"Thanks, Dad. I've kept in touch with them over the past six years, but it's not the same, you know?"

"Of course not," Jeff replied, a twinkle in his eye. "There's no whiskey involved!"

There was something to be said for having a metric fuckton of money and favors owed you all over the world. There was also something to be said for having a fleet of aircraft at your disposal, and the ability to practically blackmail your father into letting one of your brothers come with you.

Of course, the fact that they'd only be gone two days and two nights had helped that one out immensely.

And so it was that Scott and Virgil Tracy were currently just fifteen minutes from landing Tracy Three on the small island of Mohotani. It was barely fifteen square kilometers in size, but when Scott had gone looking to buy an island just to have a getaway of his own, the Motane Nature Reserve had been selling, and thus Mohotani had become Property of Scott Jefferson Tracy.

Part of the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, Mohotani was barely over three thousand miles from Tracy Island, and when your slowest jet could make that sort of trip in less than an hour, well…it was a perfect fit.

He'd had the island for four years now, and only six months prior had completed the (by Tracy standards) modestly-sized house, complete with a secret hangar for Thunderbird 2 and a secret hangar and silo that mirrored that on Tracy Island, for Thunderbird 1.

He and Virgil were scheduled to move here the very next month.

It wasn't really because they had any great desire to live together no matter where they went. True, of the five brothers they were the closest, but the idea of Virgil actually moving with Scott hadn't come up until a year after Mohotani's plans had been finalized and construction had begun.

"How do you feel about company?" Virgil asked.

Scott raised an eyebrow. "In the gym, for dinner, to drink a beer down by the pool?"

Virgil scratched the back of his neck and Scott would've sworn he seemed almost sheepish when he replied, "I was thinking more along the lines of 'when you're living on your own island.'

A lively discussion had ensued, and Virgil's top reason for wanting to move (being thus: Grandma's cooking's making me get a gut no matter how many sit-ups I do), combined with the second one down on his list (to wit: it's really goddamn difficult to sneak a girl onto an island where nine people live and hey, Scott was totally down with that), and his third reason, which he made clear was really in no particular order as related to the other two (fact: it takes less time to tell us to launch the Thunderbirds by vid console than it does waiting for me to haul my ass out of bed and run to the Office at three a.m.) had convinced Scott that having an island-mate would in no way be a bad thing.

Jeff had seen reason.

John had asked to move into Scott's room.

Gordon and Alan had pouted and then squabbled over who'd get Virgil's.

Jeff had made it clear everyone kept their own rooms.

Grandma had started trying to figure out how to preserve her apple pie.

Tin-Tin had asked for Scott's room.

Kyrano had raised an eyebrow.

Alan had called Tin-Tin a spoiled brat.

Things had devolved from there.

But the long and short of it was, Scott and Virgil were going to move to a place where they could pretty much do as they pleased. Oh, they'd be hanging out on the island enough, to be sure. After all, Brains and his lab were there. But Thunderbird 2, and all her pods and vehicles, were going to be relocated to Mohotani.

Gordon was pissed about Thunderbird 4. His brothers assured him he could spend as much time on Mohotani working on it as he wanted. Gordon was infuriated but out-voted. Sometimes it was fucking awesome being the eldest.

Brains had even invented a shield so that no matter how many people might be within sight of launching Thunderbirds, they wouldn't see or hear a thing. It was genius, really.

Which is why no one was surprised Brains invented it to begin with.

It was also handy in that they could switch it on to keep Thunderbird 5 from knowing exactly where they were at any given moment. Oh, the perks of not living on your father's island! They were going to get away with murder.

And save peoples' lives still, side by side with their brothers.

Yep. Life was about to great real good for the two eldest Tracy sons.

As Scott taxied Tracy Three to a slow crawl and pulled it into the island's only above-ground hangar, he thought about the fact that in less than six hours, the three guys he'd flown with the most back in his Air Force days, the squadron dubbed 'Re Cons' because of the hijinks the men tended to get up to in their spare time that their Commanding Officer swore would get them hauled in front of the Air Force Judge Advocate one of these days, would be there on his island, with his favorite brother.

No women in sight for this trip, unfortunately, but hey, Scott hadn't seen the boys in six years and two of them were married. The third had turned out to be gay, and reportedly had quite the Queen boyfriend. Funny how you could never really spot them even though there hadn't been a Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in something like twenty years.

Gone were the misspent nights of trolling bars in various cities around the world. The war had been the best, he mused as he did his post-flight check while Virgil closed the hangar doors. Every night they made it back alive was cause for a rowdy celebration involving an unhealthy amount of alcohol, a pretty and curvaceous body (or several, depending on how frisky they could still feel after the unhealthy amount of alcohol), and some rather ingenious ways for making it back to wherever they were stationed without getting caught out.

Unfortunately, they weren't really good at that last part. Especially when Tupac wouldn't stop singing (if you could call it that) "Help Me, Rhonda" at the top of his lungs once he had a fifth of tequila in him.

Scott chuckled at the memories. He'd been so responsible growing up, and in the early days of his Air Force career, he was so responsible on-duty that he made the rank of Captain in record time. He was hailed as the guy who'd hit Brigadier General before he hit thirty. But without his family around to actually be responsible for off-hours, Scott had indulged with these three guys.

