{Fic: Alex Rider} The Best of K Unit - Chapter 1, Part 1/2
Summary: Alex Rider and K Unit should never be mixed. Ever.
Disclaimer: Despite my dearest wishes, Alex Rider does not belong to me.
Rating: T/PG-12
Warning(s): Nothing much, really. Just a little language, and a ton of insanity.
Word Count: 10090
The one thing that Alex Rider wanted to do most in the world was to sleep. Sleep for hours and hours… Hell, sleep for days.
Unfortunately, it hardly seemed that he was going to get any sleep in his current situation, which was stumbling through the Welsh mud.
This was Alex’s second time at the SAS training camp, the Brecon Beacons. At least this time he wasn’t missing any school, as it was during his summer holidays. This wasn’t Alex’s ideal summer holiday, but it was better than getting even farther behind on school, or being forced into doing another mission for MI6.
When Alex had asked Mrs. Jones why he was going back to the Brecon Beacons, he had been told that each SAS unit had an annual refreshers course in hell, so when K-Unit was scheduled to go back, MI6 decided that it would be helpful for Alex to complete his training.
Alex was currently on a run. He’d had more time than K-Unit to complete it, but he got the feeling that his 30 minute time-limit was almost up, and he still had about a kilometer left to go.
When he finally stumbled to the end of his run, five minutes late, he was greeted by an unpleasant sight.
“You’re five minutes late, Cub!” the Sergeant, a tall, muscled black man barked, making a big show of checking his large, military style watch. “Twenty-five.” Alex knew that the man was telling him that he owed twenty-five push-ups
Alex groaned softly as he went down onto his hands and knees to complete his twenty-five push-ups.
When he - finally - finished the push-ups, he was free to get a shower in before “dinner,” which would most likely be something that was hardly edible.
Alex passed K-Unit as the other men left the showers. Wolf, the leader of the unit, was rather short, but broad-shouldered and heavily muscled. His serious, slightly Hispanic face was twisted in dislike at the sight of Alex. Wolf immediately marched off towards the mess hall, closely followed by Snake, a tall, thin, fair-skinned man with blue eyes was K-Unit’s medic. He had always been a tad more acceptant of Alex, acting almost friendly on their return to the Brecon Beacons, and he seemed to be rather reluctant about following Wolf to the mess. Apparently, however, his stomach was over-ruling his manners.
“Hey, Cub,” Fox said. Fox wasn’t actually SAS. He used to be a member of K-Unit, but then he’d transferred to MI6 and worked with Alex on the mission with ASIS. Fox was back at Brecon Beacons to get his fitness back up after having been shot in the arm.
“Fox--” Alex began, before Eagle, the last member of K-Unit, interrupted.
“Guess what, Cub?“ Eagle was practically bouncing. He seemed to be the youngest. About average height, with dark hair and gray eyes, he was also strangely hyper for a professional soldier. Alex was still unsure what to make of him.
“What?” Alex asked warily. He was pretty sure that it was dangerous for him to have answered the older man, and the faintly evil smile that appeared on the older man’s face only confirmed that idea.
“We’ve already taken our showers! See you at dinner! We might even be able to save some food for you.” With that, Eagle bounced off towards the mess, humming cheerfully as he went.
Alex raised an eyebrow at the energetic man’s retreating back.
“Er - sorry about that, Cub,” Fox began awkwardly. “I mean - about Wolf. And Snake. And Eagle…”
“It’s fine,” Alex said quietly. “I’m just going to go take a shower…” Alex trailed off, gesturing towards the door that K-Unit had come out of.
“Oh - sorry,” Fox apologized awkwardly. “See you at dinner.”
Alex nodded and opened the door to the showers.
“Oh, and Cub?”
Alex turned around. “Yeah?”
“We will save you some food,” Fox grinned.
“Thanks,” Alex smiled slightly. He was too exhausted to laugh.
--
When Alex had gone to the mess, he found that Fox had kept his word, and he hadn’t let the others eat all the food. Alex had eaten his fair share of the disgusting stuff (he wasn’t sure it could really be called food), and he would finally, finally get some sleep now.
Back in their cabin, Alex and K-Unit got ready to go to sleep.
Wolf collapsed onto his bunk, only to moan, “Why are these beds so soft?”
“You call this soft?” Snake demanded, looking distastefully at his rock-hard bunk.
Wolf just grunted in reply; apparently the “softness” of his bunk wasn’t going to deter him from a good night’s sleep.
Alex sat on his own very uncomfortable bunk while he pulled his boots and jacket off. Yawning, he fell back onto his bunk, his eyes closed, and already half out of the world. Alex sank gently down into sleep.
He was dreaming: He and Jack were in the kitchen, and Alex was a small child again, maybe nine years old.
“Tell me a story!” Alex demanded in his dream…But it wasn’t Alex’s voice.
It was Eagle’s. And that was definitely Wolf’s voice answering. “Just go to sleep, Eagle! I’m too tired right now.”
“But I’m not tired!” Eagle whined. Alex had never realized how high-pitched Eagle’s voice was. “Come on, Wolf! Just one little story? Pleeeeeaasee?”
Even without being about to see Eagle, Alex knew that the man was administering puppy eyes.
“No, Eagle! Fox’ll tell you one…” Wolf’s voice trailed off to be replaced by a low snore.
“Fox?” Eagle’s forlorn voice was quiet. The overall effect was quite piteous.
Fox sighed audibly, as he said patiently, “What story do you want to hear, Eagle?”
“How about Goldilocks?” Eagle asked eagerly.
Fox’s sigh was more of a groan this time, his voice was a tad strained as he said, “Fine. Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Eagle--”
“I don’t want to be Goldilocks!” Eagle whined. “I never get to be one of the bears! Wolf can be Goldilocks this time.” Eagle sounded pleased with his choice for the role.
Wolf reacted rather strongly for someone who was fast asleep. “No way in hell!” he shouted.
“Be quiet!” Snake moaned from his bunk.
“I am not going to be Goldilocks!” Wolf hissed menacingly. “Snake can be,” he said decisively.
“No, Snake cannot!” Snake’s bunk creaked ominously as he shot upright.
“Come on, Snake - please?” Eagle asked eagerly.
“No way! Fox can be - he’d make a much better Goldilocks.” Snake had obviously decided that logic was the way to go.
So had Fox, however. “Hey, guys!” he protested. “I’m telling the story!”
“Then who’s going to be Goldilocks?” Snake asked.
“Who cares?” Wolf muttered, but Eagle ignored him.
“Cub can be!” Eagle said excitedly. “He’s perfect for it - look, he’s even got blond hair!”
There was a badly-concealed snort of laughter from Wolf at that comment. “Oh, yeah, except for those dark roots…” he let his voice trail off at the end.
“Hey,” Alex protested weakly, his voice muffled by his pillow. This was definitely a strange dream. “It’s not dyed!”
“Well, then you make an even better Goldilocks,” Fox put in hastily. He began his story again before anyone could make any more protests:
“Once upon a time there was a little boy named Goldilocks...”
