Title: a new ornament
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 2500 words
Content notes: nothing really
Author notes: Spies!au stand-alone snippet, pre-relationship Umi/Clef also for trope-bingo au: fusion (this whole 'verse is a Man From U.N.C.L.E. fusion).
Summary: "…Please tell me that's a knock-off, not some designer thing," he muttered.

oOo

It wasn't unusual for Clef to be called into the office out of hours. Normally it meant something big had just happened, and Emeraude needed him to sort the fallout while she soothed any political and-or international feathers which had been ruffled. There were usually a few, given they were an independent, international peace-keeping organisation, sponsored by a hundred governments, answering - not precisely to any. But a little bit to all of them.

Today, he walked in to find a dozen or so agents already there, who also seemed to have been dragged in from their evenings off. All were in the main room, supplying themselves with tea and coffee, and looking rather bored and aimless.

Emeraude stuck her head out of one of the rooms as he passed it, making him jump. "I've sent you some files," she told him, "I'll see you in your office in ten minutes. Twenty at most." Then she vanished again, closing the door firmly behind herself.

Shaking his head, he made a beeline for his office and hopefully an explanation.

Umi knocked on the door while his computer was still booting, and sat herself on the corner of this desk when he waved her in. "So," she said, far too cheerily for ten past midnight, "what's afoot?"

"No idea yet," Clef told her, glancing away from his monitor for a moment to pull a face at her.

He looked back a moment later, suspiciously eyeing the dress Umi was in. It was full length, ice-blue and white in shimmering, translucent layers, with a lot of - sparkle. Beads or sequins or something marking out a scrolling pattern that curled lovingly about her.

"…Please tell me that's a knock-off, not some designer thing," he muttered.

"If that's what you want to think, just keep on thinking it." She grinned at him, crossing her legs, and those were some precariously high heels strapped to her feet.

"If that outfit somehow gets ruined while you're called in, I am not authorising a reimbursement for whatever obscene amount it cost," he warned, turning away before he started staring at the way the pattern called attention to her figure. Or the way you could almost see through the fabric.

She snorted. "Not my fault I was at a party my parents were holding when I got called. Anyway, I didn't buy it - I know the designer."

"Doesn't mean you won't bill us," he muttered - then his email finally came up, and he stilled. "…You should go get changed into something more, uh, durable. I think you'll get a briefing in about ten minutes."

"What, you're not going to share what's up?" She stuck her tongue out at him, but didn't try to peek at his monitor as he skim-read the half-dozen urgent messages. "I've got some clothes in my gym bag, but I've not got anywhere to hang this. I don't really want to shove it in a locker or leave it out on a chair or something."

"There's a strong chance you won't get kitted out until you're - elsewhere," Clef said, which was as much information as he could really volunteer until Emeraude had finished getting them authorisation. He flicked to the next message, never looking at her. "You can leave the dress in here, if you want - there should be a couple of hangers on the coat rack back there. I lock my office, and I won't hang my jackets over it unless I hear you've done something really foolish."

"Cool. Thank, Clef!" She bounced off the desk and shot out the room in a rush of glitter, and he made the mistake of looking up just in time to see how low the back was cut on the thing, and swallowed hard.

Forcing himself back to the computer, he pulled up the list of people Emeraude had called in, the probable list of assignments and started splitting them into groups of three-to-five. This was why he stayed familiar with all the agents they had - and kept himself up to date on fieldwork techniques so he could assess their abilities more accurately - he didn't need to stop and pull people's files to find out their specialisms. Then he opened a half dozen emails, and started priming messages.

Umi shot back in seven minutes later, just as he was grabbing his tablet and pushing up from the desk. She was in sweatpants and a hoodie now, trainers on her feet, and she shoved the probably-worth-as-much-as-a-car dress up on the coat rack like a very glittery tapestry. "Director's coming out," she hissed, and shot out of the room again. She left the door open for Emeraude, who watched Umi go and raised an eyebrow at Clef.

"I refuse to re-balance the budget when that thing gets ruined," he said, pointing his thumb back at the coat rack and handing the tablet to Em.

"I'm fairly certain we employ a team of accountants," she said, mildly, flicking through the assignments and emails he'd pulled together. "Don't I pay them to do the budget?"

"Yes, and they're all terrified of you, so they come crying to me when the books don't balance." He grinned. "They're roughly the only people in the building who realise you're scarier than I am, but then your department meeting on the budget deficit five years ago is legendary. They play clips of it to people on their first day to make sure they're appropriately frightened."

Emeraude smiled, looking all innocent, and pressed her hand to the screen to authorise sending those emails from her own account. "Well, that's why I have you," she told him, as a dozen dinging alerts went off in the next room as the assignment emails hit people's inboxes. "Plus, you type faster than I do."

Clef rolled his eyes. "Do you need transport arranging, or just kit when they hit the local offices? Also, we won't be able to run all the these assignments from here at once."

"Just kit, I pulled in a few favours for transport. They'll each have local handlers assigned for the duration, we'll run the over-arching mission only."

"…These 'local handlers', are they -"

Emeraude patted him on the shoulder. "All highly experienced and competent, I promise." She handed the tablet back, and he sighed, pulling up a new message even as he followed her out, and tried not to twitch too badly at the thought of their people being looked after by strangers. Or anyone he couldn't go check on. But it wouldn't be possible to keep full attention on six missions at once plus pulling together all the intel centrally, and he knew it.

It still made him twitch. (He had control issues. He knew he had control issues. He was, for the most part, in control of his control issues. Maybe.) At least he'd managed to stick their three junior agents in the same group, with a couple of highly experienced extras to help look out for them. Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu worked well as a team - and they were excellent at looking out for each other.

