The style experiment continues! This first one is, you may have noticed, going to be almost completely made up as my sister and I get you all used to this Thunderbirds universe the two of us know inside out and backwards. That being said, please let us know if you're confused. A lot of information will be coming in later chapters, but if we miss anything because we forget that you don't know, please just ask.

Thunderbirds: Millennium

Episode 1: Paying the Piper

Had Scott Malcolm Carpenter Tracy been the kind of young man who looked for signs, this was a day that would have given him plenty of them. Though it had dawned clear, a storm was fast approaching.

Standing on the wraparound porch of the old faded white farm house that was the only home the twenty-five-year-old man could remember, Scott could see for miles around; down into the open fields of the farm in the east, and to the west toward the bramble of trees by the creek that passed for woods here in central Kansas.

The fields, golden with the first turn of autumn, stood bathed in sunlight. He and the woods, however, were darkened with the shadow of pale grey clouds overhead.

He couldn't stop staring at the clouds overhead, watching for any odd movement in the weather above. It was late in the year for a tornado, but it wasn't impossible. If one did touch down, Scott wanted as much time as possible to get to the basement, and he was in the habit of watching obsessively whenever the weather turned.

"You know what this reminds me of?"

Scott turned to face the owner of that beloved trembling, reedy voice with a small smile. The westerly wind that tried to ruffle his own short brown hair was going crazy with the few loose silver strands that framed his Grandmother's face after escaping her bun.

The young man couldn't quite keep the affection out of his voice. "I'm certain you're going to tell me."

For her part, Grandma Tracy didn't look up from her knitting- a scarf if Scott had to guess although it might become a sweater later- that swayed back and forth in the breeze as well. "That day you and your brothers decided to go for a bike ride when your mother was taking care of Gordon; he was just a baby at the time. You all got caught right next to that twister and came home covered in mud with your bikes gone, and Johnny lost his shoes. Do you remember?"

"Yes, Memaw, I remember." Scott allowed himself a small smile. Oh, yes, he remembered that very well. Their father had been down in Houston, training, and their mother was frazzled. He hadn't realized at the time how stressed she must have been, but when she'd yelled at John and Virgil for fighting, he had decided it best to take his younger brothers, just four and five years old, outside, and maybe down the road to Grandma and Grandpa's house.

He hadn't known then what a sky that odd almost green color meant, and when John had expressed his misgivings Virgil had called him a baby. Unable to take that insult from his younger brother, John had sped off down the road on his bike, leaving a laughing Virgil and frantic Scott to try and catch him.

They had, just as the tornado touched down a couple of miles away. Scott had seized his two little brothers, yanking them into the muddy ditch just off the road and holding them flat as the wind roared above them louder than a train yard. Everything had sounded muffled when they finally sat up again, and the bikes they'd left on the road were gone. John's shoes, which had been too big for him but he'd insisted on wearing because they had rockets on them, had also vanished. Putting John on his back and taking Virgil's hand, Scott had led them on the weary march home to the relief of their mother and the grandparents she had frantically called looking for them.

That was so long ago now, and those little brothers were grown now. One of them Scott hadn't seen in six years and could be dead for all he knew, and the other on a tropical island putting his pre-med schooling to good use.

A soft vibrating sound from where his hip was leaning against the porch railing, and Scott looked down in surprise before pulling out his small black flip phone. The small rectangular screen in the middle of the front read 'Virgil', and Scott smiled more broadly at it. "Speak of the devil."

Flipping it open, the background of the screen flashed green, and an animate picture of a boy with spiky brown hair and dark eyes blinked and smiled at him, with a speech bubble coming off the icon. "The Cheese is returning to the trap. Thought you should know."

A frown as Scott closed his phone and sighed.

"What is it, Scotty?" Now Grandma Tracy put down her knitting on the white wicker table beside her old rocking chair. "Is it Gordon? Is he alright? He hasn't hurt himself again, has he? Virgil promised me he'd take care of him on that island, so far from any help."

"Gordon is fine, Memaw." Scott put his right hand to his forehead, shielding it from what was left of the sunshine. A dust cloud had appeared down the road, where the paved state road met the dirt road of Tracy property. Virgil's text couldn't have arrived a moment too soon. "Dad is on his way."

"Oh!" The old woman smiled and clasped her hands together. "He'll be just in time for lunch. Help me up, won't you, Scotty?"

Ever obedient, Scott walked stiffly over and took the hands offered to him before gently pulling the old woman up right. "I'm sure Dad'll be happy to have lunch with us, but I wish we could have had a little more warning."

Grandma Tracy laughed, reaching up to pat Scott's cheek affectionately. "Don't take it so personally, Scott. I'm sure he's just passing through and thought he'd stop by. He knows you're taking very good care of me and the farm."

A weak smile was all Scott offered in return before pointing her in direction of the open screen door. "Keep it simple this time, huh?"

