Work Text:
“Good afternoon!” Blume greeted another customer entering the coffee shop.
Like routine, she raised a hand from behind the counter where she worked, put on a gentle smile, and guided the new customer to her desk to pick out an order.
“Would that be all, ma’am? Thank you for your patronage, and we’ll have your order ready in just a minute!” the gentle voice smiled and pointed to an open seat.
She had thoroughly mastered the process of greeting and taking orders, even after only working for a few weeks. Even the art of a customer service voice was no longer alien to Blume. Quietly, she moved around her station of unclaimed receipts and empty paper cups with an expert’s finesse, calling out order requests to her fellow employees. Then, when orders were ready, she softly paced towards a small microphone device more familiar to her usual occupation.
“Ramirez!” she called the customer to claim the latest readied order.
Admittedly, a job behind a counter wasn’t something she preferred, but circumstances of professionalism allowed her to bear with the minutia of the tasks she had to perform as a ‘normal’ 18-year-old girl.
“Ah!” Blume heard the soft squeak come from somewhere in the back of the shop.
Despite being a new employee, she recognized the girl coming to claim her drink. An expert in being in the know, Blume knew ‘Ramirez’ had to be linked to the Ramirez security company – a name she occasionally worked with in her main job – but had recently gone down after the tragic loss of its CEO. Company drama wasn’t something Blume cared much for, but rumors had it that they recently decided to hand the business to Ramirez’s only daughter rather than any executive or subsidiary head.
Though, Blume could hardly believe them to be true when the Ramirez she knows was…
“Ramirez! Your order is ready, Miss Ramirez.”
“I-I’m here!” A slightly disheveled girl looking to be Blume’s age approached the counter.
The young girl nearly strode towards Blume with her black-fur handbag unzipped to haphazardly contain a dozen sheets of papers in one hand and a handful of notes and coins to pay in the other.
“S-Sorry… I needed an extra 34 seconds to finish writing the last paragraph of my essay and was under the assumption that my order still had 1 minute and 22 seconds to be ready,” ‘Ramirez’ muttered from behind her thick-framed black oval glasses and a greyish-brown cap that threatened to tilt off her light-brown hair that was tied in a low ponytail.
Blume giggled. “I know, it’s just–”
“–company policy is all” Ramirez finished her sentence, whose face then looked startled as if she wasn’t meant to say that out loud.
“I don’t say it that often, do I?” the girl behind the counter genuinely asked. “Here.”
“It’s only the 4th time we’ve had the same conversation… Not that I kept count!” the student looked like she wanted to wave her hands into a cross, but remembered she held the cup midway and so only frantically chopped the air. “I’m not trying to be weird– okay, I’ll just go.”
“You’re not,” Blume interrupted with a gentle tone. “It’s nice seeing you this often.”
“You remember?” Ramirez asked with both surprise and horror in her voice.
“Of course. Everyone else is chatting about celebrating the new year, yet here you are, writing paper after paper. Is there a professor I should talk to for you?” she teased.
“No, no! It’s fine…” Ramirez almost sounded too cute to Blume. “It’s all personal stuff, anyway. Miss Acey would do the worst if she found out I’m getting help…”
“Acey?” Blume’s voice turned cold for a moment.
“Oh, she’s my… instructor,” Ramirez replied. “Private… not my normal ones. She means the best, and I’ve just… been preoccupied to catch up.”
“Oh, is that so?” Blume put on her casual employee voice once more. “Seems cruel to work on New Year’s Eve though.”
“Aha… I guess so…” The employee wanted to pity the girl at this rate.
A thought crossed Blume’s mind as the conversation died down. In truth, she wasn’t just here to work a coffee shop cashier job this New Year’s Eve, but that was a fact she didn’t tell anyone. Even still, her other reason had turned up no results so far. The quiet girl gathered the courage to speak while tapping a few buttons on the monitor and readjusting her square glasses.
Maybe tonight was the one night where she could actually live a normal life.
“Say, Ramirez, was it?” Blume asked, this time with a softer voice revealing her non-employee self.
“Uh, yes? Oh no, did I forget the change? I thought I held the exact amount to the cent–” Ramirez reread the receipt.
“Ah, no. It’s not that…” She was nervous, a rare thing. “I was wondering… are you free tonight? Sorry if this came out of nowhere.”
“Hm?” the student popped her head out of her bag. “I think I should be…”
“Wanna see the New Year’s fireworks from the Thames? After I’m done with my shift, I mean.”
“Wait… you mean?”
