"Have you ever watched two of the same person fight over coffee?" Alan asked Other-Alan as he came into the kitchen the next morning. "It's an experience I never knew I needed." The older blond was seated at the counter, head resting on his arms, which were folded on the countertop. Across from him, both Virgils were busy falling asleep in their coffee mugs. None of them looked like they'd had a good night's sleep.
Neither did Other-Alan, though, to be honest.
They'd all showered, and Virgil and Alan were back in the clothes that they'd borrowed. But the shower and sleep had done them a little good, all of them. And the kitchen was slowly filling up with the other brothers of this world, Other-Scott doing his best to eyeball every single one of them. Other-Gordon made a show of rolling his eyes at the attention.
Other-John was still in the infirmary, where Jeff was keeping a close watch on it. "Everyone okay?" Other-Scott asked, grabbing a mug and filling it with coffee. He ignored the grumbles from both Virgils, taking a sip.
"We're good, Scott," Other-Alan responded, snickering a little. Virgil and Other-Virgil looked more similar now than they had at any other time during the past day and whatever. "Just kind of surprised to see them up," he said, motioning to the two brunettes at the table.
"EOS sent over a bunch of info," Alan said, waving the computer still strapped to his wrist. "V wasn't awake enough to want to deal with it, so he went searching for coffee."
"And I got our Virgil up to help with cleanup," Other-Scott muttered, rolling his eyes as he refilled the mugs in front of the two morning-challenged men. They both grumbled their thanks and grabbed at the coffee. Cleanup had already been initiated by the Kyranos, as evidenced by the lack of broken glass from the shattered window. But there were still issues with the house itself. Overturned furniture, a missing couch, pools to drain—glass had gotten into the pools as well and needed to be cleaned out. Not to mention the absolute mess that the hangars were in.
"Need any help?" Alan asked, sounding just a little out of his depth.
Other-Scott gave him a smile, a wry little twist of his lips. "I think you're going to be pretty busy on your own," he said, shrugging. "Dad wants to get you guys settled a bit more. I think he wants you to do some shopping."
Alan's face scrunched a bit. "I don't like shopping. And no offense, but I was hoping to not have to get settled."
"That's fair," Other-Gordon said, practically skipping around the counter to the coffee machine. Other-Scott quickly pushed it out of the way; apparently this Gordon—like the Gordon back in their world—wasn't allowed copious amounts of caffeine. "What's your Computer-Lady gotta say?"
Virgil grunted and tapped at the table a bit. "Hand it over, Sprout," he said, reaching for the computer.
Alan rolled his eyes and unstrapped the computer, pocketing the bio-reader that fell from his wrist. He slid the computer across the counter and watched as Virgil activated the hologram, showing a lot of information. "Let me read through this," the heavy-lifter mumbled, rubbing at his face and nearly clocking himself in the head with his casted arm. He eyed it wearily and then sighed. "Geez."
Alan rolled his eyes but followed Other-Scott from the room after shoveling down the food that Other-Gordon had put in front of him. Other-Scott got him set up in front of a computer, which looked a lot older than he was used to and told him to order at least enough clothing for a week for the both of them. He then took Alan's bio-reader and headed back towards the kitchen, presumably to get Virgil's, so that Other-Brains could set them up with a way to keep them against their skin without needing to worry about it.
Also, Other-Brains was terribly interested in the bio-readers and really wanted to see if he could incorporate similar technology in their own suits.
Thankfully, fashions weren't too different in this world and Alan knew both his and his brother's measurements. He wondered, just a bit, about whether or not the Tracys here shopped at Walmart like they did back home. It had been a bit of an uproar when that had come out—the multi-billion-dollar Tracy family shopping at Walmart?!—but they hadn't much cared. They tended to shop in bulk, and Walmart had what they wanted.
Their suits, though, the ones used for Tracy Industry business…those they got tailor made for an exorbitant price and had plenty of them. So…you know, it evened out or something.
Other-Scott had mentioned that they would fly out to Auckland and pick up any of the orders later that day. They were still making up lists of things that needed to be replaced on the island itself, after all. So, Alan made sure that he had it all set up to have the purchases delivered to the airfield address that Other-Scott had given him.
He bought a weeks' worth of clothes for the both of them. From underwear to jeans to shirts to sneakers and socks. Even a hoodie for Virgil, who seemed to get cold easy even in the tropical temperatures of the island. Everything they would need for a week. If they needed more after that…well, Alan didn't really want to think about it.
With that task done a few hours later, Alan wandered back into the kitchen. The house had been mostly empty throughout the day, with most of the cleanup work taking place in the hangars. Other-John had been released from the infirmary, but had gone straight to his room, so he hadn't been around either. And Jeff had been doing damage control in his office, wherever that was. Alan really only knew where the den, the kitchen and the guest rooms were, to be honest. He could kind of figure out the rest, but this house was really different from his own.
The kitchen still held Virgil, who now had his head resting on the table. "Everything okay?" Alan asked, stepping closer with a frown.
