Flying High
Chapter 1 – On The Mend
By: CountessMorgana
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The daughter of Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl was not the first high-school student to be a super, and she certainly wasn't the first teenager to have a crush on a boy. Before Violet Parr and Tony Rydinger, before the ban on supers, before the Glory Days ended, there was Stratogale and Macroburst. And their story isn't quite as typical as one would expect.

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If I was to hold one hand over my face now
Would you know me?
Or would you see the other side of me?
And if you were to notice
There is a plan I've been devising
To go, to go now, far away from here
And I, gonna be so brave
And I, gonna go so far away...

We're gonna go there
We're gonna go there
We're gonna see the daylight
And I, gonna fly away now
And I, gonna go where the path runs high

bôa, 'Elephant'

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London, England. April 1941

For as long as Mackie Kintail could remember, the skies of London had always been burning. His house had been dark all day and dark all night to protect themselves against Hitler's aerial attacks, and the sky had still burned. Inside, the still air had been hot and stifling, lit by candles. It smelled of smoke and burning things.

Shops were shuttered, the windows empty. There was little to sell, with importing curtailed: no foodstuffs from Europe, no silks and cottons from the East. These and other luxuries were trading at three times their cost on the black market, and everything was strictly rationed.

He remembered the smoke, the darkness and the burning. And at the makeshift grammar school it had been no better. He had stood on the roof with the other children and in the distance had seen the cities burn. They had cried around him, saying it was the end of the world. He'd cried with them.

And then the bombs quite literally hit home.

It had been dark, so dark. He heard his mother's dying gurgles. His father's last gasps. He himself was trapped in the homemade bomb shelter, unable to escape, the corrugated metal walls pressing in on all sides. He didn't want to die here, alone. Wiltshire with its wide valleys and high Downs seemed a hundred years ago and a million miles away.

Wiltshire. His uncle's house was there. Cullen House, they called it. All the rooms had huge windows and high ceilings; Mackie would never feel trapped in the dark there. And outside the wind would blow his hair and clothes about, mother always fussed about that... He wanted to feel the wind on his face just one more time. Closed his eyes and imagined he could, the wind growing stronger...

Then the rubble began to shift and he heard his uncle, mum's brother Everard, shouting.

"Kenneth, for God's sake man, what have those German bastards done to you? Mary, ah, poor Mary, don't leave me here, not now! Mackie, Mackie, where are you lad? Please let one of them be alive, if I never do anything else, let him live..."

Mackie didn't know how long he was down there. It might have been two minutes or twenty years, but Everard finally reached the bomb shelter. And when the battered doors burst open on his uncle's tearstained face, Mackie gladly quit his prison with one thought in his head—

'I never want to be in a place like that again.'

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Eleven Years Later: Riverview Suburb of Megalopolis, USA, August 1952

Summer in Riverview was as picturesque as ever, and nature enthusiasts and photographers alike loved the area for its forest, its wildlife, and the silvery ribbon of river bisecting the woods from whence the suburb gained its name.

Yet the tall sloping roofs of a series of Neo-Classical buildings interrupted the visual tranquility of the area. A person sat on the pinnacle of a cliff some fifty feet off the ground, taking one last look at this old school before it changed forever come September.

This was Riverview Heights Preparatory School, which the visitor attended. It was the type of high-fee high-quality educational institution preferred by Megalopolis' elite and wealthy, many of whom called the Riverview suburb home.

Fifteen-year-old Mackenzie A. Kintail was descended from two of Britain's more illustrious families, and the ward of one of Megalopolis' most well regarded and expensive psychologists. There was no question of not going to Riverview Heights, as Dr. Everard Howard refused to consider otherwise. (All right, so the good doctor would often complain of the superiority of the British school system and that if circumstances had allowed it, Mackenzie would have been sent to England's finest, but that was a moot point.)

In all honesty, Mackie wouldn't have minded going back to England. Anything to escape the chaos bound to occur once the new school year rolled around.

Riverview Preparatory had existed peacefully since its inception in 1889 as a boys-only school. But beginning in 1905, after the nearby Victoria Heights Girls' Academy burned to the ground, increasing pressure from the community had led to Riverview Prep opening its doors to female students. There was outrage on all sides; would-be co-eds and their families wanted in, alumni and faculty wanted them out, and the then-current roster of male students were divided into yea, nay, or indifference.

In accordance with the sensibilities of the time, an agreement was finally struck where all classes and meals were gender-segregated. This inadvertently led to 'two' Riverview Heights Schools. Aside from dances and the school library, male and female students would otherwise never be able to meet on school grounds without severe reprimand.

