Beacons is the Welsh Word for Hell

1. Of Terrorists and Peppermint Pastries

Due to an assassination attempt by SCORPIA, Alex Rider is sent to a new residence at the SAS training camp, Breacon Beacons. Permanently. Uh-oh.

Disclaimer: I (sadly) do not own Alex Rider, and make no claim to that or to other content I mention here under someone else's copywrite. And, really. Do I sound like Anthony Horowitz, guys?

Alex Rider, known as Agent, Alex, Rider, or Cub, entered the room with two expectations: One, that he would come out of it irrecoverably changed, and two, that his retirement plan would include a lack of peppermint, and a couple of guns. Just in case.

And as he had approached the so-called Royal and General Bank, he reflected on the extreme abnormality posing as his life, that would cause even his future old age to be influenced by the British Secret Service, commonly known as MI6.

It all started when he was conceived in a small, one-bed hotel room by the intimate process known as...well, we don't really need to get into that.

To keep matters appropriate, Alex Rider was born to nurse Helen Beckett and MI6 operative John Rider. That's right, MI6; as in, the top secret, classified, associated-with-James-Bond, secret spy organization. Then, after their deaths caused by Scorpia (a terrorist organization, whose name was an acronym for Sabotage, Corruption, Intelligence, and Assassination), baby Alex was sent to live with his uncle Ian, also an agent. Fourteen years later, Ian was killed on a mission, and Alex, after uncovering the truth about Ian's murder and work, was sent briefly to an SAS training camp, then strait into the operation his uncle was killed for investigating.

After completing the assignment incredibly, against all odds, Alex was sent on mission after mission, for one reason or another, with much the same result. All, however, ended with his almost death/maiming/torture/scarring other, and by the time Alex completed his most recent one (and hopefully last), he was both the best and the least willing agent known to Intelligence.

Unfortunately, contrary to his last conversation with the heads of MI6, the choice was not left to him--the spy was just too good to give up. But the dividing factor between him and every other above-average agent was the simple factor of his age. Alex Rider, however else he acted or thought, was fourteen years old, and looked it.

This made him invaluable, as he could blend in where no one else could blend in, escape suspicion when every adult was considered, and cause even the shrewdest criminal to overestimate him.

However, this also was a monumental setback, in that he had to deal with not only an overwhelming, adult-sized job, but with the normal (and unavoidable) torture of school. He also felt the same need as any other teenager to have friends, a social life, and have fun. Instead, he was expected to single-handedly solve global issues, with the world on his shoulders to boot.

In fact, Alex might have given it up and left the burden to someone else had it not been for Scorpia, which continued to haunt his life even in it's dying throes.

Though it had been nearly four months since his last mission ended and he spoke to the heads in a debriefing, it seemed like only yesterday that he had summoned to this very building, and jumped out a window to get past the locked door.

And Alex's only regret had been that it was him that had to go through it.

So, when he received an anonymous call on his cell phone, the young spy could think of any number of reasons not to pick it up. Starting with the usual 'a terrorist could be calling in disguise to set up an ambush and kill him' and ranging to 'the phone could have been switched out with a look-alike that was holding a bomb, and the person calling could have the trigger to set it off.'

Of course, he had thought, it might just be Tom calling to ask him to go to the cinema, or play football in the park. There was only one way to find out. He picked it up.

On the contrary, however, the call was from 'The Royal and General Bank' asking him to come over and talk about his 'finances'. They would send a car to pick him up in thirty minutes. He told the young woman, presumably a low-level secretary or agent, that he would take the tube, and it was the absolute last time he would willingly come in to MI6.

It turned out, he was told later, that the woman, Terra Clout, had began work there only a few days ago, and was not to be educated about the company's other aspect for a few days more. She was sent home in hysterics after signing the Official Secrets Act and getting a hurried explanation from Crawley, and it was unknown whether she would return. Oops.

Walking from the nearest tube station to Liverpool Street, where the bank was located, he passed a bakery. Alex realized that, coming straight from school, he hadn't had anything to eat since lunch, and could use a pastry or two. But as he studied the options in the window, he spotted a man behind him.

