Chapter 96.
"Gordon, the stove is on fire!"
"Oh my god, get an adult!"
"You are an adult!"
"Where's Scott?!"
"SCOTT!?"
"Scott?! Wait a minute, I'll…never mind- SCOTT?!"
Scott tried desperately to filter out the insanity that was echoing up from the kitchen by turning the volume up on Kayo's second horror film of the evening. If possible, she'd managed to select something even more graphic and gory than the first time. The eldest Tracy cringed as he felt his stomach start an argument with the pizza he'd just eaten.
"SCOTT? HELP!"
"I'll go," Kayo sighed, hitting the pause button and heaving herself to her feet. Like tired parents taking shifts with a bitchy baby, she and Scott had spent much of last hour trying desperately to keep the other four at bay as they lolloped around and caused general mayhem.
Virgil had relinquished his position as the bookmark between his brother and Kayo to answer the call of nature about fifteen minutes ago. Eager to capitalise on this advantage, Scott had stretched himself horizontally along the length of the sofa as soon as the engineer was out of sight in a bid to discourage a certain fourteen stone butt from making another descent. While Gordon and Alan wouldn't be above sitting on any part of Scott's body that looked reasonably comfortable, Virgil was a different breed. Interfering bastard or not, the engineer knew darn well that his weight on any part of Scott's anatomy would probably result in the eldest brother going to bed with more broken bones that he already had.
Scott was betting the structural integrity of his ribcage on this logic.
"Oh, has Kayo ditched you?"
A voice that made Scott want to saw his ears off filtered down from the upstairs balcony, closely followed by the sound of footsteps descending the staircase. A waft of lemon scented shower gel (organic, of course), and John was perched on the end of the sofa, his turquoise eyes sweeping up the exaggerated stretch Scott was performing in obvious amusement.
"Get lost," the eldest Tracy snapped, shifting his knees to claim ownership over a five inch by five inch section of cushion his body wasn't covering, "She's downstairs with Alan and Gordon. Don't you have some helium to suck?"
The redhead shook his head, "Too much can cause an air embolism. Besides, I have a much better idea of how to exact revenge on you."
Scott craned his neck in disbelief, "Revenge? John, if I've done something to offend you all, then please let me know. I can't guarantee that it was unintentional, but at least give a guy a clue."
Sea green eyes darkened with resentment, "Wow, that's just insulting. It's bad enough that you kept a secret from us, but you didn't even think we'd have the wherewithal to find out about it? Low blow, Scott. Low blow."
Without giving his brother a chance to reply, John snatched up the remote control, flicked over to a half-watched episode of Into The Unknown, and summoned the source of too many of Scott's headaches, "Gordon! Buddy and Ellie are on!"
The result was instant. Gordon scurried up from the kitchen like a human-shaped boomerang, his face alight with excitement, "No way! ALAN! Get up here! Now!"
They were soon joined by the midget Tracy, who looked thrilled at the prospect of another round of Scayo datecrashing. Two minutes later, and Virgil had also admitted himself into the ranks brought about by John's call to arms.
The sofa Scott had claimed in the name of Thunderbird One was big enough to comfortably support three people, however this didn't seem to bother four of the six bodies that were trying to squeeze themselves onto it. True to the Thunderbird she piloted, Kayo had snuck back upstairs and managed to reclaim her spot next to Scott before anyone even noticed she was there. Not happy with this arrangement, Virgil had intervened like a reversing dump truck and wedged himself between a now vertical Scott and thoroughly squished Kayo. John was perched elegantly on right armrest, while Gordon had draped himself across Scott and Kayo's laps. With not a spare inch remaining, Alan conceded to sitting on Virgil's lap.
Packed together like sardines in a can, Scott's nose was subjected to a variety of scents as he tried desperately to breathe like a normal human. There was his own rosewood aftershave (which he was mostly noseblind to), Virgil's pine scented deodorant, John's citrus shampoo, Kayo's jasmine perfume, and Alan's minty chewing gum.
But worst of all (ironically), was the sickly sweet smell coming off Gordon's shirt and jeans. It was powdery and floral, and smelt like something a unicorn had vomited up.
Scott wasn't a betting man, but his money was on the aquanaut accidentally using their Grandma's laundry detergent instead of his own. Again.