But times had changed, and Riverview finally had to change with it... Or so they said. Three years ago the announcement was made to desegregate Riverview, allowing it to truly become a single co-educational institution. The integration process began last year with the lower school – the students from pre-kindergarten to the sixth grade – and had been so successful that the middle and upper school classes were following suit.

It was bad enough, dealing with the usual bullies and annoying studies. Now Mackenzie had to face this on top of everything else?

How could life get any worse?

As if in answer to the unspoken question, there was a distant characteristic buzzing from the sky behind him, and a loud commanding voice sounding in his head.

'Macroburst! Bomb Voyage is in the Megalopolis Museum of Antiquities with hostages. The translator says he's threatening to blow up the entire complex if the police don't let him leave with the Van Gogh "Sunflowers"! Plasmabolt and Psycwave are on their way. Can you make it?'

Mackie bit back an irritated groan. 'I'm at Riverview Prep. Give me two minutes.'

'Done. I've got your location, and Plasmabolt will meet you enroute – Everseer out.'

Summons received, Mackenzie Kintail got up and stood precariously on the cliff edge. Grinning slightly, he opened his arms and fell forward, letting the winds catch him, letting himself free-fall before his instincts told him to pull up and out. He didn't survive the Blitz to end up as a bloody pancake at the cliff base.

Life really did have a bad habit of throwing a wrench in the works sometimes, but flying more than made up for it.

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Enid Mavis Gwynns took pleasure in bird watching, a hobby she'd enjoyed since she was old enough to toddle to the windows of her house and look outside. She loved everything about birds, the shape of their wings, their aerodynamic forms, how they glided and soared so effortlessly. And the sounds! Literally hundreds of chirps, tweets, songs and screams that made up their language.

At least, others heard them as nonsensical noise. Enid understood nearly every word.

She sat quietly on a sturdy branch of an oak tree, listening in silence to a small flock of sparrows above her. They were chatting about the best places to find worms and bugs, which houses to avoid now the owners had a new cat, and how the seagulls by Megalopolis Bay were trying to make their way upriver and take over their territory.

Then the sparrows and Enid were startled out of their perches by a loud whirring that sounded over the treetops. The sparrows were quick to take wing, but Enid nearly toppled out of the oak. Only a frantic grab of the trunk saved her.

Curiosity took hold after a moment, and Enid quickly climbed up the tree to the highest point she could reach safely. There was the source of the whirring, heading for downtown Megalopolis. And down there, at the cliff's edge...

Enid Gwynns, like most girls who resided in the Riverview suburb, attended Riverview Heights Preparatory. She enjoyed it, as the school's location gave her some of the best bird watching opportunities all year round.

But then there was that merger with the Riverview boys, which Enid wasn't too enthusiastic about. Many girls fully ignored school convention to visit the boys and gossip eagerly about their encounters later, and one name came up as often as not – Mackenzie Kintail. From hearsay, he was the quiet type with a few friends, and was athletic and studious. He wasn't a jock, but nor was he a nerd; he was simply an average guy who (like everyone else) happened to have more money than usual. Rumor had it that he was British and had had to leave the country because of the war. For what it was worth, nobody had heard him speak with an accent, so a lot of people ignored that one.

Enid wasn't too enthusiastic about young Mr. Kintail either, as he seemed rather sly and secretive during the one time she'd met him. He was looking intently at his watch in the Riverview library before running out of the building, earning a reprimand from the grumpy archivist as he did so.

And now Mackenzie Kintail stood not more than fifty yards away, standing on the precipice. As Enid watched, he smiled, a surprise in itself: nobody had ever seen Kintail smile before.

She was still watching in bemusement when he spread his arms and pitched himself forward, off the cliff.

Enid gave a scream and really did fall out of the oak this time. Arms flailing, she plunged downwards, involuntarily closing her eyes.

'Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop makeitstopmakeitstop...'

It did.

She stopped falling, and the birds around her were chirping crazily.

Enid slowly opened one eye, then the other. Her favorite shirt was torn with a black patchy stain on her shoulder, and innumerable scratches and cuts were on her arms and legs. She checked her feet, making sure no damage was done there, when two things made themselves known:

One, she was not standing on the ground.

Two, she was floating in mid-air without any visible aid.

She promptly dropped another six feet in shock, seizing a branch to stop her descent. Her feet still hung in space, as if she were standing on an invisible floor. Dazed, Enid shut her eyes again, and experimentally prised her fingers off the branch one by one. With that done, she reopened her eyes.

Nope, still floating.

Among her feathered audience was a large red robin. It cocked its head and took off; flying past her with a loud chirp that Enid knew meant, "Come on!"

