#mariashades
Heartbeats are a talisman in the Tracy household.
Beautiful. And painfully accurate
Lovely
Mind control- as suggested by many people. CW of mind control, mental and physical trauma, Scott-whump
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“It’s the GDF.” Havoc announced from the pilot’s seat. “Three fliers, about two klicks out.”
“Take us into that cloud bank and go stealth mode.” Fury ordered when he saw her hand automatically go towards the controls for the missiles. “We don’t have the fuel reserves for a fight and the longer we’re out in the open, the higher the odds International Rescue will pick us up on satellites.” He winced and rubbed his forehead, shading his eyes with his hand. “They’ve been getting too close lately and we have what we need for now, we need to lay low.”
“…got it.” Havoc’s response came after a pause and she touched the appropriate controls to take them into the towering thunderhead building on their port side.
“You all right?” Fuse asked, glancing over at Fury as he brought their stealth systems online once the cloud had enveloped them.
“Yeah, just another migraine coming on.” Fury had his eyes shut now and fingers pressed to his temples in an attempt to fend off the pain. “How much is the consortium willing to pay for the components we lifted?” He asked without looking up.Fuse grinned when he checked the encrypted messaging system and saw the numbers. “Well, there’s a five with six zeros behind it, pretty good if you ask me!”
“Tell ‘em to put a ten in front of those zeros, then we can start talking.” Fury instructed. At the surprised noise Fuse made he went on to explain “No one else is anywhere near developing that technology, we blew up the lab and we have the only working examples and the development data, if the consortium want it, they have to come to us and they know it. Realistically it’s worth at least twice that, which we know and they know. We got what we actually needed, the components are just extras, we can afford to be picky.”
Havoc and Fuse exchanged a look- actually they hadn’t known that. The Hood had been fairly careful to keep them away from the numbers side of the business and that comment was making them both wonder about the actual value of some of the things they’d stolen for the Hood and how his cut compared to theirs’.
The console beeped for attention and Havoc checked her screens. “We’re almost home.” She said with some relief.
“Great, I’ll help unload then I’ve really got to get some meds.” Fury grimaced now, the migraine well and truly taking hold. The thought that he always seemed to get a bad migraine after sighting International Rescue was banished, his attention on the task at hand. Besides, it was silly. Why would seeing IR give him a headache?
0o0o0
Once they were safely inside the base- a bunker halfway up a mountain in Montana- Fury was true to his word and helped unload the stolen equipment. Havoc vanished at some point to recheck their security and Fuse took it upon himself to help Fury up to his room- the older man was really starting to get in a bad way.
After fetching him a coffee and helping him get two of the migraine pills, Fuse left Fury to get changed for bed, turning to leave.
But as he left, doubt started nagging at him.
While he’d been pretty enthusiastic to start with, Clarence really wasn’t so sure about all this anymore.
The plan had been Havoc’s.
They’d been locked up separately from the boss and while they’d gotten themselves out, they wouldn’t be able to get the Hood out on their own- they needed help, and one of the Tracys would fit the bill perfectly. At the same time they’d get themselves well into the boss’ good graces by not only breaking him out but also presenting him with a tame Tracy at the same time.
Havoc had originally wanted the spaceman but he was almost untouchable in his space station. Instead they’d gone for the eldest. The opportunity had come at a building collapse in Singapore when Scott had been separated from the rest of the Tracy pack. He’d knocked Scott out with a gas grenade and carried him off to their reclaimed Cruiser where Havoc had stuck him into the brainwashing device that had been intended for putting the Mechanic back into the Hood’s service.
In had gone Scott Tracy, out had come Fury, convinced he was their brother and always had been. The story imprinted on his brain was that they’d found each other in the orphanage and banded together as young teens, them against the world.
They’d started wrecking chaos left, right and centre as they gathered the information and resources they needed to bust the Hood out of wherever the GDF were keeping him this time…but as the weeks rolled on, Clarence was less and less sure that he wanted to have the Hood back in charge.
The trouble was that Scott was good. And not just good in the ‘goody two shoes’ good guy kind of way.
He was a good leader- they’d pulled off all their heists with resounding success just by having better planning and someone there who was used to everything going pear-shaped and able to react accordingly.