The result: an emergency responder that stank like the duty-free section of an airport.
The anatomical issues caused by too many bodies in too small of a space wasn't limited to Scott's nose. Gordon's elbow was digging into Alan's thigh and Virgil was losing the circulation in his left leg. The hand that was trapped under Gordon but attached to Kayo was falling victim to pins and needles, and John's allergies were playing up from being in such close proximity to too many non-organic deodorants, perfumes, and aftershaves.
The positions Scott, Kayo and Virgil were in had also robbed them of the ability to breathe normally. Gordon's offer to administer CPR in light of this announcement was met with firm (and in Kayo's case, loud) rejection.
The episode John had selected consisted of forty five minutes of Buddy's backside as he trudged up some unidentifiable mountain in search of the 'Giant Rat of Sumatra'. Ellie's peppy commentary did little to break up the mundaneness of what was, in Scott's opinion, a rather juvenile and low-budget attempt at a nature documentary imbued with a touch of parascience.
Gordon remained transfixed for the entire duration, however broke out of his trance when the screen suddenly went black and an Arial font title appeared:
'The Life and Times of Mr Scott Tracy – Unfiltered Version.'
Scott felt his blood freeze as four expressions of mutual comradery and were exchanged behind his back.
Gordon was quick to credit his so-called 'squid sense' whenever he detected a situation that had the potential to turn hairy. Alan boasted about something similar, but was convinced it was the result of dormant psychic abilities he'd been born with. The overly sensitive Virgil claimed to be more in touch with his surroundings than the others, on both a physical and spiritual level, and John was full of crap about an apparent 'sixth sense' he possessed.
Scott had never subscribed to such baseless claims. If he couldn't see or read it with his eyes, hear it with his ears, feel it with his fingers, taste it with his tongue or smell it with his nose, then it didn't exist as far as he was concerned.
One look at the PowerPoint presentation unfurling in front of him however, and the eldest found himself hastily laying claim to his own intuitive faculty. One he intended to dub as his 'shit sense'.
Because shit was about to go down. Big time…
…as evidenced by the opening slide which contained a photo of him as a bare-assed baby.
-x-
Twenty five minutes later…
"And here's him having his first bath."
Scott's face was devoid of all expression. In fact, it look as if he'd pulled an all-nighter. A rough all-nighter.
It was a well-known fact that Gordon didn't know when to shut up, but Virgil came an extremely close second.
The rather slapdash PowerPoint collage was made up of numerous photos, all of which featured Scott as the main focus. His moronic brothers hadn't shown any mercy in their selection criteria. Baby pictures, school photos, embarrassing photos Gordon and Alan had taken of him without his knowledge….it was all there.
And Virgil, the smug, traitorous chonk that he was, was revelling in his self-appointed role as commentator.
"That's him learning to crawl. That's him on his first day of school. That's him on the day he lost his first tooth. That's him running around the house naked."
Despite making all the appropriate cooing noises, Kayo was well aware of the kicking Scott's pride was taking. He was doing a commendable job of keeping his emotions in check, but the tightness of his jaw betrayed the true depth of his anger.
Then, something weird happened.
Something Kayo, Gordon, and Alan had never seen before.
Scott exploded.
The trigger was innocuous enough; a photo of a very young Lucy beaming at the camera while holding her eldest son, her brown eyes shining with elation as the blue-eyed infant in her arms gummed fruitlessly at a toy plane clutched in his hand. If the timestamp on the photo was accurate, Scott would have only been three months old at the time.
Such invasions of privacy were not uncommon in the Tracy household. Kayo vividly recalled one occasion many years ago when she'd nipped downstairs from her room to grab a drink, only to find Gordon pawing through her school rucksack. After pursuing the terrified blond around the perimeter of the house four times and eventually cornering him in the larder, he'd confessed that he'd only been after a spare ruler. Further interrogation had revealed that he'd also copied a good portion of her trigonometry homework and had accidentally-on-purpose helped himself to some of her deodorant.
Living with five boys had meant that Kayo had grown accustomed to such violations, however they were all careful to exhibit a suitable amount of restraint around her. Maybe it was because she was a girl. Maybe it was because she wasn't related to them. Maybe it was because she'd once thrown the toaster at Virgil's head when he'd nearly walked in on her showering. Whatever the reason, the reservations they held spared her from the worst of their petty antics.
