Title:Blending In
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: Generalish
Length: 1600ish
Content notes: None
Author notes: stand-alone bit of spies!au, pretty early, Clef and Emeraude and Umi.
Summary: "I'm just not sure that Umi has ever, in her entire life, known the meaning of 'subtle'."

"Ah, but I didn't say she needed to be subtle. I said she needed to blend in."

oOo

Clef wandered out just in time to hear the end of the briefing, after making sure that his people had all the right equipment ready to go when it was needed.

"Okay all of you, listen up, we have our assignments ready to go out - you will find them in your email in a moment, but as an overview, team A will be infiltrating the private rooms of the target, team B will be waiting outside the premises if back-up is necessary, and team C will be attending the party as guests, blending in with the background of the event and running quiet interference if anyone looks like they're heading for the private half of the hall. Understood?" the Director looked down at all her agents, and smiled sharply as they all nodded back at her - and ignored the quiet 'huh' Clef couldn't help making.

He waited until the twelve agents were reading though their instructions, with an eye for the three still-rather-new agents who were split between the three teams. "Did you just put Ryuuzaki Umi in the team of people meant to spend the evening 'blending in'?"

Emeraude glanced at him, her lips twitching up. "Are you worried, Clef?"

"I'm just not sure that Umi has ever, in her entire life, known the meaning of 'subtle'."

"Ah, but I didn't say she needed to be subtle. I said she needed to blend in." Emeraude's eyes were sparkling in a mischievous manner he knew far too well when she had trouble on her mind. "You haven't seen the guest list for this party. I think she'll be fine."

"...Is this some fancy party for rich people, then?" he said, with a sigh.

"Rich or influential or just very, very pretty."

Well, Umi had at least two of those down - her family background wasn't much of a secret, he didn't want to know what she personally had stuck in the bank, but it was sure to be enough to qualify. She just had that 'influential' one to get down - and any agent of this organisation was going to get there pretty fast if they managed to make a career of it.

Being recognisable, however, wasn't going to help with a career in espionage.

"Well, I'm sure you'll see all of them in a couple of hours when they come down for equipment check-out - I did give team C the last slot, so they can take their time picking outfits." Emeraude sparkled at him again. "You will be overseeing their outfitting, as normal, won't you?"

Clef eyed her. "I thought we were friends, but you seem determined to make my life difficult," he muttered.

"Well, it's entertaining, though when you make it so easy it's not much of a challenge..." Emeraude patted him on the shoulder. "I'm sure she won't pick anything which would interfere with the gear you're planning on giving them all, at least, as long as you included a detailed list in the briefing..."

"You didn't tell me we were going to have fancy party clothes involved!" Clef snapped, and stomped the two paces to the balcony, looking over the assembled agents. "Team C, please see me in two minutes for a briefing on the gear you'll be getting - you need to make sure you pick an outfit that can conceal it."

He tried not to listen to Emeraude giggling as she headed back to her office.

oOo

"Seriously, though," he said, half an hour later, continuing the conversation he'd abandoned to go do his job. "It would have been useful to know we were dealing with a particular dress code."

"Well, until twenty minutes before assignments went out, I didn't know there was going to be a fancy party going on," Emeraude told him, studying her screen intently. "We thought it was to be a sit-down catered event - it would have been easy enough to slip a few people into the caterers. But the plans have apparently changed for an unmanned buffet , one person on the bar, and one person working the music."

"...Not so much opportunity for people masquerading as staff when there are hardly any staff on."

"No." Emeraude sighed. "I did ping you a 'things are changing' but only a couple of minutes before the briefing - I had to rework the team lists. Umi was originally going to be in the back-up set, for one. But I think this will work - so long as you can get things ready."

Clef shook his head. "There's not that much difference in the kit that should work for them, so long as no one's outfit is too abbreviated or too close-fitting. Uniforms are just so much easier to fit a wire under, you know?"

"Well, we have to keep you on your feet." Emeraude shot him a brief grin, then looked back down at her plans. For all the teasing, this was a deadly serious mission - hence pulling so many agents to work on it. They were trying to break their way into a particularly nasty criminal organisation, and the host of this evening's party was probably a key member. Neither of them were taking chances, but last-minute changes were a hazard of plans when they involved the particular subset of the rich and famous, who would change their minds whenever they pleased and expect everyone else to make their whim reality. "I'll get you to look these over, once they're on their way out, but I guess you need to head downstairs about now?"

"Team A should be getting to Tech in about two minutes, yes."

oOo
Teams A and B were carrying a fairly standard set of tools - equipment for breaking and entering, some for taking copies of interesting data they found, including the smallest video camera Clef had managed to work into their gear yet, and robust communications sets.

Team C, who had to make it through the evening in public, were given very different items. The best concealed communications set he could give them, and a tracker, each, generally buried in the bottom of a shoe or sewn into a collar, which they could activate if they needed to.

Beyond that, this team were on their own. But given the very different outfits the four agents had found, getting those trackers settled was the hardest part of the evening.

Umi was, of course, in something both sparkling and given to translucency about her legs - but the sequins and rhinestones attached to the bodice actually made it easier to conceal a microphone, as it meant the surface wasn't stretched smooth over skin, and the shoes she'd picked had a good inch of platform which made them very easy to fit with a tracker, and also meant the astoundingly-tall seeming heel actually didn't put her foot at a perilous angle.

She also seemed perfectly at home in her get-up, chatting away to one of the members of the team who looked rather less at home in her fancy outfit. When the tech waved her forward, she came and sat herself down on the corner of the tech desk to unstrap her shoe and hand it over - and turned far enough to grin at Clef, where he was effectively lurking in the corner of the room.

"Are you supervising, or are you just judging our outfit choices?" she called over.

"Why can't I do both?" he shot back, then sighed. Umi was hardly the only person on the team, and they weren't all expecting to be sent off with sarcasm.

"How about you come out with us for once, then you'll have to pick something out and we can judge you?" Umi asked, beaming, as she knew that wasn't going to happen.

"I don't do fieldwork, remember?" he said, reflexively, though he knew that she knew - knew pretty much everyone in the room knew. "Not anymore. I'm not dressing up to go to any fancy parties with you."

"What, not even outside of work? Alas." She made the fakest of sad faces. "Here I was, about to ask you to go to a thing my parents are hosting next weekend-"
"Umi."

"Fine." She grinned at him. "I bet you'd just get in my way, anyway."

"You're meant to be being background tonight, remember?" He came across as his tech on duty eyed Umi's bodice, and then handed her the microphone, muttering instructions on how to wear it. "You're not meant to be trying to do anything I should get in the way of."

"Just distracting anyone who wants to go upstairs. Or at least, making sure they only go the places we want them to upstairs. I can't think how you could possibly get in the way of that, no," Umi murmured, and for a moment - but she was like this, when she was excited before a mission, teasing and bright and excited. He shouldn't take it to heart.

He shook his head, and took the hopefully-invisible earpiece from the tech, tilting her head to the side so he could press it carefully into place. "Just be careful," he told her, seriously - and then he looked about at the other three agents. "That goes for all of you, be careful tonight. You will be our most vulnerable agents, on this mission."

"I promise," Umi said, but her eyes were dancing with the same kind of mischief that had lurked in Emeraude's eyes earlier.

He eyed her, but what more could he do - other than stay here, and do his job? "See that you are," he muttered, and then stepped back and away, and let his people get on with their jobs, so that Umi could get on with hers.