Chapter Text
“And we hope you have a wonderful senior year here, Ms. Veronica Best.”
“Thank you. I’ll sure try.” She says disingenuous.
“Your mother can stay as long as-”
“Oh, she’s not my mom.” Veronica says quickly, a little offended in fact.
“Sorry, your guardian can say as long as you like. Have a great first day.”
Veronica and her guardian walk out into the hallway before class starts. Rowdy teenagers fill the halls, throwing footballs down the hallway, having shallow talks in front of their lockers as Veronica looks uncomfortably at the small space around her.
“You’ll be alright. Everything will be fine.” her guardian says, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Easy for you to say, your life isn’t in danger.”
“I assure you it is.”
“Whatever, Mirage! You know he’d never hurt you!”
Mirage’s brows lower in annoyance. “Have a good day at school, Veronica.”
She huffs as she watches Mirage walk back to her new sleek black car. The same one she only dreamed of having. It was faster than any other on the market, not like she could drive it though, he’d never let her.
As the hallways clear, Veronica trudges down, nose to schedule, trying to decipher what L3H stands for, and where it could even be in a school that only has one floor. She walks for a while before running headfirst into a stranger and falling to the floor. He seemed annoyed and frustrated at first, but once she looks up at him with her big brown eyes, his gaze softens, and so does his voice.
“...hey.”
“Hey.” She says just as soft. She pushes a piece of her curly brown hair behind her ear before he helps her up. She looks away and finally comes to her senses, and says, “Oh! I’m sorry, I'm new here, I actually just moved, and I'm just trying to find my classes so-"
“I-It's alright! Uh, hey, you know, I could help you find them actually, I'm like, kind of the expert at uh... giving tours.”
Veronica laughs a little, and he smiles, looking surprised his dumb joke made her laugh at all."
“I wouldn't want to make you late, though..." She says a little worried.
"Don't worry.” He says leaning his arm against the lockers smoothly as the loud school bell rings. “I already am.”
She smiles, and he spends the entirety of first period giving her a tour of the school and showing her every class, and she discovers that L3H is in the only L shaped hallway in the building, and 3H is just the room number. He shows her the gym, the cafeteria, the best route to get to the track outside, and the only stairwell that leads to the roof, “The best lunch and hang out spot,” in his opinion. But before he can show her to her last class, the bell for second period rings.
“Well, I gotta run, sorry we didn’t get to your last class.” He says putting a hand on the back of his head.
She looks up at him as she says, "That's alright. You can show me later, at lunch maybe?"
“Yeah, for sure...” he says slowly as he watches her walk to her second period.
“What the hell was that?!" Syndromes voice booms inside her head, "I mean I get you're a teenager and all, but can we STICK TO THE TASK AT HAND?!” Veronica holds her head in her hands as her ears start ringing. "Oh, come on! don't tell me you've forgotten? Your life is on the line here, Vee. I could kill you right here, right now-”
"Yes, I know." Her head feels ten times as heavy as before, and pressure begins to build.
"Don't get all upset. All you have to do is find one guy. Just one! You already know his name. You act like this is hard or something- are you even listening to me?"
Veronica looks ahead to her class with a furrowed brow, trying to focus on anything else. “Yeah, totally...” she says rolling her eyes, but then feels a sharp, splitting pain in her head, causing her ears to ring louder than before and her nose to bleed.
“Apparently you forgot who I am, Veronica. I could split your brain in half at any moment. Don't test me. And don't fail me."
She wipes her nose on her hand, and huffs, frustrated. It's a lot more blood than she’s ever delt with before, and this time, he really feels serious. She’s scared, but that’s become a normal lingering feeling for her. Veronica grits her teeth as she walks to the bathroom, and begins washing her hands and face and, of course, is late to class because of it.
Once she makes it to class, she sits down, looking for anyone who could possibly be him. Because if she doesn’t find him... she’d rather not think about that. No one in her first class stands out, besides for the girls sitting behind her, whispering about her as if she can’t hear them sitting two feet in front of them. Her third period, again, no one interesting, a lot of whispering. In her fourth period, one of the girls from before sits beside her, asking her shallow questions like, “Are you new? When did you come here? Why were you late? Do you know anyone here?” But Veronica rolls her eyes. She asks like she hasn’t made assumptions about those exact same questions already. After an entire class of nodding along to whatever she’s saying, she goes to lunch, looking for the guy she met before.