He waved them off after the briefing, and took a deep breath. Nothing he could do now but get the central data analysis set up so they could handle everything the various teams sent in.

oOo

For the next week, the dress hung at the back of his office like a glittering weight on his conscience. He could have run one op himself, surely, it would make sense to have it be the one with their bright young stars-

But then there was a rush of intel coming in, and he didn't have time to sleep or even eat for a day, then another, busy patching together pieces of information and directing the operation to dismantle one of the largest illegal arms-dealing operations they'd ever handled in one go, rooting out every last piece before any splinter groups could even think about getting started. He existed on tea and coffee and sugar cubes, and the occasional sandwich or onigiri that Emeraude shoved into his hand. She took over contact with the teams herself, so he could focus on the intel side of things alone, and why they finally cracked the organisation wide open and moved in she pushed him into his office and threw a blanket at him as he staggered towards the sofa tucked at the back.

He slept six hours before waking up and stumbling back out, heading blearily for the tea station before finding Emeraude. She was down in analysis with a satisfied smile on her face - almost all the target icons had gone green and smiley faced. (He was… pretty certain he'd had them set to turn into stars, but not quite. His memories of the last couple of hours before he'd given in were a little hazy.)

"Ah, good morning, Clef!" she chirped at him. The display said it was three in the afternoon. He glowered at her, and she just patted him on the shoulder. "You have good timing, we just got back in touch with Team Delta, and we're almost done mopping up everything."

"Got back in - You lost them?" Clef yelped, heartrate spiking. Team Delta had Umi and the others on it, because of course it did. "How did you lose them? Are they-"

"Minor injuries only, don't worry," she assured him, and patted him on the shoulder some more. "We've only got a couple of semi-serious injuries across all our agents, in fact. I'll be sending the recall for most of them in a few hours - would you go work your magic and get transport arranged? I'll send through the current locations to your account."

Clef looked up at the big screen, watching as the second-to-last icon turned green with a cheer from the team of analysts behind hem. "You don't need me going over what we've done?"

"I don't want you doing anything which involves deep thought until you've had three real meals and a full night's sleep. I'll call if I need you to, but I don't predict anything coming up."

"Okay," Clef said, taking a deep breath and forcing his shoulders to relax. "Okay. Good."

"You did an excellent job," Em told him, and pulled him over so she could press a pleased kiss to his cheek - which meant she was a lot more tired than she looked, she didn't usually get that friendly with anyone at HQ. So Clef wandered back upstairs to find enough food to make her eat some, too. When the last of their people were confirmed as en-route home four hours later, he shut his computer down, and went home.

oOo

Next afternoon, he was headed back into his office when a familiar voice called out behind him. "Hey, Clef, did you manage to keep my dress safe? I'm gonna have to bill you if it's damaged, you know."

He spun about, relieved, only for his greeting to turn into an outraged squawk - the girls were back and grinning at him, yes, but Umi was holding an ice-pack to her side.

"Have you broken your ribs?" he demanded, and Umi flapped a hand at him.

"No, sheesh, I just fractured a couple of them. It's fine."

"Fractured ribs is not a minor injury! What happened? Was it when you lost contact with us?"

"It wasn't really out handler's fault," Hikaru piped up, cheerily. "He didn't realise we were going to get bored and start looking for something to do."

"He definitely didn't anticipate us needing to enter such a deep cavern system that none of the standard communication devices worked," Fuu added. She had a bandage wrapped about her upper arm on the left side, but she was moving it, and Hikaru had a black eye.

Clef made a noise probably classified as a growl, and turned to find Emeraude already watching him. "You knew! And you didn't tell me!" he hissed. "We didn't lose them, their handler did and you didn't wake me up!"

"You'd gone fifty-two hours without sleep and there was nothing more you could have done," she told him, calmly. "Plus, I promised he could have a few hours head start before you started hunting him down."

"Who was it."

She waved a hand. "That information is on file. But I've locked it down until you promise not to do anything I'll have to fire you for."

He ground his teeth together, glaring at her, aware she was right that he shouldn't misuse all the power he had to make some poor misguided agent pay for underestimating how much trouble these three could get into - but really, really wanted to.

"You sound like a thunderstorm with a headache," Umi told him, with a laugh. She ditched the ice and came over to pull him into a one-armed hug. "Chill out, it's fine, we're fine. He pretty much moved an entire mountain to find us. I'm pretty certain he's already terrified of you, but he was a decent person."

"You're hurt," he muttered, leaning into the touch a moment. Just to be sure she was real, and alive, and back home. "All of you."

"We'll mend!" Hikaru said, bouncing up to take her turn hugging him. "But we brought you a present!"

He blinked, looking from Hikaru's grin to Umi's smirk to Fuu's twinkling, innocent smile as she stepped aside to reveal a small pile of hard-drives, and what looked like - a full server?

"They had all this stuff behind a bunch of really well locked doors, not attached to any networks. We thought you might like to take a look." Umi grinned. "And our poor handler agreed instantly. What did you do to get this reputation?"

"…Nothing you need to know about," he muttered, but they were all so pleased with themselves he couldn't even stay mad. "And your knock-off frock is fine, you can retrieve it whenever."

"Thanks!" Umi beamed at him. "I mean, I don't think it'll go well over all the bruising, so I might leave it here a while longer - I'm sure the insurance will still probably cover it in your office. I mean, it's only worth-"

"I don't want to know!" He told her, hastily, and she cackled as the three of them went bouncing out -hopefully down to medical.

Clef took a breath, let It go, and went to inspect his 'gift', trying to ignore the glimmering ghost of a dress still haunting his coat-rack. She was going to pick it up soon, or he would post it to her.

Maybe then he'd be able to stop thinking about how she'd looked in it.