Chapter 76.
Havoc deployed her trademark smirk as she sashayed through the front door of whichever government official had taken it upon himself to host Kayo's little birthday bash.
Security was lax, just a couple of bored looking bouncers who seemed more interested in eyeing up the female attendees instead of stopping and searching people.
Havoc didn't hesitate to use this to her advantage.
A saucy wink followed by a coy smile, and she was in.
Bingo.
-x-
"Scott!" Penelope called, clattering across the terrace like a graceful gazelle in heels that were far too high, "Oh my, you look fantastic! I swear I saw that suit in Armani's winter line-up. Oh, and your cologne! Okay, I'm getting a hint of…no wait, not Gucci Guilty…zesty and musky…definitely not Chanel Bleu…Dior Savage, maybe?"
Scott smiled at Penelope's gushing. He'd taken the time to scrub himself up extra well after returning from his run. A sharp suit and kickass cologne were necessary weapons when one found oneself brushing shoulders with senior government officials and aristocratic hoi polloi.
Plus, he wanted Kayo to see what she was missing out on.
"Oh, look!" Penelope exclaimed, pointing excitedly towards the door, "Colonel Casey just arrived! Let's go and say hello."
A slender arm linked itself with Scott's and proceeded to drag the eldest Tracy across the room with surprising strength. Upon reaching her target, Penelope broke into an enthusiastic dialogue with the GDF's commanding officer, pausing occasionally to allow Scott to make socially appropriate noises of agreement.
Across the room, Virgil and Kayo were locked in a similar exchange with Captain Rigby and Ned Tedford. Kayo was howling with laughter at something Rigby was saying, while Virgil was taking a keen interest in some new buds Gladys was putting up.
Scott's blue eyes discreetly swept up and down Virgil's attire as Penelope jabbered away about an ambassador with bad body odour she'd had to deal with last week. The engineer had clearly paid no forethought to the calibre of his surroundings and was shamelessly donning a navy blue Oxford shirt and a pair of dark wash jeans. No tie, no jacket…his shirt wasn't even tucked in.
Scott visibly flinched. Virgil was the only brother who knew how to get under his skin. He knew how much of a stickler the eldest was for order, both visually and behaviourally, and had knowingly thrown another log onto the fire that was Scott's temper.
Screw you too, Virgil.
"Scott?" Penelope gently shook his arm and motioned towards a small gaggle of photographers who'd been granted access to the party, "Kat Cavanaugh wants to take some staged shots of us together in an effort to get the media off your tail. You don't mind posing for a few minutes, do you?"
Aristocratic heiress or not, Penelope looked about as thrilled as Scott felt.
"Sure thing," the eldest Tracy replied, nodding a polite farewell to Colonel Casey before tailing Penelope over towards a slightly quieter section of the terrace, their main media ally following close behind.
"I just need a couple of candid snaps of the two of you together," Kat explained, smiling sympathetically, "Trust me when I say that those Hollywood shutterbugs won't want anything more to do with you once their claims about you and Kayo being an item are laid to waste."
Scott suddenly felt unexplainedly tired.
"Okay," Kat muttered, raising her camera and squinting as she adjusted the zoom lens, "Put your arm around Penny, but don't look directly at me. Pretend you're both just people watching or something. We want this to look casually intimate."
Scott blinked. He had no idea such a thing even existed.
"A little closer," Kat coaxed, motioning with her hand for Penelope to lean more into Scott's shoulder, "Perfect. Okay, smile!"
Click.
Flash.
Blink.
"Nice one!" Kat enthused, peering down at the screen, "Oh, the world is going to be so over International Rescue's love life once these babies go live. Virgil! Your turn!"
Five million brain cells burst into flame as Scott eyed his brother meandering across the terrace with Kayo clinging to his arm like a stiletto wearing squirrel.
"Right, I need you two to shuffle in next to Scott and Penny. We're going to round this counterattack off with a double date shot. That ought to shut those faux-tographers up for good," Kat exclaimed, swooping forward to quickly straighten Virgil's collar.
Kayo smirked and dragged her thumb across a smudge on Virgil's cheek that was about as non-existent as John's fashion sense
Penelope must have sensed Scott's body temperature ratchet up several degrees, "Want me to do that to you?"
