💡🐇 Naughty Thoughts

꩜✓ The Littlest Spy

This bonus chapter is dedicated to Jen-Jen. Thanks for your ongoing support; and I'll try hard to get my regular updates back on track this week!

Dash Brock is a serious professional. He knows exactly what he's doing, and he doesn't mess around. He has a reputation for being a little blunt at times, but he can be pretty charming when he's in a good mood. As for what kind of professional... the people who hire him usually just refer to him as a "professional". He's a man who gets things done. For a lot of his work, he might be euphemistically described as a researcher, a courier, or a troubleshooter. He's an expert at searching through the archives of people who don't want you to see them; delivering items that are on the wrong side of a wall, or in someone else's vault; and making sure that his client's problems disappear permanently.

Basically, he's the kind of agent who isn't afraid to break things. He works for the kind of agency that is handled at arm's length through a dozen layers of shell companies, so that if anyone finds out about their work the government can wash their hands of the whole business and dismiss them as a rogue faction, or as mercenaries working for some private interest. But Dash still gets in trouble with his superiors sometimes, especially over his lack of finesse. Most recently, he got in a lot of trouble for breaking a faberge egg belonging to a Bolivian ambassador.

The reprimands he gets from his section leader after an incident like that are Dash's second least favourite part of the job. But what he really hates the most is when his partner dies. His last job wasn't a good one in that respect, either, and he's spent most of his six-month recuperation losing himself in a bottle. Now they've got a new job for him, something easier to break him into his new role. And a new partner too, who might be able to tame his reckless urges.

Isadora has never done field work before. She's a codebreaker, and a pretty good one. The closest she's been to the front lines is as an operator; monitoring an agent's vital signs, and watching him using his bodycam as well as whatever surveillance systems she can hack into. She's a skilled linguist, a natural polyglot, a poet, a programmer, and a codebreaker. She should never have applied for a more active role; but she really wanted to work with Cletus Brown, who she might just have a small obsession with. Having finally passed the written tests (easy) and the basic physical (harder, but she's fit enough from dancing and aerobics), she finally qualifies to be field support; travelling with an active agent and watching his back. Unfortunately, Brown was injured; and when she went to visit him in hospital, excited to tell him they would be working together, he said that he has been reconsidering his options, and might retire from the front lines to spend more quality time with his husband. Finding out that her crush is both gay and married was a big shock to Isadora, and she threw herself back into work to try and cope.

Now, a few weeks later, she finally gets her field assignment. She's paired with the legendary Dash Brock, who is known to have all the charisma of a real life James Bond, but without any of the sophistication. She doesn't know how she's supposed to feel about this, especially when she discovers that they are going undercover as a successful businessman and his trophy wife in order to get closer to Lorenzo Arrencani, to determine the truth of rumours that the drugs-and-extortion kingpin is moving into human trafficking.

Brock is going to live with Isadora in her apartment for a week in preparation, to make sure they are able to pass as a couple. This is a problem, because her spare room has long ago been turned into a nursery. Isadora is an age regressor, using childhood as a way to escape from all the stress and rational thoughts of her work life. And she doesn't want Brock to know about that side of her. However, she can't hide it for long. And to her surprise, he wants to take a crate of her adult baby stuff with them on the mission. His reasoning is that if Arrencani tries snooping around their house, the discovery of some kind of fetish or alternative lifestyle would explain any nervousness from Isadora. And while she hasn't done this kind of fieldwork, it would be better for her embarrassment over that stuff to be genuine.

So they set off on the mission, both not quite comfortable working together, but planning to do their best for the sake of the job. But everything takes a turn for the weird when they find that they aren't the only ones in the neighbourhood with a nursery. A chunk of Arrencani's new wealth might come from a special fetish suite in his basement, where he has 24/7 babysitters to 'condition' young women to be baby slaves for his underworld friends. Drugs, hypnosis, and brainwashing; whether at the request of a friend who wants his wife to be more submissive, or one who just wants a guaranteed way to introduce her to his fetish.

When they first discover this, our detectives suspect that there might be a some even darker side to his business. But the more they investigate, the more it seems like this suite is exactly what it claims to be. The women going in there knew they were going to experience some kind of kinky training, even if they didn't know exactly what; so it's a grey area that's a long way from kidnapping. It's possible that the trafficking charges were based on overheard conversations that were misunderstood. But they need to investigate, and to look into this further. Isadora suggests going undercover; letting their neighbour believe that Dash is into this stuff so that they can send Isadora inside. Dash worries about this a lot, but can't come up with a better option.

Isadora goes through a lot of training, and finds that she really enjoys being so helpless. But at the same time, she's seeing a more caring side of Lorenzo, which seems a stark contrast to everything they'd previously known about him. She starts to suspect that he might just be involved in this kinky stuff. His contacts with drug dealers could be related to acquiring the pharmaceuticals for his nursery; and the extortion could be a side business run by his security people, his butler, and his younger brother and son. She starts to believe that Lorenzo Arrencani is actually a legitimate (if kinky) businessman, who is only an unknowing figurehead for the crime family which bears his name.

But how can she prove that to Dash? And how can she keep her partner from blowing up the house in order to put an end to the family's crimes? He isn't known for subtlety...