Kayo sat in the lounge, nibbling on a piece of cheesecake as she monitored the latest situation details over comms. She grinned inwardly at the fact that Gordon's lame attempt at a date was currently in the process of getting subverted, but she felt bad for Maria. Their new cook obviously cared about Gordon or she wouldn't have gone to such lengths in dressing and fixing up her hair. Kayo really liked Alan a lot, but there was no way she'd put on a dress or style her hair differently to go out with him. If he ever so much as mumbled a disparaging word about her ponytail or her comfy cargo pants, she'd flip him on his back so hard he'd be on supplemental oxygen for a month.

However, it might be entertaining to be a fly on the wall when Maria and Gordon got picked up by Thunderbird 2 because Virgil had been acting strange about this whole thing. Kayo wanted to ask him about the fact he was regularly hiding to spy on Maria's secret dance and singing sessions, but she couldn't ask without revealing how she knew it was happening. Grandma Tracy had told her to keep an electronic eye on Maria, but everyone else was showing up on the hidden surveillance footage too. It wasn't like anyone was doing anything wrong, it was just interesting.

Then that weird little huddle in the hall twenty minutes ago where Virgil looked like he was trying to send some kind of secret code with his eyebrows. Was he being protective of the Thunderbirds? Was he jealous? Was he just overworked and confused? His probing stare seemed to be begging Kayo to read his mind, but she couldn't figure out his message and he wouldn't just spit it out.

Now Virgil's holo-image hovered in the lounge, looking like he always did, calm, focused, and professional. The projector showed his hands holding Thunderbird 2's yoke, steering toward wherever Thunderbird 4 was so he could drop the module nearby for pickup. Something caught his eye in the flight path. His eyes widened and he did a double-take. When he spoke, his voice was slightly louder than normal and tinged with a note of dismay: "Thunderbird 4, did I just see your passenger swimming back to Tracy Island?"

Gordon's holo-image materialised from his portrait's projector. "Affirmative, Thunderbird 2. She insisted. Said she needed to get back to Grandma."

Grandma Tracy turned to Kayo and muttered, "Don't look at me. I told her to take the night off." She then spoke up into the comms. "No need for alarm, Thunderbird 2. She's a good swimmer."

Virgil sighed and said, "F.A.B." but Kayo got the distinct feeling that he was faking appeasement because of the mission. Lives were in danger and he had a job to do. He was probably better than all of them in shutting out distractions and keeping his head in the game.

Kayo set her dessert plate down and stood. "I'll go check on her," she told Grandma Tracy. Kayo also knew Maria was a decent swimmer, but she was swimming in a dress, which affected the degree of difficulty somewhat, and it was also close to sunset. If she didn't make it home before dark, that could be a problem.

"Thanks, Kayo," Grandma Tracy called after her.

While Kayo was still by the pool, she saw Maria way down at the lagoon, already out of the water. Someone had left a towel on one of the chairs on the pool deck, so Kayo grabbed it on her way. Maria was still lying on the sand when Kayo arrived. She sat up when she realised she wasn't alone on the beach. Her sea-soaked dress clung to her body, wrinkled and bunched up where the fabric's flare had nowhere to go. Everything was coated in a layer of sand. Her hair was a tangled, stringy mess and she frankly looked like something a cat dragged in, not that Kayo would ever mention it. She held out the towel as a peace offering.

"Thanks," Maria said as she groped at the towel but missed. "Oops, everything's a blur. Lost my contacts in the ocean."

Kayo delivered the towel into her hand so she wouldn't have to grope. "You okay?"

Maria wiped her face on the towel. She looked kind of weary. "Yeah, I'm fine except for feeling like an idiot."

"Not one of your better dates?"

"Wasn't a date at all. Gordon never said 'date'. My fault for assuming. I should have known better." She swiped at her dress with the towel, but it was only pushing the sand around, not removing it. Apparently, she could figure that out even with her impaired vision. "I think I need the hose."

Kayo offered her hand. Maria took it and pulled herself up to standing. They walked up to the pool where Maria unrolled the garden hose.

"You want to take off your necklace first?" Kayo suggested. She wasn't a jewellery person herself, but she was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to get wet. Well, wetter than it already was. Besides, the necklace was the only thing not covered in sand.

Maria touched it as if to reassure herself it was intact. "No. These are puka shells. They come from a cone snail that's extinct. Totally waterproof. My great grandfather wore this surfing all the time. Supposedly, these were a major fad in 1970-something. Like those ribbon bows are now."

Kayo didn't keep up with fashion trends, but those dorky bows were ubiquitous as hair barrettes and brooches. It was impossible not to have noticed them.

Now clean of sand, but even wetter than before, Maria eyed the sandy towel with disdain. "I think I'll just drip for a while."

"I'll go get you some clothes," Kayo offered. They had hundreds of generic jumpsuits in every imaginable size for disaster victims who'd lost everything.

"Second drawer," Maria said.

"I wasn't proposing to go rummaging in your drawers. International Rescue has plenty of extras."

"It's okay, Kayo. Nothing to see but scrubs and aprons."

"Okay, sit tight."


Maria stood dripping by the pool deck until Kayo came back.

"I found these," she said, offering something a lot smaller than a set of scrubs would be.