It was another few minutes before the antique red Chevy convertible, it's black rag-top up as it always was, made it up the hill to the farm house, and Scott made his way down the front steps as it pulled up, calling over as the driver's door opened. "You could have called first."

"I apologize." Jeff looked older than the last time Scott had seen him as he offered a forced smile. "I hadn't intended to come see you for another couple of weeks yet, but I had a change of plans. You can thank your brother for that."

For the first time, Scott noticed there was another person in the car, climbing out of the passenger side back seat. The eldest Tracy blinked once, then twice, and the apparition did not disappear.

The boy standing in front of him was in his early twenties, scrawny and dressed in an over-sized dark blue hoodie and baggy black jeans. His hair was pale blond, the right side of it long and hanging over his eye while the rest was tucked up under the backwards blue baseball cap he wore.

Standing there, for a moment, it was like no time had passed at all, and Scott found himself remembering the last time they had stood face to face.

"Scott, please don't go." John was standing barefoot in the snow, having not even bothered to throw on his boots before running after Scott in the front yard. He hadn't put on a coat, either, and he stood shivering under the full moon light in his thin black t-shirt and jeans. His hair had hung in his face then too, although all of it had been longer and shaggy then. "Just put off college for a few more years, until Gordon's done with high school. You can come back to it."

Shutting the trunk of his El Camino, Scott took off his scarf and wrapped it around his brother's neck, over the spiked collar the younger boy always wore for no reason Scott could tell. John looked so cold, with his arms over his chest like that. "I can't do that kiddo, you know that. I made a promise to the Air Force, I can't back out on it now."

"What about your promise to us?" John stamped his foot childishly and those grey eyes of his seemed unusually bright. "I can't do this. I can't be the big brother they need me to be. I'm just...I'm not you, and they need you."

For a moment, Scott hesitated, but then his right hand found the keys in his jacket pocket. The moment passed. "Don't sell yourself short, Spaceman. I know thing have been rough around here, but you'll-"

"Rough?" John's expression changed from pleading to furious at a frightening speed. "You've been gone six months, and in that time Gordon has gotten himself a week's suspension, detention I don't know how many time, and is barely keeping his grades up enough to stay on the swim team. Alan has been sent home six times for fighting, and he keeps falling asleep in class. Hell if he'll talk to me about it, though."

"John..."

The younger boy removed his left hand from under his right forearm and waved it as if to brush something aside. "And Virgil," the name of their middle brother came out more growl than anything else. "Virgil has decided to become a mini-Jefferson and point out every way I'm not you, like some kind of little Mr. Perfect. Much longer of that and I'm going to have to show him how 'vile' I can really be."

Scott could put up with a lot, but the threatening of one of his little brother's by anyone had never made that list. His grip on his self-control slipped just a little bit. "Maybe if you didn't make it so easy for him. Fighting with Dad, sneaking out, girls, drugs...yes, I know about the crap they found in your locker. Someone else's Ritalin prescription and marijuana. The only reason I'm not spending my Christmas Break visiting you in Juvenile Hall is because Memaw stood up for you and talked the officers into letting you go. Are you really that determined to screw up your life?"

It was all the wrong things to say; the ones he'd avoided bringing up since and Virgil had sat up talking his first night back and his younger brother confessed everything that had been going on while he spent his first semester studying in Oxford on a military exchange program.

The anger and betrayal flashed in John's eyes for only a heartbeat before he reigned his emotions in and all of them vanished. Scott regretted his lapse before they had even faded.

His watch started beeping, informing him that if he wasn't on the road soon he'd miss his flight, but he couldn't leave things like this. Scott reached out, trying to lay a hand on his brother's slim shoulder. "Johnny, I..."

"You've got a plane to catch." John jerked away, his face expressionless.

There was no use trying to reason with him when John put up a wall like that, and Scott knew only time would show him the door this time. The eighteen-year-old sighed, dropping his hand to the side. "I'll call you later."

He must not have been the only one remembering that conversation, as present day John said quietly. "You didn't call."

"No, I didn't get the chance." His roommate had gotten the day of his return wrong, leaving Scott stranded at the airport and finding a trashed dorm room when he did finally make it back what would have been 4 AM back home. Not that it mattered now. "I'm sorry."

John only shrugged at that, and Scott took a deep breath before speaking again. "What brings you here, after all this time?"

A second shrug, this one more enthusiastic than the last. "I think I'm supposed to be enjoying my last look at the sky before Jefferson takes me to the barn and slits my throat."

Scott glanced over at their father, who scowled coldly. "Stop being so dramatic." He looked over at Scott and forced a smile. "After we eat some of that delicious soup I smell my mother making, the three of us are going to have a meeting. I have an offer for you, Scott."

The sudden twisting in his gut wasn't easily brushed aside, but Scott managed to keep the vague unease out of his voice. "A business offer?"

"You might call it that." And, for the first time Scott could remember in more years than the young man cared to count, his father looked genuinely excited. "It's a once in a life time chance to make a real difference in the world."