{Fic: Alex Rider} The Best of K Unit - Chapter 1, Part 2/2
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 first part of this chapter can be found here.
Snake and Eagle immediately fanned out, surrounding Cub where he lay, snoring, in Eagle’s bed.
“Ha! So I am in command!” Wolf said jubilantly.
Everyone else just ignored him, waiting to see what was going to happen next.
When all three bears were in position, Wolf opened his mouth and let loose a loud growl. Wolf, Snake and Eagle had all expected the human to wake immediately, so they were all greatly surprised when it snored peacefully on.
“Maybe it’s acting?” Snake suggested. “Like an opossum plays ‘dead’. Except it’s playing ‘asleep’.”
“And what good would that do it?” Wolf muttered. Snake acted like she hadn’t heard him, choosing instead to walk up to the bed, and bend over the human.
“It’s not faking,” she announced, standing up straight. “It didn’t even twitch when I leaned over it.”
“Ooh, that’s a surprise,” Wolf muttered sarcastically.
Snake fixed an ice-cold stare on him. “What was that, dear?”
“Nothing, sweetheart!” Wolf would never admit it to anyone, but he thought that Snake could be quite intimidating at times.
“Fox, you know that’s not fair! Snake is not intimidating! And I would never call him - her - sweetheart!” he added.
“Just shut up!” Fox finally yelled.
“That’s what I thought,” Snake smirked smugly. Wolf didn’t have to admit it to her - she already knew.
“Try roaring again, Wolfy!” Eagle had been bemoaning his empty stomach in not-so-subtle hints in the background the whole time that his parents had been discussing the human. Now Eagle was ready for some action.
Wolf complied. This time, he took an extra-large breath, and roared louder than he ever had in his life.
It was unchanged, still snoring away.
“Why do you keep calling me ‘it’?” Alex asked.
“Because I want to,” Fox shrugged.
This time, both Snake and Wolf moved forward to inspect the human.
“What are these things?” Wolf asked his wife, pointing at two small black objects, one in each of the human’s ears, with a black cord connecting them.
“Look, that cord goes all the way down there,” Snake pointed at the human’s stomach, where it’s hands were folded over the end of the black cord, and a rectangular silver object.
Wolf and Snake exchanged bemused glances. And then Eagle came to the rescue. Bounding forward to join his parents, he, too, spied the strange black and silver objects. But Eagle knew what they were.
“Sweet!” he shrieked. “It’s got an iPod! Can I have it after we eat It? Please?”
“I’ve always wanted an iPod!” Eagle said dreamily.
“You don’t have one?” Alex asked. “Who doesn’t have an iPod?”
“You have one?” Eagle asked excitedly. “Can I have it?”
“Oh, sure,” Alex said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
“It’s got a what?” Snake asked.
“An iPod!” Eagle rolled his eyes at the ignorance that comes with old age. “They play music, and they’re totally awesome!”
“I don’t hear any music,” Wolf said, cocking his head.
“Duh, Wolfy!” Eagle was astonished at his parents’ lack of technology-awareness. “That’s because it’s playing through the headphones! You know, those black things in It’s ears? Those are headphones. So It can hear the music, but we can’t. Cool, huh?”
“So that’s why he can’t hear us,” Snake mused.
“Oh, bravo, me,” Snake rolled his eyes.
“I wonder what It’s listening to…After all, whatever music is on that iPod will be mine soon! Mwahahahaha!” Eagle rubbed his hands together in glee.
“I’ve always wanted to do the evil laugh…” Eagle mused.
“Be quiet, Eagle!” Snake said. “We’re trying to think.”
“We are?” Eagle asked blankly.
“No, we are,” Snake said, indicating herself and Wolf.
“Right. Sorry!” Eagle whispered before going back to mumbling how cool it would be to have an iPod of his very own.
“I guess the only thing to do is shake It,” Snake’s voice broke the near-silence.
“I’ll do it,” Wolf volunteered bravely. “And as soon as he wakes up, we pounce him, all right?”
At Snake and Eagle’s nods, Wolf prepared himself for battle. He did a few little stretches, focusing mainly on the muscles around his mouth, so that he wouldn’t pull a muscle when he ate the human.
Finally, he gave a nod to his family, squared his shoulders, and walked closer to the bed. Steeling himself, he clapped a paw down onto It’s shoulder, and shook It rather violently.
It mumbled a protest. Something along the lines of:
“I don’ wanna go to school…” and “Ew! I don’t like bear meat! Bears are friends, not food!”
“Why are you quoting ‘Finding Nemo’?” Wolf asked, raising an eyebrow.
“How do you know what it’s from?” Fox laughed.
Wolf hesitated, trying to come up with a good alibi. “I - uh, my girlfriend likes that movie!”
“Right,” Alex said sarcastically. “It’s alright, we all know about your little Disney addiction.”
“Cub, I swear--”
“Stop the violence! Can’t we all just get along?” Snake said. “Now listen to the fucking story! Continue, Fox,” he commanded, leaning back against the wall next to his bed.
Wolf drew back in surprise at the last one, and glanced over at Snake. “Maybe It’s just pretending to be asleep?”
Snake looked both shocked and touched at the same time. “I don’t know…Are we still going to eat It?” Her eyes softened slightly when she looked down at the sleeping human boy.
“Maybe we can keep him as a pet?” she suggested.
“Him?” Wolf repeated. “Aw, Snake, you’re already getting attached, aren’t you? And I’m still hungry,” he added quietly.
“Yes, him,” Snake reiterated. “And, yes, I am‘getting attached’!”
“If we keep…him…as a pet, do I still get the iPod?” Eagle asked slowly.
“I don’t see why not,” Snake reassured him.
“Oh, okay!” Eagle said happily. “Can we keep him, Mummy? Wolfy? I promise I’ll feed him, and water him every day! And he can have my baths,” he added as an afterthought.
“Of course,” Snake smiled.
“But I’m still hungry!” Wolf protested loudly.
Both Snake and Eagle turned very intense glares on him, and he wilted considerably.
“My human!” Eagle hissed menacingly.
“Eagle? Menacing?” Wolf laughed.
“Is there anything to eat in the pantry?” he asked, intimidated.
“I believe there’s a loaf of fresh bread,” Snake said, happy that he was no longer hell-bent on eating the human.
“Good!” Wolf said, considerably more cheerful at the prospect of food. “I think I’ll just-”
“Go make it into toast for the human?” Snake smoothly cut him off.