Maria held out her hand to accept whatever it was. Her fingers identified the object immediately as her glasses. "Oh, thank you!" She had them back on in seconds. "Nice to be able to see again."

Kayo nodded and handed her the scrubs next. "I'm going back inside if you don't need anything else," she said.

Maria was actually relieved Kayo wasn't going to wait around for her. She'd already been inconvenienced enough. "Thanks again, Kayo." Maria took her scrubs into the little restroom by the pool so she could change. Being back in dry clothes felt better, but with her glasses on, she could now see how terrible her hair looked. Plucking out the seaweed and finger-combing was the best she could do for the moment, but she still looked hideous. She wanted to go straight to her room, but she had to pass the lounge level where it was likely Sally would be. It wouldn't be right not to check-in with her boss.

Sure enough, Sally was in the lounge, along with Brains, Kayo, and Alan, listening in on whatever Scott, Virgil, John, and Gordon were currently doing to save humanity. Brains was doing most of the talking at the moment.

Still barefoot, Maria padded silently behind the couches, keeping to the upper level, out of the way of comms projectors. She crouched beside Sally's head and whispered. "How are you doing?"

"Oh, Maria! I'm just fine. So what happened with your date?"

Maria cringed. Alan leaned in with keen interest written all over his face. Maria didn't want to say anything in front of him, but being silent would only make him more curious.

"Sorry, that was my mistake. It wasn't a date. I misunderstood."

Sally's thin white brows furrowed behind her purple glasses' frames. "And Gordon didn't mislead you?"

"No. He never said 'date' at all. Totally my fault." Can we please skip the joke about assuming, because the only one who's an ass is me.

"Why did he take you out in Thunderbird 4 then?"

Gordon had specifically asked her not to tell his brothers about their conversation, but Maria didn't think he wanted Kayo or his grandmother to know either. What did he tell John? "He said he needed to do a maintenance shakedown. He showed me The Hood's wrecked ship and he pointed out the biggest, most beautiful basking shark I've ever seen."

"You actually like sharks?" Alan interjected. "That is so cool!"

"Yeah, I'm kind of crazy about sea creatures." Crazy in other ways too, but we won't talk about that.

"Wait a minute," Sally said, almost growling, "Gordon knew there were sharks in the water and he let you get out and swim?"

"Actually, he didn't want me to. I insisted. Basking sharks aren't dangerous. They're harmless filter feeders. I didn't get close to the big guy anyway."

"I think you're not telling us something," Sally said matter-of-factly, her arms crossed over her chest. It was kind of spooky how perceptive she was. Then again, Maria was not a good actress.

She drew a deep breath. "You're right, but saying anything more would betray a confidence."

"And you don't kiss and tell."

Maria couldn't prevent the scoff that escaped but she did refrain from voicing her acid little comeback: Apparently, I don't kiss or tell.

Through the haze of background chatter, she overheard someone say, "See you back at the ranch." That meant the mission was over. She didn't want to be around the lounge when Gordon showed up, which sounded like it would be soon.

She leaned toward Sally and lowered her voice another notch. "I'm going to go put some shoes on and then I'll be down in the kitchen. Yell if you need anything."

"You have the night off, remember?"

"Perfect time to catch up on baking." Actually, cleaning would be more therapeutic, but the room that most needed cleaning was full of people right now. Baking would spend energy with the bonus of having something to clean afterwards.

Sally shook her head in that long-suffering way. She probably wasn't happy that the time off wasn't more appreciated. If Maria didn't have so much unsettled energy, she would go look up nano-construction or one of the fifty other subjects she'd noted that everyone else understood except her. However, her brain was too fried to try to concentrate on advanced physics and sitting still wasn't going to work for her nerves.

A quick trip upstairs and she had her trainers on, her hair tightly back in its bun, and an apron added to her scrubs. She avoided the lounge on the way back and headed straight to the kitchen.

Chocolate chip cookies went into the mixer first, as they seemed to be a Tracy family favourite. She had them down to a science now and baking them didn't take long. Next, she made a batch of cupcakes just so she would have something to decorate with fussy frosting swirls. Her piped roses were always a disaster, but she wasn't bad with cornelli, ruffles, and borders. While the cupcakes cooled, she used her bare hands to mix some curing spices into ground turkey and then extruded it into strips on a dehydrator tray for turkey jerky.

Her hands were still covered in raw meat when Gordon walked in carrying her Birkenstocks. She'd have to see him eventually, so might as well get the awkwardness over with now.

"I'm sorry, Maria," he said sheepishly.

"For what?" I'm the idiot in this whole mess, not you.

"You thought me taking you out alone in Thunderbird 4 was a date, didn't you?"

She shrugged. "Yes, I did. But you didn't say 'date'. I assumed. Not your fault."

"See? That's what I told Virgil!"

Great, you told Virgil? Be sure and tell Scott and John so they can laugh at me too. As if I wasn't humiliated enough already. She turned away from looking at him to stare down and pick at the little meat blobs clinging to her palms. Could this possibly get any worse?

"Still, he had a point that I should have noticed that you dressed up and stuff."

"You had your mind on someone else," she said quietly without looking up. Someone who's always stylish and incredibly beautiful. Someone I could never compete with.

"Yeah, I did. Thanks for understanding." He raised the hand carrying her sandals. "Where should I put these?"

"Over by the door is fine. Thanks for bringing them back."

"No problem."