A/N: Yep, this took so much longer than I thought it would. It's one of my least favourite episodes, and the ideas just wouldn't flow.

I'm much more confident about next chapter.

(I'd like to shout out user Jumpybananas on AO3, who is writing their own failure AU story collection [AO3 series 663671]. Go encourage them.)

"Thunderbird Two," said Scott, "your landing zone is ten metres ahead of you."

"I know what I'm doing, Thunderbird One."

"Easy does it, Thunderbird Two."

"I've been here before, Scott."

"...sorry."

Thunderbird Two landed without any further incident and disgorged an impressive collection of tunneling equipment, none of which they could risk using on a mountain this unstable, and an equally impressive collection of scanning equipment, little of which had any hope of working on a mountain of this composition.

"Right." Virgil was trying his best to sound jovial under the circumstances. "Let's go find Gordon and see what he's gotten himself into this time."

Scott bit back the urge to respond 'chlorine dioxide', because they both knew there was far too much of that in there with Gordon and company. He also bit back the urge to respond 'Lady Penelope', because Gordon wouldn't have had a chance, not while chaperoned by the archaeologist running this dig.

"Okay, Virgil, where do we go now?"

"I have no idea."

"I thought you said you'd been here before."

"Outside. We didn't even know this existed at the time!"

Scott sighed. "Okay. Still, the fact remains that we have a dozen little passageways to search, and no idea what leads where, how many sub-branches there are, or even which we can search fastest."

"And we can't count on Thunderbird Five being able to scan anything in here..." said Virgil. There was a few seconds' deliberation on the next course of action. Then he suddenly brightened. "I have just the thing in the module. Come on!"

"Any clues?"

"How about 'glorified snake'."

"...that thing? Really? ...actually, forget I said that, that's perfect! We can hook the other end up to the comms, and it's like we'll bring Thunderbird Five with us!" Scott accelerated.

Virgil couldn't help but smirk at the mental image.

"Okay. Neat. Hidden passageway." Scott sighed. "Should have expected that."

"Expect more," said John from outer space via snake-cam. "There's a lot more mountain, and this tribe have a habit of building deep."

"Right. Is that dead end another hidden passageway?"

"Of course it is. Hey, point me at the left wall... Okay Virgil, under there," red laser pointers from the snake-cam, "is its reset."

"Cool. Activating it now." Virgil pulled the hidden lever, and the stone slab abruptly disappeared into the floor. "Oh. Oh, that's nasty."

Professor Harold looked very dead indeed, having been crushed between the slab and the roof.

"And there's our chlorine dioxide, too." Scott checked his air supply, then sighed some more. "This place really is a death trap."

"Is it just me, or does he look like he was scrambling to get over the thing?"

"He does," Virgil replied. "How fast does it go?"

"One way to find out. Virgil, stay there. John, how do I trigger this thing?"

It was Virgil's turn to sigh. There was no stopping Scott when he decided to do something truly stupid.

"So," Scott summarised as they entered another room, "the guy had to be boosted up there. We need to figure out - oh no."

The place wasn't getting any less grisly. First the professor, then the impressive slightly-hidden collection of skeletons in the main chlorine dioxide chamber, and now this - Parker, who had done his best impression of a pincushion in the face of the spear volley trap, and was not going to be doing anything else under his own steam ever again.

"Damn," Virgil said at length. "The less said about the professor the better, but Parker didn't deserve this."

"I imagined he'd go out in a considerably more awesome way. Y'know, facing down five of the Hood's minions with guns while Penelope made a run for it."

"The death you imagine is almost never the death that happens."

"That's deep, bro."

"This is all a bit deep for me. It's going to sink in on the way back to the island and someone is going to have to remote Two in because I'll be falling apart and Gordon's going to have to keep my sorry soul together."

Scott carefully said nothing about how he'd be faring in Thunderbird One. He instead said "Assuming we find Gordon alive."

