And lo, Operation: Barbie Alex is officially kicked off!

Alex was awoken at five in the morning by a loud, insistent banging on the door. She stumbled out, bleary-eyed and muggy-headed, and despite the steady stream of expletives from the direction of Wolf's room, somehow made it first to the door. A tall woman with an unpleasant twist to her mouth stood in the hall, staring down at Alex as if she were an especially repugnant cockroach.

"You are Alex Rider?" she said.

Alex pointedly did not step aside to allow the woman in, and if she adjusted her stance to something more aggressive, she could be forgiven it. It was, after all, early. "Yes."

The woman tapped a watch impatiently and shoved a dress wrapped in clear plastic into her face. "Ms. White. We start in fifteen minutes. Wear this."

Wolf stumbled out of his room, trailing bedclothes and yet somehow still every bit as intimidating as his namesake."What the hell is going on?"

"I think," Alex began, then flicked her gaze down to the designer label on the garment bag, "this is one of those things I didn't want to talk about."

While Alex was still dazed from sleep, White dragged her to an apartment covered in cosmetics, hair tools, clothes, and accessories and sat her down in front of a mirror. Alex couldn't help but compare it to Mrs. Webber's more low-key style. Either MI6 was a lot flashier when it came to in-depth disguises, or just Ms. White.

Speaking of which, the woman turned an unreasonably bright light on her. "Oh, dear god in heaven." Alex bristled, but before she could defend herself, White grabbed her hands. "A biter. A biter. What the hell were you thinking? I see I'll have to prioritize – and where did you get that god-awful haircut? You look like a refugee."

"Um." Somehow, despite her near-constant tugging, her hands were still trapped in Ms. White's. "That was the idea. Mrs. Webber –" She stopped herself suddenly and decided to proceed with caution, since she wasn't sure if White was MI6 or just someone they'd brought in. "It was part of a play I was in." The woman hummed her disapproval and muttered about split ends and hydration and shaping and highlights and all those things Alex didn't generally encounter unless she and Jack were having a girls' night.

She and Jack, who she still wasn't allowed to talk to. She swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat. "Is this going to take long? I have classes in a few hours."

Something told her the loud snort White gave didn't bode well for her education.

"Oh my god," Tom said, eyes wide and staring. "What happened to you?"

Alex uncomfortably tugged the hemline of her skirt down. It wasn't that she didn't wear skirts – she had several in her closet and she'd always enjoyed wearing them, but they weren't… well. Floral. Apparently, this was one of the things she had to get comfortable wearing if people were going to believe she'd ever modelled before, along with the extremely strappy heels and butterfly hair clip. It wasn't bad so much as conspicuous, and there were enough rumours about her floating around Brookland without this to add to the pile. "The Royal and General happened."

Tom nodded as if this explained everything. "So are you on a mission right now?"

"No, this is just prep." James Adair from next year had frozen in place, openly staring at her. She tried not to notice. "I don't have to leave 'til the end of the week."

"Right." Tom offered up what she was sure he considered to be a secretive smile. "At least you're not missing school yet."

She smiled back. Someone up ahead gestured wildly in her direction to his mates, and the smile turned to a wince. "I can't wait to see what they make of this."

"It can't be much worse than the stories about you being a drug addict or a gang member, right?" Tom smiled at her hopefully. She was fairly certain she was grimacing at this point. "I'll see you after, right?"

"Sorry, I've got appointments. More pre-mission prep." She glanced at him and saw the words can I help just starting to form. "It's mostly primping. There's nothing you could do, and anyway, you'd be bored to tears."

"Better than listening to tears," Tom muttered, but quickly straightened out his shoulders and tilted his head up. "It's all right, we can do it some other time."

"Yeah," Alex echoed. "Some other time."

Bloody MI6.

"Oh my god," Eagle said, and Alex would have had a moment of déjà vu if he weren't also clutching at Fox's arms in a grotesque parody of being overcome by emotion. "Our little Kit, all grown up and wearing make-up!"