“It’s a date. If you’re up for it, of course.”
Coffee cup half empty, the girl named Ramirez remained stuck processing the request for exactly 23.5 seconds. A few times, she flipped through the 37 papers she stuffed in her bag, some diagrams of ships and a map of the city. When she came to after checking the clock and mentally measuring the hours left, she blinked approximately 6 times before mumbling, “I can… do that.”
“Great. Enjoy your coffee, ma’am!” Blume put her customer service smile back on. “And see you soon, Miss Ramirez.”
It was almost too easy to startle the poor girl that Blume wanted to apologize, until she heard her squeak, “It’s Melania.”
“Hm? Sorry, Miss Ramirez, I didn’t catch that. Your heart was beating so loud, I–”
“I said, call me Melania!” The flustered student then ran back to her table.
Blume felt pleased with herself after that.
“Well, look at you, miss ‘support staff’ who allegedly doesn’t do talking,” another employee said from behind even Blume’s counter.
“Oh, hello Miss Flannel,” she greeted her colleague. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Quite the contrary. You can let me take over for a while,” the assistant manager instructed with a friendly Aussie accent. “It’s the least I can thank you for covering so much of Bunny’s hours. I just couldn’t say no to that cute face asking to spend the holidays with her mama.”
“Oh, you don’t have to…” Blume tried to hide her smile with a nonexistent scarf.
“Nonsense! Go meet your college lass while I call in a friend for the evening shift.” Desert Flannel twirled the pink Tamagotchi toy around her finger as she took Blume’s hat and put it on herself. “I was wondering if you even did normal girl stuff and started to feel guilty holding you here. Now, go before I change my mind!”
“Thank you!” Blume politely bowed before excitedly running off towards the employee changing room.
Melania said she had a minute left on her essay, but knowing her, she’d likely still be busy enough for Blume to catch her.
Exiting through the authorized personnel door, Blume looked around the part of the shop opposite her cashier station. Despite knowing the table numbers and where she presumed Melania would’ve been busy doing her essays, she surprisingly couldn’t spot the college girl. Stumped, Blume absentmindedly twiddled on the tiny blue cornflower on her headband and double-checked how she looked in her casual cream and brown getup.
Focus!
Blume snapped herself out of it and wandered around, hoping to find her date.
“Oi, did you see this!?” A customer beside her asked while showing a friend a red card.
“Shh!” Blume chastised.
“Sorry!” Yet, they continued. “I found it outside minutes ago!”
“No way!” the younger friend gasped. “Acey’s here on New Year’s Eve!?”
“Hey, not that loud, Sotheby!” the one wearing sunglasses indoors sat her back down.
Wait… Acey?
“It’s a calling card! Like she’s a real phantom thief!” Blume listened in as the older one explained. “It’s all over the city, apparently. Something about… stealing the New Year’s fireworks!? Woah, now that’s rockin'!”
“You think she means it? Aww, but it’ll ruin our night at the Thames…”
“On the contrary, Sotheby, I think it’ll make it even better! We gotta see what…”
Having heard all she needed, ‘Blume’ walked out of the humble coffee shop without finding Melania.
“Sorry, Miss Ramirez,” the agent on a mission whispered as she entered a dark alley. Away from anyone or anything’s detection, the shuffling of heavy cloth quietly masked the young girl’s change in professional identity. “I think we’ll have to cancel tonight. Wish I could’ve told you myself, but…”
Now dressed in an all-black uniform and a long blue scarf she wrapped around her neck, ‘Blume’ pulled out the calling card she’d secretly taken from the loud coffee shop customer.
“Secrets always hide in careless words… and I always listen carefully.”
The agent flipped the card upside down, ignoring the explicit text that just repeated what the customer loudly mentioned. Like clockwork, the hidden details she’d come to expect from the Great Thief Acey revealed themselves when she illuminated the card by looking at it towards the sun.
“It’s her, alright,” Agent Bkornblume sighed. “And just when I thought she wouldn’t put on a show for once. Fine then, killjoy…” The thick scarf covering the girl’s mouth muffled her pout.
✦✦✦✦✦
23:42 – Bkornblume stationed herself along the West bank of London’s famous Tower Bridge. Large crowds of people gathered along the Thames – something she was thankful for – which let her more easily blend in as she monitored the barges from across the river.
“All vessels accounted for,” the agent whispered into a radio device she carried. “Target has not disrupted the cargo. Continuing to monitor.” She silenced the device with a button click.
