The Path of Redemption

The Incredibles: The path of redemption.
Englishwitch
Disclaimer: Disclaimer- I do not own The Incredibles, it is a Disney/ Pixar animation motion picture

Chapter 10-The revelation

David Conner paced his motel room impatiently. Every few seconds he glanced at his wristwatch and growled angrily. He was tired of waiting for Leon to return. The man had been gone nearly two hours and, while it may have felt like a while it was to be expected considering the task that David had set him.
There was a knock at the door and David practically jumped over to it and yanked it open, hoping it wasn‘t just the manager coming to complain about his credit card. Leon was standing outside a pile of files and folders in his arms. His camera was balanced precariously on top and he looked at David with gratitude. “Thanks man, couldn’t get the door myself. Had to kick just to knock.”
David took the camera and placed it down on a small table at the bedside. Leon slid the pile of papers down onto the bed and grabbed the paper folder from the top of the file. “The photo’s, just as you asked.”
David opened the file, it contained a pile of black and white photo’s that had been taken earlier that day by Leon. There were two versions of the same set; one was the normal photo’s of Tony and Violet before during and after their argument. The second was a set of blown up photo’s that were of Tony and Violet, containing full body shots and others were zoomed in so much they were head shots. At that size the people were a little blurry and grainy but you could still tell who they were.
“Excellent.” David muttered, looking through the pictures one by one. “Did you get everything else?”
Leon nodded. “It wasn’t easy. I had to call in a few favours and give out quite a few bribes but I got it all.” He grabbed one of the files and opened it up. “But why you want these records are beyond me.”
“If I’m right then all will become clear.” David muttered. He tossed the photo’s back onto the bed and took the file from Leon. He sat down on the bed and read through it carefully.
“Take the other report and look through those old newspapers and highlight any dates that match.”
“What?” Leon asked in confusion. David looked at him as if he was being deliberately stupid. He grabbed a folder with a green cover, there only two and he was holding the other in his hand.
“Take this.” He jabbed it into his hands. “and look through these.” He indicated the pile of folders next to him, some blue, others red. “and if you find any weird stories that match dates in there.” He pointed at the green folder again. “Highlight it and let me know.”
Leon grabbed a small selection of the blue and red folders and sat down on the other side of the bed and started to read.

They ordered cheap Chinese food and made many trips to a vending machine in the motel lobby to pick up coffee and soda. David and Leon barely spoke while they were looking through the files. They just continued reading and making notes in notebooks. Once they had finished with their own piles of blue and red folders they swapped and started all over again. Leon didn’t have any real idea of David was looking for but did the best he could. He could guess what the guy was looking for but it would have been good to have it confirmed. The two green folders were school reports. Usually they were confidential but a couple of bribes had taken care of that. David was reading Tony’s and he was reading Violet’s. the blue folders contained newspaper reports going back months, to a few months before Psychewave tried to take over city hall. The red folders were in a lesser number and were a collection of various other reports. Mostly they were eyewitness accounts. Many people were willing to talk quite freely when they were offered a few bucks.

Leon ’s eyes were starting to hurt, his brain just couldn’t process any more words. The coffee was terrible and the soda was cheap and tasted just as bad as the coffee and the Chinese food had arrived barely lukewarm. All in all he was fed up and ready to give up. David finally took notice of his friend and nodded, he wasn’t far from quitting himself. There was only so much reading a person could do.
“Alright lets see what you’ve got.” He said, taking the notebook from Leon. Leon was grateful for the break and lay down on the bed and closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples.