“But -”
“Don’t forget the jam!” Snake interrupted again, smiling sweetly.
Wolf stomped huffily off. “Work, work, work. That’s all I’m good for around here!” he muttered. (2)
Snake rolled her eyes at Wolf’s little “Drama Queen” moment before she turned her attention towards waking the small human.
“You know, Fox,” Eagle said conversationally. “You’re making Snake into a total Mary-Sue.”
“A total Mary-what?” Fox asked.
“A Mary-Sue. It’s a term generally used in fan fiction to refer to a female character that’s too perfect and lacking flaws,” Wolf said absently.
“Wait, you read fan fiction, Wolf?” Alex laughed, thinking that this must be the weirdest dream in the history of weird dreams. “Of what? Twilight?”
Wolf blushed faintly. “N-no!” he stuttered.
“You do!” Alex laughed hysterically.
“Aw, you think I’m perfect, Wolf?” Snake said, batting his eyes.
“Do you guys want to hear the rest of the story or not?” Fox demanded.
First Snake decided to try taking his “iPod” away. He didn’t wake up when his music stopped playing, so Snake had to move on to more drastic measures: she gripped both of his arms, and hoisted him up into a sitting position. He mumbled something, and Snake, satisfied that he was awake, let go of his arms.
The human immediately fell back onto Eagle’s pillow.
Snake just stared at him for a moment, wondering if maybe he really was acting. She shook that thought away, though, and she moved on to the next phase of her plan.
She marched over to Wolf’s desk in the corner of the room, and grabbed his special hand-carved, collector’s edition alarm clock. Back at Eagle’s bed, she quickly wound the clock, and set it off right in the human’s ears. Snake thought that the alarm sounded a bit like a bull moose on a rampage.
Yet the human still didn’t wake up. Snake tried everything that she could think of, from playing around on Eagle’s drum set to dancing to dancing a jig right there next to the bed. Eagle wasn’t being any help. He’d taken the “iPod” and was sifting through the human’s music. And Wolf, of course, was still in the kitchen pigging out.
Snake was desperately trying to wake the pygmy human up. What if he was in a coma or something?
Snake had now moved into desperate measures: singing. She didn’t like showing off, which was why she hadn’t tried this before, but she figured that anyone would wake up at her melodious tones. The human stayed asleep, however, and the only reaction Snake’s singing got was Eagle ripping off his headphones and shrieking:
“Where’s Wolfy?! Did he go after that mountain lion without me? He must have! I heard it shrieking!” he took off towards the door.
“Eagle, what are you talking about? Your father’s still in the kitchen!”
“Then what was that awful screeching sound?” Eagle asked slowly.
“What? The only sound was me singing!” Snake was confused.
Realization slowly spread over Eagle’s face. “Oh, so that was that lovely sound I heard!”
Snake beamed and nodded, missing the sarcastic undercurrents in Eagle’s voice.
Eagle rolled his eyes and put his headphones back on.
Fox had to stop telling the story momentarily due to major fits of laughter, his own and Eagle’s and Wolf’s.
“So - so true!” Eagle gasped out, holding his side.
“I don’t sing that bad,” Snake muttered sullenly. This statement only caused the others to laugh more.
Eventually, Wolf sat up and said:
“Snake, we don’t really need guns. All we really need as an offensive weapon is your singing.” Unfortunately for Snake, this caused his teammates to crack up again. Eagle was actually crying from laughing too hard.
Alex was watching this scene with a strange mixture of humor, exasperation, and terror. “You’re the people defending our country?” he asked softly. “That scares me.”
Fox heard him, and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, we could say the same thing about you, Cub,” he grinned.
“I’m bored,” Eagle said suddenly. “Continue, oh great storyteller!” he bowed at Fox, who laughed, and obediently recommenced story time.
Snake went back to waking the human. She did some rather random things. At one point, she dashed into the kitchen, caught a guilty-looking Wolf emptying the cupboard, told him off briefly, and grabbed a bowl and a spoon. Back in the bedroom, Snake beat the spoon around the inside of the bowl, thinking that maybe the human had been trained that that meant “food”. Even this didn’t wake him, though, and he snored on.
Finally, Snake sank down onto her own bed, turning ideas around and around in her head. Suddenly, she stood up.
“I know!” she shouted. “I’ll get some cold water, dump it on him!” she snapped her fingers in joy.
The human woke up, blinking slowly. He gave a great, jaw-cracking yawn.
Looking around, he spotted Eagle bobbing his head, plugged into the iPod.
“My iPod!” Cub shrieked. “There’s a bear listening to my iPod!”
Snake sighed in relief. “You’re awake! Finally. I tried everything to wake you!”
“Why?” Cub asked curiously. “All you have to do is snap your fingers and I’m up.” Then Cub looked at Snake more closely. “You - you - you’re a b-bear, too!” he gasped.
“I’m Snake,” she nodded.
“No, you’re a bear, not a snake,” Cub explained patiently.
“Yes, I’m a bear. My name is Snake.”
“Oh…Who’s that?” Cub pointed at Eagle.
“That’s Eagle. My son,” Snake beamed proudly.
“He’s kinda funny looking,” Cub giggled.
Snake immediately grew offended. “I don’t think he’s funny-looking!”
“Actually, he kind of is…” Snake muttered, still miffed about the singing hysteria.
“He’s got a big nose!” Cub snickered.
“I beg your pardon!” Snake was all fluffed-up.
Eagle looked up now and saw Cub sitting up.
“Mum! Human’s awake!” he shrieked, turning off the iPod.
“I noticed,” Snake said dryly, still glaring at Cub.
“You’ve got a big nose!” Cub informed Eagle.
“Oh, yeah?” Eagle glared. “Well, guess what? If you don’t make a good pet, you’ll always make a crackin’ good chimney sweep!” (3)
“Pet?!” Cub was astonished. “I’m not allowed to have a pet! Why are you allowed to have a pet?”
“Because Mummy wouldn’t let me and Wolfy eat you! She wanted to keep you as a pet,” Eagle nodded smugly.
At this, Wolf walked into the bedroom. “Eat?” he asked hopefully.
Cub shrieked. “I’m not a snack! If anything, I should be eating you! My daddy drags bears home sometimes. They always taste so good…” he sighed wistfully, missing the shocked look from Snake, and the glares from Eagle and Wolf.
“Then why did you say ‘Bears are friends, not food’ when you were asleep?” Snake asked quietly.
“Huh? I said that? Did you get it?”