Acey… Bkornblume mentally cursed her sworn rival. In her short tenure as an agent for the international police, she would’ve never believed tales of phantom thieves to still be real. When she took the first mission to track the thief down, she almost thought it was a joke from her superiors. Alas, her first ‘official’ mission after being ‘freed’ from her unofficial work led her to the now year-long squirrel chase with the picaresque rogue in passionate red – diametrically opposed to her cool blue.
She had plenty of reasons to hold contempt for the criminal, whose modus operandi involved an irrational pattern of burglaries – only to end in her returning the stolen items as an example of their security system’s failures, but tonight was a new low she didn’t wanna admit she reached.
She got in the way of her first date!
And she’ll be even angrier if she wasn’t even gonna show–
“Queen’s beans, that her up there!?” a familiar loud girl in sunglasses caught her attention.
“It is!” her small friend pointed towards the bridge, where a nimble girl in black and red could be spotted climbing the lowest suspender. “How graceful!”
Radio static. “Agent Bkornblume, now giving chase with the target. Got a visual on Acey; currently running across the Tower Bridge suspension cables from the West side. I’m on pursuit. Requesting remote access into the North Tower, over!” The young agent rapidly communicated as she weaved through the crowd. “Damn it, Acey… so the barges were a diversion!”
There was no time to contemplate why she was heading up the tower for her plans. Blume had been chasing the girl long enough to stop questioning Acey’s true goal, only thinking of the less than half an hour she had to finally catch this girl before her planned midnight heist could be accomplished. As she ran, her radio relayed back to her how no activity had been reported on the barges where the fireworks would launch, so her bet now was that Acey had secretly wanted to enact her plans from the top of the bridge towers.
“Remote control? No, we would’ve received any prior interference…” Bkornblume mumbled as she hurriedly sifted through the crowd and onto the bridge gate, where she saw the tourist door into the towers swing open thanks to her call. “Is she making an appearance? Hijack the fireworks by making it about her? The only logical conclusion. Flair is something she pulls off well; that tease…”
“Woah, who goes there!?” A night guard, confused by the opening door, moved to block the agent. “Ack!” …before falling unconscious to a harmless zap gun.
“Be quiet, old pal…” Her radio garbled in a coded transmission. “What? He was in my way!”
Bkornblume stared up the flight of stairs.
206 steps. She’s clearly headed for the North Tower. I could catch her through the walkways…
The climb was surprisingly easy, if not tedious, for Bkornblume. Fearing she might lose track of Acey, she called up her surveillance squad to surround the tower perimeter, only to catch a blurry red shadow jump down from the rafters of the North Tower and start running across the see-through walkways connecting the two bridge towers.
“Full marks, Miss Agent!” her target shouted with a head start.
“Hey, come back here!” Bkornblume gave chase.
The path Acey ran across was a straight shot, with nothing blocking the agent’s zap gun from firing an immobilizing shot. Only, Blume knew it was never gonna be that easy as the head start her rival had gave Acey all the advantage they could ever want as a dozen clockwork rat devices were thrown at her to both take her bullets and run around her legs to cause disorientation.
All the while, from across the streetlight-illuminated glass floor walkway, her target only teased and acrobatically leapt across the distance of the road of vehicles visible from beneath them. Reluctantly, the agent knew she had to use one of her last-resort gadgets to electrically deactivate the metal mice all at once, costing her more equipment she’d hoped to use on Acey herself as well as precious time.
“An unconventional choice!” Acey laughed. “Though, who am I kidding? You made it in perfect time, Miss Agent! Just a few minutes left before the show!”
The show? Bkornblume ran even quicker ahead as she now saw the sly thief hanging upside down from a rope attached to the rafters of the second tower.
“Wait for... 5 seconds!” Acey then gave her a cheeky wink before the counterweight dropped just beside Bkornblume, and the target thief rocketed up onto the tower’s triangular rooftop.
“Damn it!” Bkornblume cursed as she tugged on the rope with no hesitation and expertly climbed it up to give further chase.
Acey was right. By now, only a few minutes remained before midnight struck and Big Ben would loudly sound her failure to catch the red rogue yet again. In her pocket, she could hear the transmission of a status report request from her superior, which she promptly ignored as time would not allow it. Bkornblume didn’t care; all that mattered was getting to Acey and apprehending her before time ran out. And, with 2 minutes to spare, she found a way out onto the roof, standing on the flat surface where a pair of windows jutted from just below the steep-angled pyramid tip where Acey sat perched on the golden zenith of the tower.
