The Secret Agent

by SecretAgentPlotTwist


An alright start to the Weekend

This feels so wrong.

Sweetie Drops was sitting outside a coffee shop, reading a book while peering through the window of a local boutique opposite her. Inside, looking through the variety of expensive dresses, was Lyra Heartstrings, today's target for close recon. A fact Drops felt very uneasy about.

Sure, she had done this kind of thing many times before. Following someone around, making notes on every phase of their routine, learning their interests, and finding the best possible way to get close to them, it was nothing new to her. And, if she was honest, it was probably the part of spying she felt most comfortable with.

Not this time, though. From the very beginning of the day, Drops had felt terrible for what seemed like a massive invasion of Lyra’s privacy. Which it was, but feeling bad for it was something new for her.

The initial searching of Lyra’s room after she headed out on her errands was incredibly awkward. Once there she almost couldn’t bring herself to go through with it, but the the thought of being spotted while scaling up the side of Lyra’s house pushed her to go in.

She’d trained to search through all kinds of rooms, from a snake keeper to a dominatrix, without so much as a slight hesitation. And yet, she couldn’t even stand in Lyra’s room without blushing like a schoolgirl.

To be fair, Lyra’s room was not exactly as she had expected it to be. Not that she really knew what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t bright pink with posters of some weird kids cartoon—not that she judged; you couldn’t in this business.

Luckily, being a professional, she managed to pull herself through any embarrassment and searched for potential points of interest.

She noted down what kind of books she had on her bookshelf—manga, comic books, and academic books, with the first two looking considerably more worn—as you could always tell a lot about a person by what kind of books they own.

Some things are subtle and require time to figure out. One of her mentors once explained to her how he used a suspect's list of favorite romance novels to craft the personality of her perfect man, an impressive accomplishment.

Others were much more easy to see. Like the big collection of mangas named things like ‘GirlFriends’ or ‘Yuru Yuri’, usually with pictures of two girls very close to each other. It didn’t really leave much to Drops’ imagination—but, then again, it also really did.

At the same time, this was only low-level deduction. It would take a lot more information to reach any conclusions. It’s perfectly reasonable for a straight girl to enjoy that kind of literature in this day and age.

Unfortunately, other than her books, everything else in her room didn’t help much. A look through her wardrobe made it evident she knew a lot about fashion, but not much else. And a look on her desktop—that luckily wasn’t password protected—didn’t help because she seemed to regularly delete her history.

Though, that did give the mind a pretty good idea of what she needs to keep deleting.

Her social media was equally as disappointing. After looking through her messages, it quickly became evident she must use texting as her main communication. She had already searched through all her posts last night on her own computer, anyway.

Apart from that, she’d rather not look too far into those weird cartoons on her wall if she didn’t need to, and finding a Lyre in her room didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know.

It wasn’t a complete waste, though. Drops uploaded a program that showed her what website Lyra visited and saved them all to get past her lack of history. And the knowledge of what Books Lyra liked should not be underestimated.

In fact, Drops had decided to get one of her more worn books from the local bookshops. It was what she was reading while tracking her in a boutique. A little comic book about superheroes and their adventures, nothing too exciting.

She’d prefer her to be into books more along the works of Eric Hobsbawm or Jared Diamond, as she’s already read most of theirs. But she couldn’t complain too much.

She had followed Lyra round most of her errands, keeping close enough to get a good look at what she was doing, but never too close to risk her being seen. Hence why she was sitting across the road from her.

While you’d expect her not to be able to see Lyra from such a distance, Drops’ Sunglasses had a zoom function that made observing very easy. Which was a relatively low-cost tech that could be obtained without a fuss for this priority mission.

Drops made a note on what kind of dresses she was looking at. While, as stated earlier, Lyra’s wardrobe and fashion sense was impressive, her clothes were all relatively low cost and had a more casual look. The clothes she was looking at, on the other hand, were some of the fanciest clothes in the store, and it was already a quite up-market shop.

Drops had originally believed it to be just window shopping. But as time went on, and Lyra continued to look through them, holding onto some but shaking her head at others, painfully looking at the price tags, and constantly shortening her selection, Drops questioned that assumption.

Lyra must have some kind of special occasion she needs a dress for coming up soon, thought Drops, believing that to be the most likely answer.

