A/N: This 'story' is completely plotless AND pointless. Which is why I enjoyed writing it so much :) I had read something about pizza being classed as a vegetable. I don't know why I thought it would make a good (that's debatable too) Thunderbirds ficlet. But here it is. Heck, it's Sunday, I got nothin' else on my plate. Also, I think I might have just written the 2000th story on the TB board. **grin**

For Louise Hargadon. With love. And Virgil being a QB ftw!

Pizza Is Not A Vegetable!

Jeff Tracy stood on the balcony that looked out over the swimming pool and the views of the vast, sparkling ocean beyond. He breathed in the salty air and listened to the wheeling sea birds as they circled high above, keening to each other before heading out to sea to look for food. The glimmer of a fish below the surface would send them hurtling downwards like a guided missile, then up they'd come, trailing water that sparkled like diamonds in the sun, back into the blue-white sky to swallow their catch on the wing. Meanwhile, gulls heckled sharply, fighting over scraps on the beach.

Wait a minute...those weren't gulls.

They were the dulcet tones of his own sons having yet another heated discussion in the kitchen.

Jeff sighed gustily and rubbed his hands over his cheeks. The day had only just begun.

oOoOoOo

"Scott, I'm telling you! Pizza is a vegetable!" cried Gordon at a level of volume that was quite unnecessary given Scott's close proximity.

"My ass, pizza is a vegetable!" Scott retorted with a derisive laugh.

"Your ass pizza is a vegetable?" Gordon, who was perched on a stool at the breakfast bar while Scott refilled the coffee machine for the third time, snickered loudly. "Hey, guys, who wants a slice of Scott's ass pizza? Extra cheese!"

Scott was not amused. "Listen, Water Boy, pizza is in no way a vegetable! I don't know where you get your ideas from, but that is possibly one of the lamest."

Brains, who had only come to the kitchen for a cup of sodium bicarbonate for some experiment he was conducting, chipped in. "Uh, Scott, Gordon is partly right. Uh...American Congress passed a law in 2011 that, uh...said the tomato sauce base was enough to class it as a, uh...vegetable so that it could continue to be served in schools as part of the, uh... school lunch program."

"Partly right? I'm totally right," Gordon scoffed.

Scott looked up. "Yeah?"

Brains nodded. He looked very serious behind his big blue-rimmed spectacles, and for some reason today he was wearing a bow tie, which added to his overall aura of intelligence.

"If Brains said it, it must be true," prompted Gordon.

"Sounds fishy to me," Scott muttered.

"I bet the kids were pleased with the decision," Gordon grinned. "I know I would be. Who wants to eat a plate of soggy carrots when they can have pizza?"

"Sounds like American Congress had its arm twisted," Scott said, thumping the coffee machine with his fist. "As usual."

"Pizza totally rules," said Gordon. "That's the one thing I hate about living on an island. We can't get pizza delivery."

"My heart bleeds," drawled Scott.

The coffee machine began gurgling robustly, and as if by magic Virgil appeared. He already had his empty mug clutched in his hand, ready to grab the first cup of freshly brewed caffeine as soon as the machine had finished.

"I could hear you guys yelling from right the way down the corridor," he muttered. "What's the beef this time?"

"No beef, daddio," Gordon replied, smiling with amusement at the fact that even Virgil's coffee mug was monogrammed with a curly 'V'. "I was telling the Unbeliever that pizza counts as a vegetable, and Brains backed me up, too."

Virgil scratched the back of his head. "Interesting," he said, looking anything but interested.

"Ask Dad! He might remember American Congress passing that law."

"Gordon!" said Scott, trying to get to the coffee machine past Virgil. "I don't care! Okay?"

"Uh...you'd care if you, uh...had children and you were trying to get them to, uh...eat healthily in line with FDA recommendations and then, uh...they were still being served fatty, greasy pizza in school," said Brains, gravely.

"Because they'd gotten around the rules somehow," said Gordon, suddenly playing Devil's Advocate.

"Just gimme coffee," mumbled Virgil. "I can deal with moronic verbal ejaculations a lot better when I've got coffee." He pushed Scott's arm out of the way with a blatant shoulder nudge and made a grab for the coffee pot.