"Don't remind me. Watch that tripwire - this thing might still be loaded." Virgil continued to sweep the snake-cam across the area to look for clues - or further traps. "Wait, is that blood?"

"Yes," said John. "If only I had a DNA scanner on this thing, I'd be able to tell you whose. As it is, all I can tell you is that it's blood."

"Given that we're still in the middle of the spear trap," said Virgil, "I'm willing to bet it was a spear wound."

"So am I - I'm not seeing any other traps that could have caused it, and if it were caused by the environment I'd be seeing evidence."

"Guys," Scott cut in, "we're missing the point." (Nobody appreciated the pun.) "That couldn't have been Parker's; it's too far away. That means Gordon or Penelope are wounded, and we need to pick up the pace." (Everybody appreciated the urgency.)

"Okay, yeah, I think we got a bit distracted on the academic elements," John admitted, his voice only mildly distorted by Virgil's motion unsteadying the snake-cam.

Virgil soon came to a stop as he met another fallen wall-barrier. Unlike the others, this one terminated at knee height, leaving a small gap between itself and the floor.

"Yeah, this sucks," agreed Scott, also stopping, "but as we all know, the living take priority. Let's find the living."

"Hopefully they still are," said Virgil. "Wait, this isn't a wall, this is the biggest hammer I've ever seen!"

John told him how to reset it, and there was bated silence as he did. Eventually, "Thank God," said Scott, "nobody got pulverised."

"Still plenty more of this place," Virgil pointed out.

Virgil squinted at the damp passageway. "Very damp. Drained quite recently. Where else would they have gone...?"

"Hey," Scott said to him, "you know how this tribe were with secret passages resealing themselves."

"Point." Virgil swung the snake-cam around again. "John, see anything?"

"Negative. One way in, one way out."

They advanced through the damp passageway, and the search continued.

"Sheesh," Virgil said to nobody in particular, "this place goes on forever!"

"And has a zillion traps in it," Scott replied, still irritated by nearly stepping into a pitfall.

"And is so deep John's had to redrive the cable-cam from the surface. That thing's longer than your grapple cable!"

"Not to mention that descending wall just behind us that nearly took it out. We would have been done for if that had happened."

The cable-cam picked that moment to burst back in through a weak point in the floor, and the search continued.

"Did you hear that?" John asked, causing Scott and Virgil to stop in their tracks. "Descending wall ahead of us."

Scott automatically told them to "go, go, go!", but it hadn't been necessary - he and Virgil were already running. In no time at all, they rounded a corner and were met with the newly-formed dead end, along with-

"Gordon!"

"Virgil! Scott! Get this thing off me!" Indeed, Gordon had mostly escaped the massive stone slab, but it had crushed his right hand. "Lady Penelope's through there!" This statement was punctuated by an earthquake-like rumbling.

Virgil darted forward, wedged the powersuit's spreader into the small gap between slab and floor, and spread it. Brains had overengineered the powersuit for its usual loads, and so it was with a minimum of drama that the slab lifted. Virgil quickly wedged himself further into the gap and braced the slab up as Gordon slithered out, attempting to nurse his undoubtedly broken hand.

Scott advanced into the next chamber - and thought better of it as the floor ceased to exist just past Virgil. There was floor further in, but it was rapidly crumbling - Lady Penelope was staying just ahead of the encroaching void, approaching a pyramid-within-the-pyramid that was also looking threateningly unstable.

There was no time to think. There was only time to act. Scott loaded a grapple pack and fired it into the air towards Lady Penelope, who caught it with her good hand. As the stone floor vanished from beneath her, Penelope braced herself to swing towards the wall - and Scott realised he hadn't anchored the line properly - and was slammed to the floor and dragged towards the abyss - and Virgil just managed to step on his leg and halt his fall. Needless to say, having his arms nearly being pulled off by the load on the grapple cable hurt nearly as much as being pinned to the floor by the powersuit - but it probably beat a long fall down the middle of the mountain.

