Chapter Text
Their organization prides themselves in being able to complete any job. With over a hundred different Fae secretly employed on their payroll, they can use their abilities to accomplish things beyond that of even the most skilled human; while centuries of experience allow them to assign the best person to the job. Have an impossible construction deadline to meet? No problem; a little devil’s magic works wonders. Need someone tailed or a priceless artifact stolen from someone who has extremely tight security? Even they would have trouble catching ghosts and shifters. Have an important document that has to be delivered without risk of falling into the wrong hands? Trust the djinn to get it done. Need someone’s mind changed or seduced to create a scandal? No worries; no one can resist the charms of their sirens. Except…
Bella feels like banging her head against the table as the latest siren sheepishly reports her failure. It was supposed to be an easy job. Their target is reportedly an idiot, a man whose face and family wealth are his only good assets. Since he already had enough of his own scandals, she wasn’t quite sure why their client would bother hiring one of their agents, but their mysterious client was quite insistent that he would consider the job complete, so long as their target was caught in bed with one of their Fae. It all had felt a little strange, but she isn’t one to question the rich’s habit of throwing money at an easy job, except…
Except their client had either lied or had really dropped the ball in gathering the intel he’d given them for the job, because while he called the target a fool, fools didn’t have wards preventing them from using their charms, plastered all over their house. They didn’t have highly trained professionals pretending to be regular kitchen staff or gardeners. Fools wouldn’t be able to sabotage their agents even without all that, with the same ease as if they were simply breathing.
So far, the five operatives she had sent all failed, most of them before they even had a chance to properly approach the target. While she had to admit that the first one had only been a mid-level siren, after her failure and the realization that the job wasn’t as easy as the client had led her to believe, the rest were all high-level agents, with many years experience under their belts and a perfect track record. Until now.
“Sorry,” Melody apologizes, the siren hanging her head in shame. “I tried to make our meeting natural, but somehow…”
“It’s alright,” Bella sighs, reining in her frustration, “It’s not your fault; it’s this cursed job.” Although she hates the idea of admitting failure, perhaps it was time to cut their losses and just refund the client. Actually, in all fairness, she could probably argue that they should at least keep the down payment, after wasting so much time on what was obviously bad intel. She’s just about to pick up her special pen for cancelling jobs (this being only the third time in years that she’s using it), when a funny idea occurs to her.
“You’ve got a look on your face,” her friend and assistant, Serena, remarks, “Did you come up with an idea on how to handle this job?”
“No, not exactly,” Bella replies, a grin forming on her lips. “I’m planning on telling the client that this is a failure; he can hardly complain when he obviously misled us on the whole thing. No, I just thought it would be a fun prank to give the job to the newbie before we cancel it.”
Melody frowns, “You mean Angel?”
“No, not our department’s newbie, I was referring to the company’s newest recruit,” Bella clarifies, her grin threatening to split her face in two.
The two other sirens exchange shocked expressions. “You can’t be serious. He’s completely clueless! I’m not even sure he understands the meaning of the word, ‘flirt’! You know how horribly he will botch the job,” Melody points out.
“Besides, he’s part of the Recon department,” Serena adds, “Won’t we get in trouble for messing with another team’s newbie?”
Bella flaps her hand in dismissal, “They steal our newbies’ effects all the time as a joke; turnabout is fair play. And that’s the entire point; wouldn’t it be hilarious to see him fumble his way through the job? Since we’re planning on dropping it anyways, it’s not like he could make it any worse. So we’ll just have a little fun for a bit, then when he gets flustered, tell him it was all a joke and formally close the request. Simple.”
The other two sirens exchange glances again, obviously certain that there had to be a flaw in this reasoning, but at the same time, just as curious to see how it would turn out. In the end, they say nothing and eagerly follow behind Bella as she heads to the newbie’s usual resting spot when he was between jobs.
The room they enter appears empty, but Bella is pretty certain that he should be here. She has to admit that for a rookie, he is pretty good at his normal work, completely invisible even to an experienced Fae like herself.
“Hey, Yuder, we have a job for you,” Bella announces aloud, scanning the room. If it turns out he’s not actually here, I’ll feel so ridiculous, she thinks.