The stories they could tell about those days would curl his father's stubbornly straight salt-and-pepper hair. Never mind that Jeff had once been in the Air Force, too. Scott was pretty sure he hadn't gotten up to nearly the amount of stuff Scott had.

Well, now his favorite brother was going to hear all those stories and then some, he thought with a grin as Virgil popped his head through the open door.

"Coming?" Virgil asked.

"Yep," Scott replied, shutting the onboard computer interface down and letting it run through the final diagnostics on its own. "We have to get the place aired out before the guys arrive."

"I've got the boxes of my stuff loaded onto the hover dolly."

"Good," Scott nodded. "Glad you thought to bring them. No sense delaying getting your belongings over here when we're moving in a few weeks, anyway!"

"God, I can't wait!" Virgil huffed out and then laughed. "Al and Gordo are so jealous."

"Well, when they grow up big and strong, they can buy their own island, too," Scott replied. They just looked at each other and laughed so hard, they cried.

Virgil and Scott had gone through the entire two-story house built only of Caribbean Pine. Well, except for the hangars and the silo and, of course, the swimming pool and okay, Scott had put in titanium beams and poles and…well, look, everything that could be seen by guests was made out of the locally-grown timber, okay?

At any rate, the brothers had opened all the windows, allowing the salt-scented sea air to breeze gently through the house, freshening it up, airing it out and generally doing everything possible to make Scott's buddies jealous.

It wasn't about whipping it out and measuring it, although there wasn't a single Tracy male alive who wouldn't beat out the Jolly Green Giant in that respect, make no mistake. It was about the fact that because they couldn't tell anyone what they really did for a living, guys like Drake, Gerry and Tupac ("Tupac, Scott? Are you serious?" "Shut up, he was black and he rapped. Badly. It was a thing, Virg." "Was? He's not black anymore?" "That's it, you are not moving here with me.") tended to tease Scott mercilessly about what the hell he got up to on an island in the middle of the South Pacific with his immediate family, a really cute Malaysian girl and no day job.

The one thing all Tracy sons made certain of was that they had their own claims to fame. Because really, when you are living on Daddy's island out in the middle of nowhere, it sounds creepy to outsiders. It is creepy, come to think of it. If you don't know about International Rescue, that is.

Take John, for instance. Johnny's the astronomer, of course, always 'boldly going' and all that with his telescopes and star discoveries and planet analyses. He's forever publishing papers in journals that make Scott's head hurt just trying to get through their twenty-word subtitles. John's also published something like twenty books, which more often than once has made Scott think maybe he needs to give John some more to do on Thunderbird 5.

Then you've got Gordon, and as everyone knows, he's the fish-hiding-in-a-human-skin. He and Kyrano play around with plants under the sea (and yes, Gordon's heard the LittleMermaid song plenty, thanks so much) and Gordon's got plenty to keep him busy on the ocean bed surrounding Tracy Island. After all, the island itself arose from a volcano. Imagine the oceanographic and geological discoveries yet to be made. He still hasn't found his own personal abyss, however, which has him cranky more often than not these days.

And then there's Alan who, for all that he lives on an island where racetracks are few and far between, is forever inventing newer, faster race cars which he then has to go to the trouble of transporting to someplace like Australia in order to fully test. Which prompted him to actually purchase a huge tract of land in Western Australia between Lake Carnegie and Lake Bedford, and build his own race track, his own ridiculously huge garage ("Um, Al, that's not a garage, that's a warehouse." "What's your point, Scott?") and fight on a weekly basis with his father about why it was absolutely, positively possible for him to dig a silo there for Thunderbird 3 regardless of whether they regularly have magnitude 4 and above earthquakes, dammit.

He still hadn't won that one.

Now Virgil, he was one who hadn't gone for anything that would really get his name out there in terms of celebrity like John with his books (he even went on signing tours, and God, he would score like a sailor every time) or Alan with his racing trophies (talk about women). No, Virgil was more the type who liked to sit back and make things happen from behind-the-scenes. Whether it was designing newer and better rescue equipment for public consumption (well, he kept the really good ones for IR because, come on), or Monster trucks to fuel his secret (not so much) obsession with Monster Truck Rallies he'd had since the age of ten, or just tinkering with their existing equipment (the Mole, people, get your minds out of the gutter), Virgil wasn't one to run around touting how smart and gifted he was.

For example: He was better than most of the pianists out there, but had no desire to sit on a stage with a penguin suit and a candelabra and play Chopin twenty times a week. He also had an extraordinary gift for painting everything from portraits to landscapes to some abstracts that were weird enough for Scott to note in his file that he might have to start considering psych evals as part of his brothers' annual physicals. There was something Not Right about making a guy's face into a triangle and putting his eyeball in the bottom left-hand corner of the picture.

And then there was Scott.

