THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!
A TENDER STING
WRITTEN BY ZARIUS
(Contains spoilers for "EarthBreaker" and "City Under The Sea")
If you like this, take note this is also a follow-up of sorts to an earlier story, "Questionable Methods", give that a go too if you like. Thankyou for your interest-Zarius
The Mechanic had failed to secure the plans needed to liberate him from uninviting isolation, but The Hood didn't mind at all.
He had, after all, enjoyed playing with the mice.
Plans could be printed over and over again, it was a foolhardy notion in today's climate of air-tight security to simply keep one copy in one building, and rig it with a defence mechanism that could incinerate it, and that would be the end of it.
Security is everything to this world, and any means from which rebuild that which they may inevitably lose went a long way to keeping their paycheques coming in, and allow them to go home to their families with reassurances of a much safer day.
There was more than one set of plans, The Hood knew that as much, but he was not going to tell The Mechanic that. There was an off chance he could make the same mistakes twice in a row. International Rescue would become far too wise to his strategies. To remain two steps ahead of them, he had to adapt to a different kind of mission each time.
A different weapon, a different goal, and hope that they, in return, would fail to adjust; that they would make that crucial error needed that would guarantee The Hood liberty.
That's what impressed him the most about the mice in the maze on this occasion.
It was not those who piloted the Thunderbirds that had proven The Mechanic's match that day; it was their most esteemed of high society allies. One who had dared to fly in like a graceful wasp into the hornet's nest and, through grace and civility, knew exactly where to sting him.
He had not forgotten that.
There was a lot about Lady Penelope Crichton-Ward he had come to understand, things about her life he had learned long ago, and never let slip from his mind. He was eager to test just how far that knowledge reached, how it could affect her, and to see if she would put her own life on the line to preserve the security of her world, even if it came through a link to her own past.
So he turned to one set of plans that lay within a place close to her heart, where she had played as a child, a memory distanced from her life on land by a vast tempest.
To reconnect with that memory in a way that would trouble her, bring her cherished thoughts of yesteryear stress, complication and grief, all to ensure other people could have days of wonder free of The Hood's insidious schemes, would be a fitting way to sting her right back.
The plans destroyed, The Mechanic thwarted, his liberty denied, none of it minded The Hood at all. He had forced Penelope and her servant Parker to run his maze, they had survived the trap, but the very experience would steadily creep into their waking thoughts and hopefully within the deepest recesses of their times spent in slumber, until the full impact of their ordeal compelled them, and specifically her, to make the trip back to the hornet's nest, back to him, where she could attempt to sting him again.
He looked forward to seeing whether the sting would be so tender this time.