“No! I am not going to be called ‘Goldilocks’!” Alex said. “Just call me Cub, alright?”
“Fine,” Fox replied, obviously pleased that Alex had only objected at the name, and not the part in the story.
Alex decided that this was the weirdest dream he had ever had as Fox happily continued with his tale…
Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Cub. Cub was a naughty little boy, and was always getting into trouble--
“Hey!” Alex protested, deciding that if he had to live through this awful, traumatizing dream, he might as well participate in it. “Why do I have to be ‘naughty’?! That’s the least macho adjective you could have used!”
“Well, now you aren’t exactly ‘macho’ in the first place, Cub,” Wolf drawled cuttingly.
“Shh!” Eagle hissed. “I’m trying to listen to my story!”
Alex grudgingly swallowed his reply, and Wolf just snorted.
Fox continued his story:
One day he was very naughty, and his mother couldn’t handle having him around any more, so she sent him to play in the woods surrounding their little house.
Cub wandered farther into the woods than he’d ever gone before, and he came upon a little cottage in a clearing. The building was very similar to Cub’s own house, so he was very curious about it. He was about to go up to the door when the door opened, and three bears came out. Cub quickly ducked behind some bushes. He was very bored, and somehow hiding made this little jaunt seem more adventurous.
“We’ll just take a walk while the porridge is cooling,” said one of the bears in a high-pitched voice.
“Why, Mummy?” whined one of the other bears, whom Cub now realized were bigger than Whiner.
“They must be a mummy, a daddy, and a me!” Cub whispered very, very quietly.
Cub waited until the three bears had strolled away between the trees before he army-crawled up to the door and slipped quietly inside.
Cub looked around. There was a long, low table with three different-sized bowls of porridge. There was a big one, a medium one, and a little one.
Now, Cub was a very greedy little boy, so he immediately trotted over to the table, and grabbed the spoon beside the biggest bowl, and happily dug into the large bowl.
“Ew!” Cub squealed. “Too hot!”
“I don’t ‘squeal’!” Alex squealed.
Wolf snorted with laughter. “Yeah? Well what do you call what you just did?”
Alex blushed slightly. “I was merely objecting to the choice of adjectives that Fox is using to describe me!”
“You do squeal sometimes, though, Cub,” Eagle said thoughtfully.
“Eagle,” Fox said warningly. Turning to Alex, he grinned. “I’ll try to refrain from using such…un-macho adjectives, Cub.”
Cub moved over to the middle-sized bowl, and took a tentative bite from it.
“Gross! Too spicy!”
Cub very, very, very hesitantly looked towards the small bowl. He almost decided to just skip the porridge, and go explore the rest of the cottage, but his stomach growled just then, and so he just had to try the littlest bowl.
So, he moved slowly over to the littlest bowl. He picked up the spoon, and dipped it very carefully into the littlest bowl…“Perfect!” was the exclamation this time, and Cub’s hunger took over.
“Whoops!” he said guiltily a scant few minutes later, after completely demolishing the Littlest Bowl’s porridge.
“Please tell me that we won’t have to listen to ‘Goldilocks’,” Snake cut in, interrupting the story.
“We already are,” Eagle said helpfully, thinking that maybe Snake was suffering from a bad case of short term memory loss.
Snake was glaring. Alex knew that even before the man started rummaging around in his bag, eventually pulling out a torch, and turning it on.
“I meant,” he began, “that we shouldn’t have to listen to the Goldilocks ‘plotline’. Y’know, porridge, chairs, beds. It would be quite ironic if Fox were to put something with guns in it, seeing as where we are right now.” he glanced around the hut distastefully.
“Fine,” Fox said irritably. “Now shut up and let me finish the story!”
Now, a full stomach always made Cub hyper, so the next thing on his agenda was to explore the rest of the cottage. He marched away from the table and the door…and - as he wasn’t exactly looking where he was going - walked smack-dab into a cabinet.
Cub about-faced and walked past the cabinet before he realized that there was something very odd about it: Only three of the walls were made of traditional wood. The other wall was made of some clear wood that Cub had never seen before.
“What is that?” Cub asked himself quietly. And then he realized that there were three strange devices inside the cabinet - he could, of course, see these objects through the clear wood, which Cub decided to call “glass”.
Curious, Cub walked back around to the front of the cabinet. He now saw a handle on the Glass side of the cabinet. So, or course, he decided that he had to open the door and find out what those strange black things were.
The door’s hinges creaked ominously, and for the first time since he’d entered the bear’s cottage uninvited, Cub was a little scared. What if those bears came back?
Cub shrugged these minor worries off. He just had to see those black thingies up close!
He swung the door all the way out, as far as it would go, and climbed up onto the small ledge where the door had been, wincing as he scraped his knee on a rough bit of wood.
“Ow!” he squealed as a few drops of blood rose from his scraped knee and splattered down to the floor and the ledge that Cub was currently occupying.
“Oh, never mind!” he muttered to himself as he stretched up very, very high to reach for the biggest black thingy. He had to go up on tip-toes to reach the bottom of it. Now all he had to do was actually get the black thingy down.
Meanwhile, he’d realized what the black thingies really were: “They’re guns!” Cub announced happily to himself. “Mummy told me about them…But she told me never to touch one…” His voice trailed off as he weighed his conscience versus his curiosity.
His curiosity won, and he returned to the task of getting the guns down.
Which was harder than he’d expected. Cub eventually ended up having to give a little hop to pop it off of its hook at the top of the cabinet.
Then, of course, he fell over backwards, landing on his butt, and clutching the gun to his chest.
“That’s cold!” he said rather loudly, his voice echoing around the tiny room. He paused, holding his breath, once again hoping that the bears hadn’t heard, and therefore weren’t returning. After a moment, he sighed with relief, and stood up slowly.
Finally Cub could look at this strange, cold, black gun up close! But now he realized that it was actually rather heavy, and he almost dropped it.
“Maybe this one’s too heavy…” Cub decided that it might be better to get the medium-sized gun, so that he wouldn’t drop it.
Unfortunately, after maneuvering the medium-sized down, he realized that this one was also too big and heavy, leaving him with but one choice: the littlest gun.
This time, it was easier to get the gun down, as the hook that the gun was resting on was lower than the others
After not too much difficulty, he gripped it firmly to his chest, holding it with both arms, and marched over to the porridge table. Giving a disdainful look towards the biggest and middle-sized bowls, Cub shoved them roughly away. They fell off of the table with a bump and a slight squelching sound as the porridge splashed out.
Then he set the gun down in the place that the bowls had been in.
Giving a reverent look to the Littlest Bowl, he very carefully picked the beautiful wooden bowl up and hugged it before putting it safely under the table.
Now Cub marched excitedly back to the gun.
Examining it closely, he saw that it was very strangely shaped: It was long, and one end was thick, while the other end was rather thin. Also, at the thick end, there was a strange piece that curved down and towards the thick end.
Cub examined the black gun thingy from all angles, and now saw the piece along what he assumed was the top. The piece was just a round thing that was clear except for a few black lines on it.
