A/N: The title of this story comes from a beautiful Genesis song called Ripples from their excellent album A Trick of the Tail. Oldies like me will remember Genesis. (From even when Peter Gabriel was a member. Who's Peter Gabriel? Only one of the most awesome people on the planet. :))

Anyway, the story is set in IR's early days. When Gordon and Alan were still pretty young and probably thought it was all good fun, with all the cool machines and stuff.

Based on the TV Show characters. None of which belong to me, sadly, and Rated T for the F Word. Blame Alan- he's the one who says it.

Ripples Never Come Back

As far as International Rescue the organisation was concerned, no rescue was ever a routine rescue. But personal opinion amongst the boys was divided.

Scott, the Military man, the born leader, self-assured and confident, assessed each operation as though it were a singular entity. A collapsed building could not be compared to a rockfall. A house fire could not be compared to a forest fire. No matter the similarities. No matter the end results. To Scott, one rescue was very different to another.

Virgil, down-to-Earth and realistic, didn't even analyse it that much. He followed orders and he did what he had to do, because he knew there was someone trustworthy in charge who had already thought it out carefully. Perhaps because he had other outlets, creative outlets, he didn't dwell too morbidly on the facts. Instead, he painted sweeping landscapes full of vivid colours and played his piano late into the night.

John did a lot of thinking, usually because he was alone on Thunderbird 5. When he was at home, John came out of his shell. He and Scott kept each other on their toes- they butted heads frequently over what could have been done, what decision should have been made. Because John could become slightly detached from what happened in the field while he sat among his flashing lights and state-of-the-art technology, he sometimes needed a little gentle reminding that most decisions involved some kind of human cost.

Gordon and Alan, the two youngest brothers, were the ones who argued most over which rescue had been more adventurous or exciting.

"Oh man, Alan! The underwater cave-in was way more dangerous than the flood."

"Are you kidding? More lives were at stake in the flood!"

"I know, but we nearly lost Thunderbird 4 at the cave-in."

"Yeah, it sure would have been a shame to lose Thunderbird 4!"

"And what about the tunnel collapse last month? Fifteen trapped cars and an oil tanker at risk of exploding? That was pretty high on the Brown Underpants Scale."

"You think a cat stuck up a tree is high on the Brown Underpants Scale!"

Gordon and Alan's bickering could go on all afternoon unless someone, usually Jeff or Scott, jumped in and shut them up. They weren't insensitive to human tragedy, but they could joke about anything. Even Gordon's hydrofoil accident had produced some epic joshing from his blond younger brother.

"Sometimes I think you weren't going fast enough!"

"You'd better be going fast enough, kiddo, because when I catch you, you'll be the one needing crutches!"

And so it went on, rescue after rescue. The post mortem, where they'd argue over which 'bird had been more effective. Even though they both knew that Thunderbird 2 was the work horse with all the equipment, it didn't stop them haranguing Virgil about the big green booger's slowness, as though a top speed of 2000 mph wasn't fast enough. Or, on the flip side of the speed argument, telling Scott that being first all the time didn't mean he was the best.

"Beat it, you two, before I knock your heads together."

"Uh-oh, Alan, I told you not to tease the old guy."

"Yeah, guess he's having a bad day with his arthritis and all."

At which point, Scott would shake his head and take himself off somewhere nice and quiet, like way over on the other side of the island, where it was just him and the turtles, who never said anything.

Then one day, it all changed.

"Jesus," Gordon muttered. "I've never seen anything like it."

By earthquake standards, it had been a fairly small tremor. Way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, two tectonic plates rubbed together beneath the earth's crust, almost by accident, like strangers brushing shoulders in a doorway. But this brief union gave birth to a tsunami, the bastard child of land and sea. Beginning as an underwater ripple it rushed through its infancy, surged its way through childhood and as it grew, so did its rage.