He was also a good person- he talked to them, respected them, looked after them, trained with them, went over their gear and made a bunch of suggestions and adjustments that really should have been made by the Hood in the first place. Scott did other things too, like making sure Heather actually ate real food (that he cooked himself!) and not just mainlined caffeine, patching them up after missions and just making sure that they were okay.
Long story short, Scott cared about them, showing it in a weird mishmash of ‘older brother’ and ‘dad’ that shouldn’t have worked but it did.
Clarence wasn’t sure he wanted to go back to the cold, unfeeling, sneering arrogance and scornful dismissals that they got from the Hood, and he was pretty sure Heather was starting to feel the same way- remaining devoted to someone who treats you like a junkyard dog, kept half starved and angry, isn’t easy when there’s someone right there showing you love and kindness and you don’t have to fight for every morsel of it.
“If this is how he is with us… small wonder his family are turning the world upside down to get him back.” Was Clarence’s thought as he pulled the heavy door shut to let Scott sleep off the migraine- a side effect of the brainwasher as his mind fought the imposed memories.
The increasingly uncomfortable guilt he was feeling about all this poked at him again- they’d taken Scott from the people he loved and was loved by. He knew a bit about losing loved people- though the memories had faded over time he still remembered warm cuddles and stories at bedtime…and then not having those things ever again. Doing this to Scott- especially after Scott saved his life at Shackleton- was starting to feel very wrong.
He let the metal door lock shut behind him, then almost jumped out of his armour when Havoc suddenly appeared, leaning against the wall with crossed arms and narrowed eyes. “You’re not going soft, are you Fuse?” She asked. There was a knife edge to the question, an undercurrent of threat that made him want to shuffle his feet and hang his head.
“This don’t sit right with me, sis.” Fuse plucked up his courage and shook his head. “It’s all mind games and stuff, you know I don’t like that. It’s like what Cuddy did t’ us and the other kids.”
He sensed more than heard the sharp intake of breath that his sister took at the mention of that name. Cuddy had been one of the staff members at the orphanage where they’d met and had taught them and a bunch of other kids the meaning of the words ‘gaslighting’, ‘manipulation’ and ‘emotional abuse’ through practical demonstrations. He was found out by one of the good people there and locked away for a long time, but the damage had already been done. The moment he and Heather had realised what had been done to them was the moment the two of them had turned their backs on the world with middle fingers raised high, determined to make their own way.
“This is different.” Havoc swiftly insisted. “It’s not like that.”
“Yeah?” Clarence had no idea where all of this was coming from. He’d never challenged his sister like this before. “How’s it different?” He asked, crossing his arms.
“It…it just is!” She snapped. “We stick to the plan, you hear? Use him to get the boss, then give him to the Hood. The boss will be happy and International Rescue will pay a fortune to get him back, hell, they’ll hand over their Thunderbirds for him. The boss will have everything he wants and it’ll be all because of us.” She turned and stalked off to her room before he could reply, slamming the door shut behind her.
Fuse sighed, scuffed his feet on the floor and glanced between Scott’s door and Heather’s, then shook his head again and made for his own room. He needed sleep, it’d be better in the morning, he was sure.
The thick door shut behind him, the lock engaging with a click, and silence descended on the small bunker as its occupants all fell asleep.
Perhaps an hour crawled past, then down in a corner of the hangar one of the floor plates shifted.
A sharp point of metal appeared, the knife easily slicing through the silicone grouting that held the plate in place. Moving slowly, the square of flooring was lifted and moved aside. Kayo tucked the knife back into her boot and pulled herself out of the duct. She couldn’t help the smirk as she scanned the cavernous space, checking for any further security systems before crossing the floor on silent feet to the cover afforded by the shadow of a support pillar. Gordon slithered out of the duct next and joined her, the nano-glue dispenser from Virgil’s exo-suit in hand and EOS’ portable drive on his hip.
“John, we’re in.” Kayo whispered into her comms. She glanced at the purple hull of the Chaos Cruiser and her smirk widened. Sure, they’d gotten the tracer gel off Scott by stripping the armour off him, but someone had forgotten to wash their hands before they slapped the controls to open the ship’s main hatch. The signal had been weak, but it’d been enough for them to finally track down the Chaos Crew’s lair. She and Gordon had launched in Thunderbird One, landed some miles away and hiked the rest of the way in, finding a hatch and crawling inside.