“Get what?” Wolf growled.
“The joke! That’s the punch line -- ‘Bears are friends, not food’! Funny joke, too. Do you want to hear it?”
“No!” all three bears shouted at once.
“You don’t have to shout!” Cub pouted.
“I still say we should eat him,” Wolf grumbled. “He’s too loud to keep him as a pet.”
“I beg your pardon!” Cub gasped. “What a horrible thing to say, Mr. Bear!”
“That’s Mr. Wolf to you, buckwheat!” Wolf growled.
“But you’re not a wolf,” Cub pointed out with devastating logic.
Wolf mumbled something under his breath, causing Eagle’s eyes to get really big, and making him gasp:
“Wolfy! I didn’t know you knew that many words!”
Snake glared at Wolf, and put her paws over Eagle’s ears. Wolf seemed to blush under his gaze - though how he managed to blush through all that fur, Cub wasn’t sure. And he definitely wasn’t going to ask.
When Snake and Wolf started arguing, Cub finally realized that he was stuck in a room with three bears - at least one of whom had expressed an interest in eating him - who happened to be blocking the door. Cub gulped. How on earth am I going to get away? He thought. Looking around, he spotted a little window on the other side of the room. He figured that if he jumped up a little, he’d probably be able to escape through it.
Making up his mind, he began inching towards the little window.
The three bears were still arguing. Well, two of them were arguing. Eagle was still gaping at Wolf, wondering where he had acquired such an interesting vocabulary.
Some time later, just when Cub was getting to the window, Snake won the argument, which had begun to resemble a stand-down in a bad shoot-’em-up western film.
Snake, looking very smug, looked around for the wee human, who happed to be frantically trying to climb out of the window. She gasped and shrieked, “Wolf, he’s escaping!”
“So he is!” Wolf knew that the very best way to punish a naughty “pet” was to eat it, so he was secretly overjoyed that the human was trying to escape.
Wolf rushed back out of the bedroom door to where the guns were kept.
Cub, meanwhile, had managed to get his belt caught on the window. He was beginning to feel a bit like the beetle that was pinned onto the velvet cushion of his mother’s bug collection.
Wolf dashed back into the room, brandishing his M16, a manic gleam in his eyes.
“Where is he? Let me at ’im!” he growled.
“He’s getting out through the window, Wolfy!” Eagle shrieked helpfully.
Wolf, the opportunist that he was, was privately thrilled that he had been given a license to devour. Well, just a license to prevent escape for now, but the human was certainly giving Wolf a good case against him.
Grinning, Wolf took careful aim, and…managed to shoot Cub’s belt and free the little scoundrel.
Cub leaped out the window with a triumphant shout, which quickly turned into a terrified squeak when he realized that he was somehow a good ten feet off the ground - more than two times Cub’s own height!
Snake turned fiercely on Wolf. “You fu-” she began, but with a quick glance to Eagle, she quickly changed what she had been about to say. “Moron! You absolute moron!”
Wolf shrank back under her glare. “I’ll just - go around the front and catch him like that,” he gestured vaguely in the direction of the front door.
“You do that,” Snake hissed venomously, and Wolf scampered off after the human.
Meanwhile, Eagle was trying to climb out of the window. He was sadly lacking in technique, however, and seemed to be attempting to do a snout-dive. He almost did, too, but Snake grabbed him before he could slither out completely.
“Aw, Mum!” Eagle whined. “What’d you do that for?!”
Snake just glared at him, obviously not deigning it worthy of a reply.
“It was just going into the woods,” Eagle said. “I coulda caught It!”
Snake raised an eyebrow. “You’re calling him ‘It’ again, then?” she asked.
Eagle shrugged. “Well, It didn’t seem to want to be a pet, so we might as well eat It.”
“‘Might as well eat it’?” Snake repeated slowly. “You’re getting more and more like your father every day. Always ‘thinking’ with your stomachs!” she used air quotes when she said ‘thinking’.
“I was looking forward to that porridge, but then It ate mine. So if I eat It, then technically, I’d finally get to eat my porridge. Y’know, ‘cause it’s in him…It!” he corrected himself quickly.
Snake looked faintly disgusted. “I was wrong. You’re too much like your father already!”
Eagle wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult. So he ignored it.
Outside, Wolf was quickly gaining on the human. He admittedly had a great advantage: his legs were much longer than the human’s drumsticks were.
Wolf happily took advantage of that advantage.
So, all in all, Wolf thought that the chase was going rather well, and he expected to apprehend the human at any moment. Unfortunately for Wolf, said human had decided to go all “mini Robin Hood” and lead him a merry chase through the branches of trees. Wolf was finding it more difficult to follow the human’s trail now, but he could still smell where It had gone.
Of course, not even Wolf was stupid enough to try to follow him through the trees. Instead, he kept on trundling along the ground.
To Cub’s great surprise, he discovered that running for his life was actually rather fun. Or, more accurately, swinging for his life, as he was doing his best monkey impression, swinging through the treetops - well, actually, swinging on the lowest branches. But, still, he was thoroughly enjoying himself.
“I should do this more often,” he reflected thoughtfully, just before his grip on the branch slipped, and he fell into a painful heap on the ground.
Cub let out a shriek so shrill that he couldn’t even hear it. Wolf, however, could, and the sound made him shiver. Surely that wasn’t a natural sound? His first thought was that maybe the bogeyman really existed. But then he realized that something must have happened to the human, and that that must be where the horrible keening sound was coming from.
Wolf broke into a run, following the keening. He decided that It must have some serious lungs, as the sound hadn’t even let up in the past five minutes.
The sound was getting closer with every step, and Wolf suddenly saw It curled up on the ground beneath a branch.
Chuckling evilly, Wolf put on the brakes. But he soon discovered that he had far too much momentum built up to stop immediately. He ended up running into a tree because he had been so focused on slowing down that he hadn’t even noticed the tree in front of him.
Wolf found himself in the middle of a Wolf-shaped dent in the tree, with his own voice joining in with the keening, a few octaves above the human’s voice, even.
“I do not shriek!” Wolf objected violently.
“And we care why?” Snake muttered, still mad from the singing discussion from before.
Wolf ordered himself to stop adding to that dreadful sound, but found that he couldn’t stop. Worse than that, he couldn’t breathe, because he couldn’t stop screeching. He figured that he would have to keep shrieking until his lungs overrode his mind’s command.
His lungs finally gave out, and he was able to stop shrieking. Amazingly, the human was still at it, making Wolf wince at the sheer volume of the shriek.