"Knock yourself out," Scott mumbled, cringing when Penelope attacked his face with a lace handkerchief she'd summoned from god knows where.
"Oh yes, more of this!" Kat enthused, darting around the quartet and snapping from every possible angle, "Scott, I need you to look a little more to your left. Kayo, angle your chin upwards a bit more…that's it, gaze at him like he's the ketchup to your fries…"
No one saw the clenched fist hidden inside the safety of an Armani pocket.
-x-
Gordon felt a gag travel up his throat as he and Alan surreptitiously eyed their grandmother from across the room.
To the surprise of all five of her grandsons, the Tracy matriarch had indeed managed to bag herself a date. And he was no stranger either.
Virgil's scream of raw delight had earnt him a smack on the arm from Kayo and a glare that promised death from Scott.
Kip Harris had merely laughed and offered to buy his number one fan a drink.
-x-
Havoc's blue eyes travelled around the room, assessing her surroundings.
There were probably between fifty to seventy people in attendance, none of whom she recognised (excluding the Tracys and their little cohort). She had located all of the emergency exits and breakable windows and was ninety nine percent confident her presence was going and would continue to go undetected...
…as proven by her idiot brother earlier that evening.
"Whoa, who are you?" Fuse had demanded upon boarding the Chaos Cruiser, his fists clenching in preparation for a Power Punch when he saw the strange looking woman sat behind the controls.
Havoc had rolled her eyes and nearly smudged her eyeliner, "For goodness sake, it's me, Fuse! Don't tell me you're as thick as that armour of yours."
Fuse hadn't backed down, "Havoc? How did – why are you – you don't look like Havoc!"
Havoc had ignored her brother and returned to dressing her eyes. She knew she lacked Lady Penelope's deportment and Kayo's range of vocabulary, but that didn't mean she was any less proficient at bringing out the best in her features.
Heavy yet stylish makeup, hair that was brushed straight back instead of its usual side sweep, a pair of fake glasses, the Versace dress the Hood had footed the bill for and a purse full of holoballs.
She was ready.
The Hood had offered to loan her the technology he himself used to alter appearances; a holographic light emitter and voice synthesizer. Havoc had been delighted at his willingness to entrust her with his most valuable tools, but had declined. As a woman, she was already well versed in the art of appearance enhancement.
One quick glance at her reflection in the Chaos Cruiser's windscreen and her brother's dumbfounded expression had assured her that the Tracy brothers would also be none the wiser.
Her theory was confirmed when Gordon suddenly materialised next to her and smiled warmly.
-x-
Scott didn't think he'd ever wanted to smack Virgil more.
John, Gordon and Alan had always joked that their eldest brother was similar to a hormonal woman. Some days, he had the patience of a saint and would quite happily put up with no end of shit. Other days, he had heart failure over the simplest of questions, like whether there was a spare carton of milk in the freezer.
Gordon had nearly received a black eye for his trouble that particular morning.
The joke was made even more sardonic by the addition of Virgil, who according to John, was the emotionally stable counterpart to Scott's twitchiness. Incest notwithstanding, all they were missing were a pair of wedding bands and they'd be the perfect mad wife and chilled husband combo.
Scott didn't appreciate being made fun of at the best of times, but replaying his brother's rather tasteless joke inside the confines of his head as he watched Kayo and Virgil pose for Kat's camera made his blood froth with anger.
"Excellent!" Kat beamed, standing up from a crouch and wincing when her knees clicked, "I'm sure the tabloids will be bored sick of you guys when I publish these babies in the morning. Nothing spells 'old news' quite like a solid photographic counterargument, and I'm certain I can piece one of those together out of the shots you've given me."
"So we can go?" Penelope asked. Her perfectly rehearsed smile had started to falter ten minutes ago when a tray of champagne had breezed past.
"You can go," Kat smiled, flicking back through her camera roll, "Wow, Virgil! I gotta say, you and Kayo make a darn cute couple. The public are so going to get behind the pair of you. What do you think your name blend will be? Viryo? Kagil?"