Intuitively, Enid followed it. Any initial fears melted away in moments. Oh God, this was wonderful! No harnesses or wires, no uncomfortable airplane cabins, just pure and simple flight, and Enid loved every moment of it.

She twisted and turned, dodging tree trunks, speeding up in a delirious exhilaration. Banked right, and left the tree line, finding herself at the cliff.

The cliff. Mackenzie.

Euphoria gave way to horror. Enid made an ungraceful landing, if one could call a belly flop a landing.

"Need to work on that," she muttered to herself, darting on foot to the edge, where she knelt and peered over.

He'd jumped from there. He might've been upset over the classes merging too, but surely that wasn't so great a problem to kill himself over! Enid expected blood, bone, entrails, all the messy signs of a suicide.

She did not expect to see nothing. Confusion added itself to her shock. Enid felt the adrenaline-infused strength drain out of her, and she collapsed in an exhausted heap against an obliging rock a few feet from the overhang.

'I know I saw him... So where did he go? Have I gone crazy?'

Enid groaned, once again looking down at her ruined clothes.

'And what am I going to tell Mom and Dad?'

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Downtown Megalopolis, USA, August 1952

Macroburst had reached the museum in record time, donning his mask and shedding his civilian clothes as he flew. Plasmabolt had touched down only mere seconds after he did, glaring at him askance.

"Does everything have to be a race for you, Mackie?" she asked, only half-joking. She held out a duffel bag that was twin to her own. "Here."

"Thanks. And we might as well enjoy life, Plasma," he retorted while stuffing his civilian clothes into the bag. "Why the long face?"

Plasmabolt had been quietly marvelling at Macroburst's ability to shift easily between his native London inflection and that of his adopted country. "What? Oh, I thought I saw one of those Riverview Heights girls in the trees on my way here, right before we met up. She's a member of the local bird watching society, I see her often in my civilian job. Decent enough girl, really helpful."

"That's nice," Macroburst said, scanning the museum perimeter. There was a backdoor, some sort of emergency exit that looked promising if they needed to get inside quickly...

"And I think she might've seen Mackenzie Kintail jump off that cliff," Plasmabolt reluctantly added.

Her teammate nearly broke his neck from whiplash turning to face her.

"Not good. Will we need to call Dicker?" Macroburst asked nervously. Granted, it wouldn't be the first time the NSA agent had had to erase a civilian's memory of seeing something that they shouldn't have – and Macroburst was by far from the worst offender – but surveillance and probation really wasn't the best thing to be under when one was a super.

"Ol' Rick? No, I had Everseer scan her. The girl now thinks she got sunstroke from staying out too long and started hallucinating. It happens sometimes," Plasmabolt smiled reassuringly. "Your accent's back, did you notice?"

Macroburst scoffed. "Hardly."

"I rest my case."

"Hey!"

'Macroburst. Plasmabolt. Are you there?' Everseer's voice boomed in their heads.

'South side of the museum.' Macroburst replied. 'You?'

'North, with the bulk of the police force; they can't talk Bomb Voyage into a compromise. Psycwave is ready to paralyse him, but we all know that's short term. Plasmabolt, you and I will need to infiltrate the building before then. Have you any means of entry?'

'Fire exit right here, and still open.' Plasmabolt answered, perusing the door in question. 'Looks like a few of the museum patrons and staff managed to get out that way. Have you located the bomb?'

'Yes. Psycwave will send you the schematics now.'

As Plasmabolt stiffened under the mental images that were flooding her mind, Macroburst heard Everseer again. This time, his voice was quieter, more paternal, and Macroburst knew this conversation was private.

'Son, d'you think you'll be able to help us out inside there?'

Macroburst was silent, but the memories rose again unbidden. The bombs. The screams. The suffocating darkness that seemed like it would never end. An involuntary shudder ran through him, and Everseer had his answer.

'I thought as much. You might want to head north, stay with Psycwave. There's a good chance she may need to possess the frog. Guard her then if it comes to that.'

'I will, Uncle.' Macroburst responded.

'Good lad. Bring me over to your position and head to mine so we can finish this.'

To be continued...

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Well, my first ever Incredibles fanfiction, and on characters from the NSA files to boot! Feels a bit odd to write with only grainy pictures and the briefest of descriptions to work with, but I can only hope this started out on the right foot.

I had to devise a timeline of sorts with only the few concrete dates given in the film, and here Macroburst would have been born in early September of 1936. Stratogale (Enid) is a year younger while Everseer is some 23 years Mackie's senior. Which means Mackie would have been 4 years old during the Battle of Britain.

Crikey, I have too much time on my hands...

But wait! There's that nice blue button on the lower left of your screen... Yes, that's the one. Don't leave here without telling me what you think!