Wolf pulled himself out of the tree, wincing as he did so. Covering his ears, he leaned down to inspect the human more closely. He noticed that It’s lungs seemed to be flagging, as the pitch of the shriek was slowly dropping.
Finally, the human fainted from lack of air, and Wolf breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, now Wolf had to carry the human all the way back to the house. Sighing, he picked up the human, and started marching.
What seemed like hours later to Wolf - it was only about half an hour - he staggered into view of his house.
Snake was sitting outside, waiting for him. He didn’t see Eagle, though…until he ran up and started poking at the human, that is.
The human was still out even after the long, jolting journey. Snake had gotten up, and was running towards them. Stopping in front of Wolf, she ordered him to go put the human back in Eagle’s bed.
“My bed?” Eagle shrieked. “Why does it have to be my bed? Why can’t it be your bed, Wolfy? Or yours, M -” he swallowed at Snake’s glare.
“Because I said so,” Snake snapped. “Now carry him in, Wolf!”
Grumbling furiously, Wolf carried the human into the house and to Eagle’s bed. Wolf placed the human on the bed surprisingly gently, so as to not bruise his meal.
Snake and Eagle had followed, secretly enjoying the sight of Wolf huffing and puffing along.
Snake marched over to the bed and snapped her fingers sharply. The human jolted awake, and at once his face took on an expression of one who was resigned to déjà vu.
The first thing that Cub really noticed was Snake standing above him, in the process of folding her arms, a dangerous look on her face. Cub gulped, trying not to imagine how pissed off they would all be at him.
But when Snake spoke, her voice was surprisingly gentle…for an angry bear, anyway. “And what did you do that for?”
“Um…do what?” Cub squeaked nervously, surveying Eagle and Wolf who were too busy drooling and licking their lips to say anything.
Snake’s foot started tapping, and Cub wondered vaguely whether she was like a skunk, and that was a warning sign. Cub heard Snake growl, and he realized belatedly that he had wondered that out loud.
Cub gulped as Snake leaned in, putting one paw on either side of him, leaning in until her snout was almost touching his nose, and her hot breath washed over his face.
“Why did you make us chase you?” she asked, enunciating each word sharply.
Panicking slightly, Cub did what he usually did in these sort of situations: bluster. It was a foolproof plan of action, it’s success rate one out of ten.
“Technically I didn’t force anyone to chase me,” Cub pointed out reasonably.
“You ran away,” Snake growled. “And you’re our pet, which means that we were required to chase you.”
Wolf started slightly at the mention of the word “pet”. “We’re still going to keep it as a pet?” he asked, astonished.
Snake swung around to glare at him. “Yes, we are. Do you have a problem with that?” she asked acidly, causing Wolf to flinch, and shake his head vigorously.
“Good,” Snake said, her tone hinting that it was anything but. Turning back to Cub, she put on her “enforcing face”, which was usually just employed on Wolf. Desperate times call for desperate measures, she figured.
“I’m trying to think of a suitable punishment for you,” she said almost pleasantly to Cub. Cub, however, considered himself to possess a rather brilliant mind, and he wasn’t fooled by her pleasantry.
He began panicking in earnest now, making sure that it didn’t show on his face. Instead, he rearranged his features to offer an innocent expression.
Snake reached out a paw, and poked Cub in the chest. Cub could no longer hold his panic in check, and he moved his head without thinking, sinking his teeth into Snake’s paw.
Snake shrieked, and joined the anti-human-pet side.
Snake turned and hissed at her son. “Why don’t you go get the A-1 sauce? Somehow I don’t think that just salt will improve this one’s taste much.”
Eagle yelped happily, scurrying off to the kitchen, returning in record time with the steak sauce. Wolf, too, was grinning (and drooling) like mad.
Now all the bears were closing in on Cub, who was scrambling madly to get off the bed and perhaps out of the window again.
No such luck, however, as the bears were suddenly on him.
Cub’s last thought was: “A-1’s just glorified barbeque sauce. Aren’t I worth at least a bottle of ketchup?!”
“There,” Fox sighed in relief. “The end.”
“Great,” Eagle muttered. “Now I’m hungry.”
“I know you guys don’t like me much, but isn’t cannibalism a little extreme?” Alex asked, actually semi-seriously.
They all laughed, including Wolf. “You never know,” Eagle muttered.
“We’ll even use ketchup if you want!” Snake grinned.
“No, thanks,” Alex muttered, vaguely wondering if the Guinness Book of World Records would accept just his word that he’d had the strangest dream ever, and publish it without any real proof.
“Now can we go to sleep?” Fox whined.
All agreed, except for Eagle, who whined until Wolf informed him that if he didn’t go to sleep, they’d make him run a couple hundred kilometers. Eagle grudgingly went to sleep.
Alex, of course, couldn’t go to sleep, because he was already asleep and dreaming, right?
--
The next morning, they were on yet another run, but this time, they were all running together.
Alex was at the rear of the pack, and Fox fell back to talk to him.
“Cub? Look, I’m sorry that you had to witness that - er, grim spectacle last night? Yeah. Eagle gets like that sometimes.”
Alex stared at him. “What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Are you joking?” Fox demanded. “How could you not remember our rousing rendition of ‘Goldilocks’?”
Alex stopped running to devote more of his attention to staring at Fox, and trying to widen his eyes even more. “You mean -” he swallowed. “You mean that was real?”
“Um, yeah…” Fox said slowly, stopping as well. “Didn’t you already know that?”
“I thought it was dream,” Alex said quietly. “Granted, an insane and totally demented dream, but…I just thought it was a dream!”
“Oi!” they both looked up to see the rest of K-Unit jogging back towards them, Wolf at the front. “What’s the hold-up?” Wolf asked roughly.
Fox was still staring at Alex, who was looking more than a little traumatized.
“Um…Turns out that Cub thought our little…story time last night was just a dream.” he said, trying to hold back the laughter.
“Sorry, Cub,” Snake grinned. “No such luck.”
Wolf was shaking his head and actually laughing.
Eagle was laughing like mad. “Wasn’t that fun?” he jumped up and down, looking somewhat ridiculous for a twenty-something man in the SAS.
“Ask me after I’ve spent a lot of time with a therapist,” Alex gasped out, still very much in shock.
Fox laughed and shook his head. “Come on, we have to finish this run before we end up with too much punishment.”
As they were jogging along, Eagle suddenly asked:
“So, Fox, what story are you telling tonight?"