It’d taken weeks of frantic searching and hunting to get to this point and today they’d finally gotten to the scene before the Chaos Crew could leave their latest target- a cybernetics lab in Osaka. Cutting Scott’s grapple line had been an accident- she’d been aiming the laser at Havoc’s climbing wires as the two of them escaped the lab they’d raided- but it had slowed him down long enough for Virgil to use Two’s multi launcher to shoot him with the tracer gel.
As for what had happened to Scott for him to vanish on a mission and suddenly turn up acting completely differently and calling himself ‘Fury’, well, John, Brains and Mechanic had done a deep dive through the archives of data that the GDF had confiscated from the Hood and come up with a chilling conclusion- literal mind control through brainwashing, science fiction made real.
Trust the Hood to come up with something like that.
“Great. Gordon, find a place for EOS to plug in.” John’s voice sounded through their helmets. “Rigby says they’re still half an hour away.”
“We’ll leave Havoc and Fuse gift wrapped for him.” Was Gordon’s clipped response. He’d found a control panel and fitted EOS’s drive to the data port. “EOS- floor plan, freeze their security, then play time.”
“With pleasure.” EOS responded coldly, her lights flickering the orange of tightly controlled outrage. Data pinged onto their bracers a moment later- an annotated floor plan of the bunker. The hangar was the bottom level, living quarters were the next level up and a control section squatted at the top. A blue light was Scott’s location, purple marked Havoc and Fuse’s rooms. “Take me here.” She instructed Gordon, a fourth location highlighted in white in the control section. “I’ll be able to get better system access from here, with the computer in her room Havoc can freeze me out of the hangar systems but I’ll be able to bypass her from the control core.”
“Kayo?” Gordon looked to her as he unhooked EOS’ drive. He didn’t want to split up, two against three was uncertain odds, one against three was worse.
“Do it.” Kayo nodded to him. “Signal the others to launch, I want them here as soon as the bunker’s systems are under EOS’ control.”
“Take the glue.” Gordon handed the dispenser over. “And be careful.”
“F.A.B.”
0o0o0
Kayo slinked through the darkened halls like a cat, golden eyes darting everywhere. With any luck, she’d be in and out before anyone knew she was here.
She reached the living quarters without incident and put the nano-glue to good use, sealing all the doors that didn’t lead to Scott’s room. She was under no illusions about how long it would stand up to one of Fuse’s detonators or power punches, but all she needed was to delay them long enough to sneak in, sedate Scott with an auto-injector and get him outside for extraction.
The last door sealed, Kayo was all but holding her breath as she backtracked to Scott’s room and slipped the auto-injector pen out of her belt pouch. The lights flickered as she picked the lock- Gordon had EOS plugged back in. Her orders were to strip all data from the servers, then wreck havoc, pun absolutely intended, on everything she could link into.
Slowly pushing the door open, Kayo was now actually holding her breath as she padded across the floor like a wraith- Scott was a notoriously light sleeper under the best of circumstances. Unless they’d drugged him, she didn’t see that changing.
Her brother was in track pants cut off at the knees and a tee-shirt, curled up on the narrow bed, the blankets tossed askew, clutching a pillow and making the little movements and noises she recognised as him fighting a nightmare. Seeing it and knowing she couldn’t wake him and free him from the nightmare like she normally would was like a knife twisting inside her.
She ruthlessly shoved her emotions to the side for now, crouching beside the bed and reaching out to hike up the tattered hem of the improvised shorts- the auto-injector had to go into a large muscle and that meant mid outer thigh. She uncapped the auto-injector and was about to press it into his leg when blue eyes suddenly snapped open, focused on her and narrowed, his lip curling in a snarl.
