1. The Mechanic ("unwillingly?") in a santa hat and/or out in the snow?
The Mechanic leans back, stretching out against the aches of being hunched over a work bench for hours. Access to the endless resources of Tracy Industries and International Rescue had at first had him as giddy as a child in a sweet shop, suppressing the urge to flit between the machines and simulations and raw materials for fear of looking too eager. After struggling for supplies for years now, he was reveling in the plenty that was available to him.
Being able to work without interruptions for scavenging meant that he had been working uninterrupted; this being the first time he’d seen daylight in at least two days. The family was off somewhere, so he was taking advantage of their absence to enjoy their comfortable couches and the quite frankly stunning view. The endless sky and ocean made him feel free in a way that all the assurances that The Hood had been ‘dealt with’ couldn’t match.
The Mechanic tells himself that he’s only here because he has nowhere else to go. He has bolt holes, workshops and safe houses all across the planet (and even a couple off planet) but they’re all in various states of disrepair and he doesn’t think of any of them as ‘home’. He’s not allowed himself that luxury for some time now, but he’s entering a new era and starting to think about setting down roots again. Maybe he’ll go back to where he grew up, or try somewhere brand new, but until he makes that decision he’s spending a lot of time with the Tracy’s. Not just in their hangers but in their home, socialising as well as working together.
He’d been welcome at their beach barbecues and a place set for him at the evening meals and his favourite foods squirreled out from him and put on the grocery list and his name entered on the rota for unloading the dishwasher. He’d been given a private guest suite open access to transport on and off the island (it’s easy to be generous with that many zero’s in the bank) but they hadn’t even restricted his access to the hangers with their precious Thunderbirds. In fact, they were encouraging his scientific curiosity and technical aptitude. After everything that had passed between them, the openness is absurd. Bizarre. Baffling. Oddly heart warming.
His quiet contemplation is shattered by Gordon and Alan bouncing into the room. Obviously too deep in concentration to have noticed the light aircrafts return, the sudden noise and motion is a shock to the system. It would be rude to leave as soon as they arrived – it was their home after all – so he forces himself to sit awkwardly while they thump down several large boxes.
“We’ve just picked these up,” Alan tells him, though The Mechanic hadn’t asked. “It’s a family tradition. They tend to get lost or dropped in the pool so we have to get new ones each year.” The boy’s ‘explanation’ does nothing to enlighten him on what’s meant to be in the boxes, pieces of packaging flying everywhere, coloured tissue paper emerging, boxes of what look suspiciously like festive decorations, until he triumphantly brandishes something red and white and velvet and fluffy, with the slightest hint of sparkle.
Oh no.
“Oooo those are good this year.” Gordon snatches one up, inspecting it closely inside and out. “No bell on it though. I thought they were meant to jingle.” He shakes it to demonstrate the silence from the white puff at the end, presumably where the bell was meant to be.
“The order got mysteriously changed.” John says, walking in ahead of the rest of the family. “I almost committed fratricide last year because of them and didn't feel like putting us all through that again.”
And as quickly as that the room is filled with lively bustle. Scott and Virgil drop themselves on the couch alongside him, Her Ladyship helps Mrs Tracy organise something in the kitchen cabinets. Parker is teaching his dog a new trick on the balcony. Hiram is showing John and Kayo and Mr Tracy something on a tablet that involves much gesticulating from him and thoughtful nods from the others. The Mechanic’s palms prick to go and join them and find out what Brains has in the works – he always has interesting ideas.
“And this one is for you, Mechanic.” Alan brandishes one in his face, drawing him out of his thoughts with only the slightest of hesitation over his name.
He has one, of course. Something other than the title he’s embodied for far too long, but he hasn’t volunteered it, and they haven’t asked. He’d been careful to erase the paper trail left during his employment on the original Zero-X but he’s no digital specialist like some here. And if they’ve found out by other routes – which they certainly have the resources to do – no one's let on.
But respect for personal boundaries or not, there’s no reason to be wearing one of those when it isn’t even December yet.
“I don’t think so.”
“You have to. It’s Tradition.” Alan jiggles it again. In the meantime Gordon’s been passing out the rest of the box so everyone is in the process of putting on one of the ridiculous hats. Even the dog and the robot had one appropriately sized.
He expected an ally in John, assuming he would keep some of the distance he usually has between his physical self and all this nonsense. But he had been silently betrayed as John dons the fluffy hat without question or complaint. Perhaps resistance had been pestered out of him over the years, for him to wear it at such a jaunty angle with no sign of distress, as if it were a perfectly reasonable thing to do. He’s even smiling.