"You said 'ejaculations'," snerked Gordon.

Scott leaned back against the counter with his arms folded. He looked a little pained. "Why are we even having this discussion?" he asked. "We all know that rulings and guidelines and what's good for you and what isn't good for you has been a load of crap since time began."

"Hallelujah, brother," said Virgil, pouring himself a large mug of caffeine.

"Whatever they want us to do, we do it. Whoever benefits most is always in charge of the decisions."

"In this case, the uh...frozen food industry," nodded Brains.

"Still," grinned Gordon, "if I was a kid in school I'd be pretty thrilled. Except that if I hated vegetables, then I might start hating pizza, too. If I knew it was a vegetable, I mean."

"Takes one to know one," said Virgil, waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.

"Another reason why it's good to live on an island," Scott said. "We don't have to do what everyone else tells us to do."

"Another reason why it's bad- we're stuck with each other," said Virgil, lifting his mug to his lips.

"When I have kids, I'll just make sure they eat all the stuff I know is good for them, not what anyone else tells me is good for them," said Gordon, grandly. He sat up straight and squared his shoulders.

"You'll need to find a woman first," said Virgil. "That could take a while."

"That's what you think," replied Gordon, winking.

"I don't mean a latex one," Virgil retorted.

"Cheez Whiz!" came a sudden, deep voice from behind them. Startled, they all turned as one in the direction of the voice to find Jeff standing in the kitchen doorway with his arms folded in much the same way as Scott, who instantly unfolded his own arms when he saw how much he mirrored his father's stance.

"What's that, Dad?" asked Gordon, slightly nervously, as all eyes fell on Jeff.

"Cheez Whiz." Jeff repeated, and then he spelled it out for them as he came into the kitchen, having spied the fresh pot of coffee that stood steaming on the counter. "That should tell you everything you need to know about the food industry of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. If it were up to them, we wouldn't have eaten anything in its natural state. Everything would be sliced or diced with a ton of added sugar and salt, full of God-only-knows-what chemicals and preservatives- rat poison most probably- coated in bread crumbs or batter, squeezed into tubes or packaged in plastic containers, costing three times as much as when it first came out of the ground- when it was already full of all the goodness and vitamins that Nature intended."

"Said the guy who used to eat astronaut food," Scott murmured. He exchanged a furtive look with Virgil, who began reluctantly edging away from the coffee machine as Jeff approached.

"Uh-oh," muttered Gordon, sliding off his seat. "Dad lecture."

"That was the good thing about raising you boys on a farm," Jeff went on, oblivious to that fact that his sons were all heading quietly for the door behind him. "You ate fresh produce straight from the ground, and almost all of your meat was freshly butchered on the day. You got your daily dose of vitamins and minerals completely unadulterated and untampered with by human hand or factory machine. Yes, sir."

"Why do I feel queasy all of a sudden?" muttered Gordon, sidling around the end of the breakfast bar, closely followed by Brains, who was clutching a box of sodium bicarbonate. "I might need some of that later," he added, only half-jokingly.

"Your Grandmother had never even heard of things like 'pizza'," Jeff was saying. "Pizza was something they only ate in Europe. As for French fries, well they were self-explanatory. No, you boys ate good old meat and potatoes and home made apple pies with apples picked straight from the tree. No chemicals, no added salt, no added anything, except a great big home grown helping of love."

Jeff smiled to himself as there came the sound of a brief but frantic scuffle behind him. Unhurriedly, he finished pouring his mug of coffee, adding sugar and creamer and stirring slowly until he was satisfied with the colour and consistency of his brew. Then he sighed happily, picked up his mug, and turned around to find that the kitchen was completely empty. In fact, there was no sign that anyone else had even been in there at all, except for a couple of misplaced barstools and some empty coffee mugs with the last remnants of steam still curling out of them.

Jeff grinned broadly, then chuckled to himself, raising his mug in a solitary toast to no-one in particular. "Yes, sir. A great big helping of good old-fashioned, home-grown love. I've never known anything that cleared a room quicker than that!"