Chapter 2 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 first part of this chapter can be found here.
Snake and Eagle immediately fanned out, surrounding Cub where he lay, snoring, in Eagle’s bed.
“Ha! So I am in command!” Wolf said jubilantly.
Everyone else just ignored him, waiting to see what was going to happen next.
When all three bears were in position, Wolf opened his mouth and let loose a loud growl. Wolf, Snake and Eagle had all expected the human to wake immediately, so they were all greatly surprised when it snored peacefully on.
“Maybe it’s acting?” Snake suggested. “Like an opossum plays ‘dead’. Except it’s playing ‘asleep’.”
“And what good would that do it?” Wolf muttered. Snake acted like she hadn’t heard him, choosing instead to walk up to the bed, and bend over the human.
“It’s not faking,” she announced, standing up straight. “It didn’t even twitch when I leaned over it.”
“Ooh, that’s a surprise,” Wolf muttered sarcastically.
Snake fixed an ice-cold stare on him. “What was that, dear?”
“Nothing, sweetheart!” Wolf would never admit it to anyone, but he thought that Snake could be quite intimidating at times.
“Fox, you know that’s not fair! Snake is not intimidating! And I would never call him - her - sweetheart!” he added.
“Just shut up!” Fox finally yelled.
“That’s what I thought,” Snake smirked smugly. Wolf didn’t have to admit it to her - she already knew.
“Try roaring again, Wolfy!” Eagle had been bemoaning his empty stomach in not-so-subtle hints in the background the whole time that his parents had been discussing the human. Now Eagle was ready for some action.
Wolf complied. This time, he took an extra-large breath, and roared louder than he ever had in his life.
It was unchanged, still snoring away.
“Why do you keep calling me ‘it’?” Alex asked.
“Because I want to,” Fox shrugged.
This time, both Snake and Wolf moved forward to inspect the human.
“What are these things?” Wolf asked his wife, pointing at two small black objects, one in each of the human’s ears, with a black cord connecting them.
“Look, that cord goes all the way down there,” Snake pointed at the human’s stomach, where it’s hands were folded over the end of the black cord, and a rectangular silver object.
Wolf and Snake exchanged bemused glances. And then Eagle came to the rescue. Bounding forward to join his parents, he, too, spied the strange black and silver objects. But Eagle knew what they were.
“Sweet!” he shrieked. “It’s got an iPod! Can I have it after we eat It? Please?”
“I’ve always wanted an iPod!” Eagle said dreamily.
“You don’t have one?” Alex asked. “Who doesn’t have an iPod?”
“You have one?” Eagle asked excitedly. “Can I have it?”
“Oh, sure,” Alex said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
“It’s got a what?” Snake asked.
“An iPod!” Eagle rolled his eyes at the ignorance that comes with old age. “They play music, and they’re totally awesome!”
“I don’t hear any music,” Wolf said, cocking his head.
“Duh, Wolfy!” Eagle was astonished at his parents’ lack of technology-awareness. “That’s because it’s playing through the headphones! You know, those black things in It’s ears? Those are headphones. So It can hear the music, but we can’t. Cool, huh?”
“So that’s why he can’t hear us,” Snake mused.
“Oh, bravo, me,” Snake rolled his eyes.
“I wonder what It’s listening to…After all, whatever music is on that iPod will be mine soon! Mwahahahaha!” Eagle rubbed his hands together in glee.
“I’ve always wanted to do the evil laugh…” Eagle mused.
“Be quiet, Eagle!” Snake said. “We’re trying to think.”
“We are?” Eagle asked blankly.
“No, we are,” Snake said, indicating herself and Wolf.
“Right. Sorry!” Eagle whispered before going back to mumbling how cool it would be to have an iPod of his very own.
“I guess the only thing to do is shake It,” Snake’s voice broke the near-silence.
“I’ll do it,” Wolf volunteered bravely. “And as soon as he wakes up, we pounce him, all right?”
At Snake and Eagle’s nods, Wolf prepared himself for battle. He did a few little stretches, focusing mainly on the muscles around his mouth, so that he wouldn’t pull a muscle when he ate the human.
Finally, he gave a nod to his family, squared his shoulders, and walked closer to the bed. Steeling himself, he clapped a paw down onto It’s shoulder, and shook It rather violently.
It mumbled a protest. Something along the lines of:
“I don’ wanna go to school…” and “Ew! I don’t like bear meat! Bears are friends, not food!”
“Why are you quoting ‘Finding Nemo’?” Wolf asked, raising an eyebrow.
“How do you know what it’s from?” Fox laughed.
Wolf hesitated, trying to come up with a good alibi. “I - uh, my girlfriend likes that movie!”
“Right,” Alex said sarcastically. “It’s alright, we all know about your little Disney addiction.”
“Cub, I swear--”
“Stop the violence! Can’t we all just get along?” Snake said. “Now listen to the fucking story! Continue, Fox,” he commanded, leaning back against the wall next to his bed.
Wolf drew back in surprise at the last one, and glanced over at Snake. “Maybe It’s just pretending to be asleep?”
Snake looked both shocked and touched at the same time. “I don’t know…Are we still going to eat It?” Her eyes softened slightly when she looked down at the sleeping human boy.
“Maybe we can keep him as a pet?” she suggested.
“Him?” Wolf repeated. “Aw, Snake, you’re already getting attached, aren’t you? And I’m still hungry,” he added quietly.
“Yes, him,” Snake reiterated. “And, yes, I am‘getting attached’!”
“If we keep…him…as a pet, do I still get the iPod?” Eagle asked slowly.
“I don’t see why not,” Snake reassured him.
“Oh, okay!” Eagle said happily. “Can we keep him, Mummy? Wolfy? I promise I’ll feed him, and water him every day! And he can have my baths,” he added as an afterthought.
“Of course,” Snake smiled.
“But I’m still hungry!” Wolf protested loudly.
Both Snake and Eagle turned very intense glares on him, and he wilted considerably.
“My human!” Eagle hissed menacingly.
“Eagle? Menacing?” Wolf laughed.
“Is there anything to eat in the pantry?” he asked, intimidated.
“I believe there’s a loaf of fresh bread,” Snake said, happy that he was no longer hell-bent on eating the human.
“Good!” Wolf said, considerably more cheerful at the prospect of food. “I think I’ll just-”
“Go make it into toast for the human?” Snake smoothly cut him off.
“But -”
“Don’t forget the jam!” Snake interrupted again, smiling sweetly.
