Chapter Text
“Chloe! Phone!”
Aubrey sounds stressed, and it’s only 8 but Chloe can tell she’s already out of patience. Emily’s probably lost her gun again.
“Got it!” she calls back, before Aubrey’s voice can climb to octaves previously unknown to humankind. “Also, tell Emily to check her laundry basket!” She hits the speaker button on the house phone, tossing it on her bed while she straightens the knot in her tie. It’s Tom again. Shit.
“Why won’t you answer my calls?” he asks, petulantly, and Chloe sighs.
“Tom, I told you. It’s over.”
“You broke up with me over text? Really, Chloe? After ten months?”
“I'm not talking about this anymore.”
“But—”
Chloe hangs up, starting as Aubrey shouts at her to hurry up and tucking her gun into her purse as she runs to join her friends.
--
“I broke up with Tom,” Chloe shouts over the noise of the wind during the drive to campus.
“Really? Why?” Emily asks from the backseat (and Chloe chooses to ignore Aubrey’s scoffed “Finally” and Stacie’s comment about “letting a piece of man like that go to waste” in favor of answering her).
“I just wasn’t in love,” she says, “and it’s my last year. I want something real, you know?”
Emily nods like she knows exactly what Chloe is going through (she totally doesn't - sometimes Chloe can't believe Emily’s actually a senior, she has to mother the kid constantly) and opens her mouth, probably to say something awkward and vaguely comforting, before she's cut off by the car jerking to a halt.
"Come on, DEBS. Amy has some top secret, vitally important information for us," Aubrey informs them, leading the way into the café, where their (possibly certifiably insane) supervisor is waiting for them.
--
"She's back in town? Oh my god, no way. I'm writing my thesis on her!" Chloe all but shrieks in her excitement, earning a glare from Aubrey and a disapproving sniff from Ms. Petri (Barden’s chancellor; she knows more classified secrets than Gretchen Wieners, and is the highest-ranking member of their entire organization. Chloe is still a little shell-shocked that she’s actually here, coming to brief them on their latest high-profile target in person instead of sending Amy like usual). "Sorry," she says quickly, doing her best to look remorseful.
"Wait, I'm confused." Emily says (of course she is), "who's Beca Mitchell?"
"Remember The Professor? We learned about him in History of Crime 115A last year? Leader of the biggest crime ring of the 90s? She's his daughter, took control of his empire when he fell off the map in the late 2000’s. Top of the game with regard to counterfeiting, portrait smuggling, and diamond theft. She was behind the plot to sink Australia in '09. One of the most notorious super-villains of the present day," Chloe rambles, just catching the "she's so cool" on the tip of her tongue when she notices the rest of the table staring at her. "Um. Yeah."
"But that's not the worst part," Aubrey adds.
"Oh yeah, I forgot!" Chloe says, widening her eyes at Emily for dramatic effect (the other girl looks acceptably terrified). "No one has ever fought her... and lived."
"Yes, yes," Ms. Petri says. "So. Beca Mitchell is back in town, and since you four are top squad, I'm putting you in charge of apprehending her. Amy will fill you in on the details. Don't disappoint, ladies! Remember: Discipline. Energy. Beauty. Strength." She disappears in a hissing beam and puff of smoke.
"Alright, bitches," Amy says, leaning forward over the table and clicking a button on the center console to bring up the infographic. "So, as you’re hopefully aware by now, Beca Mitchell, supervillain, is back in the area. Our intel suggests that she's here to meet this woman, Kommissar." Another click. "She's a German assassin, seems way too impressive to agree to a meeting with someone who would even consider sinking Australia." Amy shivers dramatically. "Anyway, the Australia-hater and her German friend will be at the French restaurant on 19th at twenty-one-hundred hours tonight. Now, this is just a reconnaissance mission; learn why she's here, what she wants with Kommissar, if she has any further plans for Australia. Do not, under any circumstances, engage with the target. You're all graduating soon, and we don't need someone dying on a mission or anything. Bad publicity, even though you all did sign liability waivers when you enrolled at Barden."
Aubrey nods sharply. "Right, Amy. No contact. You have my word."
Twelve miles away at an undisclosed location, the one and only Beca Mitchell, notorious criminal mastermind (though Jesse flat-out refuses to call her that) sits back in her chair, contemplating the blonde on the screen in front of her. “How did you say you found her again?” she asks Jesse.