Lyra, for her part, had no idea she was being followed. Drops could easily see the unintentional hesitations or panics people get if they believe someone's watching them.

Drops, from an objective point of view, was on a roll as far as scouting was concerned. But her success did nothing to help the growing pain in her chest. There was part of her that wanted nothing more than to run away or go over to Lyra and beg for forgiveness. A part of herself she hated.

She needed to distract her mind from those thoughts quickly. Unfortunately, the ‘book’ she was reading didn’t take much of her concentration.

Something to eat, maybe? That was probably her stomach talking. She had forgotten to eat any lunch during the recon activity, and it was finally starting to catch up to her.

“Menu, madam?”

Drops looked away from the boutique to see that a menu had been placed in front of her when a waiter walked past. With a smile, she picked it up and started scanning through it. At least she did, until she realised something.

Wait, Costa doesn’t normally have hand out menus... or waiters.

She looked up, immediately greeted by the smug smile of a man sitting on the opposite side of her table. Middle aged, but still visibly athletic, he looked incredibly well dressed in his black suit, black tie, and sunglasses, and sat as smugly as he smiled.

“Hello, Sweetie Drops,” he said with a charming tone.

“Fast Glider?” She said, initially confused but quickly turning angry. “What on earth are you doing here?”

He chuckled. “Is that how you speak to your old mentors now? Honestly, you rookies lose all respect once out on the field.”

“What on earth are you doing here, sir.” Drops asked, more firm this time.

“Much better.” He shifted his body, getting more comfortable in his seat. “There’s no need to worry though. I’m not here to check up on you or anything. We simply don’t have enough agents to send one every time you make a mistake.”

Drops narrowed her eyes.

“Relax,” he chuckled, “I’ve got my own mission here. I just happened to see you keeping an eye on that girl—” he motioned towards the boutique behind him “—and decided to say hello. Not exactly mission protocol, but when have we ever let that stop us.”

Drops let out a breath, easing up a bit. It was unlikely the higher-ups would get such a skilled operative to keep an eye on her, and it’s hard to believe she wouldn’t have noticed him all this time.

“Alright,” she conceded, “I apologise for my quick judgement, sir.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re in the middle of a stressful mission, a ‘home mission’ tends to be. It’s perfectly reasonable to feel a bit on edge, especially as you’re doing it so young.”

Drops raised an eyebrow. “You’ve read my mission statement?”

“And your report,” he added. “The bit about you punching a teacher really got me laughing. I’ve never heard such an event that was so ‘Sweetie Drops’.”

She let out an embarrassed sigh. “I couldn’t help it. We’ve drilled those moves so many times—on occasion, without me knowing before hand—that it’s practically second nature to counter when someone throws me a punch.”

He shrugged. “That’s to be expected. I had to infiltrate a play of Macbeth recently. And I tell ya, the amount of time I almost blew my cover by saying the next line, it was embarrassing.”

Drops let out a little chuckle herself. “Is that an attempt to make me feel better about my English lessons?”

“Something like that,” he admitted. “But it’s also because you’re one of few people who won’t judge me for it. Not completely out kindness mind you, but out of never being in a position to judge.”

“It would seem that way,” she sighed.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. You’ll soon be the one judging people for all their rookie mistakes. We did nominate you for ‘recruits with most potential’ for a reason, and you won it for the same reason.”

“Yes, because I’ve got ‘above average skills’ but can’t ever do a job without messing up at least once. Most ‘potential’ is never the title people want.”

Fast glider gave her an unimpressed look. “Trust you to take a reward in the most self-deprecating way.” He thought for a second, but quickly returned to Drops. “You remember your third unobserved mission, while I was still your mentor.”

She responded with an inquisitive look, but complied nevertheless. “Yes, It was meant to be a simple low-level arrest mission, but the culprit turned out to be part of an underground group.”

“Exactly, that mission quickly turned into something you were in no way prepared for. But instead of getting out and letting someone else handle it, as we had advised, you worked through it.”

He leaned forward. “You came back with a broken leg, cut lip, and more bruises than I could count, but you also arrived with him in custody. And do you remember what I said to you?”

“‘What the bloody hell happened to your face?’”

“Yes, but I also said that ‘you did an amazing job out there’, because you did. At the very least it cemented the idea in my mind that you had great things ahead of you.”

“And the idea in many people's minds that I was too reckless for my own good.”