Scott, who was touted as the Golden Boy of the Air Force but then suddenly dropped out of sight to live with a bunch of other men on an island. One asshole, who'd hated how all the women (and a great majority of the men) always pined after Captain Tracy whether he was in his Airman Battle Uniform or his Service Dress blues, had the unmitigated gall to compare them to the guys on Bonanza. Scott had later denied all knowledge of how exactly the word HOSS had come to be tattooed on the guy's right butt cheek.

But Scott was a smart guy, and the one thing he loved doing almost as much as flying ridiculously fast aircraft that tended to leave your teeth in their afterburners, was to design aircraft that did that. Though his time of late had been consumed with executing his perfectly laid plans for Mohotani, Scott had been known to spend hours patenting new designs that were either sold to other companies or kept by Tracy Corporation. No, really, it was the patenting that took hours to do. Actually drawing up the designs was a snap.

So now Virgil was busily organizing his boxfuls of belongings ("For the tenth time, no, Virg, you are not hanging 'Scott In Bed' in the living room, okay?" "What, it's the best portrait I've ever done of you!") while Scott set about preparing appetizers, making sure the crystal tumblers sparkled and generally ensuring not a speck of dust could be seen on any surface of his prized new home.

(He was a bit anal retentive.)

The hour drew near for their guests to arrive, and Scott hoped to hell they'd all heeded his warning not to bring their wives, because while women in general were never something to be turned away, wives were a whole different story altogether. Well, in Gerry's case it was a boyfriend rather than a wife, but same difference as far as Scott was concerned.

When Scott told Virgil Gerry's boyfriend was called Stripe, Virgil absolutely did not pout when Scott also told him he'd let Gerry tell the story of why he called the guy Stripe to begin with.

Scott surveyed the navy blues and burgundies that made up the color motif of his living room. From the couch to the area rug to the wall color to the curtains, there was no mistaking the manliness of the whole thing. He wasn't sure if he'd be showing the guys his bedroom after Tin-Tin had decided to paint a pink heart on the hardwood floor that Scott had yet to take a gallon of turpentine to.

What? It wasn't his fault John had blithely suggested to her that Scott would be a sure thing if she got him alone on Mohotani. John had paid dearly for that. He still hadn't gotten all fake supernovas painted onto his best telescope lens scraped off.

Soon the boys could hear the whine and whappa-whappa-whappa of the helijet they'd hired to transport three former Air Force flyboys from American Samoa. They went out to the (kinda short) tarmac as it landed and the men offloaded. The pilot was a little grumpy since he was also expected to lug their duffel bags all the way to the house that was ten klicks away on the eastern shore.

Rats. Stripe had come along.

There were a whole lot of hugs accompanied by hearty backslapping as the men reunited. Well, all except for the uninvited Stripe who gave a full-body hug that involved no backslapping and way too much in the way of running his hands up and down Scott's back. Virgil noticed. Scott gave him a death glare. Gerry laughed. Stripe turned red. Drake just rolled his eyes and decided Virgil was the safest bet for the night.

It didn't take long for them to blow through the appetizers, devour the steaks Scott so expertly grilled, to a chorus of Off we go into the wild blue yonder ad nauseum that made Virgil threaten to bury them all at sea, and have two empty bottles of Glenfiddich 50 Year Old to their credit. Scott was annoyed because he only had one of those left, and then they'd have to downgrade to The Macallan in Lalique IV 60 Year Old. Life could be so unfair sometimes.

Now what usually happened back on Tracy Island when the men of the family decided to indulge to honor a birthday or a going-away or a recent win for one of the boys, is that they'd gather around their pool, get completely wasted, and listen to their father tell the same Air Force stories he'd been telling since they were born. Before that, even, if Grandma was to be believed.

Virgil was unusually chipper tonight, though, as the guys all lazed around the roof of Scott's house, which he'd purposely made into the biggest lanai Virg had ever seen. "So what's with the giddy?" Scott slurred as he dumped more scotch into his tumbler.

"No Air Force stories," Virgil replied with a thousand-watt grin.

Scott thought he might just have to make another note on Virgil's file about getting that psych eval after all because, "Virgil, you are in the company of four Air Force men. You're hearing nothing but Air Force stories!"

Virgil knew he had a good argument for that, a point having to do with his father and these particular stories not being stale, but for some reason his brain hitched on the way Stripe was undressing Scott with his eyes and all he could think to say was, "You're getting lucky tonight, man."

Scott's eyes widened. "Stripe is Gerry's boyfriend."

"When in Rome."

"We're not in Rome, Virg."

"Too bad. They had baths."

Scott shook his head, left Virgil by the bar, and rejoined his friends. At some point in the wee hours of the morning he lost track of his brother, but wasn't at all worried when he showed (or dragged) his buddies to their respective guest rooms with orders that they were not to show their ugly mugs in the common areas of the house until at least two the next afternoon.

He also had to lock Stripe out of his room.

True to form, Scott slept his hangover off after waking at six in the morning to down four aspirins, drink almost a gallon of water, heat up a mug of Brains' hangover remedy (only he added sugar because God, that stuff tasted like week-old dirty socks) and empty his bladder of the residual alcohol his body was trying so hard to squeeze out of his veins. It occurred to him that he should probably head to Virgil's room just to make sure he'd actually made it to his bed, but Scott faceplanted into the area rug next to his bathroom before he could actually turn that particular thought into an action.