“I have my ways,” he says, grinning broadly at her, though he makes a show of sobering when she glares daggers at him. “That guy with the underground speakeasy in Atlanta put me in touch. Remember, the rich guy with the all the geese in his mansion?”
“And you took his advice?”
“Come on, Beca, you need to get back out there! It’s been almost two years since you were dumped. And you haven’t been on a single date since then.”
Her glare deepens. “I was not dumped.”
Jesse raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, and Benji doesn’t like Star Wars. Please, Becaw? I put a lot of effort into arranging this. And Kommissar came all the way from Germany. At least just go - I promise if you don’t like her, I won’t force you into any movie marathons for the next month.”
Beca groans, sinking further into the chair. “Fine. But make it two months.”
At exactly 20:57 that evening, Chloe finds herself hanging from the ceiling of the restaurant, squashed between Stacie, who's filing her nails, and Emily, who won't shut up about when Beca Mitchell is going to show up and what her no-doubt sinister motives might be.
"Wait - is that the German?" asks Stacie, who has somehow magically swapped her nail file for a pair of binoculars and is now staring intently at the crowded restaurant below them.
"What? Where?" Emily says, gaze frantically sweeping downwards, all speculation about the theoretical secret cache of fine art stashed in the city a century ago by a long-dead crime lord forgotten. Chloe breathes a quiet sigh of relief.
Stacie points, and Chloe follows the trajectory of her arm to a blonde woman who, even from their position fifteen yards up, appears tall and menacing. Next to her, the brunette that's just arrived seems utterly tiny.
"Is that her?" Chloe hisses at Stacie, unable to take her eyes off the figures.
Stacie nods. Below them, the two women, after an interaction that had made the blonde one laugh, are taking their seats.
“All right,” Emily says, nodding, “surveillance. Let’s go.”
Stacie, a pair of headphones over her ears, just nods vaguely.
“What are they talking about?” Emily asks after a brief pause, seemingly unable to shut up for more than ten consecutive seconds.
“Oh, you know,” Stacie says, “killing, maiming, world domination. The usual.”
Chloe seizes the binoculars from Stacie, looking intently down at the table.
"Wow," she says. "That's Beca Mitchell? She's..."
"What?" Emily asks.
Beautiful. Intriguing. Not what I expected. "Short," Chloe says.
"Didn't you already know that?" Stacie asks, "You've read her case file, like, fifty times."
"I guess so," Chloe replies, "but it's different in person. I never thought I'd actually see her in real life, you know?"
Stacie tilts her head, opening her mouth to respond.
"Ladies!" Aubrey hisses, glaring daggers at Stacie. "Focus!"
"Sorry!" Stacie grimaces, turning her attention back toward the table below them, but Aubrey’s reprimand causes Emily to jerk slightly, bumping the entire line and knocking loose Stacie’s nail file. All four of them watch in horror as she lunges and misses, and it falls end over end and straight into the soup of one Beca Mitchell.
"Oops," Stacie says.
"So," Beca says, looking up at Kommissar. Even when they're both sitting, the other woman towers above her. (She wonders again why she let Jesse talk her into this, particularly after she had greeted the German with a supremely awkward handshake and a "Hello there, you gorgeous... specimen." The night is already a disaster, and they haven't even gotten drinks yet.) "You're an assassin."
"That's right," Kommissar says.
"What's that like?" Beca asks. God, even to herself she sounds stupid.
"Lots of killing," Kommissar replies, seeming - thankfully - amused by Beca's incredible lack of conversational skills. "Sometimes maiming. You know, like the cutting off of limbs. A hand, for example, or perhaps an arm if the pay is particularly good." Her gaze lingers on Beca's own arm, and Beca fights the urge to flee.
Thankfully, a waiter chooses this exact moment to take their orders, and Beca is spared the necessity of a response. She orders wine for the both of them, as well as the first thing she sees on the menu (soup. She thinks it might be some sort of onion, but in all honesty she's a little preoccupied with what seems to be a thinly veiled threat against her limbs).
"Um," she manages to get out, once the waiter has disappeared (this evening is going just swimmingly), "what else do you do? You know, besides cutting off the limbs of innocent people?"