The small island country had been on alert ever since the earthquake happened, but they weren't prepared for the tsunami's ferocity. It hit the coast and pushed its way in like a belligerent gatecrasher at a garden party. It left nothing standing and ripped up anything that was nailed down. It tore things out of the ground. It smashed buildings flat. It picked things up and threw them like toys out of a toybox. It curled its fists and hammered them on the ground in a spectacular tantrum, like a child unloved. It roared and screamed and tore its way through the coastal town, and by the time its rage was spent it had destroyed everything.

International Rescue were not the first ones on the scene. Even before the water began to subside, local and regional emergency services were sifting through the carnage, retrieving dead bodies one after the other after the other. It was clear though, that this was worse than anyone had ever experienced. The loss of life was too great. People hadn't evacuated as they should have done. Too many earthquakes, too many Tsunami Alerts in this part of the world. By 2065 people had grown blasé. Stopped bothering. Some people had even gone down to the coast, thinking it would be cool to get some video footage for You Tube.

But it wasn't cool to see almost unidentifiable bodies stacked up high in makeshift morgues. People who had been strangers in life lay side by side like lovers lost in gentle slumber. The mud and the stench and the sheer numbers defied belief.

The dead would never worry about tsunamis again. But there were survivors of this tragedy, and some of them were trapped in saturated buildings that could collapse at any moment. Buildings slumped with half their sides gone, their interiors exposed like the guts of a slit open dinosaur. Hotel rooms with all their secrets laid bare. Beds, wardrobes, those standard prints that hang on every wall. A badly painted vase of flowers. A snowy mountainscape. A wonky portrait of someone's child. Arrogant glass-fronted office blocks that had once sparkled proudly in the sunshine vomited desks and file cabinets onto the ground while electrical wiring hung out of them like tangled intestines.

"It's like the whole town got put into a blender," Alan whispered.

They worked harder than they'd ever worked in their lives. They came across so many corpses it was hard to keep their composure. There were animal carcasses stinking to high heaven that no-one had the time to remove- bulldozers and JCBs would come in later to scoop up anything that wasn't human in origin.

International Rescue's sole objective was to find the living, but this time there didn't seem to be that many. The dead were now the majority in this town, and the sheer scale of the tragedy was almost unbearable. By the end of the day, Alan was almost in tears and Gordon had stopped talking altogether.

After three days of non-stop search and rescue the Tracy brothers finally returned home, caked in mud and shaking with exhaustion. They filed their reports quietly while Jeff watched their faces. He saw what was written in their eyes, he knew the terrible carnage they had witnessed. He knew how badly they had been affected, and that even though they were home, safe and unharmed, the after effects of the tsunami tragedy would go on for a long, long time.

It wasn't until several days later that Scott and Virgil both noticed how quiet it was. There was no wisecracking, no shouts of derision, no inappropriate jokes, no hooting and hollering.

"Are they even on the island?"

"Beats me. Why not just enjoy it while it lasts?"

"I dunno, Virge. It's not normal."

"They're not normal."

Scott found Gordon sitting by the side of the pool, his arms wrapped around his knees. The pool was calm and still, save for the occasional ripple across the surface made by the kiss of a passing breeze. The auburn haired Tracy was staring into the depths of the water, as though there was something hidden there, something lurking in the deep end.

"You okay, Gordon?"

"Damn, Scott, don't sneak up on me like that!"

"I didn't sneak up on you. You were miles away."

"I was just thinking. About what it's like to drown."

"Nice."

"What do you think it's like, Scott? Do you think you get a warm feeling just before it happens?"

"I don't know, Gordon. I really don't."

"I don't remember anything about my accident except for the few moments just before it happened. I know I nearly drowned, but I don't remember how it felt. Imagine if you knew how it felt. Imagine if you were lying at the bottom of this pool with something on top of you, holding you down. You could see people moving around above the surface, but you couldn't do anything to get their attention. All you could do was lie there, unable to breathe, knowing you were gonna die in agony while everyone else was just walking around, breathing in their precious oxygen, not even knowing you were there."