The afternoon air was still. The temperature was seventy-seven degrees and there wasn't a cloud in the sky when Scott Tracy exited his shower, checked the newly-formed lump on his forehead and hissed in pain when he was stupid enough to try and touch it. He wondered how come people always touched the places where they were hurt when they knew it was going to make them hurt worse.

First thing he did after throwing on a pair of (short) shorts and an old, faded Air Force tee shirt was head down the hall to Virgil's room. The door slid open and…Virgil wasn't there.

Scott frowned. Of all his brothers, Virgil was the one who was perfectly happy to stay up most of the night and then sleep for twenty-four hours solid to make up for it. There was something to be said for not being a morning person, especially when Scott was usually lucky to chase four hours of sleep through the night even when he was bone-tired.

Pretty soon Stripe was trailing around after him, no doubt checking out his perfect ass (there was a reason Scott had worn this particular pair of shorts, duh, or that's what Stripe insisted) as he searched the house for his brother. Gerry joined them next, followed by Drake and finally Tupac.

There was one thing that annoyed Scott almost more than the fact that he and the guys couldn't find Virgil, and that was the black bird that had decided he liked Scott in short shorts, too. Or, at least, he was following him around almost as closely as Stripe was. More than once, Scott had felt Stripe slam square into his back when he'd stopped really quickly to check this nook or that cranny for any sign of his brother.

It was no big stretch to say Scott was getting worried. His voice grew more clipped and the men he used to fly with were having really awful flashbacks to the last time Scott gave them a command through their inter-jet comm. That was one story they would not be recounting this visit, by the way.

So the annoying bird followed as the men trudged down the long, winding staircase that lead from the second floor of the house all the way to the fifteen-foot stretch of beach that surrounded the entirety of Mohotani. Well, all except the parts where cliff rock met water, but…there was a lot of beach anyway, okay?

Scott decided putting the incredible technology owned by International Rescue to good use rather than wandering around fifteen square klicks of island like they were some perverted all-male revu of the Swiss Family Robinson was the most logical thing to do.

Thing was, the other four guys weren't letting him get far enough away to be able to talk into his wristwatch without them wanting to then commandeer Tracy Three to haul him off to the nearest insane asylum.

With a sigh, Scott flipped an internal switch and became Captain Tracy once again. For old times' sake. What? It was kind of like going from Clark Kent to Superman, only without the tights and cape. Short-shorts for this superhero. Well, that or a blue flight suit. He knows he doesn't look very commanding right now. Hence the voice, dammit!

"Drake, you and Gerry take the west end of the island. There are no structures, so you've only got some indigenous flora to contend with. I want you to report back here at oh-eight-hundred."

"Yes, sir!" they chorused, then must have realized how dumb it was to salute here on their supposed vacation six years after Scott stopped being a Captain. Thus affronted by their own lapse in judgment, Drake and Gerry let their hands fall lamely to their sides.

"Well?" Scott barked and yeah, oops, they weren't moving yet. So off they went.

"Tupac, Stripe, I want you two to search the house again and work your way back, north and south sides, right here at oh-eight-hundred."

"Yessir!" Tupac drawled, but at least he was smart enough not raise is hand to his forehead.

"I'd rather stick with you," Stripe said, leaning in like he was telling Scott the biggest secret in the Universe (yeah, not fooling anyone there).

Scott narrowed his eyes and turned so he was facing Stripe and (oh, for the love of-) said, "Snap to!"

Stripe went immediately into Attention stance and flipped the smartest salute Scott had seen in a (very old) dog's age. "Sir, yes, sir!" snapped from his mouth and he was racing back toward the house like his ass was on fire. (Not even going to touch that one.)

And, you know, that salute wasn't half bad for a guy who'd never been in the military.

Tupac had to hustle to keep up.

Scott lifted his wrist to his face. "Virgil, where are you?" That was still the Captain voice, because hey, desperate times.

No answer.

"Virgil, this is Scott. Come in!" Tinged with a bit of worry, but more pissed off that his Captain voice wasn't being responded to than anything.

The watch face didn't even light up. Not good. Not…okay, this was serious.

Scott looked around, but none of his buddies were anywhere near. With a final three-sixty glance around him, he sprinted to the side of the small cliff that butted up against the back of his house, reached out and pressed an unseen switch that rolled a regular-sized door open. Lickety-split he was inside, the door closing behind him.

With that damn bird.

Well, he'd have to worry about that later.

"Virgil!" he called out into Thunderbird 2's new hangar. "Virgil, are you in here?"

His own voice echoing back at him was the only response.

"Virgil!" he yelled even louder.

But there was nothing. No equipment had been brought over, so there wasn't really anywhere Virgil could be hiding. Scott took off at a fast jog and circuited the cavern anyway, then made his way through an access tunnel to the spot beneath the house that was Thunderbird 1's new hangar.

It wasn't very big and there wasn't anything in there to hide behind either. Okay, Scott still had one more hidden place to check, so he ran down the ramp that was meant to ferry 1 to her silo but when he made it to the launchpad, it was crystal clear Virgil wasn't here either.