She tore a cushion off the nearest chair and threw it at his head. It missed. "What are you doing here?"

"Well," Eagle said, "Ben is here because James asked him to sit with you in case your beauty consultant turned out to be a mass-murdering megalomaniac or something, and I'm here because I'd be remiss in my duties if I didn't oversee your transformation from a little baby Kit into a beautiful, beautiful butterfly – "

Ben snorted. "Sorry about him. My car's in the shop, and I had to get a ride from somewhere."

"And when people think of a generous, handsome chauffeur, they think of me," Eagle agreed.

"Fine," Alex said, throwing up her hands in surrender. "Stay. Put your feet on the table. Make paint balloons and put a mural on the walls, if you like. Just keep quiet, because I only have an hour until Ms. White shows, and if I don't get enough of my work done by then, I'll be up all night."

"Did you want help?" Eagle offered, looking all too eager at the thought of getting to make more quips at her expense under the guise of being a responsible adult. "Because I got top marks in most of my – "

Ben slapped a hand over Eagle's mouth and gave her a thumbs-up with the other.

"Thanks," Alex said sincerely before running on to her room.

When Wolf returned to his flat later in the evening, he found Fox unconcernedly reading a battered copy of a Mark Twain novel on one end of his sofa while Eagle sat hunched in on himself miserably on the other. Indistinct voices filtered in from the kitchen – Kit and that other woman, the one who'd stormed in at five in the morning.

He cleared his throat. "Going well?"

Neal all but launched himself out of his seat. "I have heard things, James. I have heard things. Things I never wanted to know, things like –" He shuddered. "Bikini line."

Fox flipped a page. "I told him he shouldn't crowd them."

"We were meant to be supervising." Neal glanced in the direction of the kitchen and gave a theatrical shudder. "That woman worries me. I'm not sure she should be allowed near sharp objects."

"Right." Wolf paused, trying to work out if he should intervene or not. He knew this was part of whatever it was Kit did for the MI6 and they probably wouldn't take too well to an interruption, but leaving Alex at the mercy of a stranger with beauty products didn't seem like the responsible thing to do. It couldn't hurt to get a drink or something, get an idea of the mood in the room.

Alex could practically feel her mind trying to turn itself off from several hours of being lectured on her skin care, hair care, nail care, face care, and every other care that could possibly be applied to her body. Her hands had cramped up from trying to take notes so she could recite everything back to Ms. White the next morning, when she was scheduled continue this nightmare of an image transformation.

It was almost a relief, seeing Wolf stick his head into the room. "Everything all right?" he asked, doing his best to sound interested and not just gruff.

Ms. White waved a hand at him dismissively. "Yes, yes. Go."

He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. "I wasn't asking you."

Alex snapped her head up in surprise, but Ms. White didn't even seem to consider letting her into the conversation. "We are fine. We have a large amount of work to do and not nearly enough time to accomplish it, and we would work much better in isolation."

To Alex's amusement, Wolf turned a formidable glare on the fashion consultant. "Alex," he said, without taking his eyes off White, "you hungry?"

Alex glanced at White out of the corner of her eye. She had no doubt that every bit of the woman's ire would be redirected towards her the minute Wolf left them alone, but the truth of it was that she was hungry. White hadn't given her any time that morning for breakfast, and lunch was feeling a long way away. "Sort of."

"I'm sure you won't mind leaving off, then," Wolf told Ms. White firmly in the tones of someone who would accept no arguments.

White huffed, sensing that her reign of terror was about to be ended early. "I'm certain it won't hurt her to wait just a while longer – "

"Alex is under orders from her doctor not to miss any meals," Wolf said flatly. "Good night."

As Alex watched, White swept up her impressive collection of accessories into her arms before turning to Alex. "Don't forget," she said icily, "we've an appointment tomorrow morning."