Bkornblume aimed her zap gun. “This is Agent SCH KA/7! Surrender yourself, or I will be authorized to use–”
A clockwork rat squeaked at her feet.
“Shit–” Boom.
Acey giggled. “Ah, looks like you still haven’t learned from your last assignment, Miss Agent.”
2 minutes before midnight, Bkornblume sat helplessly restrained by ropes atop London’s Tower Bridge’s roof. The agent sighed, defeated and outmaneuvered yet again, only given solace by the view she now got of Elizabeth Tower, the London Eye, and St Paul’s Cathedral minutes before the New Year arrived.
Part of her wished she just didn’t take the mission and was down on the ground with the skittish Melania, enjoying her first date with someone her age and sharing the midnight view. Even more, she regretted not contacting the fellow girl before this, wondering if she should quit the coffee shop job to avoid awkwardly meeting the college student again and needing to lie about why she ghosted her. Was she down there, all nervous and confused? Blume knew she was a pretty rigorous girl with plans and time. All this with a minute and a half left before the planned stolen fireworks would reveal what Acey’s true plan actually was.
“Aww, don’t be so glum, Miss Agent! It doesn’t suit your pretty face.” Acey hung upside down from a rope she tied to the tip of the tower, cutely poking Bkornblume’s forehead, who hid her annoyed frown behind the thick blue scarf.
“Why did you do this? Don’t you have something better to do than ruin someone’s plans!?” Bkornblume snapped and asked, unable to keep her usual calm composure.
“Oh, I do hate when plans get ruined. But that’s not what I was here for.” Acey twisted around her rope and pointed towards the barges, where the fireworks now started being lit and illuminated the River Thames in a hundred golden glows. “I actually did this for you! Now, count down a minute with me and enjoy the show!”
Bkornblume rolled her eyes and mentally started counting the last 1 minute. “59…”
“58,” Acey synced with her.
“57…”
“56!’
Strangely, something about her counting felt familiar to Bkornblume.
“54!” Acey counted louder as the crowds along the river started chanting too.
Sounds were a thing Bkornblume was quite particular about. A quiet agent, her superiors often praised her perception skills, specifically her ability to listen in when no one else would know. It was like she’d heard Acey counting numbers before but just couldn’t remember where.
“46!” The thief excitedly spun around her hanging rope.
Going nowhere with her previous thought, she now wondered what exactly Acey meant by this being ‘for her.’ Bkornblume concluded it had to be settling a vendetta. The agent had spent the last year interfering with the careful thief’s plans, occasionally foiling one part of a plot but never the whole. Acey had sounded particularly giddy today. Was she making tonight a warning to never interfere with her plans again?
“38 seconds left, Miss Agent. Louder!”
No, it couldn’t be something violent. Acey was a criminal, but nothing she ever did reflected lasting harm to individuals or even public property. The phantom thief had been careful to only ever involve herself and what belonged to the targets she had her sights on.
“30!”
“29…” Bkornblume joined her.
The agent was lost. Despite how many different missions she’s solved aside from the Acey case, she could never figure out what motive drove the rogue in red.
“22!”
“21…”
Thoughts of escaping her own restraints quietly left her as she figured she might as well enjoy what New Year’s plans the little thief had set for her, come what may of their intentionality or result.
“14!”
“13…”
Well, whatever.
“10!” Acey and the crowd chanted in their loudest voices.
“9.” “Bkornblume still just casually counted.
“8!”
Bkornblume wondered if Melania was enjoying herself down with them.
“Five.” She smiled, realizing she’d thought about that girl a lot already.
“Four!!”
“Three–”
“Two!!!”
“One.”
The Thames immediately erupted into a canvas of light and sound. Across London, Big Ben's bell could also be heard tolling. Much to Bkornblume’s surprise, the bursts of color that lit the midnight sky started with everyone’s expected New Year’s fireworks, dazzling the river below with a kaleidoscope of pyrotechnic hues. Yet, as Acey smiled beside her, the explosions were soon followed by fireworks that exploded into cursive words that spelled messages for the people and agents below to see.
“Perfect!”
“The Great Thief Acey, 100!” and;
“SCH KA/7 ♡"
The last one particularly caught Bkornblume’s attention, as she soon turned her head to face the perpetrator of the firework messages, when she suddenly felt a pair of soft upside-down lips meet hers between the thick cloth of her blue scarf.
“!!!” Despite all her training, she couldn’t help but turn just as red as the thief she pursued.