To hell with worry. Now was the time to panic.

"Scott to Thunderbird 5!"

His face morphed from panic to disbelief to worry and then settled on a combination of all three. How could Alan up on 5 notanswer?

"Thunderbird 5, come in!"

Without warning, Scott heard a loud screech and then was dive-bombed. He looked up as the sound of flapping wings drifted upward and watched as the black bird, with yellow on its wings and white edging its tail feathers, swooped around in a wide arc and then came right for him again, its slightly curved, long, pointed beak headed right for his face.

Scott turned and ran back up the ramp but the bird caught up with him and raked the top of his head with its claws before he could duck. Flattening himself in between the rails of the launch track, he covered his head and felt the bird's claws all along his back now, just skirting the curve of his ass as it squawked and flew away.

He waited a full minute before he dared unfold his arms from his head to look around. There was no sign of the bird.

Time to get back to the surface. Maybe the guys had found Virgil. Scott would be given such tremendous shit if it came out that he'd spent the past half-hour playing chicken with a bird while the boys downed a couple beers on the roof lanai, now, wouldn't he.

The thought made him move fast.

Drake, Tupac and Stripe were waiting at the rendezvous point – which was a tiny little one-foot-tall Marquesas Palm – when Scott arrived. He hadn't seen hide nor hair…er…feather…of the stupid bird.

Did birds actually have hides?

He shook his head as Stripe moved to stand behind him, then rolled his eyes, knowing exactly why he was doing so. He started turning to tell Stripe to knock it the hell off with his 'ogling-my-ass thing, dammit' when Stripe let out a sound that reminded Scott of a dying pterodactyl. Although where he'd heard that particular sound before wasn't something he could immediately recall.

"What the hell happened to your back?" Stripe asked, voice reaching the octaves that would normally mean he'd been kneed in the groin.

"What?"

Tupac and Drake came around to stand behind him. Tupac whistled long and low as Drake commented, "You got clawed, man."

Scott reached around behind his back, felt the slices in his tee shirt and then something wet and sticky. When he brought his hand back, it had a good amount of blood on it. "Shit," he swore. "Some bird came after me."

"A…bird?" Tupac repeated.

"Yes!" Scott snapped. "Forget it, all right? Did you find Virgil?"

"Naw, man, no sign of your little bro," Tupac said, shaking his head.

Stripe's eyes were round as saucers, and flicking between Scott's back and the back of Scott's head.

"Where's Gerry? He was with you," Scott said to Drake.

Drake bit his lip.

"Drake," Scott said in a warning tone. Warning shot be damned, his tone was a portent of many more perils than his shot.

"One minute he was right next to me," Drake replied, not meeting his eyes. "Next thing I know, I look out at the ocean, turn back and he's gone."

"We're down two men now?" Scott asked.

Drake nodded.

Suddenly Stripe was really paying attention to what was going on not on Scott's back. Scott wondered why Stripe was only just now starting to get worried about his boyfriend.

"Yo, maybe we oughtta call someone," Tupac said, whipping out his cell phone.

"I tried. No signal," Scott said, though he wasn't at all sure a signal had anything to do with his wristwatch not working.

All four men pulled their cell phones out, frowned at them, pressed a few buttons and then frowned some more.

"No signal," Stripe reported.

"Me either," Drake said.

"Ditto," was Tupac's input.

"What the hell?"

"You usually get signals out here?" Drake asked.

"Yeah, from the island of Tahuata, it's only about fifteen miles due west. I've always been able to get a few bars," Scott replied. "Even 7G isn't working."

"That's bullshit," Tupac said. "Satellite always picks up."

They all stuffed their cell phones back in their pockets. Just as Scott was thinking that this was most definitely not a situation he was in control of, a loud screech came from not too far away. He instinctively ducked into a crouch while the other three men scanned the skies.

"That little thing the bird that scratched you up?" Tupac asked, pointing up at the black, yellow and white creature circling about half a mile over their heads.

Scott chanced a look up. "That's the one," he confirmed, forcing himself to stand again even as the scratch marks on his back started to sting.

"I ought to clean those up for you," Stripe offered.

"Don't even think about it," Scott growled, and Stripe jumped back a step. "Right now we've got to find Virgil and Gerry, all right? And we stick together so no one else goes missing. Got it?"

He was back to clipped Captain voice and it felt good to slip it on like a well-fitting glove. Made him feel like he was in charge even though he was starting to suspect that damn bird was more in charge of things here than he was.

Come to think of it, how had the bird gotten out of the hangar, anyway?

Weird.

The men had gone all the way to the opposite end of the island from the house and were halfway back when Stripe gave a small squeak. When the others turned to find out what was wrong, he was nowhere to be seen.

"Stripe?" Scott said, eyes wide.

"Stripe!" Tupac yelled.

"Hey, Stripe!" from Drake.

"Jesus Christ, you can't just disappear into thin air!" Scott bellowed as though convinced Stripe was doing this on purpose just to fuck with him.

"Hey, you've got a plane, right?" Drake asked.

"Of course, it's in the hangar just over there off the runway," Scott said, pointing northward.

"Maybe we should go for help," Drake suggested.