Wolf stomped huffily off. “Work, work, work. That’s all I’m good for around here!” he muttered. (2)
Snake rolled her eyes at Wolf’s little “Drama Queen” moment before she turned her attention towards waking the small human.
“You know, Fox,” Eagle said conversationally. “You’re making Snake into a total Mary-Sue.”
“A total Mary-what?” Fox asked.
“A Mary-Sue. It’s a term generally used in fan fiction to refer to a female character that’s too perfect and lacking flaws,” Wolf said absently.
“Wait, you read fan fiction, Wolf?” Alex laughed, thinking that this must be the weirdest dream in the history of weird dreams. “Of what? Twilight?”
Wolf blushed faintly. “N-no!” he stuttered.
“You do!” Alex laughed hysterically.
“Aw, you think I’m perfect, Wolf?” Snake said, batting his eyes.
“Do you guys want to hear the rest of the story or not?” Fox demanded.
First Snake decided to try taking his “iPod” away. He didn’t wake up when his music stopped playing, so Snake had to move on to more drastic measures: she gripped both of his arms, and hoisted him up into a sitting position. He mumbled something, and Snake, satisfied that he was awake, let go of his arms.
The human immediately fell back onto Eagle’s pillow.
Snake just stared at him for a moment, wondering if maybe he really was acting. She shook that thought away, though, and she moved on to the next phase of her plan.
She marched over to Wolf’s desk in the corner of the room, and grabbed his special hand-carved, collector’s edition alarm clock. Back at Eagle’s bed, she quickly wound the clock, and set it off right in the human’s ears. Snake thought that the alarm sounded a bit like a bull moose on a rampage.
Yet the human still didn’t wake up. Snake tried everything that she could think of, from playing around on Eagle’s drum set to dancing to dancing a jig right there next to the bed. Eagle wasn’t being any help. He’d taken the “iPod” and was sifting through the human’s music. And Wolf, of course, was still in the kitchen pigging out.
Snake was desperately trying to wake the pygmy human up. What if he was in a coma or something?
Snake had now moved into desperate measures: singing. She didn’t like showing off, which was why she hadn’t tried this before, but she figured that anyone would wake up at her melodious tones. The human stayed asleep, however, and the only reaction Snake’s singing got was Eagle ripping off his headphones and shrieking:
“Where’s Wolfy?! Did he go after that mountain lion without me? He must have! I heard it shrieking!” he took off towards the door.
“Eagle, what are you talking about? Your father’s still in the kitchen!”
“Then what was that awful screeching sound?” Eagle asked slowly.
“What? The only sound was me singing!” Snake was confused.
Realization slowly spread over Eagle’s face. “Oh, so that was that lovely sound I heard!”
Snake beamed and nodded, missing the sarcastic undercurrents in Eagle’s voice.
Eagle rolled his eyes and put his headphones back on.
Fox had to stop telling the story momentarily due to major fits of laughter, his own and Eagle’s and Wolf’s.
“So - so true!” Eagle gasped out, holding his side.
“I don’t sing that bad,” Snake muttered sullenly. This statement only caused the others to laugh more.
Eventually, Wolf sat up and said:
“Snake, we don’t really need guns. All we really need as an offensive weapon is your singing.” Unfortunately for Snake, this caused his teammates to crack up again. Eagle was actually crying from laughing too hard.
Alex was watching this scene with a strange mixture of humor, exasperation, and terror. “You’re the people defending our country?” he asked softly. “That scares me.”
Fox heard him, and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, we could say the same thing about you, Cub,” he grinned.
“I’m bored,” Eagle said suddenly. “Continue, oh great storyteller!” he bowed at Fox, who laughed, and obediently recommenced story time.
Snake went back to waking the human. She did some rather random things. At one point, she dashed into the kitchen, caught a guilty-looking Wolf emptying the cupboard, told him off briefly, and grabbed a bowl and a spoon. Back in the bedroom, Snake beat the spoon around the inside of the bowl, thinking that maybe the human had been trained that that meant “food”. Even this didn’t wake him, though, and he snored on.
Finally, Snake sank down onto her own bed, turning ideas around and around in her head. Suddenly, she stood up.
“I know!” she shouted. “I’ll get some cold water, dump it on him!” she snapped her fingers in joy.
The human woke up, blinking slowly. He gave a great, jaw-cracking yawn.
Looking around, he spotted Eagle bobbing his head, plugged into the iPod.
“My iPod!” Cub shrieked. “There’s a bear listening to my iPod!”
Snake sighed in relief. “You’re awake! Finally. I tried everything to wake you!”
“Why?” Cub asked curiously. “All you have to do is snap your fingers and I’m up.” Then Cub looked at Snake more closely. “You - you - you’re a b-bear, too!” he gasped.
“I’m Snake,” she nodded.
“No, you’re a bear, not a snake,” Cub explained patiently.
“Yes, I’m a bear. My name is Snake.”
“Oh…Who’s that?” Cub pointed at Eagle.
“That’s Eagle. My son,” Snake beamed proudly.
“He’s kinda funny looking,” Cub giggled.
Snake immediately grew offended. “I don’t think he’s funny-looking!”
“Actually, he kind of is…” Snake muttered, still miffed about the singing hysteria.
“He’s got a big nose!” Cub snickered.
“I beg your pardon!” Snake was all fluffed-up.
Eagle looked up now and saw Cub sitting up.
“Mum! Human’s awake!” he shrieked, turning off the iPod.
“I noticed,” Snake said dryly, still glaring at Cub.
“You’ve got a big nose!” Cub informed Eagle.
“Oh, yeah?” Eagle glared. “Well, guess what? If you don’t make a good pet, you’ll always make a crackin’ good chimney sweep!” (3)
“Pet?!” Cub was astonished. “I’m not allowed to have a pet! Why are you allowed to have a pet?”
“Because Mummy wouldn’t let me and Wolfy eat you! She wanted to keep you as a pet,” Eagle nodded smugly.
At this, Wolf walked into the bedroom. “Eat?” he asked hopefully.
Cub shrieked. “I’m not a snack! If anything, I should be eating you! My daddy drags bears home sometimes. They always taste so good…” he sighed wistfully, missing the shocked look from Snake, and the glares from Eagle and Wolf.
“Then why did you say ‘Bears are friends, not food’ when you were asleep?” Snake asked quietly.
“Huh? I said that? Did you get it?”
“Get what?” Wolf growled.