Reservations which they obviously didn't have with Scott.
Like an exhausted father with too many kids, the eldest Tracy dutifully weathered their skylarking, propped up by the crutch of a strong mental constitution paired with the occasional glass of wine.
Not this time, it seemed.
Scott had been the baby of the family for eleven months, the shortest of all the boys. In his eyes, the decision to include the photo of him and Lucy was a blatant attempt at mockery. Mockery over the fact that, as hard as it was to believe, he too had once been young and vulnerable.
Bullshit. Just because he'd changed Alan's diapers, didn't mean he was made of steel. He still craved the hugs and reassurance his brothers took for granted. He just hid it under layers of professionalism and the occasional eating binge.
Alan and John both shrieked and catapulted up from their respective seats as Scott lunged blindly for Virgil, the hurt on his face as plain as the lettering on Thunderbird Three. After getting over the shock of being attacked, Virgil came around and met the betrayal burning in his older brother's eyes with that of his own. Gordon made a frantic throat slashing gesture at the engineer, silently pleading with him to flee with the rest of them, but it was too late.
One and Two had their horns firmly locked.
John and Alan plastered themselves against the wall as Gordon and Celery scampered for cover behind the piano. Despite his injuries, Scott appeared to be putting up a decent fight, his lack of foot-related attacks being replaced instead with wrestling and, much to Alan's secret delight, biting.
Kayo gasped as both brothers fell onto the holotable, their combined weight causing the wood to splinter and buckle. Scott was swift to gain the upper hand and celebrated his victory by dumping his glass of water over Virgil's face. The engineer retaliated by clumsily ramming a fistful of discarded popcorn into Scott's mouth. The sneezing fit brought about by a stray kernel escaping up the eldest Tracy's nose afforded him the time needed to follow up his initial attack with a water dump of his own.
Unfortunately for Virgil, Scott's wealth of self-defence experience had taught him to always have a Plan B handy.
Digging around in his back pocket proved trickier than normal with Virgil's bulk trapping him in place, but some strategic wriggling gave Scott the opportunity to close his fingers around the small needle he'd gotten into the habit of carrying on his person at all times. Popping the safety cap off with his thumb, he whipped his arm out from the safety of his body and expertly plunged the sharp end into Virgil's thigh.
It was a concoction that had been tested and approved by a private GDF facility in New York. All Scott knew was that it contained Metaxalone, a well-known muscle relaxant used for sedating hysterical rescue victims as an alternative to physical force (also handy when trying to shift fourteen stone of hysterical chonk off one's chest).
The effect was near instant. Virgil's entire lower half went limp, the weight of both his deadweight legs dragging him off Scott and onto the floor. Shortly afterwards, the numbness migrated north, up into his shoulders and arms.
Over by the bookcase, Kayo stood stock still, rooted to the spot in a combination of amazement and disbelief. The distant echo of a door slamming shut informed her that Gordon, John and Alan had opted to take shelter in their respective bedrooms.
"Grab your phone," Scott panted, hauling himself up and leaving Virgil in a boneless heap on the floor, "We're having this date if it kill us."
Kayo nodded and obediently patted her back pocket, relief flooding through her when her fingers detected the familiar outline through the fabric of her jeans. The little voice in her head muttered something about going along with whatever Scott suggested, lest she join Virgil on the floor.
"We're leaving in Thunderbird One," Scott announced, tapping away at his own phone and necking a handful of painkillers, "I've got a contact who can secure us a table at one of Paris's best restaurants. Make sure the others don't follow us."
"Scott?" Virgil slurred, his voice thick with medicated fatigue, "Don't leave me, I can change! Jus' lemme contact my lawyer…I'll buy you out of the mortgage and we'll share joint custody of Alan and Celery…"
After stooping to check that all his brother's airways were clear and none of his limbs compromised, Scott staggered towards the hanger stairwell, mentally cursing the time he knew it would take before the painkillers kicked in.
The trip to Paris was unplanned, but very convenient. His research had turned up several high-profile jewellers he'd like to speak to on the Champ de Mars, which just so happened to be where their restaurant was located.
He was long overdue a bit of luck.