"I am not leaving this island until I find them," Scott said, drawing a nod from Tupac.

"Then I'll go," Drake offered. "Let me take your jet, get to that next island over you said was there, and get some help."

Scott looked at Tupac, then back at Drake. For one of the first times in his life, he was at a loss. Then without warning the bird was overhead again, and before any of them could look heavenward, something fell heavily on their heads.

With loud oofs and other assorted grunts, the men went down.

When Tupac screamed, Scott's hair stood on end. He scrambled out from underneath what had fallen, only to find it was Gerry. Gerry no longer alive. Gerry with three gigantic slices down his chest so deep that Scott could see his unbeating heart in his chest.

His stomach clenched as he fisted a hand in his mouth to keep from retching. Why the hell were these things always worse when it was someone you knew?

Tupac had turned at least five shades lighter and Drake had clearly gone into shock.

"Fuck," Scott breathed through the gagging his throat wouldn't stop doing.

"What the hell," Tupac asked, voice like a little girl's. He backed up crab-like, then jumped to his feet. "You…how…Scott, what the fuck, man?"

The bird chirped happily above them, then came down and landed right on top of Gerry's chest. To their horror, it began dipping its beak into one of the open gashes and pulling out bits of flesh, throwing its head back and swallowing them one after another.

This time, Scott did throw up.

Tupac backed further away. Drake was sitting there like his mind had taken a permanent vacation.

"Is your brother a psycho killer?" Tupac asked, eyes so wide they swallowed a good portion of his face.

"What?" Scott asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Are you crazy?"

"You tell me!" Tupac said, brow knitting as Scott rose to his feet. "You tell us Virgil's disappeared and then Gerry and Stripe go missing and now Gerry's dead!"

"Hey, I've got scratches on my back, too, asshole. My own brother wouldn't do that to me. It was that damn bird!"

"But you're not dead!" Tupac yelled, voice back in the James Earl Jones range.

"I know that!" Scott said, realizing half a second later that was a pretty stupid comeback. "My brother is no killer."

The bird, seemingly full from its bloody meal, screeched and took off into the sky.

"Oh, shit," Tupac breathed.

"What?" Scott barked.

"Drake's gone."

Scott turned and gaped at the spot where Drake had been sitting too shocky to move. Sure enough, his butt print on the beach grass was all that was left of him.

Tupac backed away. "That's it. I'm taking your goddamn jet, Tracy, and I'm getting the hell out of here."

Before Scott could lunge at him to stop him, Tupac was sprinting toward the hangar.

"Wait! Goddammit!" Scott hollered, but stayed right where he was.

None of this made sense.

The bird swooped low, acting like it was headed right for his face, then at the last minute pulled up and was beak-straight into the sky. Scott looked back to where his buddy had been running and…Tupac was gone.

"What the hell are you?" Scott yelled to the heavens. How cliché.

Just like that, the bird grew and grew, right before his eyes. Something flashed then, that blinded Scott for a few seconds. When he moved his arm away from his eyes, he was stunned to find a darker-skinned woman with long, black hair and wearing nothing at all standing before him.

"It's about time you asked," she said, voice sultry and – God help him – hypnotic.

"Who are you?" he said softly.

"I am the spirit that guards Mohotani and the memories of the Moi a Tiu."

"The…the what?"

"The peoples who once inhabited Mohotani," she explained, looking down briefly at Gerry's body. "You are invaders. No one is to disturb these lands."

"Invaders? I've owned this island for four years!" Scott protested, only just then realizing he was talking to someone who by all rights shouldn't even exist. His brain stuttered to a crashing halt over that one.

"You have invaded the land but it has seen no permanent inhabitants until all of you came here and remained."

"You didn't have to kill Gerry!" Scott barked.

Captain's voice didn't seem to faze the woman.

Damn.

"All who stand in the way of the tranquility of this place, especially those who come from a military, shall perish."

Scott threw his hands up in the air, turned a complete circle and fisted his hands at his sides to resist the very real urge he had to pound this woman into the bedrock. "I don't even know what the hell you're talking about!"

The woman looked at him, and Scott thought she looked sad as she spoke. "Those who dwelled here upon Mohotani lived at peace with this island. Over two hundred years ago, a ship from Europe, full of men who operate as your military does today, came here with their weapons our people had no defense against."

"What do you mean, guns?"

"Guns, yes," she nodded. "And disease. The men took our fresh water, our food, our women. They left behind something the people could not fight." She stopped and looked directly into his eyes. "Every last one of us was killed."

"Except you?"

She laughed, and he swore he could hear behind it the chirp of that bird. "I am the spirit of the people, who prayed with the Moho birds for salvation. None came for our people. Just as the Moho birds became extinct, so, too, did we."

"Every single person died?"

She nodded.

"But we had nothing to do with that!"

"You come with your weapons to this place of peace!"

"Weapons?" Scott blinked. "We're not armed! All but Virgil and Stripe are former Air Force, but we're not here to do harm!"

"Liar!" she screeched, and this time she sounded exactly like the bird. "You build these hidden places under your dwelling, places for weapons! I have seen them, the great ones of the sky!"