Cub propped the gun up on the table, so that the “top,” with the round thing, was facing up. Cub stretched his arms way down the gun, as far as they could go (which was only a little ways down the gun), and managed to hold the piece that curved down. When his arms had been stretching, he’d heard a slight clicking sound, but he’d just figured that his wrist had popped. It had been doing that a lot recently.
But as his fingers wrapped around the curving part, he heard a far more alarming noise than that one little pop: there was a series of louder pops, and a shredding sound. Cub looked up tentatively, almost afraid that that was the bears coming back. Cub jumped as he realized that that shredding noise had been the wall, of which pieces were now in splinters.
Cub looked down at the gun again. “Whoops! I didn’t mean to fire it!” he sounded guilty, even to his own ears. He quickly decided, however, that it didn’t really matter. After all, it wasn’t as if that was his wall.
“I’m glad to see that you’ve given me such fine morals,” Alex said dryly, thinking that he should’ve been too tired to have such an insane dream. Apparently not.
“Cub, just stop thinking of you and Cub as being the same people!” Snake said irritably. “I want to listen to the story.”
“You’re actually listening to it, Snake?” Wolf snorted. “I guess you would be one to enjoy maimed fairytales.”
Snake blushed. “Fox tells it well,” he blustered.
Fox started laughing almost hysterically. “Thanks,” he managed to gasp out. It took him almost five minutes to regain his control enough to continue the story.
Cub was getting bored of playing with the gun by now, so he turned his attention elsewhere.
He began walking in the direction that he had been heading in before he ran across the guns. This time, though, he avoided the cabinet, carefully walking around it.
Once he’d successfully maneuvered his way around the cabinet, Cub saw a door. It was closed, so of course it piqued Cub’s mischievous interest.
Grinning deviously, he marched over to the Mysterious Closed Door, and reached up to turn the door handle. The door moaned as Cub shoved it in. The door hit the wall with a dull thud as cub had had to push it very hard to get it open. Apparently a little too hard, as there was now a dent where the door handle had hit the wall.
Cub once again decided that it didn’t matter since it wasn’t his wall.
Now, of course, there was the task of finding out what was in the room. “This is gonna be fun!” he grinned.
He marched swiftly into the room past the Mysterious Open Door, and immediately noticed yet another door to the left of the door he’d just opened.
“Doors are fun,” he told himself, so he marched over to the newest victim.
After a brief tussle with said door, Cub realized that this door opened towards him, instead of away from him. This realized, he found that it was ridiculously easy to open Mysterious Closed Door, Jr.
“Now what are these?” Cub muttered to himself, when he saw what he was faced with strange black vest things. And, of course, there were three of them. A big one, a medium-sized one, and a small one.
Cub decided to get a closer look, so he walked into the closet, and strained to reach his short arms way, way, way high up, and pull the biggest one off of the highest hook.
When he finally got it down, using the hop technique that had been so effective in getting those guns down, Cub was surprised to find that the vest was really quite stiff, and even huger than he’d previously realized.
He shrugged and decided to try it on anyway.
“Ugh! It looks like a dress!” he squeaked, and immediately shrugged it off, deciding that the medium-sized vest might fit better.
“Still too big! Maybe the littlest one…?”
He repeated the process of getting a vest down for the third time. As it had been with the guns, the littlest thing was easiest to get down, as its hook was lower.
“This one fits just right!” was the pronouncement this time.
Still happily wearing his new vest, Cub marched back out of the closet, and into the room, which he now realized was utterly fascinating. It had beds. Three of them, of the usual sizes: big, medium and little.
Not only were there three beds to choose from, but they also all looked so soft, and so comfortable.
Cub thought that the biggest bed looked to be the softest one of the lot. Unfortunately, it seemed that he would have to take a running start to get on top of it.
So Cub marched back to the door that he had entered the room through in the first place, and about-faced so that he was turned towards the big bed. Taking a deep breath, he launched himself towards the big bed, and pumped his arms for maximum speed.
He leaped up high into the air, and bounced down onto the big bed, which was way too hard, and he landed on the flabby parts that prolong the small of the back.
“What the hell?” Wolf asked, actually sounding interested.
“It’s from ‘The Three Musketeers’,” Snake said. “Now shut up.”
“Ow!” Cub shrieked. “Beds are supposed to be soft!”
He hopped down off of the big bed, rubbing his behind as he did so. He looked up at the medium-sized bed that was right next to the big bed, and wondered if it was softer or not.
Shrugging, he decided to try it anyway. The middle-sized bed was lower than the biggest bed, but Cub would still have to take a running start. So he repeated the same process that he’d gone through to get onto the biggest bed.
This time he yelled “I’m drowning!” as he sank farther and farther down into the mattress, which couldn’t really be a bed. It had to be a marshmallow masquerading as a bed.
Flailing his arms and legs frantically, Cub managed to extract himself from the Marshmallow, and fell heavily onto the ground. Groaning from his violent contact with the floor, Cub glared up at the Marshmallow. “If I knew which finger to use, I’d flip you off!” he muttered to the Evil Bed.
“Aw, little Cubby doesn’t even know which finger to use,” Wolf laughed hysterically. “It’s time for a little lesson, don’t you think, Cubby?” He then demonstrated the fine points of “the finger etiquette”.
“Shut up, Wolf,” Cub yawned, though why he was yawning when he was already asleep and dreaming, he wasn’t sure. “Fox? Just get the damn story over with already.”
Cub eyed the littlest bed dubiously, wondering if he managed to get on it if the result would be less hazardous.
Cub decided that he might as well try it. It wouldn’t be as hard to get onto as the biggest bed and the Marshmallow had been because it was low enough for him to climb onto.
Cub marched over to his new victim, and began the rather difficult task of climbing up and up to the mattress of the littlest bed.
As he lay down on the bed, Cub shouted joyfully:
“It’s perfect!”
Yawning, he realized just how tired he was. Remembering what his mother had always told him about spending the night somewhere without her approval, Cub decided that it didn’t matter. He was, after all, a very naughty little boy, and very rarely did as he was told anyway.
Cub settled back onto the pillow, and pulled up the sheets. He was suddenly too tired to even remove his combat boots. All he could do was reach into his pocket and pull out his iPod, and turn up his Nightwish. (1) Once his beloved tunes were blasting in his ears, Cub quickly fell fast asleep…
Meanwhile, the three bears were coming back to their home. The last thing they expected to see as they entered through their front door was the biggest bowl, and the middle-sized bowl and their contents to be spilled all over the floor. They didn’t expect to see the littlest bowl, completely empty, placed carefully under the table.
They didn’t expect to see their gun cabinet open, with all the guns out of it, the littlest of which was lying on the table where their porridge had been.
And they definitely didn’t expect to see one of their walls riddled with bullet-holes.
“What happened here?” the middle-sized bear gasped.
“Please don’t tell me the bears are who I think they are!” Wolf moaned.
Fox just grinned evilly.