Though, no matter where she looks, she doesn’t find him. Not in the cafeteria, not in the hallways, not even on the roof. She sighs, hanging her feet off the building, eating the average school food as a slight breeze blows by. She hears laughing and yelling nearby, and she looks over to see the guy from before playing tag with a bunch of other jock looking dudes. She smiles, it’s a sweet sight, highschoolers usually don’t play around like its recess. She is a little peeved though, he said he’d show her to her last class, and yet, here she is, on the roof alone.
Fifth and sixth period go by, and yet nothing. She sits down near the back of class and sighs, defeated. It would have been great to find him today, but it is only the first day of school. Maybe Syndrome will understand. Maybe he’ll tell her that it’s fine, that they can always find him later. And maybe, they’ll hug at the end, and he’ll apologize for everything he’s done to her! She rolls her eyes and huffs, frustrated that in an hour she’ll go “home” and have nothing to show for it.
Someone sits down next to her, and says, “Hey, looks like we have math together.” She turns to look at him, realizes he’s the guy from before, and her mood instantly changes.
“Would be better if we had chemistry.”
He looks at her shocked, and tries to reply, but he breathed in too quickly, and all he can do is cough, red-faced from lack of air and embarrassment.
As they sit through their honors math class as his eyes dart from the board to her and back. He’s taking a jumble of notes, all chicken scratch and moving further off the page with every letter, not that he’s trying to pay attention anyway. She looks down at her paper though, copying exactly what’s on the board making no sense of it in her mind at all.
She whispers to herself, “Can you help me with this later?”
Syndrome’s voice rings back, “Seriously? Calculus isn’t even that hard!” She sighs a frustrated sigh, and he inhales sharply, “Look, you know what, if you find him, I’ll help you, how’s that sound?” he says in a mocking tone.
She leans back in her seat, and stares straight ahead and says, “Great,” through gritted teeth.
Next to her, he noticed her lack of enthusiasm just as their teacher mentioned their first homework of the week, and he sees her frustratedly walk out the door as he tries to catch up with her. But a sea of students erupts from every door, and he loses sight of her.
As she steps into Mirage’s beautiful car, she feels a slight click in the center of her mind.
“He’s gone.” Veronica informs her, and she breathes a small sigh of relief.
“He’s upset with you, you know.”
“It’s the first day of school! How does he expect me to find him on day one! It's not like he would be able to find any of them. It took him years to even figure out their secret identities!"
“...I wouldn’t tell him that.”
“I would.”
After driving for an hour, Mirage and Veronica arrive at a place in the middle of a dry dessert like area on the outskirts of the city. Usually, Veronica likes watching the ground shift underneath them, and the gentle spin of the giant metal elevator that takes them deep underground. But right now, she’s struggling through her calculus homework on the pull-out desk from the glove box. Another reason to love this car of its vinyl wood interior, and intriguing features like that. But all Veronica is focused on is the small black print that's starting to melt into the white working area. Maybe she’s been staring at it too long.
They arrive in the garage and take yet another elevator down even further into the earth. Veronica can only stare frustrated at the page, as Mirage puts in a long code very quickly, which opens the door to a long white hallway. Today, the small pools on either side of the main path are open, but Veronica could never figure out why he even had them. There was nothing in them except clear water, and the white shiny vinyl that covered every wall and surface only made the pools look that much emptier.
She looks up and is greeted with the same sight as always, two giant black metal doors with silver rings and hinges. They’d have to be around twenty feet tall, Veronica thinks, but she’s always been a bad guesser. Mirage opens the doors for her, taking her homework as she's greeted with a pitch-black room, and a glowing red eye in the center. He only ever turns off all the lights when he’s upset.
Syndrome’s metal claw hands clank together in a pattern, over and over, as his identical feet grip the base of his obsidian throne. His cloak shifts as he gets up to talk to her, making the small white S on his chest visible, but only for a moment before Mirage closes the door.
The semi-translucent veil on his face glows red from his left eye, and his metal arms and legs slither uncomfortably as he gets even closer. She hates the sound they make, like metal cogs grinding together in an old, forgotten clock.
“I don’t think I need to explain why I’m cross with you, Veronica.”
