Scott- Advantages to being a werewolf

"Come on Thunderbird Two, just a little more." Virgil urged his old friend, pushing her engines from a rumble into a howl as he tried to get just that little more speed from the engines. He could almost feel the seconds passing, like sand in an hourglass, as he streaked across the sky to Scott's aid.

Virgil ground his teeth in impotent fury. This shouldn't have happened! If Colonel Casey didn't have all involved hung, drawn and quartered by the time this was over, he'd take care of it personally.

Tensions were high between Bereznik and everyone else again, with sabre rattling and diplomats being called into plush offices for a 'please explain'. In the middle of it all, they'd had a rescue in Greenland- climber stuck on a glacier with a storm closing in. Scott had just taken off for home when some collective mob of brain-dead imbeciles in a GDF warship had somehow missed Thunderbird One's friend-or-foe transponder beacon, looked at the speed and size of the craft on their radar and fired a salvo of surface-to-air missiles at her, thinking she was an ICBM.

Scott had dodged most of the missiles but one had exploded underneath her, ripping open the auxiliary hatch in the belly and sending her tumbling. The eldest had managed to wrestle her nose back towards Greenland- the closest solid ground he could find- and keep her airborne just long enough to make a rough landing on the glacier he'd just left and the storm had swallowed the area whole.

Virgil had thrown himself into his launch tube almost before John had confirmed Scott's emergency beacon activating, shortcut the launch sequence and poured on the speed as he fought the storm, but more importantly, raced the elements- the temperature on the glacier was already -15 degrees Celsius and it was only going to get colder as the storm set in.

The storm was already nudging Category Five when he finally reached the glacier, but it was several long minutes until he was close enough to see through the storm to spot the long furrow carved into the surface by Thunderbird One's crash landing. Snow was already piled around her as he landed Two, shrugged into his exo-suit and descended from the bottom hatch of the cockpit.

"Scott! Thunderbird One, respond!" He tried the radio as he forced a path through the wind and snow to the broken 'Bird, but a hash of static was his only response. "John, do you have telemetry?"

"...negative." John's voice was very tightly controlled as he made his answer. "I lost contact shortly after the storm hit the area. It could be interference." He offered, but Virgil didn't bother with a reply. Their equipment could easily punch through a storm like this, even without the signal boosting their Thunderbirds provided.

He finally reached One's icy hull. The ship was on a list, one wing tip in the ground and the other in the air, her belly exposed. As he came closer he could see the viewport was frosted over, but not enough to hide the splash of red on the inside of the fused quartz glass. Virgil hammered on the grey skin of the ship, waited a beat, and when there was no response he hurried down the length of the ship and used his shoulder laser to cut through the hinges of one of the twisted doors of the hatch. It felt so wrong to cut into his brother's Thunderbird like this, but he had to get inside.

The torn metal fell away with a groan and Virgil ducked inside the darkened interior, going first to the pilot's seat. The wind and noise were lessened here, but snow had already gathered in drifts and he shivered despite the heating elements in his suit.

Clack!

Virgil felt his heart rate triple when his foot hit Scott's empty helmet and sent it skittering over the sloped metal deck. He swept his torch across the cockpit and found the steel grey baldric hung over the arm of the pilot seat, the bracers, boots and gloves piled underneath it and Scott's discarded uniform and undersuit crumpled beside it.

The implications of the pile of clothing hit him like a sledgehammer to the gut- paradoxical undressing. It was the only explanation.

Seen in extreme exposure cases, paradoxical undressing was where someone gets so confused they think they're overheating and strip off, accelerating the process of hypothermia.

"Scott!" Virgil filled his lungs and bellowed again. "SCOTT!" In university he could be heard lengthways across a football field. He hoped against hope that his brother would hear him over the shrieking storm.

"Rrrr?"

A drift of snow towards the back of One's cargo bay cracked and shifted. Two black tipped ears broke through and golden eyes blinked sleepily at him.

"Scott!" Virgil clambered through the snow and twisted metal, falling to his knees as a transformed Scott stood and shook off the last of the snow, then staggered over to lean heavily on him. "You started to cool off and changed, didn't you?" Virgil said as he wrapped one arm around him and scratched behind Scott's ears. His currently canine older sibling leaned into the affection, tail wagging.

"Are you okay?" The immediate relief of 'my brother is alive' dealt with, Virgil carefully swept his hands over the wolf's head, frowning as his questing fingers came away red. He parted the fur over Scott's right eye and found a split in the skin. "You hit your head in the crash, didn't you?" He asked.

Scott had the grace to give him a canine guilty look.

"Okay, into Two, get you warmed up and that bleed seen to." Virgil instructed, gathering Scott up in his arms and ignoring the protesting yelp that meant 'put me down I can walk!'. "You've knocked your head again, forget it Scott." A wriggle and whine was 'but my Thunderbird!' "We'll pick her up with a tackle and sling and take her home once the storm dies down." Another whine and an attempted lick at his face was foiled by his helmet. "No Scott, you can't change my mind."

Scott huffed at him in the canine fashion and laid his head on Virgil's shoulder, resigning himself to being carried to the warmth and safety of his brother's 'Bird.