David looked over the notebook. Leon hadn’t done that bad a job. He had made some good notes on Violet. “Let’s see.” He muttered to himself. “Violet Parr. Well here’s something. She skipped school for a couple of days before that giant robot attacked the city.”
“The syndrome incident.” Leon muttered without moving from his resting place. David nodded. He had won a couple of small awards doing a few stories on the Supers Returning. But almost every reporter across the planet had won one award or another for one story or another they had done.
“Just after the robot attack her family home was destroyed in an explosion?” David read in disbelief. “A gas leak?”
“That’s what the newspaper said.” Leon muttered. He suddenly sat up and began rifling through the files again. “Actually.” He found a couple of red folders and opened them up, pointing at a couple of statements. One was a bank statement. “Something just clicked. I read it but hardly noticed before. Here and here. The home was rebuilt but their insurance was never claimed and the families personal finances never took a dent.”
“That is interesting.” David said, looking at the files. “Where did that money come from?” He turned back to the file as if the answer was written down in there. He noticed more stuff. Over the following months Violet’s grades had suffered slightly but had levelled out for a time. A few statements from kids at the school said that Violet and Tony had become a couple. School kids were very chatty for ten dollars. The grades had climbed in the weeks after the two had got together. “Hello hello.” David muttered. “Violet’s attendance dropped to zero after the first Shifter sighting. Vanisher ended up in hospital because of that.” He muttered the last sentence as an afterthought then paused as he read on. “Violet’s reason for skipping school was a hospital stay due to an ‘accident.’ What hospital did she go to?”
Leon looked through a couple of the red folders and until he found the right one.
“Why are you so interested in this girl anyway?” He muttered. But he continued to search the folders, not daring to stop when David got into his flow of work.
“This girl and Rydinger had an argument about someone who could have gone to prison. Rydinger knows who that person is and what they’ve done. That’s why he got so upset. Somewhere in these files those two kids lives will cross over with the same person in common; a criminal most likely. When we find that common element we’ll know who it is and probably find a nice little twist on our story.”
“Whatever you say.” Leon muttered doubtfully. He admitted there were a few odd bits to Tony and a few questions were popping up about Violet too, but David was the only one to think there was a newsworthy story hidden away.
“Violet and Vanisher were admitted to the same hospital.” David said, as if he’d found something important.
“You sure?” Leon pressed.
“Everyone knows what hospital Vanisher went to. The first super ever to be hospitalised, several times. After Shifter and after Psychewave. Violet went to the same at the same time Vanisher was in there. The doctors report said she fell down the stairs.”
“So the poor girl is clumsy so what?” Leon asked.
“Some of her injuries don’t sound like they could be caused by a fall down the stairs. Some of her injuries don’t sound like they were caused by a fall down the stairs.” He sighed. “This girl is as big a mystery as Tony.” He sighed and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, none of these things cross over with anything in Rydinger’s life.” His eyes scrolled down the page until he found some dates that matched the ones on his notes on Tony. “Ok, now this is very interesting.” He said, talking more to himself now that to Leon. “The same day that Rydinger was being treated at hospital for injures he received while he was Psychewave’s hostage, and the same day Vanisher was being treated for injuries she got from Psychewave, Shifter and that robot thing. Violet’s medical records say she was back in hospital for ‘further accidental injuries’.” He looked at the medical reports in the red file again. “Reports are pretty vague. Doctors say that her already existing injuries led to her second accident. But they don’t say what that accident was.”
“So she’s *very* clumsy. So what?” Leon pressed. David looked at him and shook his head. Leon was pretty right, it didn’t reveal who the two kids were arguing about.
“She was released the same day as Vanisher too.” David muttered. After the psyche wave incident Violet and Tony’s lives didn’t cross over in any way that would bring in a criminal. They had attended the same therapist for up to a month after the Psychewave incident. David didn’t recognise the name; he would get a background check on the shrink later. After the therapist they didn’t do anything news worthy; there was nothing in the papers that connected with their lives. There were only a few connections through hospital appointments for follow up examinations to check how their injuries were healing. They had a couple of the same days, mostly different ones but they both went to the same hospital to get checked up. The hospital that had housed Vanisher. After that there was nothing in the records. Their relationship had become nothing more than a normal relationship. David had scoured all these files for anything related to Tony but there was nothing. If this guy was having a relationship with Vanisher then he was being really careful not to appear in the same places Vanisher appeared in public. There was nothing that would tie any of them together, not the two kids and Vanisher or even a criminal at all. He guessed that perhaps they ran into a recovering criminal at their therapy sessions but that was just a tad far fetched.