The man was tall and bald, with a dark tan that stood out dramatically in the March weather. However, what marked him even further, to Alex's eye, was his subtle but present muscles, his tense, alert manner, and that this was the third time he had seen him since he got off the tube. Alex cursed, and, thinking quickly, entered the shop the minute the man's eyes left him.

Inside, the shop was warm and cozy, and the smell of freshly baked bread was wafted over to him by the old-fashioned brick oven in the far wall. A bell tinkled as he walked in, and the shopkeeper, a middle-aged, balding man, glanced up from his writing at the front counter on the left.

The spy scanned the room for exits other than the door, but found none. Outside, however, the man was searching for him methodically, and it wouldn't be long before he figured out where Alex had gone. Cursing himself quietly, he resigned himself to a fight, and began to plan.

********

Eight minutes later, a tall suntanned man who looked to be in his early thirties entered the small bakery, Chelsea Delight. The shopkeeper, a youngish strawberry-blonde boy about seventeen wearing glasses, said hello without looking up from the book he was reading, as the bell tinkled to announce him. He took out a piece of gum, and began to unwrap it. The man sneered in response.

A flash of something yellow and moving caught his eye. He looked over just in time to see the door to a small supply closet close. So the boy meant to hide from him! It was obvious his employers had overestimated him. After all, a decent spy would at least stick around to fight, knowing they had no chance of staying hidden for long. The man was, after all, a Scorpia assassin in his own right, and Scorpia never failed. He strode confidently over to the closet, opened the door, and went inside.

Alex watched the man enter through his fringe that hung down low over his head. As soon as the Alex had realized that confrontation was inevitable, the spy had started to brainstorm for a plan. Many things came to mind, but in every situation he thought of, the shopkeeper of the store was either a casualty, or a hostage. Either way had an undesirable ending, so the spy knew the only way to save him was to remove him temporarily from the shop.

Noticing a long-handled baking paddle leaning against the stove, he casually wandered towards it, pretending he was watching the latest batch of bread baking. The man (he could now see his name was Martin, according to the tag) didn't so much as look up. Alex took hold of the paddle in the middle, keeping it out of Martin's line of sight behind the desk, then grabbed a bagel from a basket, and approached the counter.

The man closed the journal, glanced at the bagel, and rang it up on the register. "That would be..."

But he never got a chance to finish. Alex used the handle of the paddle to hit a pressure point on the back of Martin's neck as he turned away, and he dropped like stone, unconscious immediately. Alex glanced at the bagel in his hand, then at the two doors behind the counter, one of them presumably the kitchen. According to the clock on the wall, two minutes had gone by since he had entered the shop. He was running out of time, and had a lot left to do before the man arrived. He had to move fast...

********

So far, everything was going to the plan. He quietly said a greeting, but was ignored by the assailant. That was good. The hastily applied food coloring had managed to tint his hair more strawberry blond, and the glasses disguised his face. His school uniform was covered by a dark blue apron with the shop's seal on the front. He had escaped notice in favor of the target. Now, time to get him where he wanted. He loudly took out a piece of gum, unwrapped it, and started chewing obnoxiously, hoping to cover any noise his plan would make.

Alex dropped the pen in his left hand on the ground. It landed on the balance he had found in the back room almost silently, muffled by the hot pad it was wrapped in. The weight caused the side closest to him to hit the ground (also muffled, this time in paper towels), and the other side to go up. Thus, the egg bagel he had set on it earlier was sent flying across the room, and landed perfectly in the basket he had moved, making nothing seem out of place.

The bald man glanced sharply at it, thinking that the flash of yellow had been hair. To further his belief that Alex had gone that way, he let up the pressure his foot had been exerting on the paddle. As it was wedged in between the door and the doorframe, it would give the appearance of the door being closed from the inside. Alex had pushed it open almost a foot when he dropped the pen, and now he quickly shut it.