Hiram should be above this sort of thing as well, but he’s working away at the tablet still, with the soft white end dangling in his face.
“Your tradition, not mine.” The Mechanic insists, arms crossed and face impassive.
“Well, our tradition is that every person on the island for Christmas eve wears a hat for the group photo.” Gordon comes to stand next to his brother, mimicking the Mechanic’s posture.
“Gordon,” Jeff reprimands, his voice as commanding as it ever was. “Don’t pester the man, he doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to.”
Christmas eve? Really? He’d disconnected himself from the outside world since the work began on the Zero XL and he hadn’t put himself back since it’s success - barring occasional and brief visits to the mainland for essentials. Had he lost tack of time that badly? He checks the calendar and swallows some inappropriately bad language, sitting up in alarm.
“I didn't realise. That is, I haven’t -” he was going to be a guest in someone's home for Christmas and he didn’t have a gift for anyone. He wouldn’t have been surprised if his grandmother’s ghost rose from the grave to shame him for such rudeness. If he’d known he’d have made sure he was off island, away and alone, for such an intimate family focused day of the year.
“Don’t worry dear.” Mrs Tracy says “You’ve already given us the greatest gift you could.” She looks over to her son, who shifts, uncomfortable under her attention.
“Maaaaaaa.”
“If you really feel bad about it then consider this my gift.” Gordon’s grin says he knows he’s got won.
“Fine.” The Mechanic almost snatches the dangling hat from Gordon’s hand. “But just for the photograph.”
“Great” Gordon claps his hands together and yells “Places people!” ducking away from his grandmother and her admonishment to use his inside voice.
What follows is astounding.
Astounding that such a highly capable group of people could take so long to organise themselves into three rows. There is much changing of places, shuffling back and forth, complaining about position and dropping of hats. Alan leaves the room completely at one point, and Kayo has to be instructed to let Gordon out of a head lock.
“Don’t worry,” Virgil nudges him from where they’ve ended up elbow to elbow in the back row. “It’s always like this but won’t last long.”
It’s a minor Christmas miracle when the chaos dissolves into something neat and orderly.
“Finally!” A holographic image of Eos’ preferred interface on Five flickers into the Mechanics peripheral vision. “Please direct your attention to the camera.” A light from the security camera on the opposite wall flashes to highlight where they should look.
“Everybody say ‘the hood sucks’.” Alan suggests.
That one’s thrown out as not being in the spirit of the season, and ‘Thunderbird One is best’ sparks a brief but intense argument, so they settle on the basic but agreeable ‘merry christmas’.
“There, over.” Virgil says as the group dissipates slightly, the image of him in a santa hat, deep amongst the Tracy family, preserved for all time. “We’ll be putting the tree up at around three this afternoon, eating at 1 tomorrow.” He lowers his voice slightly for the next part. “John and Dad have it covered, don’t worry.” Then again at a normal volume. “Feel free to join us if you would like but don’t let Gordon’s wheedling get to you. Everyone gets to spend this time how they’d like.” Virgil gives his shoulder a hearty slap, and moves off to speak to Her Ladyship.
The Mechanic pulls his hat from his head, scrunching it in his fist. Deftly done: a genuine invitation but with the possibility of a polite declination built right in. Anyone would think the Tracy family was trying their best to make him comfortable, make him welcome. Anyone would think they are good people, willing to forgive and forget. How many of those are in the world?
He catches Jeff’s eye, who gives him a small smile and an even smaller nod. Even after everything....
Maybe lingering here wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
“I have some work I need to do.” The Mechanic announces to the room at large, getting a wave of acknowledgement from Hiram and a questioning look from Scott.
He leaves them nattering behind him to make a beeline for his workshop, already planning. He has a dozen or so small machines to make before tomorrow; contraptions that will be have to be assembled from whatever components he can find from his own discarded projects, or scrounged from Brains. Some will be easy: rockets, planes, fish. Some will need a little more thought. Plus he needs something to present them in – boxes, bags, wrapping. He might even sign his name.
This is another WIP snippet from something that is taking me way longer to plan and write than I'd initially intended, featuring Lady Penelope.
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He took another deep breath. “A week ago, three men from the Spirit Network went missing. They just vanished. Poof. Nobody could track them down. They essentially disappeared.”
“Men don’t simply disappear, Cellier. Something must have happened to them.