Whiner - the smallest bear - let out a high-pitched squeal of some sort, hopping up and down while he did so.
“Well, that one’s definitely Eagle.” Snake said, rolling his eyes.
It was a sign of how into the story Eagle was that he didn’t take offense at that.
The biggest bear just stood there, working his jaw.
The middle-sized bear, whose name was Snake, quickly marched over to the spilled porridge, muttering quite viciously to herself. Snake was shadowed by Whiner - a.k.a. Eagle.
The biggest bear, whose name was Wolf, marched over to the wall Cub had inadvertently peppered with bullets.
“Oh god, no!” Wolf shrieked. “I didn’t sign up to be a bear! I didn’t even audition!”
“I think that you’d have gotten the part anyway, Wolf,” Alex smirked. “Didn’t you go to drama school?”
Wolf flushed. “Shut up, Cub.”
“Keep telling, Fox!” Eagle said eagerly.
Of course, at this point in time, the three bears didn’t know that Cub had done of this. They didn’t even know who Cub was.
“And why couldn’t it be like that in real life?” Wolf said dramatically.
After Wolf finished his examination of the freshly “Cubbed” wall, he marched over to their gun cabinet.
Examining it inch by inch, Wolf discovered a few drops of blood on and around the bottom of the cabinet.
Wolf stuck a finger into a drop of blood, and brought both finger and blood up to his nose. Taking a long, deep sniff, Wolf beckoned Snake and Eagle, who had been cleaning up the remaining porridge, over.
“Human blood,” Wolf growled quietly as Snake and Eagle approached him now.
“There’s a human in our house?” Snake demanded, her mouth set in a firm line.
“What’s going on, Wolfy?” Strangely, Eagle called his father “Wolfy”. “What’s a ‘human’?”
“What?! Why is Wolf my father?!” Eagle shrieked. “He’s not that much older than me!”
“Just shut up and listen to the story already!” Snake whined.
Wolf ignored Eagle, and gave Snake a meaningful look. “Yes, and I think that It is in our bedroom. Do you hear It snoring?” Wolf nodded his head in the direction of the door to the bedroom.
Snake cocked her head to one side, and a look of great concentration came over her face. “Yes, I believe I do!” she exclaimed after a few moments.
“‘Her head’?” Snake asked dangerously.
“You just noticed that you were a girl, Snake?” Alex grinned.
“Why do I have to be a girl?” Snake complained.
“It has to follow the Goldilocks plot, Snake,” Fox said patiently.
“Goldilocks has a plot?” Alex asked blankly.
“Only in the loosest sense of the word,” Wolf actually agreed with Alex on something, it seemed. “Snake, you’ve always been a bit of a sissy, so it makes sense that you’re the girl.”
“You definitely shouldn’t have said that,” Fox grinned evilly.
“Why? What are you going to do?” Wolf asked nervously.
“I’m not going to do anything. But Snake’ll have to get payback in the story.”
“I’m hungry,” Eagle announced. “Can we eat a ‘human’?”
“Of course not!” Snake answered at the same time that Wolf said:
“Why not? It ate our breakfast.”
“Wolf!” Snake was appalled at Wolf’s logic. Eagle, however, didn’t seem to like conversations on an empty stomach.
“Well? Can we, or can’t we?” he demanded impatiently.
“No.”
“Yes,” Wolf glared at Snake. “Look, dear,” he said in an undertone, “if we let this…this human” -- there was a wealth of distaste in his tone -- “go, It’ll go tell other humans that we live here, and they’ll come after us. I, personally, would much rather eat one human than be attacked by a dozen or more of them.”
Snake nodded slowly, reluctantly. “Fine, fine.”
“You’re going to eat me?!” Alex yelled.
“I like this story!” Wolf laughed evilly, rubbing his hands together.
Wolf grinned evilly. Turning to Eagle, he said, “Yes!”
“Huh?” Eagle said blankly, tearing his gaze away from a butterfly that had flown through the still open front door.
Wolf sighed. “Yes, we can eat the human,” he explained with exaggerated patience.
“Sweet!” Eagle yelped.
“You can say that again…” Wolf said under his breath., looking very innocent when Snake glared at him.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Eagle demanded.
Wolf shrugged. “Let’s go!”
“Wait,” Snake laid a restraining hand on Wolf’s arm.
“I thought we already had this conversation? We’re going to eat it, and that’s final!”
Snake glared at him. “I was going to suggest that we grab the salt,” she said scathingly.
“Oh,” Wolf quelled under her gaze. “Right, well. Grab it, then.” he regained his composure.
“Wait a minute! Since when have I ‘quelled under her gaze’?!” Wolf demanded.
“Since you said that Snake was a sissy, and I told you that she’d - sorry, he - get payback,” Fox grinned.
Snake rolled her eyes, and turned to grab the salt out of a cupboard. “Now we can go eat the human.”
As the three bears advanced towards their bedroom, Eagle tugged on his father’s elbow. “Wolfy? What do humans look like?” he asked quietly.
Wolf stopped walking to answer him. “They have - You see, they have two drumsticks--” at Snake’s glare, Wolf quickly corrected himself. “I mean legs! They have two legs…And a--and a head! Yeah, they have a head. And they’re short…About this tall,” he used his paws to demonstrate a very vague height. “And--”
But Eagle had already turned to his mother. “What do humans look like, Mummy?”
“Well, dear, they look a bit like us, but a little shorter, and they don’t have a lovely fur coat like you do,” Snake smiled down at her son.
“Why didn’t you just say what Mummy said?” Eagle looked innocently up at his father.
Wolf just snorted and muttered something along the lines of:
“--Sissy way of explaining things. Butter up the kid, he won’t even hear what you said…” His little rant continued as he resumed his march towards the bedroom door.
Eagle giggled quietly at the expression on his mother’s face, which was somewhere between wanting to punch Wolf or cracking up.
“Yeah, like you could punch me,” Wolf said to Snake.
“Shut up,” Snake said casually. “You’re afraid of me, remember?”
Wolf flushed. “That’s in the story!”
“Yeah, whatever.”
When the three bears walked into their bedroom, they once again saw a disaster area: all of their bullet-proof vests were taken down, and Eagle’s was missing. Snake’s carefully wrinkle-free made beds were now covered in wrinkles. Wolf’s and Snake’s beds, that is. Eagle’s bed was currently occupied.
“It’s sleeping in my bed!” Eagle whisper-shrieked. He hopped up and down in place. “And it’s wearing my bullet-proof vest!”
“You’d better not touch my stuff any more,” Eagle warned Alex.
“I haven’t touched any of your stuff!” Alex protested.
“You just did,” Eagle said blankly.
“Eagle. That was a story.”
“Just don’t touch my stuff, okay?” Eagle blustered.
Snake put a hand on her young son’s shoulder. “It’s all right. We’re going to eat it now, remember? It won’t be stealing your things any more.”
“Surround the captive, soldiers!” Wolf whispered commandingly.
Snake and Eagle immediately fanned out, surrounding Cub where he lay, snoring, in Eagle’s bed.