Virgil turned his head just enough to look up at him with a huff. "They had to be up all night looking at that machine and figuring things out," he said, rolling his eyes. "And…it's not exactly great news."
"We can get home, right?" Alan yelped, feeling a rather deep sense of dread come over him.
Virgil sat up and tugged Alan over to him. "Yeah. Of course, we can," he said, calming his little brother. "Sorry, Allie. Didn't mean to scare you. We can get home. It's just…going to take a bit longer," Virgil explained softly. Wrapped up in Virgil's strong arms, Alan buried his head in Virgil's shoulder and took a deep breath. He'd been holding off panicking, even last night when they'd been alone in their guest room. They had both been wiped out from the day they'd had, and the back-to-back rescues they'd been on before they'd even been thrown into this new world.
Alan had actually slept in a bed all night. Granted, he'd crawled into bed with Virgil before falling asleep, so that probably had something to do with it, but he'd stayed in bed and not wandered off or ended up on the floor. It'd been a while since that had happened.
He was still tired though. In a bone-deep way that went way further than just fatigue.
"Hey, you're okay," Virgil whispered, and Alan belatedly realized he was crying. Too much happening too fast, he guessed. He sucked in a breath and held it for a moment but couldn't seem to stop the tears that were silently leaking from his eyes. Virgil tightened his grip a big, absently rocking him a little. "Everything's going to be fine, Sproutling. We're going home. They've figured it out. It's just going to take a bit of work on our part."
"I want Scott," Alan choked out, face still buried. Because Virgil was great, and amazing and always right (which was a bit of a sticking point sometimes, because Alan could count on one hand the amount of times Virgil had been wrong about something and that was annoying) but Scott was a comfort that he just wanted. The man seemed to be able to control the natural elements of the world at times, just by standing there and glaring.
"I know," Virgil murmured. "Me too."
Virgil hugs were really nice, Alan mused. He relaxed a bit, letting the tears fall as he gave a huff of a laugh. He had to relax, really, because if he didn't then something was going to break, and he'd rather it not be him. "Going to take time, eh?" he asked. "I have finals in two months."
"Not that much time," Virgil rumbled, his arms loosening just a little but not letting go. He seemed to feel Alan's mood returning to a more stable state.
"I'm supposed to be releasing the new TiePhone in four days," Alan added.
"Hm…yeah, you're probably going to miss that," Virgil said, finally pulling back to look Alan in the face. He gave a small, sad smile, reaching up one large, callused hand to wipe the tears from Alan's cheek. "Sophie can take it."
"She'll never let me live it down," Alan grumbled with a wobbly smile.
"Who's Sophie?" Other-Virgil asked as he plunked a bottle of pain medication down in front of Virgil and looked at him pointedly. Virgil rolled his eyes but took the glass of water that Other-Scott handed him. They hadn't realized that the kitchen had slowly been filling up with others, kind of lost in their own little world, but the Other-Tracys had at least been kind enough to not mention the tears.
"My PA," Alan said with a deep breath. He scrubbed at his face and then eyed the plate of sandwiches that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.
"You have a PA?" Other-Gordon asked, plopping himself down in a chair across from them.
"I'm head of Marketing," Alan responded absently, sliding into a chair of his own. Virgil's hand was staying firmly on his back, now that he'd swallowed the pills that Other-Virgil had gotten him. "Of course I have a PA." And Sophie McIntyre, who was only nineteen herself, was Wonder Woman in disguise. Granted, all of their PA's were superheroes, according to the brothers, so that wasn't saying too much.
"You're sixteen," Other-Gordon pointed out with a bit of a frown. "I'm in my twenties and hardly have anything to do with the family business. In fact…I think Scott's really the only one that does anything with the business right now."
Other-Virgil gave a bit of a shrug, rolling his neck with a grimace. "I mean, for us it makes sense. No one expects the lazy sons of a billionaire to be the Thunderbirds. We're all obviously living off our father's wealth and hard work or whatever."
Alan and Virgil exchanged looks. "That…wouldn't pan out in our world," Virgil said softly. "For one, everyone knows who the Thunderbirds are. We're just lucky that no one really knows where they are."
"You don't work in secret?" Other-Scott asked, sounding a bit flabbergasted. He looked up when Jeff and Other-Alan entered the room, piling up more sandwiches on two more plates for them.
"No," Alan said, taking a bite of his own sandwich. He hadn't realized just how hungry he was; they hadn't actually eaten anything last night after waking up in the infirmary. An oversight, really, but breakfast had been filling enough. Lunch was just as good. "Social media, for one. We'd have a hard time hiding."
"And The Hood outed us near the beginning," Virgil finished with a frown. The Hood had outed them when he'd destroyed their father's ship, only six months after the start of International Rescue. Scott had managed to keep them going by sheer will and determination. And money spoke a lot. It was a good thing they had so much of it.