For a moment, there is silence, then a shadow detaches itself from the wall and slinks down to join them. A black cat stretches himself in the sunlight, before his form ripples, becoming that of a young man with cat ears and a flicking tail. He eyes the sirens, curiously, “What sort of job?”
“Oh, don’t worry; it’s a very simple one, something suitable for a rookie like you,” Bella assures him, eyes gleaming with mischief. She hands him the job slip, watching him read the paper, methodically, expression not changing even though she knows he has to be surprised by the contents.
“Isn’t this a red job?” Yuder asks after a bit. Being a rookie, he hasn’t had many jobs yet, but as part of the Recon team, they’ve all been black jobs, mostly reconnaissance, with the occasional object ‘retrieval’ thrown in. Red jobs at a bare minimum require interacting with humans (something Yuder isn’t very experienced with) and often involves seduction (something Yuder knows absolutely nothing about). Even more experienced members of his type of Fae rarely get involved with red jobs, and usually that was for infiltrations that require more than just pure stealth. “This isn’t my normal sort of task.”
“No,” Bella agrees, “But, well, this one is so simple, it seems like a very good opportunity for you to get some experience in a different field.”
Yuder frowns. The siren keeps insisting this is a simple task, but unlike the rather straightforward instructions for a black job (observe who this target meets over the next three days, record what occurs at this site on the 15th, retrieve this artifact from that human…) the only instructions included in this job state only that he has to get his target caught in a compromising position. Whatever that means. “But I don’t understand the instructions.”
“Oh it’s just an open-ended seduction job,” Bella explains, “No particular requirements; the client just wants us to secure the target.” When this seems to clear absolutely nothing up, she sighs and adds, “You just have to sleep with the target, okay?”
“Oh.” Yuder nods. Bella is right, that does seem like a simple enough task, given his skill set.
“What are you three up to?” Kanna scolds, the Simurgh making the three sirens jump as she lands, “Why are you trying to get Yuder to do one of your jobs?”
“It’s fine Kanna. It’s just for experience,” Yuder assures her, pocketing the job description.
Kanna frowns, “Yuder, it’s a red job.”
“I know.”
“That means seduction. You don’t do seduction.”
“I know. Bella explained it to me.”
Kanna raises an eyebrow, wondering what ‘explanation’ she just missed.
“Now excuse me; it’s already late evening, so this would be the best time to get started.” Yuder shifts back into his cat form and with several quick bounds, leaves the three sirens and the Simurgh watching him leave with varying degrees of bemusement on their faces.
This… is not going to end well. Kanna internally sighs. She wants to scold the sirens some more, but they have wisely taken this opportunity to scatter in all different directions. She supposes she might as well wait for Yuder to return and assess damage control when he does.
A black cat wanders up to the estate’s impressive wall, reflective eyes studying the defences. The locked wrought iron gate presents no obstacle at all; the bars are plenty wide enough for him to wiggle through without any effort. With the darkness of night as an aid, his black form is just another small shadow moving between the cameras and down a long driveway lined with invisible wards and alarms, their spider web structure leaving the sensation of gossamer against his skin as he passes. Security guards patrolling in pairs, sweep the area, but he dodges them all, making it to the side wall of the main house.
The wall is smooth and uncluttered by vegetation, impossible to climb for a normal cat, though hardly an issue for a shifter, especially one of Yuder’s skill. If anyone had been looking, they would have seen a vaguely cat-shaped shadow surging up the side of the wall, the amorphous form shifting and changing on a micro scale to grip and push along the fine texture of the brick. The third floor window is shut, no doubt sealed in the humans’ minds, but the gaps between are still large enough for the shadow to ooze his way inside, resuming his cat form as soon as he hits the floor, for faster mobility.
There are cameras inside as well, along with motion sensors to trigger the hall lights, but with his abilities, they are no more difficult to avoid than any of the other previous obstacles. Finding his target’s bedroom doesn’t take much longer, either, as it is the most densely warded room in the house, meaning that it is easy to find. His target is already asleep, making his job all the easier. While he is still not certain what this is supposed to accomplish, it is not his place to question his seniors, who are all much more experienced and knowledgeable than he, especially in this area. And so, without further ado, he crawls under the sheets beside his target and promptly falls asleep without changing form.
Mission successfully accomplished.