Second part of this chapter can be found here.
Disclaimer: Despite my dearest wishes, Alex Rider does not belong to me.
Rating: T/PG-12
Warning(s): Nothing much, really. Just a little language, and a ton of insanity.
Word Count: 10090
The one thing that Alex Rider wanted to do most in the world was to sleep. Sleep for hours and hours… Hell, sleep for days.
Unfortunately, it hardly seemed that he was going to get any sleep in his current situation, which was stumbling through the Welsh mud.
This was Alex’s second time at the SAS training camp, the Brecon Beacons. At least this time he wasn’t missing any school, as it was during his summer holidays. This wasn’t Alex’s ideal summer holiday, but it was better than getting even farther behind on school, or being forced into doing another mission for MI6.
When Alex had asked Mrs. Jones why he was going back to the Brecon Beacons, he had been told that each SAS unit had an annual refreshers course in hell, so when K-Unit was scheduled to go back, MI6 decided that it would be helpful for Alex to complete his training.
Alex was currently on a run. He’d had more time than K-Unit to complete it, but he got the feeling that his 30 minute time-limit was almost up, and he still had about a kilometer left to go.
When he finally stumbled to the end of his run, five minutes late, he was greeted by an unpleasant sight.
“You’re five minutes late, Cub!” the Sergeant, a tall, muscled black man barked, making a big show of checking his large, military style watch. “Twenty-five.” Alex knew that the man was telling him that he owed twenty-five push-ups
Alex groaned softly as he went down onto his hands and knees to complete his twenty-five push-ups.
When he - finally - finished the push-ups, he was free to get a shower in before “dinner,” which would most likely be something that was hardly edible.
Alex passed K-Unit as the other men left the showers. Wolf, the leader of the unit, was rather short, but broad-shouldered and heavily muscled. His serious, slightly Hispanic face was twisted in dislike at the sight of Alex. Wolf immediately marched off towards the mess hall, closely followed by Snake, a tall, thin, fair-skinned man with blue eyes was K-Unit’s medic. He had always been a tad more acceptant of Alex, acting almost friendly on their return to the Brecon Beacons, and he seemed to be rather reluctant about following Wolf to the mess. Apparently, however, his stomach was over-ruling his manners.
“Hey, Cub,” Fox said. Fox wasn’t actually SAS. He used to be a member of K-Unit, but then he’d transferred to MI6 and worked with Alex on the mission with ASIS. Fox was back at Brecon Beacons to get his fitness back up after having been shot in the arm.
“Fox--” Alex began, before Eagle, the last member of K-Unit, interrupted.
“Guess what, Cub?“ Eagle was practically bouncing. He seemed to be the youngest. About average height, with dark hair and gray eyes, he was also strangely hyper for a professional soldier. Alex was still unsure what to make of him.
“What?” Alex asked warily. He was pretty sure that it was dangerous for him to have answered the older man, and the faintly evil smile that appeared on the older man’s face only confirmed that idea.
“We’ve already taken our showers! See you at dinner! We might even be able to save some food for you.” With that, Eagle bounced off towards the mess, humming cheerfully as he went.
Alex raised an eyebrow at the energetic man’s retreating back.
“Er - sorry about that, Cub,” Fox began awkwardly. “I mean - about Wolf. And Snake. And Eagle…”
“It’s fine,” Alex said quietly. “I’m just going to go take a shower…” Alex trailed off, gesturing towards the door that K-Unit had come out of.
“Oh - sorry,” Fox apologized awkwardly. “See you at dinner.”
Alex nodded and opened the door to the showers.
“Oh, and Cub?”
Alex turned around. “Yeah?”
“We will save you some food,” Fox grinned.
“Thanks,” Alex smiled slightly. He was too exhausted to laugh.
--
When Alex had gone to the mess, he found that Fox had kept his word, and he hadn’t let the others eat all the food. Alex had eaten his fair share of the disgusting stuff (he wasn’t sure it could really be called food), and he would finally, finally get some sleep now.
Back in their cabin, Alex and K-Unit got ready to go to sleep.
Wolf collapsed onto his bunk, only to moan, “Why are these beds so soft?”
“You call this soft?” Snake demanded, looking distastefully at his rock-hard bunk.
Wolf just grunted in reply; apparently the “softness” of his bunk wasn’t going to deter him from a good night’s sleep.
Alex sat on his own very uncomfortable bunk while he pulled his boots and jacket off. Yawning, he fell back onto his bunk, his eyes closed, and already half out of the world. Alex sank gently down into sleep.
He was dreaming: He and Jack were in the kitchen, and Alex was a small child again, maybe nine years old.
“Tell me a story!” Alex demanded in his dream…But it wasn’t Alex’s voice.
It was Eagle’s. And that was definitely Wolf’s voice answering. “Just go to sleep, Eagle! I’m too tired right now.”
“But I’m not tired!” Eagle whined. Alex had never realized how high-pitched Eagle’s voice was. “Come on, Wolf! Just one little story? Pleeeeeaasee?”
Even without being about to see Eagle, Alex knew that the man was administering puppy eyes.
“No, Eagle! Fox’ll tell you one…” Wolf’s voice trailed off to be replaced by a low snore.
“Fox?” Eagle’s forlorn voice was quiet. The overall effect was quite piteous.
Fox sighed audibly, as he said patiently, “What story do you want to hear, Eagle?”
“How about Goldilocks?” Eagle asked eagerly.
Fox’s sigh was more of a groan this time, his voice was a tad strained as he said, “Fine. Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Eagle--”
“I don’t want to be Goldilocks!” Eagle whined. “I never get to be one of the bears! Wolf can be Goldilocks this time.” Eagle sounded pleased with his choice for the role.
Wolf reacted rather strongly for someone who was fast asleep. “No way in hell!” he shouted.
“Be quiet!” Snake moaned from his bunk.
“I am not going to be Goldilocks!” Wolf hissed menacingly. “Snake can be,” he said decisively.
“No, Snake cannot!” Snake’s bunk creaked ominously as he shot upright.
“Come on, Snake - please?” Eagle asked eagerly.
“No way! Fox can be - he’d make a much better Goldilocks.” Snake had obviously decided that logic was the way to go.
So had Fox, however. “Hey, guys!” he protested. “I’m telling the story!”
“Then who’s going to be Goldilocks?” Snake asked.
“Who cares?” Wolf muttered, but Eagle ignored him.
“Cub can be!” Eagle said excitedly. “He’s perfect for it - look, he’s even got blond hair!”
There was a badly-concealed snort of laughter from Wolf at that comment. “Oh, yeah, except for those dark roots…” he let his voice trail off at the end.
“Hey,” Alex protested weakly, his voice muffled by his pillow. This was definitely a strange dream. “It’s not dyed!”
“Well, then you make an even better Goldilocks,” Fox put in hastily. He began his story again before anyone could make any more protests:
“Once upon a time there was a little boy named Goldilocks...”