"So…if you're head of Marketing," Other-Gordon said, pointing at Alan and ignoring the shocked look that Jeff gave at that revelation. "Then what do you do?" he asked, pointing at Virgil.
"Head of R&D," Virgil replied with a slight shrug. "And before you ask, Scott is CEO, John's CFO, and Gordon's head of Human Resources. Kayo's head of Security."
Alan choked a bit on his sandwich as he laughed. "God. Her job interview…"
Virgil rolled his eyes. "I wouldn't call that a job interview, Sprout," he commented. At the questioning looks he gave a wry shrug. "She stormed her way into the old head's office, punched him in the face, called him a bunch of names, had him arrested and then proceeded to just take over without so much as a by-your-leave."
"To be fair," Alan said, licking a bit of mustard off his thumb. "The guy had conspired to have me kidnapped for ransom. It kind of ticked her off a bit."
"A bit, he says," Virgil muttered. "But yeah, we all work for the company, and we all have our own PA's."
"So what's a TiePhone?" Other-Alan asked around a mouthful of food. Other-Scott nudged him and he rolled his eyes but gave a soft apology.
"T-I-Phone 7. It's the latest phone that we're unveiling this week. Or well, we're supposed to be," Alan said with a frown. "Sophie could take the rollout, but I don't know if Scott's going to go ahead or not." He gave a bit of a shudder and Virgil's hand slid down his spine, soothing him. Yeah, okay, more stable or not he was still incredibly unsettled.
"We haven't really ventured into phones or household tech," Jeff said, looking thoughtful. "We're mostly still working with aeronautics. How's that worked out for you?"
Virgil shrugged a bit. "I don't know the exact numbers," he admitted. "I'm just a grease monkey." Alan rolled his eyes and nudged him sharply in the ribs, causing Virgil to pinch him lightly in retaliation. "Okay. Fine. I'm just an R&D nerd. John's better with the numbers. But I can say that we started with tech right before Dad disappeared and Green Energy about two years after. We hit the medical field last year. And since then, we've become a multi-trillion-dollar company." Jeff's eyebrows rose, because that was big. Trillion-dollar companies were extremely rare; multi-trillions were pretty much unheard of.
"Right," Jeff said thoughtfully. He shook it off after a moment, eyeing the boys across the table from him. Everyone was finishing up their food and looking more relaxed than they had all day, so he sat forward a bit, folding his hands on the table in front of them. "Have you figured out anything about getting home?" he asked.
Virgil took a deep breath, pushing a button on his wrist computer, still sitting innocently on the table in front of them. A diagram popped into view, the hologram spinning idly. It was of the machine that had sent the two of them into this world, broken apart a bit. "They figured out how the machine works," Virgil said, speaking of the people back home in their world. "And I'm not going to get into the science behind it because it makes my head hurt, but let's just say it shouldn't work at all." He shook his head, frowning tightly and poking at the hologram a bit.
"The machine pulls on ambient energy in the atmosphere and quantum-space to open a portal to the next closest world," he said. "And they—Brains and John and our friends—have reverse engineered it so they know how to build another one. A better one, even," he said. "But the problem is that the amount of energy needed to go backwards is staggering. It would likely rip this world apart."
"Backwards," Other-Scott said, likely asking for clarification. His face had paled at the thought of the world being ripped apart and, frankly, Virgil couldn't blame him.
"Think of the quantum-sphere as an analogue clock face," Virgil explained, pointing at the clock on the wall. And also…analogue clocks were still being used here, which was weird. Virgil could read one, sure, but he was pretty certain that Scott hadn't ever bothered learning—digital had overtaken analogue a long time ago. It was pretty rare to even see one. "The different worlds all go along the clockface in a clockwise manner, and it takes relatively little energy to travel in that direction. The worlds want you to go that way. But going counterclockwise? That's going against the natural order and would take far too much energy and risks un-stabilizing the entire clockface."
"So, we're going to have to go around clockwise," Alan mumbled, frowning at his brother, who gave a single nod.
"You said that there were likely an infinite number of worlds," Other-Virgil pointed out, staring at the hologram thoughtfully. "It could take ages to get back to your world."
Virgil nodded a bit more, taking a sip of water from his glass. "Yeah, but Ty's pretty sure that we can code the machine to pick a specific path. He thinks, and Brains and John both back him up on this, that we can cut down the number of worlds to about a dozen or so. Moffie says it might be possible to make it less, but she's not entirely sure that would be safe."
Jeff took a breath, giving a nod. "Okay. So, from the sound of it, we need to help you boys build a new machine and get you set up to travel through a bunch of worlds safely."
Alan frowned a bit more, looking a little startled. Virgil blinked at him. "That would be nice, sir, but you really don't have to—"
"Of course we do," Jeff interjected with a wave of his hand. "You two helped save my family. The least we can do is make sure you get back to yours."
"You know," Other-Gordon said with a grin. "Without tearing our world apart."
"That would be ideal," Jeff muttered with a grin of his own. "Okay, boys. Looks like we have more work to do."