Cellier paused before he could reply. Of course the waiter had to choose that exact moment to appear. Penelope wasn’t even sure if she was hungry anymore. Cellier certainly hadn’t given her a reason to doubt that niggling fear of something being very wrong.
Once they had placed their orders, he answered. “You are right, Lady Penelope. Two days later, they returned to the safe house. And took out every agent in the building in under a minute.”
"By the Mysterons, who can replicate anything that's been destroyed and recreate it under their control," Lieutenant Green finished, sounding absolutely horrified. "How did we miss that?" Captain Blue asked, a little faintly. It was John's turn to swear. "Oh no they fucking don't." I'd love to know your thoughts baout this section - it was so exciting and I really enjoy rereading it ! 5/5
Send me a section of one of my fics to get a behind-the-scenes commentary on it
I'm just gonna copy out the whole section with formatting here rather than screenshot the chain of asks as this was the only one that contained anything other than the fic quote. My commentary will be right underneath!
John didn’t quite swear, but Scott figured he wasn’t far off.
“No- that’s not- no-”
“John, what-” he started, before a flood of light entered the villa. Light that was supposed to be blocked out by the tsunami defences.
The tsunami defences that were sliding back down into the sea.
“Kayo!”
“I don’t know why!” she protested, struggling with the controls. “It’s not responding!”
“Uh… is your swimming pool supposed to be moving?” Captain Blue asked.
“What?” Scott dashed over to the balcony to see that, sure enough, the swimming pool was retracting as though Thunderbird One was about to launch. He leaned against the glass doors, trying to look down to see if Thunderbird One was underneath, but before he could tell, the doors moved, retracting and returning the villa to its usual open air status.
“We must have been hacked!” Kayo said, still wrestling with the controls.
“How?” Gordon asked, casting around wildly as though he’d be able to find a way to stop it. “That’s not-”
“Does anything have access to your systems?” Lieutenant Green asked. “Anything at all?”
“Not anymore,” John said, waging his own war against the system from the desk, if the way his fingers were little more than a blur was any indication.
Both Colonel White and Mel had vanished, Scott noticed distractedly as he stumbled back from the suddenly-open doors.
“What do you mean, anymore?” Captain Blue demanded.
“The communication hub?” Captain Scarlet asked.
“That had access to everything,” Scott confirmed, watching John and Kayo fight with the systems and feeling frustrated that it was a battle he couldn’t help with. “But it was destroyed.”
“Destroyed,” Captain Scarlet said, flatly.
“Destroyed… by the Mysterons,” Captain Blue added. Scott almost snapped at them to stop repeating useless information they already knew, but something about their body language made him pause.
“By the Mysterons, who can replicate anything that’s been destroyed and recreate it under their control,” Lieutenant Green finished, sounding absolutely horrified.
“How did we miss that?” Captain Blue asked, a little faintly.
It was John’s turn to swear. “Oh no they fucking don’t.”
Oh, this passage. This passage was so much fun like you wouldn't even believe. Scott and the rest of IR doing their damndest to keep Spectrum as in the dark as possible while everything is literally exposing itself, and of course Spectrum being smart cookies who are noticing things and taking note of everything. Everything. I had so, so much fun, here.
Sorry, Scott.
Balancing all the characters in this scene was a little tough (the fic as a whole, actually). I do best when I'm dealing with maybe four, five at a push, characters in a scene - preferably two or three, so having *counts* seven characters who all refused to go underground/were needed for plot reasons running around in what was supposed to be a high-charged scene full of tension was a challenge. If you're wondering why Virgil, Alan, Brains, Grandma and the Angels were stuffed out of the way for most of the fic - that's why. Anyone else in this scene would have ruined the balance. As it was, it was a bit like walking on a tightrope, but the intention here was to focus on two or three characters in particular - Scott, as this chapter's narrator, John, and to some extent Captain Blue, with the others providing more of a support role.
John starting this scene by definitely not swearing because John doesn't swear unless it's the literal apocalypse under normal situations but ending the scene (and the chapter) by swearing because he's just realised his precious Thunderbird is being used to kill them was a little bit of self-indulgence.
And actually, let's talk about that. One of the biggest things I had to figure out when I was writing this fic (as @janetm74 and @gumnut-logic know because they were the unfortunate souls on the receiving end of my endless musing on the topic) was how the Mysterons were actually going to try and kill IR. Thunderbird Five's destruction and recreation under the control of the Mysterons took a little while to come to me as a work-around for Tracy Island's defences. Originally I was thinking something like how am I going to sneak a Mysteron agent onto IR to sabotage them from the inside? The brainwave that was Thunderbird Five (why sneak an agent in when they literally have IR's supercomputer in a position to be under their control?) was the sort of thing that had me literally bouncing around the room when it occurred to me. I was so smug about figuring that one out! Actually, I'm still really proud of that little plot twist... which I'm not actually sure anyone saw coming, judging by the various comments on the fic.
