Chapter 105.

With great power, came great responsibility.

Or so John thought.

Being a hall monitor didn't afford him a shedload of power, but it certainly gave him more than his fair share of responsibility.

The redhead had made it his personal mission to track Gordon for the remainder of the afternoon. He'd shirked his own remaining lessons, blagging to his teachers that he needed a couple of free periods to catch up on some tutoring duties that he'd fallen behind on.

Being a hall monitor might not have given him the Key to the City (or even the key to the janitor's closest), but it did offer him a certain amount of autonomy over his timetable. It also gave him the authority to skip to the front of the lunch line and to issue detentions.

The former came in particularly handy on Fajita Fridays.

Operation 'Stalk the Kid Brother' had hit an unexpected roadblock when John had observed said kid brother run into his tormentors after French class. The redhead had intended to keep an eye on Gordon for the sole purpose of making sure he got to his remaining lessons on time, but had ended up bearing witness to two more incidents involving the little bastards who had accosted him after lunch.

The first had been another taunting session focussing on Gordon's 'puppy fat', as Virgil affectionately dubbed it. The second had ended with his rucksack getting confiscated and tossed on top of a bookcase in one of the vacant science labs, necessitating the use of a chair to get it down.

John had documented it all, while somehow managing to suppress his desire to commit first degree murder.

-x-

All five brothers met as usual by the fountain in the courtyard at four o'clock sharp. Scott was moaning about some extra homework that he'd been given, and Virgil was admiring a finger-painted masterpiece than Alan had made that morning.

Gordon was flushed pink from retrieving his rucksack, but didn't say a word as he plonked his tired butt down next to the jabbering Alan. John took subtle note of the way his younger brother nervously scanned the crowd of homeward-bound students, but didn't verbalise his observation.

"Right, home time," Scott announced, stretching and yawning, "I've got six essays due before the end of the week and a presentation I've got to cobble together for tomorrow morning. Everyone alright with takeaway this evening?"

Virgil and John both nodded in agreement, while Alan squealed and Gordon remained silent.

Like a family of oversized ducklings, the four brothers all followed Scott towards his car. A technical complication onboard Shadow Alpha had seen Jeff blast off like some kind of lunar knight to fix whatever the hell was wrong, hence his absence. Three weeks had passed, yet the Tracy patriarch had made no indication of when he'd be home.

Thankfully, Scott and Virgil had their licenses, so were able to taxi both themselves and the others to and from school each day. While this arrangement meant that none of them were at the mercy of buses, it was a royal pain in the ass if one of them had to stay late for a detention.

T'was why all five boys sported impeccable behaviour records.

Virgil didn't know whether to be terrified or mortified as he climbed into the passenger side of Scott's brand new Audi A3. It had been a birthday gift from Jeff, who was apparently indifferent to the risk posed to his four other sons whenever they got in a car driven by the eldest.

Especially one with a four cylinder, turbocharged engine.

Needless to say, Scott's need for speed had resulted in more than a few backseat bowel evacuations.

"USE YOUR TURN SIGNAL!" Virgil howled as Scott torpedoed towards a junction, his own white-knuckled grip on the door handle a stark contrast to the slack one Scott had on the steering wheel.

"Don't know where it is," the eldest brother replied, gesturing vaguely to the myriad of buttons and knobs adorning his portion of the dashboard, "The car I learnt in had a stalk that you pushed up or down, but dad mentioned something about this one having a button instead."

A couple of drivers honked angrily as Scott cut in front of them. In the backseat, John hastily tightened Alan's car seat harness.

"Then use your hand signal instead!" Virgil wheezed, waving awkwardly at the distraught looking driver of the school bus they'd just forced into an emergency stop, "And not the one you gave me when I asked you to slow down!"

Scott rolled his eyes, but slowed to a speed that no longer made Virgil, John, Gordon, and Alan want to void their bladders.

One impressive plume of dust later, courtesy of a last minute handbrake turn on Scott's part, and the Audi screeched to a halt outside Gran Roca's farmhouse, three of her five occupants falling out in boneless heaps.

"I'm getting the bus," John mumbled, his face squashed against the dry dirt of the driveway.

"Alan's thrown up," Virgil grimly announced, unclipping the youngest from his harness and carrying him at an arm's length towards the house, "I reckon that last turn was too much for him. I'll get him in the bath, but you're on washing duty."

Scott moaned like the diva he secretly was and unloaded his schoolbag from the trunk, "Seriously, Virg? My 'to do' list is twice as long as yours, plus grandma's not here today, which means I'll probably get stuck with dinner duty as well. I've also got Gordon's swimming lesson to supervise and two university applications to finish!"