“No! I am not going to be called ‘Goldilocks’!” Alex said. “Just call me Cub, alright?”
“Fine,” Fox replied, obviously pleased that Alex had only objected at the name, and not the part in the story.
Alex decided that this was the weirdest dream he had ever had as Fox happily continued with his tale…
Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Cub. Cub was a naughty little boy, and was always getting into trouble--
“Hey!” Alex protested, deciding that if he had to live through this awful, traumatizing dream, he might as well participate in it. “Why do I have to be ‘naughty’?! That’s the least macho adjective you could have used!”
“Well, now you aren’t exactly ‘macho’ in the first place, Cub,” Wolf drawled cuttingly.
“Shh!” Eagle hissed. “I’m trying to listen to my story!”
Alex grudgingly swallowed his reply, and Wolf just snorted.
Fox continued his story:
One day he was very naughty, and his mother couldn’t handle having him around any more, so she sent him to play in the woods surrounding their little house.
Cub wandered farther into the woods than he’d ever gone before, and he came upon a little cottage in a clearing. The building was very similar to Cub’s own house, so he was very curious about it. He was about to go up to the door when the door opened, and three bears came out. Cub quickly ducked behind some bushes. He was very bored, and somehow hiding made this little jaunt seem more adventurous.
“We’ll just take a walk while the porridge is cooling,” said one of the bears in a high-pitched voice.
“Why, Mummy?” whined one of the other bears, whom Cub now realized were bigger than Whiner.
“They must be a mummy, a daddy, and a me!” Cub whispered very, very quietly.
Cub waited until the three bears had strolled away between the trees before he army-crawled up to the door and slipped quietly inside.
Cub looked around. There was a long, low table with three different-sized bowls of porridge. There was a big one, a medium one, and a little one.
Now, Cub was a very greedy little boy, so he immediately trotted over to the table, and grabbed the spoon beside the biggest bowl, and happily dug into the large bowl.
“Ew!” Cub squealed. “Too hot!”
“I don’t ‘squeal’!” Alex squealed.
Wolf snorted with laughter. “Yeah? Well what do you call what you just did?”
Alex blushed slightly. “I was merely objecting to the choice of adjectives that Fox is using to describe me!”
“You do squeal sometimes, though, Cub,” Eagle said thoughtfully.
“Eagle,” Fox said warningly. Turning to Alex, he grinned. “I’ll try to refrain from using such…un-macho adjectives, Cub.”
Cub moved over to the middle-sized bowl, and took a tentative bite from it.
“Gross! Too spicy!”
Cub very, very, very hesitantly looked towards the small bowl. He almost decided to just skip the porridge, and go explore the rest of the cottage, but his stomach growled just then, and so he just had to try the littlest bowl.
So, he moved slowly over to the littlest bowl. He picked up the spoon, and dipped it very carefully into the littlest bowl…“Perfect!” was the exclamation this time, and Cub’s hunger took over.
“Whoops!” he said guiltily a scant few minutes later, after completely demolishing the Littlest Bowl’s porridge.
“Please tell me that we won’t have to listen to ‘Goldilocks’,” Snake cut in, interrupting the story.
“We already are,” Eagle said helpfully, thinking that maybe Snake was suffering from a bad case of short term memory loss.
Snake was glaring. Alex knew that even before the man started rummaging around in his bag, eventually pulling out a torch, and turning it on.
“I meant,” he began, “that we shouldn’t have to listen to the Goldilocks ‘plotline’. Y’know, porridge, chairs, beds. It would be quite ironic if Fox were to put something with guns in it, seeing as where we are right now.” he glanced around the hut distastefully.
“Fine,” Fox said irritably. “Now shut up and let me finish the story!”
Now, a full stomach always made Cub hyper, so the next thing on his agenda was to explore the rest of the cottage. He marched away from the table and the door…and - as he wasn’t exactly looking where he was going - walked smack-dab into a cabinet.
Cub about-faced and walked past the cabinet before he realized that there was something very odd about it: Only three of the walls were made of traditional wood. The other wall was made of some clear wood that Cub had never seen before.
“What is that?” Cub asked himself quietly. And then he realized that there were three strange devices inside the cabinet - he could, of course, see these objects through the clear wood, which Cub decided to call “glass”.
Curious, Cub walked back around to the front of the cabinet. He now saw a handle on the Glass side of the cabinet. So, or course, he decided that he had to open the door and find out what those strange black things were.
The door’s hinges creaked ominously, and for the first time since he’d entered the bear’s cottage uninvited, Cub was a little scared. What if those bears came back?
Cub shrugged these minor worries off. He just had to see those black thingies up close!
He swung the door all the way out, as far as it would go, and climbed up onto the small ledge where the door had been, wincing as he scraped his knee on a rough bit of wood.
“Ow!” he squealed as a few drops of blood rose from his scraped knee and splattered down to the floor and the ledge that Cub was currently occupying.
“Oh, never mind!” he muttered to himself as he stretched up very, very high to reach for the biggest black thingy. He had to go up on tip-toes to reach the bottom of it. Now all he had to do was actually get the black thingy down.
Meanwhile, he’d realized what the black thingies really were: “They’re guns!” Cub announced happily to himself. “Mummy told me about them…But she told me never to touch one…” His voice trailed off as he weighed his conscience versus his curiosity.
His curiosity won, and he returned to the task of getting the guns down.
Which was harder than he’d expected. Cub eventually ended up having to give a little hop to pop it off of its hook at the top of the cabinet.
Then, of course, he fell over backwards, landing on his butt, and clutching the gun to his chest.
“That’s cold!” he said rather loudly, his voice echoing around the tiny room. He paused, holding his breath, once again hoping that the bears hadn’t heard, and therefore weren’t returning. After a moment, he sighed with relief, and stood up slowly.
Finally Cub could look at this strange, cold, black gun up close! But now he realized that it was actually rather heavy, and he almost dropped it.
“Maybe this one’s too heavy…” Cub decided that it might be better to get the medium-sized gun, so that he wouldn’t drop it.
Unfortunately, after maneuvering the medium-sized down, he realized that this one was also too big and heavy, leaving him with but one choice: the littlest gun.
This time, it was easier to get the gun down, as the hook that the gun was resting on was lower than the others
After not too much difficulty, he gripped it firmly to his chest, holding it with both arms, and marched over to the porridge table. Giving a disdainful look towards the biggest and middle-sized bowls, Cub shoved them roughly away. They fell off of the table with a bump and a slight squelching sound as the porridge splashed out.
Then he set the gun down in the place that the bowls had been in.
Giving a reverent look to the Littlest Bowl, he very carefully picked the beautiful wooden bowl up and hugged it before putting it safely under the table.
Now Cub marched excitedly back to the gun.
Examining it closely, he saw that it was very strangely shaped: It was long, and one end was thick, while the other end was rather thin. Also, at the thick end, there was a strange piece that curved down and towards the thick end.
Cub examined the black gun thingy from all angles, and now saw the piece along what he assumed was the top. The piece was just a round thing that was clear except for a few black lines on it.