“The joke! That’s the punch line -- ‘Bears are friends, not food’! Funny joke, too. Do you want to hear it?”
“No!” all three bears shouted at once.
“You don’t have to shout!” Cub pouted.
“I still say we should eat him,” Wolf grumbled. “He’s too loud to keep him as a pet.”
“I beg your pardon!” Cub gasped. “What a horrible thing to say, Mr. Bear!”
“That’s Mr. Wolf to you, buckwheat!” Wolf growled.
“But you’re not a wolf,” Cub pointed out with devastating logic.
Wolf mumbled something under his breath, causing Eagle’s eyes to get really big, and making him gasp:
“Wolfy! I didn’t know you knew that many words!”
Snake glared at Wolf, and put her paws over Eagle’s ears. Wolf seemed to blush under his gaze - though how he managed to blush through all that fur, Cub wasn’t sure. And he definitely wasn’t going to ask.
When Snake and Wolf started arguing, Cub finally realized that he was stuck in a room with three bears - at least one of whom had expressed an interest in eating him - who happened to be blocking the door. Cub gulped. How on earth am I going to get away? He thought. Looking around, he spotted a little window on the other side of the room. He figured that if he jumped up a little, he’d probably be able to escape through it.
Making up his mind, he began inching towards the little window.
The three bears were still arguing. Well, two of them were arguing. Eagle was still gaping at Wolf, wondering where he had acquired such an interesting vocabulary.
Some time later, just when Cub was getting to the window, Snake won the argument, which had begun to resemble a stand-down in a bad shoot-’em-up western film.
Snake, looking very smug, looked around for the wee human, who happed to be frantically trying to climb out of the window. She gasped and shrieked, “Wolf, he’s escaping!”
“So he is!” Wolf knew that the very best way to punish a naughty “pet” was to eat it, so he was secretly overjoyed that the human was trying to escape.
Wolf rushed back out of the bedroom door to where the guns were kept.
Cub, meanwhile, had managed to get his belt caught on the window. He was beginning to feel a bit like the beetle that was pinned onto the velvet cushion of his mother’s bug collection.
Wolf dashed back into the room, brandishing his M16, a manic gleam in his eyes.
“Where is he? Let me at ’im!” he growled.
“He’s getting out through the window, Wolfy!” Eagle shrieked helpfully.
Wolf, the opportunist that he was, was privately thrilled that he had been given a license to devour. Well, just a license to prevent escape for now, but the human was certainly giving Wolf a good case against him.
Grinning, Wolf took careful aim, and…managed to shoot Cub’s belt and free the little scoundrel.
Cub leaped out the window with a triumphant shout, which quickly turned into a terrified squeak when he realized that he was somehow a good ten feet off the ground - more than two times Cub’s own height!
Snake turned fiercely on Wolf. “You fu-” she began, but with a quick glance to Eagle, she quickly changed what she had been about to say. “Moron! You absolute moron!”
Wolf shrank back under her glare. “I’ll just - go around the front and catch him like that,” he gestured vaguely in the direction of the front door.
“You do that,” Snake hissed venomously, and Wolf scampered off after the human.
Meanwhile, Eagle was trying to climb out of the window. He was sadly lacking in technique, however, and seemed to be attempting to do a snout-dive. He almost did, too, but Snake grabbed him before he could slither out completely.
“Aw, Mum!” Eagle whined. “What’d you do that for?!”
Snake just glared at him, obviously not deigning it worthy of a reply.
“It was just going into the woods,” Eagle said. “I coulda caught It!”
Snake raised an eyebrow. “You’re calling him ‘It’ again, then?” she asked.
Eagle shrugged. “Well, It didn’t seem to want to be a pet, so we might as well eat It.”
“‘Might as well eat it’?” Snake repeated slowly. “You’re getting more and more like your father every day. Always ‘thinking’ with your stomachs!” she used air quotes when she said ‘thinking’.
“I was looking forward to that porridge, but then It ate mine. So if I eat It, then technically, I’d finally get to eat my porridge. Y’know, ‘cause it’s in him…It!” he corrected himself quickly.
Snake looked faintly disgusted. “I was wrong. You’re too much like your father already!”
Eagle wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult. So he ignored it.
Outside, Wolf was quickly gaining on the human. He admittedly had a great advantage: his legs were much longer than the human’s drumsticks were.
Wolf happily took advantage of that advantage.
So, all in all, Wolf thought that the chase was going rather well, and he expected to apprehend the human at any moment. Unfortunately for Wolf, said human had decided to go all “mini Robin Hood” and lead him a merry chase through the branches of trees. Wolf was finding it more difficult to follow the human’s trail now, but he could still smell where It had gone.
Of course, not even Wolf was stupid enough to try to follow him through the trees. Instead, he kept on trundling along the ground.
To Cub’s great surprise, he discovered that running for his life was actually rather fun. Or, more accurately, swinging for his life, as he was doing his best monkey impression, swinging through the treetops - well, actually, swinging on the lowest branches. But, still, he was thoroughly enjoying himself.
“I should do this more often,” he reflected thoughtfully, just before his grip on the branch slipped, and he fell into a painful heap on the ground.
Cub let out a shriek so shrill that he couldn’t even hear it. Wolf, however, could, and the sound made him shiver. Surely that wasn’t a natural sound? His first thought was that maybe the bogeyman really existed. But then he realized that something must have happened to the human, and that that must be where the horrible keening sound was coming from.
Wolf broke into a run, following the keening. He decided that It must have some serious lungs, as the sound hadn’t even let up in the past five minutes.
The sound was getting closer with every step, and Wolf suddenly saw It curled up on the ground beneath a branch.
Chuckling evilly, Wolf put on the brakes. But he soon discovered that he had far too much momentum built up to stop immediately. He ended up running into a tree because he had been so focused on slowing down that he hadn’t even noticed the tree in front of him.
Wolf found himself in the middle of a Wolf-shaped dent in the tree, with his own voice joining in with the keening, a few octaves above the human’s voice, even.
“I do not shriek!” Wolf objected violently.
“And we care why?” Snake muttered, still mad from the singing discussion from before.
Wolf ordered himself to stop adding to that dreadful sound, but found that he couldn’t stop. Worse than that, he couldn’t breathe, because he couldn’t stop screeching. He figured that he would have to keep shrieking until his lungs overrode his mind’s command.
His lungs finally gave out, and he was able to stop shrieking. Amazingly, the human was still at it, making Wolf wince at the sheer volume of the shriek.
