Gordon poked his head into a partially-crumbled warehouse. His scanners had shown two people inside.
"Hello?" he called. "This is International Rescue! Where are you?"
A voice echoed from the back corner of the building. "Over here! Help us, please!"
Gordon carefully picked his way through a maze of debris. "Hold on," he called. "I'm on my way!"
A couple minutes later, he squeezed between two boards and found himself in a more open area. As he looked around, his first thought was a mental facepalm as he saw that he could have saved himself a lot of work and a few splinters by going to the back of the building and coming in through a window. His second thought was, Uh, why do these guys think they need rescuing?
His victims were two boys in their late teens…and they were standing near the open window, apparently entirely unharmed.
Gordon raised his eyebrows. "Uh…can I help you?"
"Yeah, man, we really need your help," one of them gushed. "Me and Eddie here, we just didn't know if it was safe for us to go outside the building." He elbowed Eddie in the side.
"Yeah," Eddie stammered. "Me and Rocky were scared."
Gordon sighed. "Right. Well, if you'll follow me, we'll just go out this window…right here…and you two will be perfectly safe."
"Great!" Rocky said, trying to wrestle his face into a relieved expression. He ended up with something halfway between a smirk and a grimace.
Gordon resisted the urge to turn his mental facepalm into a literal one. He brushed past the teens, eager to get them out of the building and then be rid of their presence. He'd never understand why people would put themselves in dangerous places just for kicks.
The guys were whispering behind his back. He started to turn around to tell them to pay attention to their footing – but then something long and hard cracked against his head, sending him staggering backward with brilliant stars flashing in front of his vision.
Things went fuzzy for a minute; when his awareness began to return a little, he found himself down on his hands and knees, and someone was tugging at the straps of his rebreather and sash.
For a second, all his sluggish brain could think of was the fact that one time Alan had called their over-the-shoulder belts "utility sashes." Gordon had then spent the next week driving his brothers crazy with Batman quotes.
Gordon shook his head to drive out the memory – it wasn't exactly a good time to get lost in thought.
"What…what are you doing?" he asked slowly, forcing the words past a tongue that felt thick and uncooperative. He tried to swat at the hands, but the movement made his head spin nauseatingly, and he closed his eyes again, head hanging low.
A few words filtered through the fog in his mind – "Souvenir!" and "Awesome!" and "I bet we can sell this!"
The realization that Eddie and Rocky had planned this assault just so they could get some International Rescue souvenirs sent a burst of anger through Gordon, clearing his mind a little. He reached for the IR symbol on his sash and tapped it three times, a signal that he needed help fast.
Then his sash was being lifted off him, and a foot connected with his ribs, sending him toppling onto his side. He groaned and rolled onto his back, looking up to see Eddie and Rocky standing over him, their faces twisted into self-satisfied sneers.
They laughed, and it made his head hurt worse.
And then a sharp voice cut through the haze in front of his vision, and suddenly Gordon felt a whole lot better.
"Gordon, what–? Hey! Drop the sash and back away from him!"
Gordon turned his head and saw Scott nimbly leap through the open window, Virgil following right after him.
All the color drained from Eddie and Rocky's faces, and all of a sudden they looked a lot smaller and younger. They hastily obeyed, dropping the sash as if it had burned them and stumbling backward.
Scott kept his eyes fastened on the two teens as he asked, "What happened, Gordon?"
Virgil crouched down next to Gordon, easing him up into a sitting position and carefully inspecting the gash on his forehead.
The note of command in Scott's voice helped Gordon to swallow back his rising nausea and answer, "They clobbered me when my back was turned. They wanted my sash as a souvenir."
Virgil's arm tightened slightly around Gordon's shoulders, and a line appeared between his brows as he frowned.
Scott's reaction was less subtle. His eyes turned thundercloud gray, his hands clenched into fists, and he suddenly looked a lot taller than normal. He speared the two teens with a glare. "Is this true?" he ground out between clenched teeth, his voice dangerously low.