He moved a split second before she could stab the pen into his leg, lunging at her with broad hands spread wide to grab her. The pen flew out of her grasp and skittered away under the bed as they wrestled, rolling over the floor. Kayo finally got a foot between them and used it to shove him backwards to crash into a dresser, smoothly rolling to her feet and dropping into a defensive stance. “Scott, snap out of it!” She ordered
“I’m not Scott.” Fury snarled at her in that familiar voice but with jarringly unfamiliar hatred dripping from every syllable. “HAVOC, FUSE, INTRUDER!” He hollered, then snarled and lunged at her in attack. Kayo quickly found herself hard pressed to keep her feet. She was used to fighting Scott- she knew his moves and his patterns. But this wasn’t Scott. This was Fury- Scott with all the safeties off. He was all fists, knees and elbows- powerful and fast strikes to cripple and maim and because she didn’t want to hurt him she was onlyjust keeping him in check.
She dimly was aware of the sound of pounding on metal and knew that at the very least they’d have Fuse joining them shortly.
But right now she didn’t have time to think about that, catching an overhead hammer blow on her crossed forearms, then when she brushed his arm aside Fury gripped her wrist and pulled her in, a knee aimed at her gut. She was able to tense and twist just before it hit so she wasn’t winded, then turned his grip against him and used a hip toss to throw him back onto the bed. He scrambled back to his feet and lunged back at her with a roar, hands aiming for her throat.
“Kayo!” Then Gordon was there, intercepting Fury with a body check. But while Gordon was quick, Fury was quicker. The knee that Gordon aimed at Fury’s groin was deflected into his thigh and answered with a flurry of vicious punches to Gordon’s torso. Gordon grunted as he weathered the assault and slammed his helmeted head forward in a head butt to make Fury disengage. His gamble worked and Fury pulled back before he could make contact, backing up towards the far wall, eyes narrowed and darting between Kayo and Gordon as they moved to box him into the corner.
Outside, metal shrieked as Fuse finally broke his door down, there were running footsteps, some beeps and a sharp crack of detonation as he blew open Havoc’s door.
“Reinforcements.” Fury grinned nastily at them.
Gordon would have been worried if he hadn’t heard the heavy, running footsteps pounding down the hallway towards them. “Yep, ours just got here too.” He loudly announced, to make sure Havoc and Fuse could hear him.
“EOS has your network in a stranglehold, Virgil and Alan are here and the GDF are only minutes away.” Kayo chimed in coldly as Havoc and Fuse paused just outside Fury’s doorway. She could see them turn and glance at Virgil charging at them in his exo-suit with Alan just behind, then the narrowing of Havoc’s eyes as she looked at Fury, calculated the odds, and the shift as she decided to cut their losses.
“Fuse, let’s go!” Havoc waved at Fuse to follow her, the demolitions expert sparing a guilty look at Fury before turning and running after her. The four IR operatives didn’t pursue, they had a bigger concern right now.
“No!” Fury called after them desperately, his expression flickering through disbelief, shock and betrayal as the people he thought were his family left him behind in the clutches of the enemy. But it only lasted for a split second before Kayo took advantage of the distraction to slip behind him and put him in a sleeper hold, her slim arm locking around his neck and squeezing just so until he sagged to the grimy floor.
Two sets of hands caught him on the way down and arranged him carefully on the floor while Virgil twisted out of his exo-suit, left it in the hallway and produced another sedative auto injector from his pocket. He administered it while Gordon found the medical scanner and played it over his body, then turned it to show Virgil the results. Virgil’s expression hardened, mouth set in a line as he skimmed over the findings. “Two. Now. Gordon, you fly, Alan, assist me. Kayo, get EOS and take One back.” He ordered as he scooped up the limp form. “Tell Grandma to get the infirmary ready and someone please tell me John and Brains have figured out a way to fix this.”
0o0o0
In the cool, sterile environment of the infirmary, Virgil listened with half an ear to John, Brains and Grandma’s conference call with two neurology specialists while he finished anointing Scott’s back with bruise cream. The eldest was still out cold but at least he was in some hospital scrubs now. Virgil had consigned the clothes they’d found him in to the medical waste incinerator and while he’d really wanted to give Scott a proper wash to clean off any last traces of the Chaos Crew, for now he’d settled for a quick wipe down of the more obvious smudges and grime.
“I’m just setting up another drip now.” He told Scott as he set up the saline IV. “You’re dehydrated. Gordon says they probably didn’t take care of you, letting you burn yourself out.” That particular suspicion had just compounded everything, one final insult on top of everything else. Scott was not the low-maintenance Tracy- he needed someone to look after him and yank him back down to earth before he could run his tanks dry and fall out of the sky. From the lines of results in glaring red, he could see that Scott had been within a hair’s breadth of a crash.