The man, he could hear, strode confidently over to the door, opened it, and shut it behind him. Carefully, quietly, Alex got up, and hurried to the door. He pushed the cloth bag of firewood for the stove in front of the crack, and backed it up with a few hastily stacked bricks. He spit his gum (completely normal this time) into his hand and placed it on the back of the 'out of order' sign, then stuck it to the door, for appearance's sake.

Next, the teen opened the other door behind the counter, leading to the kitchen. He was almost sure that the man had accomplices, and if he didn't come out or check in in a certain amount of time, they would assume the worst, and finish the job. Hence, stage two of his plan.

He approached the door that lead into the supply closet, after grabbing a heavy cookbook off the shelf. It had almost ruined his idea, that there was no part with only a single entrance or exit, but instead, he had hidden it from discovery at first glance. The teen figured the assassin would search all the places Alex could be hiding before he realized he was trapped, and started searching for an exit.

So, Alex quietly opened the door, and found himself looking at the lattice of mops he had constructed. He gently, painstakingly, made a hole in the strands large enough to see through, and watched the assassin pace back and forth. Alex watched him for enough seconds to work out the pattern, then quickly stepped through his cover and hit him over the head with the book.

After tying the assassin up and searching him thoroughly so as to remove anything possibly helpful in escape, Alex exited the way he came, and pushed a small table under the handle to prevent it from turning.

Then, he went over to the corner where six heavy barrels sat of the bakery staple--flour. It took him ten more minutes to move one to the middle of the shop and put the others safe in the storage closet. The spy idly wondered what would happen if someone saw this through the windows, but ignored it; his priority was getting out of there alive.

He hastily cut the remaining pieces of cloth into small, half inch strips, then tied them together to make a long string. Then, he tied it around one of the barrels, and did his best to hide it behind objects as he lead it into the kitchen, where it ran out inches behind the door.

A smell of burning made his nose tingle, and he realized with alarm that the bread that had been baking when he entered was starting to burn. And a fire now was something he could not afford. Alex found the paddle on the ground where he had left it, and used it to scoop out two blackened pieces of bread, then dumped them in the kitchen sink. He felt sorry for the shopkeeper who's shop Alex was currently ruining, but hoped MI6 would at least reimburse him. After all, it was their fault (excluding some technicalities) that he was in this mess in the first place.

Making one last trip through the kitchen drawers to find a lighter, Alex returned to his seat behind the counter, reading the book he found on the shelves.

********

Half an hour later, Alex was getting worried. The accomplices had not shown up, and he couldn't leave to go to the 'Bank' without taking care of them first. At least there, he had the advantage of a trap set; he didn't want to know what would happen to him in the street. Also, there was the problem that both the assassin and the shopkeeper (whom he had left in the alley between this shop and the next) would be waking up, and he couldn't risk either attempting to escape until he could get MI6 to take care of them.

However, he needn't have worried--his 'luck of the devil' held out even back in London. Just then, he noticed a group of eight men dressed in black with small bulges at their waists and Bluetooth earphones in. Conspicuous much? Alex thought.

They were wandering, apparently leisurely, down the road, looking in the shop windows, and the spy knew they were searching for anything unusual to do with their teammate's disappearance.

He also knew that, unlike the normal passer by fooled by the 'Out of Order' sign, the firewood and the bricks holding down the door would stick out like sore thumbs to them.

Abandoning his post at the counter, the spy slipped into the kitchen, closing the door tightly. He took out the lighter, flipped off the safety button, and moved the rug as far away as possible from the last strip of cloth that came through the bottom of the door.

The tinkling of the shop bell sounded, and the spy peered under the door to assure that it was the group he had seen. It was. He waited for the door to close completely, then quietly clicked the lighter, and held it to the cloth.

His makeshift fuse was long, and didn't burn easily. The teen realized his mistake as soon as he lit it. Not only would it take too long for the fire to reach the barrels, but the fire would be bright, large, and very noticeable. Uh-oh.

