking it back to Syndrome. She wondered if he had realized that he hadn’t lost the money. Two and a half million dollars might, or might not be a lot of money in his mind, but it was more than Vex had thought she’d ever see in her entire lifetime.
The next room she found herself in was the barracks rec room, with a large screen TV being the dominant item. What excited Vex more though, was the sight of a small CD player. Vex had brought her walkman, but didn’t want to use it, in case she ran out of batteries. She unplugged it, picked it up with her free hand, and headed back to her room.
000
Syndrome had gone through the same mercenary agency as last time to hire his minions. Of course, this meant he had to pay a higher price because of the fact that he’d lost a fair number on them in his last debacle. But money, as ever was not an issue. He’s also ordered a shipment of his own equipment, and more parts and such, to get the technical lab in working order. Both would be arriving in two days.
Which meant there was time to kill.
He stood up, and stretched, his whole body felt better for it, having been hunched over the computer for so long. And then he remembered, there was one call he hadn’t made yet.
He picked the cell phone back up, and dialed.
“Bonjour,” greeted a cheerful French voice. “Theese is Maurice speaking.”
“Maurice, it’s Syndrome.”
“Syndrome? Zey said you were dead! To what do I owe the pleasure of your call, eh?”
“I need you to design make a costume.”
“Oh? ‘Ave you become tired of your own? Eet was one of my finest achievements.”
“No, no, I still love it, Maurice. It’s not for me.”
“Oh, zen who eez it for?”
“My lieutenant.”
“Very well, what are his measurements?”
“Hers. And, uh, I don’t know. Should I…go ask?”
The fashion designer chuckled. “Why don’t you just bring her to my office for a fitting, eh?”
“Alright. Are you free tomorrow?”
“For you, mon amie, the door eez always open.”
“Riiiight. See you tomorrow Maurice.”
“Au revoir.”
To be continued…
And now, the reviews….
C.D. Anders: I definitely don’t mind long reviews! Sorry I didn’t respond to yours last chapter, but I got it after 9 was already posted. I hear what you’re saying about too much romance. I think you will be pleased to note that while romance is a factor, it is not really the main attraction. If you knew where this was going at chapter 8 you must be psychic! I didn’t think I’d put in quite enough clues!
RavensHaelo: Yes, Vex is a bit remorseful. But not much.
Artymas: Homework sucks! Hope you enjoyed the chapter.
Shadow Fox Forever: I really liked chapter 9 too. It practically wrote itself.
Dark Fire Angel: I’m so glad you like the fic! Syndrome is my favorite character…ever!
Maya Beebop: Mmmmmm….kiss. Lol I’m glad you liked it. It’s very convenient where you left off, eh? Haha, I made you like a mary-sue!
Megan the Vampire Slayer: go check out my deviantart gallery, and also ookamki-anye
WormmonABC: I checked the lyrics in the flap of my cd, and they say damp. I personally always thought it was damn, as to calling Syn handsome being extreme, people have different tastes. Vex thinks he’s handsome. She has a thing for redheaded, pudgy men, I guess, and so do I.
Oh, by the way, my friend loved the Incredibles, and I made a Syn fan out of her. Though she also likes Dash, so I get to call her a pedophile!
See you tomorrow!
