Chapter 76.

Havoc deployed her trademark smirk as she sashayed through the front door of the home of the government official who'd 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 than 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 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…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 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 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 him 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 eyes discreetly swept up and down Virgil's attire as Penelope jabbered away about an ambassador with bad body odour. His brother clearly gave zero tosses about 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 flinched. Virgil was the only one who knew how to get under his skin. He knew how much of a stickler he was for order and had deliberately thrown another log onto the fire that was his temper.

'Screw you too, Virgil.'

"Scott?" Penelope gently shook his arm and motioned towards a small gaggle of photographers, "Kat Cavanaugh wants to take some staged shots of us together 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," he replied, nodding a polite farewell to Colonel Casey before following Penelope over to a slightly quieter section of the terrace, their media ally 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 Penelope, but don't look directly at me. Pretend you're 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 squirrel.

"Right, I need you two to shuffle in next to Scott and Penelope," Kat instructed, swooping in to straighten Virgil's collar, "We're going to round this counterattack off with a double date shot. That ought to shut those faux-tographers up for good."

Kayo smirked and dragged her thumb across a smudge on Virgil's cheek that was about as non-existent as John's sense of fashion.

"Want me to do that to you?" Penelope offered, aware that Scott's body temperature had just ratcheted up several degrees.

"Knock yourself out," he grouched, cringing when Penelope attacked his face with a silk handkerchief summoned from one of her many pockets.

"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 eyes travelled around the room, assessing her surroundings.

There were between fifty to sixty people in attendance, none of whom she recognised aside from the Tracys and their little cohort. She had located all of the emergency exits and was confident her presence was going, and would continue to go, undetected.

Her idiot brother had promised her as much.

Two hours earlier…

"Whoa, who are you?"

Fuse instinctively clenched his fists in preparation for a Power Punch, his gaze locked onto the strange woman sat behind the controls.

Havoc rolled her eyes and nearly smudged her eyeliner, "For goodness sake, Fuse! Don't tell me you're as thick as that armour of yours."

Fuse hesitated, "Havoc? How did– why are you– you don't look like Havoc!"

Havoc ignored her brother and returned to dressing her eyes. She lacked Lady Penelope's deportment and Kayo's silver tongue, 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 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 assured her that the Tracy brothers would also be none the wiser. A theory that was confirmed two hours later when Gordon materialised next to her and smiled warmly.

-x-

Scott didn't think he'd ever wanted to hit Virgil more.

According to Gordon and Alan, he shared many similarities with hormonal women. Some days he had the patience of a saint and would 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.

The joke was made even more sardonic by the addition of Virgil, who according to Gordon, 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."

"So we can go?" Penelope asked. A tray of champagne had breezed past ten minutes ago, and her perfectly rehearsed smile had been faltering ever since.

"You can go," Kat assured, flicking through her camera roll, "Wow, Virgil! Forgive my forwardness, but you and Kayo make a handsome couple. The public are so going to get behind the pair of you. What do you think they'll call you? Viryo? Kagil?"

Scott had heard enough. With a shove that fell well short of his usual politeness, he barrelled past Penelope and marched up to Virgil, taking care to look down his nose at his more vertically challenged brother.

Virgil, who'd seen Scott's tantrum coming from a mile away, sighed and motioned for Kayo, Kat, and Penelope to evacuate the area, "Go on. We'll follow you inside later."

Penelope nodded and ushered the two younger women over towards the safety of the buffet table.

"Can I help you?" Virgil asked, turning back to face Scott with an annoyingly benign expression.

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 none of them would ever grow out of. Low-key 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 just 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 began herding everyone away from her warring grandsons, "They'll cool down and come to their senses in a bit. Don't let their antics spoil your evening, Kayo. A bit of water up the nose might do their attitudes some good."

Kayo nodded quietly. Havoc could practically smell the guilt oozing from her. In the background, Kat snapped one final 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 pictures taken without permission.

"Is that normal behaviour for them?" Havoc asked, deliberately enunciating each word in a bid to mask her drawl. Physically, she was well disguised, but auditorily, she was not. Her somewhat slurred speech was almost as identifiable as her trademark purple armour, and she was beginning to regret not bringing the Hood's voice synthesizer.

Fortunately, Gordon seemed oblivious.

"All brothers fight," he replied, 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. Tell me, how do you and Kayo know each other?"

Havoc muttered something vague and returned to scanning the room. She'd already decided that Gordon wasn't worth her time. He stank of infatuation and would probably be harder to manipulate than his unattached brothers. Like a hawk seeking out a mouse, her gaze locked onto the expression of hurt clouding Virgil's face as Scott's yelling reached a ten on the Richter scale.

Throwing espionage protocol to the wind, she allowed a sly smirk to 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 gaze not leaving Virgil for a second.

Poor Gordon, meanwhile, was experiencing a sudden and rather profound attack of anxiety. 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 seabed came flooding back, paralysing him with fear.

He still had nightmares about that day. The day he had very nearly not come home.

Fear turned to panic when he surfaced from his terrifying flashback to find Havoc well and truly gone. In the absence of both Scott and Virgil, he did the only rational thing and called for his only remaining older brother.

"John! John!" Gordon yelled, crunching across the broken glass at his feet and groping blindly through the crowd, "John!"

A flash of red and John was at his petrified brother's side.

"Havoc!" Gordon gasped, his eyes wide with memories he wished he didn't have.

"What about her?" John asked, placing a reassuring hand on Gordon's back.

"She's here."