Alex had two options, as far as he could tell: Go outside the door and be killed by the explosions, or wait for the men to see the fuse and extinguish the flame, then rescue their trapped comrade and come to kill him. Neither seemed very appealing.

Then, he noticed that not all the burning was coming from outside. The charred bread from the oven...

The spy practically flew over to the kitchen sink, grateful that he hadn't actually turned it on, and it had been somewhat dry before. Alex grabbed the two burning loafs of bread he had hastily shoved in it. Running back to the door, he picked up the lighter, and held it to the first, then the second. Already dry and slightly charred, they caught fire quickly. Then, he threw open the door and jumped outside, cursing in French. The men, as he had hoped, looked immediately at him.

Now came the hard part. He had to behave like any other teenager holding a burning piece of bread, and who had no idea why the men were there.

"What are you doing!" One of the assassins shouted as Alex threw the first a few feet away from the fuse.

"Il brûle! Mon Dieu, il brûle!" He shouted in French. Hoping that the foreign language would be another 'difference' for them between the 'shopkeeper' and Alex Rider. With the entire backup teams' attention on him, there was much more chance of being recognized--which would ruin everything, and probably wind up with him dead.

The men were now busy trying to stamp out the fire around them, and Alex knew that the fuse was seconds away from exploding. If he stayed longer, he would, too.

The spy waited until the fire on the second loaf had almost reached his hand, before dropping it with a cry, and sprinting for the kitchen door. He slammed it shut behind him, and went to the other side, as far away from the impending explosion as possible. Then, he curled up into a ball, protecting his head with his arms, and waited.

Ian had once taken the eight-year-old Alex to an exhibit on colonial times at a fair in London. They had walked through an old-fashioned kitchen, where several kegs of flour were on display. A man in their tour group had been 'escorted' out by the security guards for smoking and refusing to put it out. The guide had explained to them that when flour was packaged so tightly, even the smallest amount of fire could cause the entire thing to blow up. This had caused many deaths, especially when fire was commonly used for cooking, and could easily get out of hand. Ian had told Alex, jokingly, that if he ever needed an impromptu bomb, just go to a bakery and throw a cigarette at it. Now, Alex thanked his uncle for the experience. It just might save his life in a minute. Or destroy it, depending on the strength.

Counting down, approximately six seconds later, he heard an enormous boom, and the entire shop shuddered from the explosion. Burning debris flew everywhere, and white dust rained down from the ceiling. The wall that had once stood in front of him was now a lump of broken bricks, and there was a large gap in the floor where the barrel had been.

He waited a few more seconds, then hesitantly uncurled himself from his position. Dust was still clouding the air, but it would soon settle, and leave the shop clear to the public. Already the spy could hear screams from the passer-byes, and it wouldn't be long until the sirens would join them.

He walked over to the sink, where he wiped the dirt and dye from the top layer of his hair. Then, he placed the real shopkeeper's reading glasses on the sink, removed the apron, and limped out of the side of the building, which was also missing a wall.

After considering it for a moment, he grabbed a pastry from the piles of baking trays by the sink to eat on the way to the bank. After all the work he did, Alex felt that he deserved it. He bit into the golden, frosted outside. Then he reached the creamy white center with tiny red specks in it...it was flavored PEPPERMINT! Of all the options, of all the days...

Alex re-thought his opinion of luck. It might show up life-or-death circumstances, but when you needed it most? Gone.

A/N: So, I finally figured out how to work the document thing, and am writing an author's note! Um...soooo....do you like it? Yes? No? Review worthy? *ducks flying rotten tomatoes, with a single cantalope in the middle* um...well, review anyways, peeps! It helps me make this story 5.343221701 times better! And, I make a point to review ANY story I read, good or bad, so your efforts in boosting this author's confidence (or helping her make it better so you can THEN boost her confidence) are greatly appreiciated. AND, the next chapter (with a pretty cheezy title.. *sigh*) is almost ready, and it will be the ABSOLUTE FASTEST I have EVER updated! In my writing HISTORY! How exciting is that!!! Thanks for your time!

TheNotedMusician