Behind him, he sensed more than heard the conference call wrapping up and the three of them continuing their debate on what to do next, to purge ‘Fury’ and return Scott to them. He left them to it as he tended to Scott, calculating the nutrient mixes he’d need and jotting down a rehab regime to bring him back up to full strength.
“Donut of doom.” John finally announced, looking up from his holograms of data and over at the combination MRI/concussion treatment unit. “If I’m reading this right, with some changes to the settings it should wipe the overlaid memory engrams.”
“A-agreed.” Brains nodded his assent. “I-it should be easy enough.”
“And if you’re not?” Virgil asked from his post next to Scott.
“Then it won’t make anything worse and at least it’ll fix the untreated concussion he’s got. If it doesn’t work we’ll cross that bridge if and when we need to.” Grandma ordered. “Virgil, prep Scott for it, John and Brains, prep the ‘Donut’.”They got to work and within a few minutes Scott was fully sedated and intubated and the ‘Donut’ was ready. Virgil watched as the narrow table bearing his brother slid into the machine and it hummed into life.
All they could do now was wait and hope that this would work.
0o0o0
He was lying on something soft, there were voices debating something above his head and his throat had that dry and raspy feeling that told him he’d been intubated again. His body felt leaden and stiff, like he’d been lying still for a long time. He cracked an eye open to see what was going on, but the blurriness and rising nausea told him that was a very bad idea and he groaned and threw an arm across his eyes. “Ugh…what happened to me?”
“Donut of doom happened, bro.” His brother’s voice floated down to him. “You got a concussion. We’re not sure which hit it was or when, but my money’s on the bus.”
“Bus?” He frowned behind his arm. He vaguely recalled something about a bus, but it was the undercurrent of tension in the air that caught his attention. As his brain started to come back online properly he could feel the itch of an IV site in his right elbow, but there was also something small, round and hard lightly pressing against his left thigh.
“Yup, you hit a bus yesterday, nice reverse swan dive.” His brother continued lightly.
“Can you open your eyes for me?” A different brother asked, his voice gentle. The equally gentle touch to his arm was to encourage him to move it out of the way. He must have made some sort of noise of protest because that brother continued, urging him “I know you’re feeling sick, but I need to see your eyes, just a moment, okay?”
“Nnng… okay…” He moved his arm and slowly opened his eyes. “Virgil? Gordon?” He groggily asked when their faces finally came into focus.
“Scott? You feeling okay?” Virgil asked carefully.
“Really nauseous.” Scott groaned, swallowing hard against that feeling of rising bile that was the prelude to vomiting.
The relief in their expressions was instant and the invisible tension in the air melted away like snow on a hot road in summer. The thing against his leg was also taken away.
“Close your eyes and rest, Scott.” Virgil told him. “I’ll get that nausea sorted out for you.”
“F.A.B.” Scott acknowledged, draping his arm back over his face.
Feeling like the weight of the world had just slipped off his back, Virgil put the sedative auto-injector back in its drawer and signalled to Kayo and Alan who had been waiting just out of sight, ready to assist just in case Fury had made an appearance instead.
But it had worked. The nightmare was over.
Their brother was home.
WOW! Just WOW!
All of you, Thunderfam, read this :D
@scribbles97@tsarinatorment@janetm74 Your boi features muchly :D
Thank you for a fantastic read.
And thank you to @the-original-sineater for pointing my sand covered head in this direction :D
Nutty
(Ostrich)
In which some goons do so, and Gordon does not. thunderwhump-y, military bros. A little snippet that insisted on being written.
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Gordon sat up and cracked a sharp edged grin- the one that was all teeth and malice- spat out a mouthful of blood and meat, and over the screaming he started singing in the most annoying, nasal tone he could manage. “One, two, three four five, once I caught a fish alive. Six, seven, eight nine ten, then I let him go again. Why did I let him go? Because he bit my finger so. Which finger did he bite? This little finger on my right!”
It wasn’t the guy’s little finger, but it was close enough, and he hadn’t quite taken the finger off like he’d been aiming to, but he had ripped a substantial chunk out of the guy’s hand.