Kommissar grins menacingly at her discomfort, but at Beca’s query her eyes light up. "I'm the leader of Das Sound Machine," she says. "a German collective operating in concert to create sonic mastery. It is - what do you Americans call it - a capella," she hastens to add, at Beca's blank look, and, when Beca still fails to display any sort of recognition "singing, but all the instruments are purely vocals."
She continues, detailing their world domination and subsequent victory at the World Championships of A Capella (something Beca had no idea was even a Thing, much less the sort of thing that would necessitate a World Championship), and Beca finds herself, much to her surprise and despite being generally terrified, mildly interested.
"Enough about me," Kommissar says finally as their food arrives, "tell me about yourself, tiny maus."
Beca opens her mouth to speak (first of all, she’s not that tiny), when suddenly there's a splashing noise and she and Kommissar are both wiping the city's finest French Onion soup off their faces. Digging a spoon into the sad remnants of her meal, Beca extricates - after several embarrassing failed attempts - a small, thin piece of metal, which she vaguely recognizes as a nail file. She looks up. Shit.
“Shit,” Beca says, and then several things happen at once.
Kommissar somersaults across the table and picks it up to shield the two of them while the four superspies dangling from the ceiling descend, guns out and blazing. Beca draws her own gun to return fire, making a mental note to yell at Jesse later (discreet, Jesse? Really?) as, managing to dodge the few bullets not deflected by the table, she and Kommissar make it to the relative safety of the bar.
"Listen, tiny maus," Kommissar shouts over the sounds of gunshots, breaking glass, and shouts clamoring for their surrender, "I do not think this will work out. You are very small and adorable, like a miniature elf, but you also appear to be wanted by this plaid-skirted girl group and this whole situation is a bit of a heated mess."
Beca isn't sure whether to be disappointed or relieved by this news, so she settles for her standard dodge-the-question tactic, tossing a grenade over the bar and shouting "Duck!" in lieu of a response.
"If you ever find yourself in Germany without your, how do you say, 'groupies,'" a low voice sounds in her ear, "call me." And Beca turns in time to catch Kommissar tossing her a wink before dashing off through the chaos left in the wake of the explosion. Beca stares after her for a second, stunned, before jerking to her senses and diving through a doorway to her left and down a staircase and into the basement, where, at the end of a long narrow corridor, she can see the neon green of an exit sign glowing faintly.
As the dust settles and the DEBS realize that their targets are no longer present, Aubrey calls for a halt. "Alright, ladies, regroup. Chloe, you take Emily and circle around the back; Stacie and I will go out the front."
"Wait!" Emily says, looking panicked, "what if we actually find her? Amy said no contact, remember?"
Aubrey breathes out heavily through her nose. "Emily, out of the four of us, who won't be graduating at the end of the year?"
"Me," Emily says quickly.
"And why is that?"
"I haven't earned my stripes," Emily says, "because I haven't shown bravery in the face of unspeakable danger."
"That's right," Aubrey says, and, with the air of explaining simple logic to a five-year-old, "now, don't you think the subdual and subsequent capture of Beca Mitchell might qualify?"
Emily nods, chagrined, and Aubrey takes a step back, apparently satisfied. "All right, DEBS. Head out!"
She and Stacie quickly disappear, and Chloe tugs on Emily's elbow, urging her in the opposite direction.
They make their way silently through a narrow, twisting hallway and emerge into the open air of a deserted parking lot. After looking quickly around and determining that Beca Mitchell is not, in fact, lying in wait behind the nearest car to murder the both of them in cold blood, Chloe relaxes slightly. “Okay,” she says. “You stay here in case she comes out, I’m going to go check in there.” She jerks her head at a door standing propped open next to the dumpsters, and Emily looks alarmed.
“What if she actually shows up?”
“Stripes, Emily,” Chloe says, fixing the other girl with an even and (she hopes) calming look.
“Okay,” Emily says, setting her jaw, and Chloe leaves her there with her gun drawn, not looking back as she disappears into the building.
She descends quickly to the building’s sublevel and spots an exit at the end of a long row of shipping containers. Heading towards it, gun drawn, she doesn’t notice the set of footsteps down a similar aisle to her right.
Twenty feet away, she breaks into a run, then,
“Ouch!”
Scrambling to her feet, she offers a hand to the girl still on the ground, pulling her upright before noticing the mussed brown hair, black-lined blue eyes, mouth set into a permanent scowl, and, “Fuck,” Chloe says, at the exact same time as Beca Mitchell.