"Great ones…?" Scott rubbed his forehead. Yeah, control, not so much something he had any illusions about getting back any time soon. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Enough talking," she seethed. "There is that one of your blood who is not of the military."

Scott's eyes widened. "My brother, Virgil. Where is he? Where is he?"

"He is safe."

"Lady, so help me God if you don't return my brother to me unharmed right fucking now…"

She held a hand up, clearly unimpressed with his tirade. "Only if you agree to not bring your birds of destruction to this place."

He shook his head. It wasn't often Scott was clueless, but this was one of the rare occasions. (No comments from the Peanut Gallery.) Just then a shadow fell over him and before he could look up something cold-cocked him. In that same instant there was a flash of light that blinded him. It took him longer than it should've to blink the spots out of his vision and longer yet to disentangle himself from whatever was on top of him.

When he finally pulled himself out from under the weight, his heart sank. "Drake," he breathed.

Sure enough, there were three deep gashes in Drake's chest. He'd clearly been dead for long enough that fresh blood was no longer seeping from the open wounds. Scott looked into the sky but the bird was nowhere. He looked all around on the land, but the woman had disappeared as well.

Scott whipped out his cell phone. Still no signal. He raised his watch to his face and called frantically for Virgil, Thunderbird 5, Tracy Island, his father…everyone, in rapid succession. The watch stayed dark.

Two of them were dead. Three were missing, and Scott suddenly felt more alone than he ever had. In the Air Force he'd been surrounded by thousands of men, and these three he'd invited to Mohotani were a close-knit group. Much like his four brothers today in International Rescue, they'd always had each other's backs, but now?

Now these men were dying, and it was all because they'd come to Mohotani.

That woman, spirit-thing, whatever, had said Virgil was safe, but he hadn't had a chance to ask about Stripe or Tupac.

He began to pace up the beach and down, studiously ignoring the dead men lying next to each other like garish angels on the pristine sand. Birds of destruction. What the hell was she talking about, birds of destruction? He didn't have anything that would destroy, he was—oh. Oh, shit.

The Thunderbirds.

Scott stopped and scrubbed a hand down his face, mouth open wide in complete and utter disbelief. She thought the goddamn Thunderbirds were used for destructive purposes! She had no idea what they were really for, so she'd taken to killing his former squadron and who the hell knew whether Virgil was really okay?

With no equipment on this island and communications being out, Scott knew there was only one thing he could do now. He would have to take Tracy Three, get back to Tracy Island, mount a search and rescue and return.

He stopped and looked around the island one more time before he started running for the hangar. Suddenly nothing mattered anymore…the short-shorts, Stripe's obvious desire to get into his pants, the whiskey, the stories they'd been telling, the need to be out on their own away from their father's cocoon of an island…nothing mattered but getting help from the ones he'd been trying so hard to get away from.

Nobody else would be dying on his watch, if he had anything to say about it.

Obviously, Scott had absolutely nothing to say about it and for a guy used to everyone doing what he told them (no matter how some of them might bitch about it – ahem *cough* Johnny *cough*) this was not sitting well at all.

Tracy Three's engines simply would not start. In fact, her onboard computer wouldn't even power up and Scott had literally had it up to here. Here being his untamed gone-quite-wavy-almost-curly walnut brown hair.

Damn, he needed a haircut.

He slammed his fist down on the console in frustration, took the steps down to the hangar floor almost without touching them and raced back out into the bright sunlight, skidding to a halt on the tarmac when greeted with yet another body.

This time it was Tupac, and Scott knew he was dead. That bird, that goddamnbird, sat upon Tupac's chest and dipped its long, thin beak into the deep gash over his heart. He pulled out a chunk of flesh, threw back his head and gobbled it down.

"You don't have to kill us!" Scott yelled, running forward and shooing the bird away.

It screeched and circled its way up into the air.

"Our Thunderbirds don't kill, dammit!" Scott continued, knowing he looked like an idiot punching his fists into the sky like that. "We're International Rescue, we use the 'birds to rescue people, not kill them!"

Whaddya know, the bird had stopped flying altogether. It was just hovering there, not five feet over Tupac's body, looking at Scott. It twisted its head this way and that like a miniature puppy. That had feathers instead of fur. Yeah. Um…

"You," Scott said, striding over so he was nose-to-beak with the – admittedly, beautiful – bird. "Your people were slaughtered by guys in a boat two centuries ago. By men who probably weren't any kind of military at all, but explorers." He was starting to feel bolder now. Either that or he just didn't give a shit anymore and had gone for ridiculously reckless.

The bird chirped angrily.

"No, you do not get to talk right now! I have the floor!" Scott glanced down to his feet, ignoring Tupac's lifeless body. "The tarmac!"

The bird jumped…levitated?...back a step. Er…wing-length.

"They were explorers who came and it meant death to your people. Well, we're not explorers," and really at this point there was no…point…in mentioning how John explored space at every given opportunity, "we're rescuers. We save lives with our 'birds, me and my brothers. We want to come here to give ourselves a second base of operations, so we can be closer to French Polynesia, to all points west, than we are in the middle of the South Pacific. We want to save as many lives as possible, and I tell you, if we had been around two hundred years ago, we would've saved at least half the population of this island because we have the technology to do it!"