Eddie stammered helplessly.
Rocky cleared his throat and jabbered, "Well, uh, we didn't mean to hurt him…we just thought it'd be cool to, uh, get a little something to show the other guys…" His voice trailed off into a terrified squeak as Scott took a threatening step forward.
Scott was trembling with the effort of holding himself back. Gordon thought that he could almost see the wheels turning in his oldest brother's mind – Scott would like nothing better than to thrash the two teens to within an inch of their miserable lives…but as satisfying as that would be, that wasn't exactly how International Rescue wanted to portray themselves.
Virgil seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "Scott," he said softly. "Let them go. Justice isn't our job. Helping people is – and right now, Gordon needs our help."
Gordon saw the sharp line of Scott's shoulders ease a little, and he knew that Virgil's words had hit home.
Scott still took one step closer to the teens, though, his eyes burning into theirs and holding them in place as effectively as if they had been tied there.
"Well," he said, "you heard him. We're letting you go. But I'll tell you something…I've got ways that I can keep an eye on you two, and if I ever hear of you trying anything like this ever again, I promise you that I will track you down and make sure you get what's coming to you. Comprende?"
They nodded their heads frantically.
"Then go!" Scott barked.
Eddie and Rocky scrambled for a window, got stuck for a moment as they both tried to go through it at once, and then disappeared from sight.
Scott stood still for one more moment, and then let out a long sigh, the tension flowing out from his body. Then he spun and hurried to Gordon's side, scooping up the sash on the way.
He dropped to his knees, his face and voice softening as he looked Gordon over. "You okay, Gords?"
Gordon shrugged. "My head hurts, and I'm not exactly feeling much faith in humanity right now, but other than that, yeah, I'm okay."
Scott winced. "I'm sorry, Gordon."
"Why? It's not your fault."
Virgil slowly stood up, pulling Gordon with him. Scott's hands followed them all the way up, ready to help if necessary.
Halfway up, Gordon flinched, gingerly rubbing his ribs. "Oh, yeah, and my side hurts too, because they kicked me while I was down. Why would someone do that? I was just trying to help people!" He swatted away Virgil's gently-probing fingers from his side.
Scott and Virgil exchanged a glance and sighed at the same time.
Gordon rolled his eyes. "It's really freaky when you do that," he muttered.
Scott ignored that comment. "I don't know why people do things like that, Gords. There are some real creeps out there." He cast a dark glance toward the window Eddie and Rocky had disappeared through. Then he continued, "But people like those two are in the minority. Remember the bus driver last week who refused to let us help him until we'd gotten all the kids off the bus?"
"And that lady a couple months ago who kept everyone trapped in that elevator calm, even though she's dying of cancer?" Virgil added.
Scott settled the yellow sash back over Gordon's shoulder and buckled it in place, his long fingers gently smoothing it down. "I'll be the first to admit that I've met some really nasty, unkind people in this job, Gords…but I'd also have to say that I've met some of the most incredible people, too – the kind of people that, when you get to the end of the rescue, you feel privileged just to have been able to spend a few minutes with them."
They fell into silence as they headed toward one of the windows. As his brothers helped him climb outside, Gordon thought about what they had said. It was jarring to think that there were people out there who could be so…so ugly. But Scott and Virgil were right. For every mean, ugly person he'd encountered during the course of rescues, he'd come across a hundred who were kind, cheerful, or even just grateful. And then there were the exceptional few, like Scott had mentioned, that shone like a ray of sunshine in his memory.
In the end, he reminded himself, he wasn't doing this job because he cared about people's reactions…he was doing it because he loved helping people, and he sure didn't plan to stop just because of one ugly incident.
And even if he did run into trouble again at some point, it was nice to know that he had brothers just a call – or three taps – away.
"Thanks, guys," he said softly.
Scott and Virgil exchanged another look and then they both smiled at him at the same time. Of course.
Gordon smiled too.