There was nothing more Virgil could do. He hadn't had time to properly reset the descending wall, and still had to hold it up - and he could hold it up with one arm, if necessary, but he couldn't twist the right way to grab Scott with the other arm and anchor him less painfully.

Gordon was dealing with his own fractured bones, and couldn't have helped much even if he hadn't been; and the cable-cam was neither strong enough to bear any significant load, nor flexible enough to anchor anyone. So it was that Scott found himself in a bit of a pickle. "Lady Penelope! Climb!"

Penelope grabbed the line with her other hand, hissed with pain as the spear wound in that hand rubbed against it, and let go again.

Scott winced (as much as possible) as another pulse of pain shot through his crushed leg.

Penelope scrabbled her feet against the wall, trying to find purchase. There was minimal, which held for a second, but then she slipped again.

Scott grunted this time as Penelope's mini-fall jolted him.

"Lady Penelope! You've got to climb now!" Virgil shouted.

"This isn't going to work!" Penelope shouted back as a giant golden statue fell into the void below her. "I can't climb like this!"

"Stay there!" Gordon scrambled forward, severely overestimating how much he could accomplish. "We'll find another way!"

"I have a feeling we won't," said Scott, unwittingly loud enough for Penelope to hear him. All at once, he and Virgil slid twenty centimetres towards the edge; Virgil had to press even harder on Scott's nearly-ruined leg to halt the slide. "Aah!"

Penelope felt the slight slip, heard the exclamation, and realised she was about to pull at least one Tracy down with her. There was only one thing to do at that point. "I have nothing but appreciation for you all!" she shouted, and let go of the line.

A GDF engineering team armed with structural tools and Thunderbird Five's maps met them halfway out, along with medics who braced and splinted broken bones. As they continued surfaceward, further engineering teams appeared, escorting further medical teams sent to secure the bodies of Harold and Parker.

It was a sorry group that trudged out of the underground temple under cover of artificial day. The cable-cam was not waiting for them, having retracted all the way into its module (John having said his piece on the trip out), but a GDF temporary base was. Colonel Casey couldn't help but embrace Gordon (who, aside from being the least injured of those not in powersuits, looked particularly forlorn) before ordering him and Scott to the base medical block for proper treatment.

Virgil shed his powersuit inside Thunderbird Two, then returned to the base command post to call John back and brief Casey.

"This is ...worrying," said Casey some forty minutes later, having heard the complete story of the temple's innards. "Quite aside from the exceptional lethality of this particular site, and from the distinct possibility of others like it in the area, the comparative ease with which some of these traps can be constructed gives rise to the risk of ...hostile actors adapting them for their use."

Everyone knew who she was talking about.

"I can think of worse," John added. "The Hood's after money. If he somehow catches wind of the Idol of the Laughing King down there, he'll want it, and I don't know what we'll be able to do about him."

"There's half a mountain on top of it, John," Casey protested.

"We all know that won't stop him. Hang on, Scott's calling."

"John, Virgil, Colonel Casey. I'm still getting patched up, but Gordon's up and about already, and he should be in one piece within a week. I'll be out for more like two weeks."

"Three!" admonished an unseen GDF medic.

Scott had enough decency to look slightly sheepish for a split second. "Bad news is, aside from everything I know you've talked about, Gordon's ...well, none of us are taking this well," he paused to remember his driving lessons with Parker, then remembered that Alan wouldn't get the chance, and had to pause longer to get his emotions back under control. "Anyway, Gordon's taking it worse. I'm still stuck here, so Virgil, could you check on him? I think he's curled up in a pod."

(Unbeknownst to Gordon, Virgil and Scott both had theories about why Gordon in particular was taking this so badly. Unbeknownst to Virgil or Scott, their theories were identical.)

"FAB. Colonel, are you okay with not debriefing Gordon yet?"

"In light of the circumstances, it can wait. Virgil, dismissed. Scott, I'll need to hear your clarifications on..."

Virgil made for the pod bay to try and assess exactly how long he'd need to put Gordon on leave for.