Scott felt winded. He liked hearing himself talk most of the time, but was also (ironically enough) usually a man of few words unless he was either drunk as a skunk or pissed off. He figured this particular moment qualified as the latter, and wished like hell Virg was around to snort at him for using the word 'latter' right now.

"These men you've killed, we were in a war together," he said, voice much less clipped because hey, field commanders didn't need to be yelling themselves hoarse because then one of their brothers would wind up taking over Mobile Control – 'Control' being Scott's operative word here – and that was beyond inconceivable.

Virg would've snorted at 'inconceivable,' too.

"We helped free a tiny little country that probably didn't have any more people than your island did, and now you've gone and killed three of my men!"

There was a blinding flash of light which, as before, caused Scott to throw an arm over his eyes because yeah, a blind field commander was about equal to one who had laryngitis in his book and how much would that suck?

When he removed his arm and blinked the spots away, she was standing before him again, this native woman with long, black hair and dark bronze-tan skin. Her brown eyes were wide and filled with tears and oh, hell, Scott was so not good with crying females. He shifted uncomfortably as he recalled his last mistake trying to comfort Tin-Tin when she was crying over Alan, and how that had landed him a black eye that was really difficult to explain to his father.

"You tell the truth," the woman said softly.

Scott's eyes practically bugged out of his head. "Of course I tell the truth! Tracys are men of integrity, Lady!"

Well, most of the time. Unless practical jokes, too much scotch or certain nocturnal activities best kept secret from the rest of the family were involved. But Scott wisely decided this woman didn't need to know about that.

"Scott?"

He whirled around to find a very shaken Stripe wobbling toward him on legs that seemed to be made of Jell-O. Scott rushed to him, took in that he seemed to be fine (though really, really freaked out and hey, who could blame him?) and decided against giving him a hug. Under the circumstances, he could be forgiven, but Stripe would remember the short-shorts and Scott didn't think he'd have an easy time extricating himself from such an embrace.

So he opted for putting a steadying hand on Stripe's shoulder. Another blinding flash of light and Tupac was standing on his feet, no gashes or blood in sight, looking as dazed as Stripe did. Scott heard a holler from some distance away and recognized Drake's voice, soon followed by Gerry's. Quickly he moved to face the woman, who had set herself apart from them further down the runway.

"Where's my brother?" Scott ground out.

"You will find him in his bed, where I first saw him and…wanted him."

Scott's body went rigid. "Wanted him?"

She peeked up through her eyelashes and got a really weird smile on her face and in that instant Scott knew what had happened. Women were never very good at hiding that sort of thing, even spirit ones that turned into birds.

"You had sex with my brother?" Scott screeched almost as loud as the bird had been doing.

"He has helped make right what once went wrong," she stated, splaying a hand over her belly.

Scott slapped his face with the palm of his hand. "Oh, my freaking God."

"You may have our island, Scott Tracy," the woman continued. "No harm will come to you, your brother or your guests."

"And you will not sleep with him again," Scott ground out through clenched teeth.

"This I cannot guarantee."

"Lady, so help me God—"

Drake and Gerry came running from the far end of the runway just as Scott's watch beeped an incoming transmission. He lifted it to his face and there in the screen was Virgil's characteristic I-just-woke-up bedhead sticking out in twelve thousand different directions.

He was rubbing his eyes and sounded for all the world like he was ten years old when he said, "Scott?"

"Virgil!" Scott breathed, a wide grin threatening to split his face in two.

"Hey, Scott, I thought you didn't invite any women. I don't remember there being women."

"Say what?"

"Well, I have the distinct feeling that I got laid last night."

Stripe came to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Scott. "Well, at least someone did," he muttered grouchily. Drake and Tupac laughed.

"My chest itches," Gerry said, absentmindedly scratching it through his tee shirt.

"I'm hungry," Tupac announced, clapping his hands together and then rubbing them so fast Scott was sure they were about to spontaneously combust.

"What the hell are we doing out here on the runway?" Drake asked, looking around like he was lost. "I thought I passed out on the roof."

"I think I slept like the dead," Gerry offered, causing Scott to flinch.

"Never mind all that," Scott snipped, looking around them only to find the woman had vanished. "I think we were all sleepwalking."

"I think," Virgil said from Scott's watch, "that I was doing something else my sleep."

"Hey, you can talk to your brother through a watch?" Stripe said, grabbing Scott's wrist and jerking it over so he could see the watch face. "Hi, Virgil!"

"Hey, Stripe," Virg said with a slow, lazy smile.

"Oh, my God, he's gorgeous when he's all sleep-warm like that," Stripe breathed.

And much, much later, if Jeff's questions about why Scott's back was scratched all to hell, why Virgil was walking like he was chafed somewhere really unmentionable, and why Scott had resolved to not only never move to Mohotani, but to sell it back to French Polynesia at his earliest convenience, weren't being so truthfully answered?

Well, that was nobody's business but Scott's.

And maybe Virgil's.

And also maybe the spirit of the Moi a Tui.

Or something like that, anyway.