“Lesson number one!” He brightly announced. “If you can bite through a raw carrot, you can take off a finger! Wanna try grab my face again?” He offered, the dark looks and swearing only making him grin more broadly as he quickly thought of another way to goad them- something, anything, that would keep their attention on him and not on Alan who was still out cold on the dirty concrete floor. They’d been ambushed on a call out, knockout gas had been involved, and he’d come around to find himself lying on the floor with his hands tied in front of him and one of the goons touching his face. Reacting without thinking (because his family knew better than to do that) he’d whipped his head around and bit down.
“Come on you bastards, that’s right, lookie me!” Gordon mentally urged as he gave voice to a particularly unhinged Joker-esk cackle that Virgil had once declared sounded like a hyena on helium. But despite everything, with the timing of this event and others it seemed like the universe had taken mercy on them for once. “John, I really hope your magic tracker box is doing its job!”
Three months ago John had finally made good on his long-issued threat to chip them all like puppies, designing GPS trackers that operated on the same waveband as their gear. Most of the time they were intended to be dormant, only activating if triggered remotely (because Scott) or by a sudden wild swing in their bio-monitors (also because Scott). The smooth, thumb-sized devices had been nestled between the bundles of muscles in their right thighs, but in Gordon’s case all the hardware in his body had had an unexpected side effect- it acted like an antenna. He could almost feel the pinging as someone attempted to home in on him and Alan.
Gordon spat out some more bloody saliva, aiming for the closest of the four goons in the de regur of kidnapper fashion- dark, baggy clothes and balaclavas. He missed by about half a foot, but that was okay. Dude-missing-a-piece had progressed to whimpering as one of his fellow goons crudely bandaged his hand, so that left two that he had to continue to distract, to keep their hands off his little brother.
“So, you know what would be a really smart idea for you people to do?” He asked in a genial, conversational tone. “Leave, right now. ‘Cause, you know, your guy over there really needs to get seen to- human bites are worse than dog bites and once infection sets in…” He shuddered. “Multicoloured pus, swelling, necrosis, gangrene, sepsis, oooh it’s a whole bucketof nasty! He might lose his arm!” He grinned nastily again. “Have you ever heard the shrieking of someone who’s literally rotting while still alive? It’s nightmare fuel.”
“Shaddup!” The goon he’d been aiming the spit at stepped closer and backhanded him across the face. Gordon rocked under the surprisingly powerful blow- yeah, that was going to leave a heck of a bruise- landing on his back. But it put him into the perfect position to draw his legs in and kick out at the guy’s knees, now that he’d moved into range to hit him. Something, probably the kneecap, made a very satisfyingcrunchunder his heel and the goon collapsed with a scream.
The other two managed to drag him away before he could hook his handcuffs around the guy’s neck though, that was a pity. He shifted to kneel, still placed protectively in front of Alan, eyeing them and grinning like a sea leopard eyeing up a seal. “Anyone else want to try that?” He asked in a disconcertingly chirpy voice. “Two down, two to go, and my very pissed off backup is enroute.”
“Actually, she’s here.”
Kayo launched herself at them from the darkened doorway, all fists and fury as she attacked without mercy. From behind him, there was a muted whine that resolved into the distinctive sound of one of their cutting lasers as Scott made a hole in the roof and dropped in to assist her, followed moments later by Virgil with the medical backpack. Alan was checked over first, an oxygen mask fitted over his face and cuffs removed, then Virgil turned his attention to Gordon. “Blood?” he asked as he cut the handcuffs off.
“Not mine.” Gordon told him as Scott and Kayo finished mopping up, using the cables from Scott’s grapple packs to tie up the goons and leave them for the GDF.
“Good.” Medical mode slipped for a moment and Virgil squeezed his shoulder, his worry and relief shining through. “Let’s get outta here.”
“F.A.B.”
Oooooo!!!!!@gaviiadastra our boy being a BA!!!!! Wonderfully written!
Oh my god what a joy.
Gordon being all hot shit is my jam. Especially when he’s portrayed as capable and protective and knowing *exactly* what he’s doing. Because behind that sunshine exterior, he’s smart and calculating and quick on his feet.
So so good. Thank you for this one mariashades!