The fact that Sally Tracy wasn't present to cook for her grandsons was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that whatever she created would probably go uneaten anyway. A curse in that it was nice to have a grandma in the house who, in one way or another, always made sure her grandsons went to bed with full stomachs.

But alas, it was a Tuesday, and Sally still worked part-time as a consultant surgeon on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She maintained a property in Phoenix two days of the week for the sake of her commute, but spent the rest of her time chasing and cleaning up after the boys at the ranch. Heaven help them if they were to have no female influence at all in their lives.

Virgil, unfortunately, seemed indifferent to Scott's homework-bath-vomit-dinner plight.

"Your mess, couldn't care less."

-x-

Gordon's problem with overeating happened to be the reason behind his love of swimming.

Scott's relationship with guilt had started the moment he'd walked out of the doctor's office following his little brother's obesity diagnosis. As Gordon's main caregiver, he quite predictably (and quite rightly) blamed himself for the little blonde's weight. After giving John's suggestion some serious thought, he'd started throwing Gordon into the pool every evening before dinner and had devoted himself to teaching his younger brother to swim. His plan was simple; create an inverse relationship where Gordon's love of water increased and his BMI decreased.

All was going well so far. Water wings were a thing of the past and Gordon was quite capable of independently dog paddling the full length of the pool. He relied heavily on Scott walking beside him and cheering him on, and had required his brother's assistance on one occasion when he'd become fatigued, but no one could deny the progress he was making.

Tragically, a noseful of chlorinated water put a slight dampener on the after-party.

Scott cringed. One benefit of his cake strategy was that Gordon hadn't been able to scream when his mouth had constantly been full.

-x-

"HE'S WHAT?!"

John nearly dropped his glass in shock. He knew he could have picked a better time to drop the bomb he'd been inadvertently tasked with carrying, but watching Gordon bite back tears when Virgil questioned him on why all his rucksack snacks were gone was the straw that broke the camel's back.

The redhead had been strategic in his delivery and had waited for Virgil, Gordon and Alan to all retreat upstairs to bed before breaking the news about Gordon's situation to Scott.

"I'll kill them!" Scott seethed, pacing the length of the living room like a captive tiger, "I'll wring their filthy necks. How dare they! How dare they!"

The coffee table buckled under the force of the kick Scott directed at it, one leg splintering on impact. John flinched slightly, but remained outwardly impassive. Someone had to keep a cool head, and no way in hell or heaven was it going to be Scott.

"Why didn't he say something?" Scott mumbled, sinking onto the sofa and burying his face in his hands, "I should have noticed. I should have read the signs."

It was during times like these that John wished that Kayo was around. Unfortunately, her sporting timetable meant that she'd opted to board at the Academy full-time during the week, which although beneficial for her extracurricular profile, robbed the boys of the female perspective she brought to situations like these.

"Virgil!" Scott bellowed, jumping up from the sofa and beelining to the bottom of the stairs, "Virgil! You'd better get down here before I well and truly lose my shit!"

Mild panic coursed through John as he leapt up and slapped a hand across his eldest brother's mouth, "Zip it! Are you intent on waking up the entire house?"

Scott struggled for a second before realising he had the upper hand. A quick drag of his tongue across John's palm and the redhead nearly suffered cardiac arrest on the spot .

"Gross!" John hissed, flicking his wrist in disgust and scurrying towards the sink, "I hope your rabies shots are up to date!"

Scott responded with the finger, but didn't reiterate his original demand. Involving Virgil at this stage would be hopeless anyway. Logistics and legalities notwithstanding, they were powerless to do anything about the current situation until morning. None of them knew where Gordon's bullies lived, and while Scott was certainly not adverse to the idea of giving both kid's parents a profanity-laden earful, he had a strong urge to confront the little shits himself.

'How dare they.'

Scott was easily the quickest to anger of all the brothers, but his annoyance (or fury, in this case) was never unjustified. He was a stickler for fairness and incapable of tolerating injustice in any form. While he knew there were plenty of amicable options he could pursue for the sake of rectifying the situation peacefully, the fact that it was one of his own brothers who had been victimised only worsened his wrath.

They would pay. Oh, he'd make sure they paid dearly for their trouble.

They were probably tucked up in bed right now, the little bastards. Oh yes, burrowed under the safety of their filthy duvets, utterly oblivious to the severity of their actions. No doubt plotting their next move, probably walking through their next ambush of Gordon in the safe confines of their minds.

Over his cold, hard, decaying dead body.

He was Scott Tracy, and no one, but no one, messed with his little brothers.

They wanted a fight. He'd give them a war.