Title: Precautionary
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: Teen maybe
Length: 1400 words ish
Content notes: Potential poisoning attempt
Author notes: pre Umi/Clef spies!au
Summary: All in all, it was over thirty hours since she’d slept, and she hadn’t eaten a proper meal since yesterday evening.


oOo

It was only just midday, and it had already been a very long day in Umi’s world, given it had started with a call for a somewhat impromptu mission just as she was going to bed at ten the night before. She’d had a couple of hours sleep in the car, drowsing against Hikaru’s shoulder while the senior agent who had pulled them as backup drove almost five hours north.

A couple of tense hours of clearing out an empty base where someone had been stockpiling weapons of varying kinds, making sure they had it locked down safely, and then she and Hikaru had spent the trip back writing up the report and a full inventory of what they’d found from the notes all of them had taken.

It had been eleven before they made it back to HQ, and the Director had wanted a verbal report alongside the written one.

All in all, it was over thirty hours since she’d slept, and she hadn’t eaten a proper meal since yesterday evening. None of which was helping her mood any; she needed to add better snack options to her grab-bag, obviously, and probably a travel pillow. (Hikaru’s shoulder wasn’t the most comfortable thing to sleep against.)

On getting out of the briefing, Hikaru headed off home, ready to get some rest, but for Umi the hunger was winning out over tiredness. She headed down to the little cafeteria instead, and managed to get in just as they started serving food.

She got a burger and fries, and headed out with them, back up to the office; she didn’t fancy sitting in the echoing cafeteria while it filled with people all nattering at each other about their morning. Junior agents only got a desk in the big main office, not a room of their own, but it was significantly quieter and she dropped into her seat with an anticipatory sigh, peeling back the paper wrapper on her burger.

The first bite was in her mouth when Clef’s voice snapped across the room – “Don’t swallow that!” he yelled, startling her enough she almost did so reflexively.

Mouth full, she stared at him as he stormed across the room, bewildered. What else was she meant to do with a mouthful of food?

Only he was shoving a handful of paper napkins at her, and there were worried creases about his eyes. “Don’t swallow, spit it out, now,” he insisted. “The catering firm has been compromised. Here, rinse your mouth out, fast-“

Bite of burger spat into the napkins, Umi blinked at the bottle of water he’d shoved at her, then the mug he’d grabbed off Fuu’s desk – Fuu being out of the country this week, she wasn’t there to defend it. “How?” she demanded, before taking the bottle and cracking the seal open, swishing the water inside her mouth.

Spitting it back into the mug wasn’t dignified, but then again neither was being poisoned.

“I found a link in some invoices that came in yesterday – the same intel dump which netted that weapons stash you cleared out. I didn’t find it until just now, and if they know that their servers have been compromised – and given the number of raids we sent out this morning, I think that’s a given – a strike back is highly likely. So you’re coming to the infirmary, now.” He snatched up the plate of her lunch and shoved it into a plastic bag, sealing it tight. “Come on, then.”

Umi pulled a face as he caught her arm and dragged her up – his worry was concerning, but she was exceedingly hungry and that burger had tasted so good for the three seconds it had been in her mouth. “You owe me a meal!” she told him, heading to the stairwell.

“Sure, fine,” Clef agreed, shooing her along. “Whatever. Just hurry. Please.”

He got them downstairs, handed bag of food and Umi herself over to the white-coated doctors, then Umi was pulled away into a treatment room and lost sight of him.

The next six hours were worse than the entire morning had been by some exponential factor. They wouldn’t let her eat anything in case she’d ingested anything and they needed to treat her, they wouldn’t let her sleep because they wanted constant updates on how she felt – and when she started feeling light-headed and told them so, grumpy, they refused to believe her that she was exhausted and ravenous and insisted on running a whole barrage of tests on her.

When the results of the tests on her food came back clean, it was dinner time, and they let her go only reluctantly – though one of the nurses did hand her a lukewarm carton of orange juice and a cereal bar as she stomped out of there.

Umi finished both before she even made it upstairs, and continued her stomping all the way across the main floor to the door of Clef’s office, which she thumped on with great irritation.

The look of relief on his face when he pulled it open had her biting her lip, but she focused on how bad she felt, and kept glaring. “My meal was fine!” she told him, loud enough a couple of people turned and looked – and then rolled their eyes and looked away again.

Clef took a breath, shoulders relaxing a bit. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said, which was entirely beside the point.

“I’m not okay! I haven’t eaten, and they wouldn’t even let me sleep!”

He winced, then shrugged, mouth opening. But whatever reply he was about to make got cut off by the door next to his opening up.

“Ryuuzaki? Why are you still here?” The Director asked, pausing halfway out of her office to blink at the two of them.

“Because I wanted lunch”, Umi said, bitterly, glaring at Clef. “Then Clef stole it!”

Lips twitching, the Director looked between them as Clef sighed. “…Oh dear,” she said. “Well, that was rude.”

Clef didn’t respond to that, still frowning back at Umi. “Look, if it had been poisoned, you’d be thanking me.”

“No, pretty sure I’d be complaining at you unless I was completely out of it in the infirmary.” Umi stuck her tongue out at him. “Doesn’t change the fact you owe me a meal.”

“You’ve been awake for, what, forty hours straight? I should take you home to make sure you go to bed!” Clef snapped back at her, which for some reason made the Director snort loudly enough that Clef flushed. “I’m not done yet, I’ve got some analysis to run before tomorrow’s all staff meeting-“

“Oh, take her to get some food,” the Director told him, patting Umi on the shoulder. “After all, if you’d been paranoid enough to catch the issue ten minutes earlier, she’d have been out of here and had a replacement lunch hours ago.”

“And when I turn up to the meeting tomorrow morning without anything prepared?”

“You’re at the end of the agenda, and you never pay much attention to the rest of the meeting anyway. Just do your analysis while you’re not listening.” The Director patted him on the shoulder, grinning at his expression. “Go on, you’ve been here too long anyway, and you skipped lunch. It’s not healthy. Go eat something and get some sleep, both of you.”

Clef opened his mouth, frowning like he was about to protest – then looked between the two of them, sighed, and headed into his office. “I’m turning my computer off, don’t yell,” he called back to them. “Anyway, if I’m buying you food, I need money of some kind.”

“Lots of food,” Umi clarified. “Good food.”

“Come on, then,” he said, and for the second time that day he steered her out of the room, but this time they were headed out. “What do you want?”

“…Not a burger,” Umi said, lips twisting. “I don’t really fancy one right now.”

“Well, that leaves a lot of scope,” he said, wryly, and let her lead out into the evening bustle of the streets.

#

They ended up at an okonomiyaki place, despite his protests about lack of sleep and hot plates being a terrible combination, and all in all it wasn’t a bad end to a terrible day.