“Hehe, Happy New Year, Miss Agent!~ ♡”
Acey winked at the flustered girl before finally jumping down and standing on her feet.
“I know this is probably gonna sound a tad strange, but I’ve always liked how you kept me on my toes. Miss A– my mentor always said that a good thief should be able to adapt to unexpected circumstances while keeping a clear head. You’ve helped me learn that, and I thank you.”
“You…” Bkornblume could form no words, only awkwardly squirming around while still tied up.
“Oh, don’t worry! I had those restraints set to let you go after 5 minutes from now. We’ll both be able to enjoy the New Year soon!” Acey made a coy ‘shh’ gesture with her gloved finger to her soft lips.
Bkornblume couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed more by the humiliation of her failed situation or by how Acey’s teasing genuinely worked to get her riled up, with feelings she couldn’t identify if they were of contempt or something more mutual.
“Sorry if I surprised you there. I do genuinely think you’re cute, even after you’ve tried to catch me so many times this last year. Just thought I’d finally make that obvious from now on.” The red phantom thief pulled out an envelope with a red wax seal saying ‘A+’ from her black-fur handbag and placed it beside where the agent sat. “A more formal confession. You have to admit, it’s already working to throw you off your game plan. It’ll make our future encounters more fun, don’t you think?”
Bkornblume only rolled her eyes while hiding a smile behind her scarf, which Acey took as a generally positive response.
Meanwhile, both of them heard the sound of a helicopter approaching to rescue the agent. Bkornblume assumed her friends on the other side of the radio must’ve worried for her state and eventually found where she could last be traced.
For some reason, part of her felt disappointed this meant an abrupt end to the view they shared atop the Tower Bridge.
“Alright then, we’ll see each other next time, Miss Agent!~” The Great Thief Acey finished equipping another gadget on herself. “Who knows? Maybe we could do this again next year! I’ll make plans for us then, too ♡” Then, she lept off the side of the tower, to the agent’s shock, before a soft blur glided across the glowing Thames and landed somewhere she couldn’t see.
Was that… a date?
Radio static. “SCH KA/7!! Status report!”
✦✦✦✦✦
00:14 – Melania Ramirez meekly looked around the West bank of The Thames, searching for a person she thought should be there but hadn’t yet seen.
I knew I should’ve left something at the coffee place before I went out! If she’s been waiting here a while and I just didn’t show though, I’d feel horrible…
The girl from the coffee shop was cute, she had to admit. However, the reason she spontaneously agreed to this date was less for the foresight of the plan she set for the night and more because she didn’t expect the cool girl who reminded her of her Miss Agent crush to come out with a request so bold like that. Plus, it was gonna be super awkward if the two only met again at her work and if she chose to reject her then…
Guess I still need to work on adapting to those kinds of unforeseen circumstances… Thankfully Miss Agent has never seen me like this…
Suddenly, the memory of the bold kiss she did atop the Tower Bridge came flooding back into her mind, causing Melania Ramirez to shake like a frightened squirrel as the adrenaline of the situation finally wore off, and she nearly collapsed in embarrassment beside the river.
“I hope I didn’t scare her…” she groaned.
“Scare me how?”
Melania quickly turned from a tiny squirrel into a deer facing headlights. She and the girl from the coffee shop locked eyes, and another firework illuminated the Thames.
“Hey,” Blume smiled and greeted her. “Melania, right? I’m glad you’re still here.”
“No, no, it’s fine!” Melania waved. “I should also apologize. It didn’t occur to me that you likely meant that we were supposed to see each other before midnight – I had a task that kept me busy for 33 minutes and 27 seconds – and I probably let you down by missing the fireworks, and now we barely have any time for anything– oh, and I’m also sorry to tell you that I actually don’t–” Melania sunk down and hid her face behind her knees.
“Woah, slow down,” Blume leaned down and patted the anxious girl’s head. “I actually got caught up in something myself. Sorry, I didn’t tell you back at the coffee shop.”
“Oh, alright then…” Melania stood up straight.
“Yeah, we can make some new plans and– oh, sorry.” Blume dropped an item that Melania picked up.
“Here–” It was a wax-sealed envelope with a red ‘A+’ carved into the seal. “I thought I was the one still in university.” Melania joked.
“Oh, that’s just a thing from work.” Blume waved it off. “So, mind telling me what you like and we can go do that?”
“Hmm,” Melania thought. “I heard from a friend that Tower Bridge is actually open for visitors tonight!”
“Oh, sure thing then–”
Melania giggled as she and Blume set out for another eventful night.