Wolf pulled himself out of the tree, wincing as he did so. Covering his ears, he leaned down to inspect the human more closely. He noticed that It’s lungs seemed to be flagging, as the pitch of the shriek was slowly dropping.
Finally, the human fainted from lack of air, and Wolf breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, now Wolf had to carry the human all the way back to the house. Sighing, he picked up the human, and started marching.
What seemed like hours later to Wolf - it was only about half an hour - he staggered into view of his house.
Snake was sitting outside, waiting for him. He didn’t see Eagle, though…until he ran up and started poking at the human, that is.
The human was still out even after the long, jolting journey. Snake had gotten up, and was running towards them. Stopping in front of Wolf, she ordered him to go put the human back in Eagle’s bed.
“My bed?” Eagle shrieked. “Why does it have to be my bed? Why can’t it be your bed, Wolfy? Or yours, M -” he swallowed at Snake’s glare.
“Because I said so,” Snake snapped. “Now carry him in, Wolf!”
Grumbling furiously, Wolf carried the human into the house and to Eagle’s bed. Wolf placed the human on the bed surprisingly gently, so as to not bruise his meal.
Snake and Eagle had followed, secretly enjoying the sight of Wolf huffing and puffing along.
Snake marched over to the bed and snapped her fingers sharply. The human jolted awake, and at once his face took on an expression of one who was resigned to déjà vu.
The first thing that Cub really noticed was Snake standing above him, in the process of folding her arms, a dangerous look on her face. Cub gulped, trying not to imagine how pissed off they would all be at him.
But when Snake spoke, her voice was surprisingly gentle…for an angry bear, anyway. “And what did you do that for?”
“Um…do what?” Cub squeaked nervously, surveying Eagle and Wolf who were too busy drooling and licking their lips to say anything.
Snake’s foot started tapping, and Cub wondered vaguely whether she was like a skunk, and that was a warning sign. Cub heard Snake growl, and he realized belatedly that he had wondered that out loud.
Cub gulped as Snake leaned in, putting one paw on either side of him, leaning in until her snout was almost touching his nose, and her hot breath washed over his face.
“Why did you make us chase you?” she asked, enunciating each word sharply.
Panicking slightly, Cub did what he usually did in these sort of situations: bluster. It was a foolproof plan of action, it’s success rate one out of ten.
“Technically I didn’t force anyone to chase me,” Cub pointed out reasonably.
“You ran away,” Snake growled. “And you’re our pet, which means that we were required to chase you.”
Wolf started slightly at the mention of the word “pet”. “We’re still going to keep it as a pet?” he asked, astonished.
Snake swung around to glare at him. “Yes, we are. Do you have a problem with that?” she asked acidly, causing Wolf to flinch, and shake his head vigorously.
“Good,” Snake said, her tone hinting that it was anything but. Turning back to Cub, she put on her “enforcing face”, which was usually just employed on Wolf. Desperate times call for desperate measures, she figured.
“I’m trying to think of a suitable punishment for you,” she said almost pleasantly to Cub. Cub, however, considered himself to possess a rather brilliant mind, and he wasn’t fooled by her pleasantry.
He began panicking in earnest now, making sure that it didn’t show on his face. Instead, he rearranged his features to offer an innocent expression.
Snake reached out a paw, and poked Cub in the chest. Cub could no longer hold his panic in check, and he moved his head without thinking, sinking his teeth into Snake’s paw.
Snake shrieked, and joined the anti-human-pet side.
Snake turned and hissed at her son. “Why don’t you go get the A-1 sauce? Somehow I don’t think that just salt will improve this one’s taste much.”
Eagle yelped happily, scurrying off to the kitchen, returning in record time with the steak sauce. Wolf, too, was grinning (and drooling) like mad.
Now all the bears were closing in on Cub, who was scrambling madly to get off the bed and perhaps out of the window again.
No such luck, however, as the bears were suddenly on him.
Cub’s last thought was: “A-1’s just glorified barbeque sauce. Aren’t I worth at least a bottle of ketchup?!”
“There,” Fox sighed in relief. “The end.”
“Great,” Eagle muttered. “Now I’m hungry.”
“I know you guys don’t like me much, but isn’t cannibalism a little extreme?” Alex asked, actually semi-seriously.
They all laughed, including Wolf. “You never know,” Eagle muttered.
“We’ll even use ketchup if you want!” Snake grinned.
“No, thanks,” Alex muttered, vaguely wondering if the Guinness Book of World Records would accept just his word that he’d had the strangest dream ever, and publish it without any real proof.
“Now can we go to sleep?” Fox whined.
All agreed, except for Eagle, who whined until Wolf informed him that if he didn’t go to sleep, they’d make him run a couple hundred kilometers. Eagle grudgingly went to sleep.
Alex, of course, couldn’t go to sleep, because he was already asleep and dreaming, right?
--
The next morning, they were on yet another run, but this time, they were all running together.
Alex was at the rear of the pack, and Fox fell back to talk to him.
“Cub? Look, I’m sorry that you had to witness that - er, grim spectacle last night? Yeah. Eagle gets like that sometimes.”
Alex stared at him. “What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Are you joking?” Fox demanded. “How could you not remember our rousing rendition of ‘Goldilocks’?”
Alex stopped running to devote more of his attention to staring at Fox, and trying to widen his eyes even more. “You mean -” he swallowed. “You mean that was real?”
“Um, yeah…” Fox said slowly, stopping as well. “Didn’t you already know that?”
“I thought it was dream,” Alex said quietly. “Granted, an insane and totally demented dream, but…I just thought it was a dream!”
“Oi!” they both looked up to see the rest of K-Unit jogging back towards them, Wolf at the front. “What’s the hold-up?” Wolf asked roughly.
Fox was still staring at Alex, who was looking more than a little traumatized.
“Um…Turns out that Cub thought our little…story time last night was just a dream.” he said, trying to hold back the laughter.
“Sorry, Cub,” Snake grinned. “No such luck.”
Wolf was shaking his head and actually laughing.
Eagle was laughing like mad. “Wasn’t that fun?” he jumped up and down, looking somewhat ridiculous for a twenty-something man in the SAS.
“Ask me after I’ve spent a lot of time with a therapist,” Alex gasped out, still very much in shock.
Fox laughed and shook his head. “Come on, we have to finish this run before we end up with too much punishment.”
As they were jogging along, Eagle suddenly asked:
“So, Fox, what story are you telling tonight?"
Chapter 2 found here.