David sighed and sat down on the bed, rubbing his eyes. This was starting to give him a headache. He had just wasted the last few hours and had found absolutely nothing. Not only did all the evidence say that there was no reason Tony and his girlfriend should be arguing over a criminal, but it was showing that perhaps there was no story on Tony to be found either. From the look of things Tony had never even met Vanisher before the day he was taken hostage by Psychewave. That was the problem though with just relying on these records; it couldn’t give you the whole tale. Despite all the things that were written down, there were so many things that weren’t written down. Of course any meetings with Tony and Vanisher wouldn’t be in the papers or any of these other reports. If Tony and Vanisher were having a relationship then maybe, just maybe, Tony could have contact with criminals. But there was no way Violet would know any of them unless she knew about the relationship and had even met with Vanisher too. That was an interesting thought; a threesome with a Super. But it was too weird a thought and now David was beginning to actually think that Tony wasn’t having a relationship with Vanisher. That was a difficult thought for him to house; he had spent six months trying to prove that was the story.

David’s eyes rolled over the notes once more. There had to be something. There was a puzzle here, there was a story that was newsworthy but now he just couldn’t tell what the story was. Violet’s school attendance wasn’t perfect. There was more going on with Violet’s life than in Tony’s. There was a day in recent history that everyone said was the day Vanisher turned evil. She had responded to a report that Shifter was in an apartment building with Psychewave as a hostage. The next time she was seen the three of them were working together trying to take over the city. After that day Violet was due to return from school but hadn’t. There was a note about it in her school records because an excuse had never been given by Violet or her parents. But nothing had come of it; she had never been reprimanded. Violet hadn’t returned to school for weeks because of her second accident. Which, he just noticed, was on the same day that Vanisher had been admitted to hospital because of the injuries she had obtained overthrowing Psychewave.
David took Violet’s school record and starting to read them. There might be something in there had Leon had missed because it hadn’t joined up with any weird events in the newspapers. After returning to school Violets attendance had been perfect and her grades were slowly but surely climbing again; until just a couple of days ago. Violet had skipped the entire afternoon of school. Something in David’s head told him that meant something. What was it about the other day. The wheels turned and it clicked. He had quizzed Tony about it; the other day Vanisher had made an appearance at the school where both Tony and Violet attended. In the time after the sighting Violet had disappeared. Vanisher appeared and Violet had vanished.
“Vanished?” He muttered. The word bounced around in his head. Why had that particular word occurred to him?
“What now?” Leon asked. The photographer had all but lost interest in the subject. He would continue taking pictures but he didn’t care if Tony was having an affair with Vanisher or not anymore.
David didn’t answer. In his head all kinds of thoughts were churning around and connecting. The same hospital’s, the same times in the hospitals, the same time between public appearances after those hospital stay‘s, Violet at school and Vanisher fighting criminals. Tony was connected to Vanisher somehow maybe this was how. Now he thought about it he realised that their appearances were similar, maybe it was more than just a general likeness.
“Shit.” He muttered.
“What?” Leon pressed. The tone in David’s voice had caught his interest.
David tossed down the notebooks and started to root through the files until he found the folder with the photographs. This would reveal all for certain. He found one; a close up of Violet’s face. Out of his pocket he pulled a black marker and started scribbling over her face.
“What are you doing?” Leon almost shouted. These were his work, his photographs and here was his friends defacing them. David didn’t answer but merely turned the photo around for Leon to see. Over Violets face he had sketched a mask, similar to the one Vanisher wore. It was crude, a little messy but it was the same mask. But that wasn’t the only thing that was the same. With the mask over her face Violet’s appearance seemed to change and she resembled a whole different person. Leon had seen similar appearance changes in perfectly normal people when the put on and take off pairs of glasses. That was the key to how super’s identities stayed secret; they never looked the same with the masks off. With the mask on Violet Parr perfectly resembled Vanisher.
“Who does that look like to you?” David asked smugly.

To be continued.