“You are under arrest,” Chloe says, pointing her gun carefully at the supervillain in front of her, though the sentiment is undermined slightly by the fact said supervillain’s gun is aimed back at Chloe. “You have the right to remain silent-”
“Seriously?” Beca Mitchell asks, raising one perfect eyebrow. “You’re reading me my rights?”
“-anything you say can be used against you in a court of law,” Chloe continues, undeterred.
She trails off, and the two of them spend a good five (long, uncomfortable) seconds just staring at each other, neither willing to drop their gun first.
“Okay, so here’s the thing,” Chloe says, breaking the silence (Beca Mitchell’s other eyebrow joins the first halfway up her forehead), “I’m not really interested in dying today.”
“Yeah,” Beca Mitchell says, “same. Obviously.”
“So, I was thinking… why don’t you put your gun down?”
“What, so you can arrest me? Or, like, I don’t know, shoot me? Yeah, not gonna happen.”
“Well, technically,” Chloe says, drawing on all the negotiation tactics Aubrey has been trying (and, for the most part, failing) to impart upon her for the past three years, “you’re the criminal and I’m the cop, so technically I’m more trustworthy?”
“Maybe,” Beca Mitchell says, face dropping back into the trademark scowl Chloe is so familiar with (from the hours she’s spent studying the few photos in the library, for research) “except I was totally minding my own business on some stupid blind date, so I’d argue that this entire situation is really your fault.”
Chloe is so taken aback she lets her gun drop.
“Wait, you were on a blind date?”
“Um. Yeah?”
“With that scary German chick?”
Beca Mitchell lifts her eyes defiantly to Chloe’s. “So what if I was?”
“Nothing, I just didn’t know you were, um…”
“Bisexual, actually,” Beca Mitchell mutters, “but why in the hell would you know?”
Chloe opens her mouth a few times, but no words come out. This meeting is going absolutely nothing like she imagined it would (for starters, there’s a lot less heroic combat, ending with her, wounded but triumphant, leading a captured Beca Mitchell into headquarters, and a lot more falling over and putting her metaphorical foot in her mouth). Finally, she manages a “Wow. This really torpedoes my thesis.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m, um, writing a term paper on you. For this class? Capes and Capers, Gender Reconstruction and the Criminal Mastermind? It’s actually a really popular course.”
Beca Mitchell has the gall to look amused.
“But it’s hard,” Chloe continues, “because there are only, like, second- and third-hand accounts, because no one has ever actually met you. Seriously, do you ever leave the house? Or your evil lair, I guess?”
Beca Mitchell snorts. “I mean, Jesse would say no, but… And no one has met me until now, because I might be mistaken but we seem to be having a conversation.”
“Yeah,” Chloe says. “Until now.”
There’s another long, charged pause, but where the first was full of an awkward reluctance to shoot the other, this one is different. If Chloe didn’t know better, she’d say it was practically affectionate.
“I’m sorry,” Beca Mitchell says, and there’s a small half-smile on her face now. Combined with her stature, it makes her almost cute. “I didn’t get your name.”
“Chloe,” Chloe says, hastily tucking her gun under her arm to shake the other woman’s hand. (She’s struck by how unexpectedly soft and warm it is, and then quickly and forcibly ejects the thought from her brain.) “Chloe Beale, DEBS Sector One.”
“Beca Mitchell.”
“Yeah, I know,” Chloe says before she can stop herself. “Sorry. It’s really nice to meet you.”
“It’s really nice to meet you too, Chloe Beale,” Beca Mitchell says, and her eyes linger on Chloe’s face for just a second too long. Her smile has grown, tugging at both corners of her mouth, and Chloe feels her own lips curve upwards in response. Before she can say anything else, however, Aubrey’s shouts echo behind her.
“You know,” Beca Mitchell says, soft smile still in place, “you could just let me go.”
Chloe bites her lip. “I really couldn’t.”
Accompanied by the eyebrow quirk that she seems to have spent hours in the mirror perfecting: “Are you sure?”
The shouts from behind Chloe grow louder, Emily’s and Stacie’s voices now audible below Aubrey’s bellowing, and Chloe glances over her shoulder towards the noise. When she turns back around, Beca Mitchell is gone, a smattering of diamonds across the floor the only indication that Chloe didn’t imagine the whole thing.