As for actually writing this scene - it was one of those I was full of glee about. I'm sure any fic writer will tell you there are moments in fics that you're just chomping at the bit to unleash on your poor, unsuspecting readers, and this scene was that for me in this particular fic. The way it starts with John not-panicking, and then IR's secrets starting to crumble, and the rest of them joining in on the panic while Spectrum desperately try and pry the relevant information out of them, before we finally get all the pieces of the puzzle and the glaringly obvious hole in their security that they'd have noticed if IR hadn't been quite so tight-lipped about their secrets (Captain Blue's sheer disbelief that they missed something that should have been so obvious, Lt. Green being the one to spell it out like the communications officer he is, all three of them putting everything together the moment they heard that the destroyed communications hub was so intertwined with IR's systems while IR were a half-step behind because they don't really know the Mysterons... Although John was more like a quarter-step behind because it's John and his little "waged war" on the system would've revealed TB5 as the culprit very quickly, especially to him of all people).
It was important to me in this fic to not make either organisation seem like they were "better" than the other. IR and Spectrum do very different things and they're both the best at what they do, but when it comes to overlapping into each other's jurisdictions... well, it's not quite so smooth sailing. Scott's youth and relative inexperience work against him a little in places, but on the other side, his reasonings are solid and he's constantly being underestimated by Spectrum because of his youth.
I also really, really wanted a John and Lt. Green tag-team. Kayo was a necessary evil in this fic (she's IR's head of security and decent with tech, there was no way to justify leaving her out), but John and Lt. Green? Rather a terrifying combination and the one I was most excited about writing out of all of them (although the cautious military interactions between Military Bros and the two Captains was also a fun game of "who's gonna crack first").
Poor Gordon in this scene, though. He had literally nothing to do but he was important earlier and was never going to leave Scott to fend off the two Captains alone (although Scott was equally useless and mad about it, in a mirror with Captain Scarlet, because I really wanted a plotline where for once he had to sit back and be useless and frustrated about it, much like poor Captain Blue ends up being most of the time in canon...)
But yeah, this was the twist reveal scene and I was lapping up the reactions to this as they came in! I'm so glad you found it as exciting as it was intended to be :D
love this series of fics! It's been mentioned that John gets migraines- I wonder how that would affect the family?
Sally had learned to watch for signs years ago, because heaven only knew John would never open his mouth to say he was hurting.
The trouble was John was always subtle, even as a tiny babe in arms, and adulthood too soon had only taught him guile. He hides his pains well; the merest frown or scowl, easily explained by the endless stress and worry, the only sign of the feeling of a head in a vice.
Sally never had migraines, but her Grant, god rest his soul, occasionally suffered for them. It hurt her, that John had inherited the malady, and that there was nothing she could do to make it easier for him. The only pills they suspected would help him were priced so high as to be little more than a fantasy.
It takes her a few minutes to ease herself out of bed, her own pains pulling her back from her grandson in ways she’s grown to hate. Alan’s long gone, door slammed hard enough to make even her wince, after the TV had been snapped off.
John is where she was afraid he would be, sat at the kitchen table, head on his arms. The gills, such as she can see, are an unfetching shade of green.
He only twitches as she turns the faucet, lets the water run a moment before putting the mug left on the draining board under the flow. He’d cleaned, but she can still smell bile.
She sets the cup next to his arm, turns back to run a clean dishcloth under the water before turning off the tap.
He sighs, barely a whimper, as she presses the compress to his temple. “Grandma, I’m fine, and it’s too chilly for you to be….”
“Hush child,” she pushes the mug closer. “Let me take care of you for once.”
That he lets her tells her just how much he’s hurting. She stands as he sags onto the table again, her gnarled, stiff fingers pressing into his taut neck muscles, combing through his hair.
Her hip grumbles, but she silently tells it hush too. Her boys needed her more.
so how many things are you writing at any one time, because at my last count it seems like a billion. And how do you keep them all straight?
WELL, YOU'RE NOT WRONG. my xkit isn't letting me answer this with proper formatting, so give me a second to edit this into a proper answer with formatting from the dashboard. watch this space.