Glider Frowned. “Have you always been such a mood killer?” He sat back in his chair. “Throw yourself a bone for once, assuming you won’t just leave it because you’re ‘not good enough’.”

Drops fell silent, lowering her head slightly. Her eyes began to linger anywhere but her old mentor, who, for his part, seemed perfectly happy letting the silence linger. But, eventually, she managed to force herself to restart the conversation.

“So,” she said, “why did you read my report in the first place? I wouldn’t think you have the time to keep up on your old students.”

“I don’t. I would say I made a special exception for you, but that would be a lie. In all honesty, my mission is also based here for now, so I thought I should keep up with other missions going on alongside me. You never know when you might need back up.”

“And it just happened to be me, one of your old students?”

He nodded. “Not too surprising. I’ve been a mentor for a very long time.”

“Indeed,” Drops admitted. “What mission are you working on?”

“Nothing too special, just tracking down the Sirens.”

Her eyes Widened. “The Sirens are here?”

“This town is where I’ve tracked them to, yes.” His tone turned more serious. “I found a restaurant near here filled with people under the siren's spell. With some luck we’ll finally be able to stop our biggest ever security threat.”

Drops had gone stiff. “T-That’s easier said than done. We’ve been after them since the organisation was set up.”

“Tell me about it.” He sighed. “Don’t worry though, they’ll probably be in a different town by the end of the week. It’s very rare for them to stay in the same place for long.”

He started to lift himself up from the table. “But good luck with your investigation. Hopefully you’ll find all you need to know about your target. Who are you following, by the way?”

She hesitated slightly. “I’m performing recon on Lyra Heartstrings.”

Fast Glider raised an eyebrow, giving her an inquisitive, if not a little surprised, look. “Lyra Heartstrings? But your report said she… ah.” He gave her a sly smile and a wink. “Say no more, I gotcha.”

Drops blushed. “Sir, I’m only doing what was recommended on my report. I want you to know I’m being completely professional about this mission.”

He Laughed. “It was indeed recommended to get close to her, but I believe they were thinking more along the lines of an easy initial friendship that bypassed the need for recon.”

Drops fell silent. The only thing her body could do was brighten her already red face.

“Again, relax,” he said with a smile. “This is your ‘home mission’. No one is expecting you to be perfectly professional about everything. These missions may be about severing personal ties, but they’re just as much about giving you some closure.”

He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Which is something I would strongly recommend you get, as those who don’t always come to regret it.”

He used the same hand to pat her back. “Careful though, if the Sirens are indeed connected to your investigation—which I highly doubt—you’ll be off the case faster than you can say ‘With them they think on? Things without all remedy’.”

“‘Should be without regard: what's done, is done’.”

“Exactly.” Fast Glider gave her one last encouraging smile before making his way down the street.

Drops watched him as he left, but stayed quiet.

“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” he called back, “just try not to beat anyone to a pulp this time.”

Drops’ gaze lingered on Fast Glider for a bit longer as he walked out of sight. Once she was sure he had gone, she let out a heavy sigh.

She wanted desperately to take a couple minutes out just to think everything through, but she forced her attention back to Lyra, who was walking out of the bouquet with a newly purchased black dress.

Drops for a second thought it good luck that she hadn’t left before the conversation ended, but quickly realised that Fast Glider had most likely done that intentionally.

As Lyra walked down the street, Drops knew that if she wanted to follow her, she’d need to move quickly, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to.

Fast Glider had been right, after all. The only reason they recommended getting close to Lyra was because it would be quick and easy. This wasn’t quick or easy.

Not only that, but she didn’t even have to get close to Lyra, it wasn’t an order. There had even been other recommendations, it’s not like getting close to Lyra was the be all and end all of plans. Others were available and were, most likely, more advantageous.

That report had just been a huge excuse, an excuse to do something she didn’t even want to do. To do something she shouldn’t want to do. She’d always known that spy work would require many, many sacrifices. And right now, her friendship with Lyra was one of them.

So, she let her walk away. Out of sight and out of mind.

Glancing back at the boutique, Drops noticed someone. Rarity. It would seem, while looking at Lyra, she completely missed that one of Sunsets friends was working there.

More importantly, she missed an opportunity.

Placing the comic book straight into her bag, she stood up and made her way over. Agent Sweetie Drops was filled with determination and, for the first time today, a plan that would point her in the right direction.