Cub propped the gun up on the table, so that the “top,” with the round thing, was facing up. Cub stretched his arms way down the gun, as far as they could go (which was only a little ways down the gun), and managed to hold the piece that curved down. When his arms had been stretching, he’d heard a slight clicking sound, but he’d just figured that his wrist had popped. It had been doing that a lot recently.
But as his fingers wrapped around the curving part, he heard a far more alarming noise than that one little pop: there was a series of louder pops, and a shredding sound. Cub looked up tentatively, almost afraid that that was the bears coming back. Cub jumped as he realized that that shredding noise had been the wall, of which pieces were now in splinters.
Cub looked down at the gun again. “Whoops! I didn’t mean to fire it!” he sounded guilty, even to his own ears. He quickly decided, however, that it didn’t really matter. After all, it wasn’t as if that was his wall.
“I’m glad to see that you’ve given me such fine morals,” Alex said dryly, thinking that he should’ve been too tired to have such an insane dream. Apparently not.
“Cub, just stop thinking of you and Cub as being the same people!” Snake said irritably. “I want to listen to the story.”
“You’re actually listening to it, Snake?” Wolf snorted. “I guess you would be one to enjoy maimed fairytales.”
Snake blushed. “Fox tells it well,” he blustered.
Fox started laughing almost hysterically. “Thanks,” he managed to gasp out. It took him almost five minutes to regain his control enough to continue the story.
Cub was getting bored of playing with the gun by now, so he turned his attention elsewhere.
He began walking in the direction that he had been heading in before he ran across the guns. This time, though, he avoided the cabinet, carefully walking around it.
Once he’d successfully maneuvered his way around the cabinet, Cub saw a door. It was closed, so of course it piqued Cub’s mischievous interest.
Grinning deviously, he marched over to the Mysterious Closed Door, and reached up to turn the door handle. The door moaned as Cub shoved it in. The door hit the wall with a dull thud as cub had had to push it very hard to get it open. Apparently a little too hard, as there was now a dent where the door handle had hit the wall.
Cub once again decided that it didn’t matter since it wasn’t his wall.
Now, of course, there was the task of finding out what was in the room. “This is gonna be fun!” he grinned.
He marched swiftly into the room past the Mysterious Open Door, and immediately noticed yet another door to the left of the door he’d just opened.
“Doors are fun,” he told himself, so he marched over to the newest victim.
After a brief tussle with said door, Cub realized that this door opened towards him, instead of away from him. This realized, he found that it was ridiculously easy to open Mysterious Closed Door, Jr.
“Now what are these?” Cub muttered to himself, when he saw what he was faced with strange black vest things. And, of course, there were three of them. A big one, a medium-sized one, and a small one.
Cub decided to get a closer look, so he walked into the closet, and strained to reach his short arms way, way, way high up, and pull the biggest one off of the highest hook.
When he finally got it down, using the hop technique that had been so effective in getting those guns down, Cub was surprised to find that the vest was really quite stiff, and even huger than he’d previously realized.
He shrugged and decided to try it on anyway.
“Ugh! It looks like a dress!” he squeaked, and immediately shrugged it off, deciding that the medium-sized vest might fit better.
“Still too big! Maybe the littlest one…?”
He repeated the process of getting a vest down for the third time. As it had been with the guns, the littlest thing was easiest to get down, as its hook was lower.
“This one fits just right!” was the pronouncement this time.
Still happily wearing his new vest, Cub marched back out of the closet, and into the room, which he now realized was utterly fascinating. It had beds. Three of them, of the usual sizes: big, medium and little.
Not only were there three beds to choose from, but they also all looked so soft, and so comfortable.
Cub thought that the biggest bed looked to be the softest one of the lot. Unfortunately, it seemed that he would have to take a running start to get on top of it.
So Cub marched back to the door that he had entered the room through in the first place, and about-faced so that he was turned towards the big bed. Taking a deep breath, he launched himself towards the big bed, and pumped his arms for maximum speed.
He leaped up high into the air, and bounced down onto the big bed, which was way too hard, and he landed on the flabby parts that prolong the small of the back.
“What the hell?” Wolf asked, actually sounding interested.
“It’s from ‘The Three Musketeers’,” Snake said. “Now shut up.”
“Ow!” Cub shrieked. “Beds are supposed to be soft!”
He hopped down off of the big bed, rubbing his behind as he did so. He looked up at the medium-sized bed that was right next to the big bed, and wondered if it was softer or not.
Shrugging, he decided to try it anyway. The middle-sized bed was lower than the biggest bed, but Cub would still have to take a running start. So he repeated the same process that he’d gone through to get onto the biggest bed.
This time he yelled “I’m drowning!” as he sank farther and farther down into the mattress, which couldn’t really be a bed. It had to be a marshmallow masquerading as a bed.
Flailing his arms and legs frantically, Cub managed to extract himself from the Marshmallow, and fell heavily onto the ground. Groaning from his violent contact with the floor, Cub glared up at the Marshmallow. “If I knew which finger to use, I’d flip you off!” he muttered to the Evil Bed.
“Aw, little Cubby doesn’t even know which finger to use,” Wolf laughed hysterically. “It’s time for a little lesson, don’t you think, Cubby?” He then demonstrated the fine points of “the finger etiquette”.
“Shut up, Wolf,” Cub yawned, though why he was yawning when he was already asleep and dreaming, he wasn’t sure. “Fox? Just get the damn story over with already.”
Cub eyed the littlest bed dubiously, wondering if he managed to get on it if the result would be less hazardous.
Cub decided that he might as well try it. It wouldn’t be as hard to get onto as the biggest bed and the Marshmallow had been because it was low enough for him to climb onto.
Cub marched over to his new victim, and began the rather difficult task of climbing up and up to the mattress of the littlest bed.
As he lay down on the bed, Cub shouted joyfully:
“It’s perfect!”
Yawning, he realized just how tired he was. Remembering what his mother had always told him about spending the night somewhere without her approval, Cub decided that it didn’t matter. He was, after all, a very naughty little boy, and very rarely did as he was told anyway.
Cub settled back onto the pillow, and pulled up the sheets. He was suddenly too tired to even remove his combat boots. All he could do was reach into his pocket and pull out his iPod, and turn up his Nightwish. (1) Once his beloved tunes were blasting in his ears, Cub quickly fell fast asleep…
Meanwhile, the three bears were coming back to their home. The last thing they expected to see as they entered through their front door was the biggest bowl, and the middle-sized bowl and their contents to be spilled all over the floor. They didn’t expect to see the littlest bowl, completely empty, placed carefully under the table.
They didn’t expect to see their gun cabinet open, with all the guns out of it, the littlest of which was lying on the table where their porridge had been.
And they definitely didn’t expect to see one of their walls riddled with bullet-holes.
“What happened here?” the middle-sized bear gasped.
“Please don’t tell me the bears are who I think they are!” Wolf moaned.
Fox just grinned evilly.
Whiner - the smallest bear - let out a high-pitched squeal of some sort, hopping up and down while he did so.