She hates how close he gets. Especially since his long hair touches her face while he looms over her. It’s bearable if the lights are on, his red hair with white stress streaks isn’t a good look for him, and she can focus on how stupid he looks rather than the feeling. But when all the lights are off, it’s torturous. She protests, moving backwards as she says, “This is ridiculous! I didn't do anything wrong-” but his arm extends out towards her. His metal claw wraps around her neck as it slams her into the double doors, the only thing she can see is the light from his red eye, and the veil it illuminates.
"Every day you don't find him is another day wasted."
She coughs, pulling the claw off her neck to say, “Go do it yourself then...” She inhales hard just to say, “You half human bastard.”
His grip on her neck tightens. “You have no room to talk, you powered freak.” His voice hardens with that last word. His second claw supports the first, scratching the metal behind her head. He begins to smile and then laugh. “Where’s all that attitude now, Vee? Not so smart now that your life is in my hands!”
She manages to speak once again, much raspier than the first time, “If you were really going to kill me you would have done it already.”
His red eye pulses for a moment, before he abruptly throws her hard at the ground. She groans as he returns loudly to his throne, metal clanking and scraping against the dark rock ground.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I'm more of a... spirit breaker. And wouldn't it be fun to break the spirit of Frozone's only niece." She weakly tries to get back up, only for one of Syndrome’s arms to rapidly extend to her and slam her back down. “He should have died, you know. Should have been him fighting V.8, not Mr. Incredible. But now... now I have you to bring the Incredibles to me.”
“Yeah? What are you going to do with that nub of yours?” He reels back his arm into view of his red eye, realizing his claw has been melted off, and she holds the evidence. Her palms are glowing around the three metal pieces missing from Syndrome’s arm as she smiles at him, the first time she’s felt truly satisfied in years.
“You-!” He screams, plunging his other arm into the abyss where she just sat. But as he slams his hand against the ground, trying to find her, she uses a claw piece to pry open the door. He squints as light fills the room, watching her silhouette get further and further away.
As she’s running down the hall, preparing to round the corner to her room, she yells in agony, and crumbles to the ground. She holds her head as her nose bleeds on to the white floor and Syndromes voice booms both inside and outside her mind. He walks up behind her, saying, “You think you're some kind of genius, don't you? Well, every day you don't find him, every day not one incredible is found, you will suffer." He slams his working hand down on her, staring at her with callous eyes. "Over, and over, and over again." He slams the giant metal claw three times more.
Another day at school goes by, and she finds nothing, and learns even less. But of course, her punishment that day is worse.
Another day, nothing. Another night, beaten.
Another. Another.
And by Friday, she’s much too exhausted to even think about school. She doesn’t have the energy to bother with the girls calling her a ghost, she can’t focus in class at all, even when the teachers call her out. And she barely responds to Syndrome when he speaks to her, even when he threatens her and makes her nose bleed. But her attitude completely shifts when she sees him again, as it did every day, sitting right next to her in her last class of the day. It was something she could actually look forward to, maybe the only thing.
At the end of class, though, their teacher announces they’ll have their first test on Monday, and Veronica sighs hard, hanging her head. She gets up to leave, taking a test review with her, but before she leaves, he puts a hand on her shoulder and asks, “Hey, uh, are you struggling with math or something?”
She looks at him defeated, saying, "Is it that obvious?"
"Uh, I could help you, if you wanted." He says putting his hand on his neck, a little embarrassed.
"Really?" She says pleasantly surprised.
"Yeah, we could go to my house... if that's fine with you?"
"NO THATS NOT FINE WITH YOU!" Syndrome's voice in her head screams. Her ears ring loudly, but she completely ignores him with a smile on her face.
“Yeah, that sounds great.” She smiles through the immense pain and Syndromes shrieks in her head, feeling truly happy for the first time this week. "But uh, before I go with some random stranger," she teases "what's your name?" She puts out her hand, and he shakes it.
"Dash. Dash Parr."
“...Ohuh, ohhohohoho!” Syndrome’s terrible laugh echoes behind her eyes as they widen, and her mouth slightly opens in shock.
“Would you look at that! Your little crush was an incredible all along! What are the odds! You know, yeah, you should go study at his house. Stay there as long as you want! And you know what? As a reward for job well done, I won't bother you the rest of the day!"
She hears a click, and stares at Dash in silence.