Scott had heard enough. With a shove that fell well outside of his usual politeness, he barrelled past Penelope and marched up to Virgil, noting with a smidgen of satisfaction how he had to cast his gaze downward in order to make eye contact with his first brother.
Virgil, who had seen Scott's mood coming from a mile away, sighed and motioned for Kayo, Kat and Penelope to evacuate the immediate area, "Go on, we'll follow you inside later."
Three sets of heels did as instructed.
"Can I help you?" Virgil asked, turning back to face Scott with an expression akin to that of a harassed girlfriend/wife.
That did it for Scott.
A sharp shove to the chest and Virgil found himself partially submerged in the fountain they'd just been posing in front of.
Scott loved Virgil more than the air he breathed, but sibling rivalry and petty arguing was something the eldest Tracy had never (and probably would never) grow out of. Low-key family violence was always an option in his book.
The mouths of Alan, John, Gordon, Penelope, Parker, Grandma, Kip Harris, Kayo, Colonel Casey, Ridley O'Bannon, Kat Cavanaugh (and Havoc) all fell open in shock.
A well-timed kick to the shin on Virgil's part and Scott found himself faceplanting the same water he'd sent his brother careening into.
John winced. Scott with wet hair was significantly harder to reason with.
Virgil was going to have his hands full.
-x-
"Holy cow," Kip Harris exclaimed, his expression suitably alarmed as he watched Scott and Virgil roll around in the fountain like a pair of wrestling geese, "Shouldn't someone go over there and stop 'em?"
Sally sighed and ushered everyone away from her warring grandsons with a 'shoo' motion of her hands, "They'll cool down and come to their senses in a few minutes. Don't let their antics spoil your evening, Kayo. A bit of water up the nose might do their attitudes some good."
Thunderbird Shadow's pilot bit her lip and nodded quietly. Havoc could practically smell the guilt oozing from her.
Kat Cavanaugh snapped one final discreet shot of the leaders of International Rescue before trotting after the rest of the group, stammering a hasty apology when Sally demanded that she delete any images taken without the subject's permission.
"Is that normal behaviour for them?" Havoc asked, deliberately enunciating each word in a bid to mask her usual tone. Physically, she was well disguised, but auditorily, she was not. Her somewhat slurred speech was almost as identifiable as her trademark smirk, and she was beginning to regret not bringing the Hood's voice synthesizer.
Fortunately, Gordon seemed oblivious.
"Eh, all brothers fight," the aquanaut shrugged, helping himself to a glass of pineapple juice while flexing his bandaged arm, "We're no different to any other family where that's concerned. So tell me, how do you and Kayo know each other?"
Havoc had already decided that she wasn't going to waste any energy on Gordon. He stank of infatuation and would probably be harder to manipulate than one of his unattached brothers. Her attention suddenly fixated itself on the hurt look passing across Virgil's face as Scott's yelling reached a ten on the Richter scale.
She'd recognise that look anywhere.
Vulnerability.
Throwing espionage protocol to the wind, Havoc allowed a sly smirk to briefly flit across her face.
Target located.
The shattering sound that echoed around the room as Gordon's glass ended up in eight different pieces on the floor did nothing to deter Havoc as she slunk off into the crowd, her predatory gaze not leaving Virgil Tracy for a single second.
Gordon meanwhile, was experiencing a sudden and profound bout of empathy for John's anxiety attacks.
Memories of seeing that exact same smirk cocooned inside the cockpit of the Chaos Cruiser as he and Thunderbird Four raced for their lives through the Marindata Ventfields, only to end up crushed underneath a volcanic chimney and left to die on the cold, dark sea floor came flooding back, momentarily paralysing him with fear.
Gordon still had nightmares about that fateful day. The day he had very nearly not come home.
Fear turned into panic when the aquanaut surfaced from his terrifying flashback to find Havoc well and truly gone.
In the absence of Scott and Virgil, Gordon did the only rational thing and yelled for his third brother.
"John! John!" the aquanaut yelled, crunching across the broken glass at his feet as he began to frantically scour the room, "John! SOS!"
A flash of red and Tracy Numero Tres was at his petrified brother's side.
"Havoc," Gordon gasped, his eyes wide with memories he wished he didn't have, "She's here."
Turquoise eyes darkened in alarm.