“Well, that one’s definitely Eagle.” Snake said, rolling his eyes.
It was a sign of how into the story Eagle was that he didn’t take offense at that.
The biggest bear just stood there, working his jaw.
The middle-sized bear, whose name was Snake, quickly marched over to the spilled porridge, muttering quite viciously to herself. Snake was shadowed by Whiner - a.k.a. Eagle.
The biggest bear, whose name was Wolf, marched over to the wall Cub had inadvertently peppered with bullets.
“Oh god, no!” Wolf shrieked. “I didn’t sign up to be a bear! I didn’t even audition!”
“I think that you’d have gotten the part anyway, Wolf,” Alex smirked. “Didn’t you go to drama school?”
Wolf flushed. “Shut up, Cub.”
“Keep telling, Fox!” Eagle said eagerly.
Of course, at this point in time, the three bears didn’t know that Cub had done of this. They didn’t even know who Cub was.
“And why couldn’t it be like that in real life?” Wolf said dramatically.
After Wolf finished his examination of the freshly “Cubbed” wall, he marched over to their gun cabinet.
Examining it inch by inch, Wolf discovered a few drops of blood on and around the bottom of the cabinet.
Wolf stuck a finger into a drop of blood, and brought both finger and blood up to his nose. Taking a long, deep sniff, Wolf beckoned Snake and Eagle, who had been cleaning up the remaining porridge, over.
“Human blood,” Wolf growled quietly as Snake and Eagle approached him now.
“There’s a human in our house?” Snake demanded, her mouth set in a firm line.
“What’s going on, Wolfy?” Strangely, Eagle called his father “Wolfy”. “What’s a ‘human’?”
“What?! Why is Wolf my father?!” Eagle shrieked. “He’s not that much older than me!”
“Just shut up and listen to the story already!” Snake whined.
Wolf ignored Eagle, and gave Snake a meaningful look. “Yes, and I think that It is in our bedroom. Do you hear It snoring?” Wolf nodded his head in the direction of the door to the bedroom.
Snake cocked her head to one side, and a look of great concentration came over her face. “Yes, I believe I do!” she exclaimed after a few moments.
“‘Her head’?” Snake asked dangerously.
“You just noticed that you were a girl, Snake?” Alex grinned.
“Why do I have to be a girl?” Snake complained.
“It has to follow the Goldilocks plot, Snake,” Fox said patiently.
“Goldilocks has a plot?” Alex asked blankly.
“Only in the loosest sense of the word,” Wolf actually agreed with Alex on something, it seemed. “Snake, you’ve always been a bit of a sissy, so it makes sense that you’re the girl.”
“You definitely shouldn’t have said that,” Fox grinned evilly.
“Why? What are you going to do?” Wolf asked nervously.
“I’m not going to do anything. But Snake’ll have to get payback in the story.”
“I’m hungry,” Eagle announced. “Can we eat a ‘human’?”
“Of course not!” Snake answered at the same time that Wolf said:
“Why not? It ate our breakfast.”
“Wolf!” Snake was appalled at Wolf’s logic. Eagle, however, didn’t seem to like conversations on an empty stomach.
“Well? Can we, or can’t we?” he demanded impatiently.
“No.”
“Yes,” Wolf glared at Snake. “Look, dear,” he said in an undertone, “if we let this…this human” -- there was a wealth of distaste in his tone -- “go, It’ll go tell other humans that we live here, and they’ll come after us. I, personally, would much rather eat one human than be attacked by a dozen or more of them.”
Snake nodded slowly, reluctantly. “Fine, fine.”
“You’re going to eat me?!” Alex yelled.
“I like this story!” Wolf laughed evilly, rubbing his hands together.
Wolf grinned evilly. Turning to Eagle, he said, “Yes!”
“Huh?” Eagle said blankly, tearing his gaze away from a butterfly that had flown through the still open front door.
Wolf sighed. “Yes, we can eat the human,” he explained with exaggerated patience.
“Sweet!” Eagle yelped.
“You can say that again…” Wolf said under his breath., looking very innocent when Snake glared at him.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Eagle demanded.
Wolf shrugged. “Let’s go!”
“Wait,” Snake laid a restraining hand on Wolf’s arm.
“I thought we already had this conversation? We’re going to eat it, and that’s final!”
Snake glared at him. “I was going to suggest that we grab the salt,” she said scathingly.
“Oh,” Wolf quelled under her gaze. “Right, well. Grab it, then.” he regained his composure.
“Wait a minute! Since when have I ‘quelled under her gaze’?!” Wolf demanded.
“Since you said that Snake was a sissy, and I told you that she’d - sorry, he - get payback,” Fox grinned.
Snake rolled her eyes, and turned to grab the salt out of a cupboard. “Now we can go eat the human.”
As the three bears advanced towards their bedroom, Eagle tugged on his father’s elbow. “Wolfy? What do humans look like?” he asked quietly.
Wolf stopped walking to answer him. “They have - You see, they have two drumsticks--” at Snake’s glare, Wolf quickly corrected himself. “I mean legs! They have two legs…And a--and a head! Yeah, they have a head. And they’re short…About this tall,” he used his paws to demonstrate a very vague height. “And--”
But Eagle had already turned to his mother. “What do humans look like, Mummy?”
“Well, dear, they look a bit like us, but a little shorter, and they don’t have a lovely fur coat like you do,” Snake smiled down at her son.
“Why didn’t you just say what Mummy said?” Eagle looked innocently up at his father.
Wolf just snorted and muttered something along the lines of:
“--Sissy way of explaining things. Butter up the kid, he won’t even hear what you said…” His little rant continued as he resumed his march towards the bedroom door.
Eagle giggled quietly at the expression on his mother’s face, which was somewhere between wanting to punch Wolf or cracking up.
“Yeah, like you could punch me,” Wolf said to Snake.
“Shut up,” Snake said casually. “You’re afraid of me, remember?”
Wolf flushed. “That’s in the story!”
“Yeah, whatever.”
When the three bears walked into their bedroom, they once again saw a disaster area: all of their bullet-proof vests were taken down, and Eagle’s was missing. Snake’s carefully wrinkle-free made beds were now covered in wrinkles. Wolf’s and Snake’s beds, that is. Eagle’s bed was currently occupied.
“It’s sleeping in my bed!” Eagle whisper-shrieked. He hopped up and down in place. “And it’s wearing my bullet-proof vest!”
“You’d better not touch my stuff any more,” Eagle warned Alex.
“I haven’t touched any of your stuff!” Alex protested.
“You just did,” Eagle said blankly.
“Eagle. That was a story.”
“Just don’t touch my stuff, okay?” Eagle blustered.
Snake put a hand on her young son’s shoulder. “It’s all right. We’re going to eat it now, remember? It won’t be stealing your things any more.”
“Surround the captive, soldiers!” Wolf whispered commandingly.
Snake and Eagle immediately fanned out, surrounding Cub where he lay, snoring, in Eagle’s bed.
Second part of this chapter can be found here.