Chapter Text
In the Grand Siesta between the 11th and 12th season of Blaseball, the Spies went on a lot of missions. Not as many missions as would make total sense for the length of the siesta, as the way time affects Blaseball players during siestas is… odd, to say the least. Some players found themselves struggling back into normal lives in the time they had, growing older at a variable rate. Other players found themselves laying down to sleep a few weeks into the siesta, and waking up right before the next season started, not aging a single day. More players still took the siesta in waves, conscious for only parts. Despite this though, the Spies had things to accomplish, and missions to go on. Their team was not on the Blaseball field, but that did not mean they were off the field.
As useful as solo missions were during the on-seasons, off-seasons typically consisted of more duo missions. If someone is out on a dangerous mission and suddenly is taken by the urge to indulge the Blaseball siesta, they could seriously be injured. To prevent things like this, the Agency paired their Spies up on anything more dangerous than a drop-off. Of course, the pairs weren’t the same every time. But there were pairs that happened more often than others, due to the relative skill and ‘personality alignments’ between them. Everyone had their skills, and the missions that worked best with those skills.
Alexandria Rosales can work a mission alongside just about everyone. They’re an all-around extremely skilled player and spy, and quite honestly could do most of their missions solo. But protocol is protocol, and going at it alone just wasn’t viable during the siesta. Jordan Hildebert had sort of the opposite problem, in that they didn’t pair well in just about any mission. They were a good person, as much as they were a person, but they did tend to lean a tad disagreeable. A simple mission could be turned from that to a rather complicated issue of ethics and theory, if their partner attempted to rush through with any on-their-feet plan. However, since Alex had known Jordan for the entirety of their tenure on the Spies (in fact, Jordan was the one who recruited Alexandria), they knew how to speak their language. Together the two of them were a calculated and well-oiled machine, able to complete missions with effectiveness and stealth. Plus, the conversations they have during stake-outs are typically weighted and necessary, concerning either the state of the team or general worldly theory.
Despite being an odd pair, Karato Bean and Malik Romayne were often put together for larger scale information gathering missions. If there was a high society dinner, or anything of the sort, Karato’s ability to be very distracting and yet charming enough to not be immediately kicked out gave Malik the wiggle room to sneak into the back and integrate into the kitchen. A lot of information can be gained by simply helping out with the workload of the overloaded, and xe is quite good at that. After Karato is eventually kicked out of the establishment, Malik just lets her into the back entrance. Any espionage on the people in the event is trivially easy at that point, as the type of people that are necessary to spy on in high-class restaurants tend to not notice whether or not their waiter looks quite like the skater that just got kicked out. Malik is also able to use xer time in the kitchen to actually cook up snacks for Karato and the people xe is borrowing the kitchen from. This method works very effectively, and is a key point in a lot of Spies information gathering.
If there’s a mission where something needs to be stolen, and stealth is not needed, Comfort Septemberish and Denzel Scott were the optimal pair. Since this scenario happens very frequently, the two of them work together quite often. It doesn’t matter the amount of protections, anomalous or mundane, a place has. If Comfy and Denzel decide they would like to be in a building, they are capable of getting into that building. Denzel can walk through levels of security like they’re meant to be there, with no one even trying to stop them. Comfort can walk through pretty much anything, with everyone trying and failing to stop them. The reason this pair works together so well, instead of just on their own, is that Comfort tends to get caught up in the excitement of breaking and entering, and simply grab the first thing that they believe to be the objective. Sometimes, they are right on the money. Other times, they’re quite far. Denzel being with them means that the mission will end up successful on the first run, and not the second. Comfort’s tendency of taking things almost right also help obscure the actual goal of the Spies. The get-away chases that ensue after the two of them leave the building are also a sight to behold. Comfy gets to exercise their skill in stunt driving (learned from mimicking high-action commercials they’ve seen) without putting anyone in danger as Denzel makes sure they stay safe.
Fitzgerald Blackburn and Math Velazquez were a common pair for any important mission. The near-silent Math and the suave noir Fitz worked perfectly in sync, no need for words between them. Despite no need for those words, they were still commonly exchanged. The two of them got along like a house on fire, and that chemistry was obvious in the quickness of their missions. They would go in with a plan, accomplish it, and then sit back to watch and make sure all the dominos were falling into place. Math calculated the moves, and Fitz helped Math enact them. A job that needed to be done ASAP tended to fall to this duo.
If the mission was magic in nature, it would fall on the shoulders of Marco Escobar and Morrow Wilson. The boundaries of magic in a world with Blaseball are very fuzzy, and very hard to define. Still, the expertise of Marco and the raw magical power of Morrow allowed them to combat many things they quite possibly were underqualified for. The two of them had very specific skill sets, and the only real overlap was the label ‘magic’. So when there’s a forcefield of pure, rippling, magical energy, those two were the ones called on. They learned from each other as well as from the missions, figuring out how to be traceless with their magic, and how to track traces from magic residue. All of that knowledge is quite useless for someone with no knowledge of how to do it though, so it stays scrawled in the margins of the spellbook Marco and Morrow share. When they’re not working together to figure out something magical, they’re arguing about the path of magical research. The end goal was always accomplished though, no matter the strife.
Son Scotch and Sosa Hayes, despite both being fully fledged team members, tended to not actually get sent on a ton of missions. The higher ups didn’t doubt either of their skills, but for reasons probably pertaining to a protective parental instinct, Son was not sent on any solo or duo missions that could result in serious harm. Sosa was included in this, not because of anything concerning age of course (because he’s a fully grown man), but because of his close friendship with Son. The two of them hung out very frequently, and it likely seemed rude to seperate them. The missions they did receive were the less dangerous stakeouts, where they often brought a few handheld video game consoles to play together. Any reports of these missions being more like sleepovers than stakeouts are clear misinformation, and have been concretely discarded.
Reese Clark and Theodore Holloway found themselves on missions alongside each other far more often than they were assigned said missions. The pair had the most fun when they were working together, and they weren’t really going to let things like ‘assignments’ get too in the way. Swapping missions wasn’t technically allowed, but the Agency didn’t stop them. Any mission they embarked on ended up far more ridiculous than it had any right to be, each of them escalating in their own way. Reese would use their disguises to charm their way into and out of frankly unbelievable situations, and Teddy would use a combination of her teddy bear form and her ‘parkour skills’ to join them stealthy. No matter what the original mission was, the retelling of it would become so ridiculous and overblown that all that was really sure to be true is the fact that they worked together to succeed, and no one even knew they were there.
The pairs the Agency tended to choose were effective, especially over the long period of time they had to operate. The plans upon plans that were in place for the Grand Siesta fell neatly into line, and not a single agent was seriously harmed in the process. Working in duos seemed to be something that might stay past the siesta, as it felt natural at that point.
When the next siesta came, three seasons later, it felt a lot less natural.
Jordan Hildebert joined the Charleston Shoe Thieves.
Karato Bean joined the San Francisco Lovers.
Fitzgerald Blackburn entered the Shadows.
Marco Escobar entered the Shadows.
Rogue Umpire incinerated Son Scotch!
Rogue Umpire incinerated Theodore Holloway!