Hi, guys! It's official Thunderbirds Day! Would have posted this sooner, but it was my turn to cook. Made lasagna. =) Thank you, Tikatu, Bow Echo, Thunderbird Shadow, Minimam, Akimakel, Creative Girl, Susan and Whirl Girl for your very kind reviews. Edits to follow!

4

Pacifica City, beside the plunging San Marcos Trench-

Once just a scientific research station, the big, domed complex had gradually transformed itself into a playground for the bored, beautiful and stupendously wealthy. Science costs money, after all, and what better way to pay the bills than by encouraging well-heeled tourists in search of something… different. Exotic.

This meant that the city, which resembled a glass-domed beetle perched on six arching, steel-alloy legs, boasted a fairly large population. At the moment, eight-hundred-plus regulars, six VIPs, four lapdogs and a juvenile dinosaur were down at the bottom of the ocean, and in peril of their lives.

That afternoon, the paying guests and reporters had gathered in a big, ornate ballroom. Twenty people clustered around Tycho Reeves' newly installed matter transmission disk, waiting for the triumphant reappearance of Buddy and Ellie Pendergast. His Majesty, the Right Royal King Denys I… Anastasia, Grand Duchess of Prussia and the Rhine… and Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward sat in the first row (naturally) with their various bodyguards and John Tracy, son of the fabled Colonel. Also present was a teenaged American film and music star named Libby Wentworth, her nervous young date, and a roving herd of bloodthirsty newshounds. Floating holo-screens and camera drones zipped along beneath a high-paneled ivory ceiling, keeping transmission and receiver sites in constant contact.

A party atmosphere had reigned, because the matter transmission system was about to make Pacifica City as widely accessible as London or Ulan Bator. Up on those hovering screens, they could see Buddy and Ellie stepping onto the disk, back in distant Kyoto… then Tycho Reeves pressing that glowing red button (with no style or panache, whatsoever). What should have come next, was a flash of light and dramatic fanfare, as the transmitted signal coalesced into two grinning explorers.

Instead, something went badly wrong in Japan. The power first choked, and then surged wildly, causing the signal to stray. Only, the reception disk was still primed for delivery, still "searching". When the expected signal did not arrive on time, something else filled the vacuum.

A roaring torrent of icy cold seawater and three-quarters of a very unfortunate megalodon were transferred into the chamber in place of Buddy and Ellie. That high-pressure water didn't just fountain into the ballroom, it blasted, triggering all of the city's flood gates and hull-breech alarms.

Screaming people were swept under and tumbled around, striking sea-life and cascading furniture. The fierce, sudden cold was like a hammer-blow, the pressure intense and crushing. Worse, the entire trench-side structure began to buckle, as earthquake and added weight stressed its shuddering limbs.

Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward was descended from a very long line of warrior-aristocrats; men and women who'd picked up their swords to defend Britain, when the Romans had deserted them to face the darkness, alone. She did not panic, any more than her ancestors had, when faced with rampaging Viking invaders.

Someone reached out to seize her hand, there in the cold, swirling darkness. John, she fancied. Well accustomed to finding his way without 'up' or 'down' to guide him, the astronaut wasn't confused, now. His wrist comm blinked repeatedly, making a light for others to follow, as he stroked for the ballroom's paneled ceiling, with Penny in tow.

Penelope's head broke surface between a splintered, muck-strewn chandelier, and the saw-toothed maw and sandpaper hide of a dead giant shark. Distant alarms were ringing, distorted by hundreds of tons of dark water. Sherbert, thank God, was away in the dog park, being tended by nannies, together with Bitsy. As for the others…

Penny glimpsed John by the faint red light of his wrist comm; wet through, hair slicked down, and shivering slightly. Parker sputtered up, next, dragging his half-conscious Majesty.

"Duchess… still… below…" Parker gasped, between wheezing coughs.

John wrenched off his white tuxedo jacket, which featured a water-proof heating unit. He'd been going to hand it to Penny, but hesitated, torn between Scott's woman and the fading King.

"Share it," he decided, shoving the gadget-packet coat at Lady Penelope. Their bubble of air was a scant eight inches high, just big enough to clear their mouths, with the occasional gulp of chill, gore-tinged brine thrown in. "Going after the rest."

He and Parker both, actually; while Penny held the King's lolling head up, and did her best to keep him warm. The monarch's personal bodyguard appeared a few moments later, some dragging others. Unable to see a thing, down below, they'd simply latched onto whomever they'd bumped. Occasional twitches from that dead partial shark set them all to bobbing and crashing like frigid bath-toys.