"You going to be sitting here all day thinking about what it's like to drown?"

"Probably."

"It's a shitty way to die, Gordon. It's a real shitty way to die."

"All those people were drowning while we were sitting here on our asses."

"Don't start with that. Because you can apply that argument to just about anything."

"Just go away, Scott. Really. I know you're trying to help, but I don't want to be helped right now. I just want to sit here and think."

"That's fine, Gordon. Just do me one favour- don't attempt to find out for yourself. Okay?"

"Been there, Scott. Almost got the t-shirt."

Scott found Alan as he came in from a run around the island. The youngest Tracy was so completely soaked in sweat that his white blond hair looked like it had turned a shade darker. He was panting hard, his face pale, his tired eyes ringed with dark circles. He slumped onto a kitchen stool, crossed his arms and let his head rest there on the counter.

"Okay, Alan. What is it? What's got you all worked up?"

"What is it? It's nothing."

"It's not 'nothing'."

"Get out of my face, Scott. Don't tell me what it is."

"You tell me, then."

"You're an asshole, Scott."

"I know that. Tell me something original."

"Death sucks."

"I said, original."

"No. Death really does suck. It doesn't give a shit. It just takes, takes, takes."

"And you think you can change that?"

"I can't fucking change that! That's the point!"

"Death has been around a lot longer than we have, Alan. It pretty much calls the shots, in fact."

"It plays by some scummy rules."

"No, it doesn't."

"Killing little children? That's pretty scummy."

"Sometimes it can be a relief."

"Not when you're a child. Not when you didn't want to die. Get the fuck out, Scott."

"Okay, okay, I'm going. But don't waste your time thinking you can change the way Death works. Think instead about how you can keep on helping to protect the living."

Gordon and Alan were quiet for several days. Then, one evening at dinner, when all the clan were gathered at the table, an argument sprang up out of nowhere. This time it wasn't about Thunderbird 2 being too slow, or Thunderbird 4 being cooler than Thunderbird 3, or Thunderbird 1 being any kind of anatomical extension. This time it was about which 'bird saved more lives. Which 'bird pulled more people to safety. Which 'bird had the strength and endurance to keep going until every life that could be saved, had been saved. The conclusion was that Thunderbird 2 saved more lives because it carried the pods that contained almost all of their fantastic rescue equipment, and because it kept going and going until the job was done.

Virgil smiled. He wasn't smug or overly proud of himself for being the pilot of the 'bird in question, but he was proud of his two youngest brothers. For once they hadn't allowed their hot-headed emotions and youthful ignorance to get in the way of a simple and logical decision.

They all raised their glasses to Thunderbird 2. They all agreed that without Thunderbird 2, there was no point in turning up to any rescue at all, because they'd be about as much use as a chocolate fireguard. The events of the last few days had proven it without a doubt.

"That tsunami was something else."

"I never saw anything like it."

"I hope I never see anything like it again!"

Jeff's eyes darted across the table from Gordon to Alan and back again. He could see that his youngest two had changed almost overnight. The sheer scale of devastation caused by the tsunami had opened their eyes to the awe-inspiring power of Death. It didn't matter who you were. Whether you were rich or poor, big or small, young or old, black or white, whether you lived in a house or a hut, a mansion or a maisonette. If Death wanted you, by golly it took you with no questions asked. No amount of technically superior rescue equipment or billionaire's supply of endless money would ever be able to change that.

Jeff would never stop being anxious for his children, especially his two youngest, but tonight he felt immensely proud of the men they were becoming. He also knew that despite the threat of Death, International Rescue would never stop trying to change the world for the better, no matter how long it took and no matter who or what attempted to get in their way- be it human, animal, or raging, murderous force of nature.

Like the tsunami that had caused so much devastation, Jeff Tracy's youngest sons had begun their lives as mere ripples. But, once formed, ripples never returned. They gained strength, they moved forward, and they never looked back.

Gordon and Alan Tracy were growing up at last.