The door slammed with much more force than necessary. Alex stared down at the table."You didn't – have to do that. With her." She shrugged, awkwardly. "I was all right."

"It wasn't a problem." She risked a glance up and found him eyeing her thoughtfully. "It was true, anyway. Micheal's got me under orders to make sure you eat." She suppressed a wince at the potential difficulties that would bring, and his lips twitched. "I'm not going to stare at you eating or anything. I just thought maybe you could use the back-up."

"Right." She gave him a tentative smile. "Thanks."

"No problem."

The rest of the evening passed in what could almost be called normalcy. They ordered takeaway, and Wolf kicked ben and Neal out early so Alex actually had time to finish her homework and go to bed at a decent hour. Her rude awakening the next morning was no less unwelcome than it had been the time before, but at least she managed a little breakfast before being dragged out the door.

School could almost have been called a relief if it weren't for the classmates constantly chattering on about her whenever she was in the room. Once, she tried asking Tom what rumour they'd come up with this time, but when he abruptly turned red and bolted to the loo, she decided maybe she'd be better off not knowing. With a day like that behind her, she could only muster a sour greeting for Ben when she got into the flat and found him camped out again.

If White had been difficult before, she'd somehow managed to become downright unbearable overnight. To preserve her last few shreds of patience, Alex let her mind wander onto the topic of what she could do if she needed a lot of mobility when wearing something as limiting as the dresses she was shown. Just as she thought she might have a solution, White grabbed her arm painfully and hissed out an angry "Are you completely incompetent?"

Alex was stunned, feeling the anger bubbling up in her throat and choking her. "Wh-what?"

"This!" White stood, yanking Alex's arm along with her. "This is why I don't work with children! They have no sense of priority! It's all sugar sodas and daydreaming, never a work ethic!"

The grip on her arm was strong, but not unbreakable. She manoeuvred out of White's grasp with a neatly executed twist, just in time for Ben to enter the room, alerted by White's unsubtle shouting. Alex didn't have to bother looking at her arm to know that it would bruise; she could tell by the feel of it. "I think there might be another reason you're not allowed to work with children," she muttered.

It only took Ben a moment to work out what had happened. "Get out."

White's face twisted into a pantomime of outrage. "With pleasure. You have no idea how difficult it is for me to work such an unmannered, unreasonable and frankly unforgivable child!"

Ben's eyes were like ice. "Get out."

The minute Alex heard the door slam shut for the second time in as many evenings, she breathed out a sigh. It wasn't as if she hadn't faced more unpleasant people in her time with the MI6, but something about having one of them in a space where she was supposed to live just went badly with her.

Ben took a few breaths of his own before turning to her, visibly softening his approach. "All right?"

She swallowed. "Yeah. I'm –" Quickly, before they could get into a conversation, she grabbed her schoolbag and slung it over her shoulder. "I have to go to the Bank."

Alan Blunt was halfway through an excellent cup of a tea and a scintillating conversation with Mrs. Jones regarding the status of a possible double agent in Spain when Alex Rider marched into the room. He set his cup down, glancing in her direction with seeming calm. "Can I do something for you –"

"Never do something like that to me again," Alex hissed out, hands clenched into fists at her side. "All right? Or I won't work with you at all, no matter what blackmail you manage to pull out."

"I have no idea what you're talking about – "

Alex pulled up her sleeve to reveal a rather ugly bruise on her arm. "I think I worked out why you assured me Ms. White would be especially helpful when it came to disguising my scars. She had a lot of practice." She tugged the cloth down again. "I think I'll figure out how to pass as a model from my own for now on." Just as quickly as she'd appeared, Alex stormed back out the door into the general offices of MI6.

Blunt glanced at Mrs. Jones, who was still somewhat in shock from their young visitor, and gave a delicate cough. "Is it just me," he mused, "or do these chats get earlier every mission?"