Up on the surface or out in space, Jaeger would simply have accelerated John in order to speak with him. Underwater, that was impossible, as the stuff would lock up like cement at high speeds. John couldn't talk with the AI, directly, down here... but he could follow sparkles of light to a target, so that was the unspoken plan. He soon found the Duchess trapped in a very small bubble of rapidly fouling air, underneath one of the transmitter consoles.

"Dear boy," she gasped, upon seeing his face by reddish-dim comm glow. "Dear… d- dear boy."

Anastasia was hypoxic and close to freezing, with light brown hair plastered down to her thin, pallid cheeks. Teeth were chattering, faintly.

"Deep breath, Your Grace," he told her, pulling the middle-aged lady as close as she'd wanted to be, at lunch. "Just go limp, and let me do the work."

She managed a faint smile, then, and kissed him right on the lips. He let her. Then, back down into the water with only his comm and a few sparkles from Jaeger to lead him up to the airspace. The duchess weighed more than Penny had, but didn't panic on going under; just clung tight, her fingers tangled in the billowing fabric of his shirt.

John swam steadily, lungs burning, until he got them up to that crowded airspace, rising past a forest of slow-kicking legs and the cold, flat eye of a dead shark. Passed her off to one of the bodyguards, who looked like he still had some go.

"Talk to her…" John gasped. "Keep her awake." Because sh*t, it was cold! He could see his own breath misting pale in that dank, smelly air.

"Y- yes, Sir," the guard responded, though he was older than John. "She'll b- be aces, Sir, my word on it."

Between them, John and Parker retrieved most of the audience, reporters and technicians, but their trapped air wouldn't last forever. Worse, that insidious, deep-water cold was already claiming a few of the weaker ones.

Then the singer, Libby, started a quavering song; a very old, badly translated work by the 'Beatles', called 'Octopuses Garden', or some such. A few people cheered and then joined in, once they'd got the words right. It was a very scratchy, coughing chorus, but it kept spirits high, as John, Parker and Penny turned their thoughts to getting out.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Simultaneously, and quite far away-

The undirected signal might have wound up anywhere… or nowhere, at all, simply dissipating into the aether. Only, the Survivor chose to act. After the first alarm, urged by his host, he'd left Captain Rigby. Taking a long chance on this wet, plant-filled globe, Survivor spread himself out, forming a sort of conductive matrix, grounded here and there at sites with unused antennas and lots of space. Not a perfect solution, as these places were few and far between; abandoned, decrepit and dangerous, all of them.

Buddy and Ellie Pendergast had stepped onto the disk in Kyoto, Japan. They'd bowed, holding hands, before a politely applauding crowd. Then… nothing. Utter blankness. They'd been blown out; snuffed like a couple of candles. No sense of movement or travel, no passage of time at all, that they could feel. Just sudden re-existence, in some sort of cold, drafty tunnel, with briefly sparking and flickering pale-green overhead lights.

Footing was uncertain, Buddy noticed; being composed of fallen concrete, rusted metal and… well, bones. Human, some of them. Hard on the old blade foot, but at least he wasn't alone. He squeezed his wife's hand, got a firm 'I love you' triple press in return. He breathed easier, then. Come whatever, he could face it all, with Ellie beside him.

"Don't look much like Pacificker City, Love o' me life," he ventured, fighting the urge to sneeze. The air smelt of rust, wreckage and ancient decay.

"No worries, Mate," she told him. "You know how them shonky adverts make places look fair corker, an' then, when you actually gets there, they're bleak as Gabba?"

Buddie nodded, looking around him at twisted metal rails, broken tile and faded paint. Overhead, a gutted loudspeaker crackled and sparked with some sort of fading green energy.

"Might be this is Packie," she continued, meaning Pacifica City.

Buddy reached up to scratch his head beneath that bright red beanie.

"Dunno, Chookie… musta taken them pics with a long lens an' a filter," he mused, adding. "Don't see no crowd o' reporters, either. Where 'd they get off to, then?"

Something caught their eye, as they turned to look around the sagging, blocked tunnel. A rust-flecked metal sign hung there, marked: Times Sq-42 St Station.

Buddy and Ellie Pendergast gaped for a long moment, peering through murky half-light at that creaking, slow-swinging sign. It dangled by one corner, from a rusted steel bolt set in cracked and badly-stained concrete. Then, as comprehension dawned, they whirled to look at each other, reaching for camera, mic and makeup kit. Jumping up to high five like a pair of daft teens, the pair whooped,

"Crikey! The elusive New York sewer croc! New season starts now!"