Protectors of NCIS

A/N: Protectors of the Plot Continuum was founded by Jay and Acacia. Excerpts taken from New Beginnings by luckyducky09. This mission was chronicled by IndeMaat.

New Beginnings


"You must be cured," Allison said after she had glanced over the Intelligence Report.

"What makes you say that?"

"We've got a Sue mission. Gibbs' daughter wreaks havoc among NCIS employees."

"Another daughter we didn't know Gibbs had," Tasmin said. She walked over to the console.

"To be fair, he didn't know about her until this story either."

"My point exactly." Tasmin set the parameters for the disguises and opened a portal.

-oOo-

The portal brought the agents to the bullpen. It was late in the evening and Gibbs was still present finishing up the paperwork.

"Isn't that the sort of thing the more bossy person can off-load on the less bossy people? Like in the arrangement we have?" Allison pulled some folded sheets of A4 and a pen from her pocket.

Tasmin threw her a brief glare.

Gibbs smelled something odd. He took his gun from his desk and went to investigate. In the break room he found a girl making popcorn.

She had a sports water bottle which had 'University of Delaware' written on it. She had headphones on and had one of those Pod things, like the little boy Zach had too. The strangest thing about her however was that she was wearing sunglasses.

"Nope," Tasmin said. "Strangest thing about her is that she is making popcorn in the NCIS building."

"Wearing sunglasses indoors is rather common around here. At least among Sues."

The girl ran away as soon as she saw Gibbs and he ran after her shouting. The girl managed to give Gibbs the slip, and without spilling her popcorn ran to MTAC and used her key card to gain access to the room.

"MTAC requires a retina scan to enter," Tasmin said. "Not a key card."

"Key cards are easier to borrow than retina scans," Allison said. "We should compliment her for taking the easiest route to breach NCIS security."

Tasmin scowled.

Gibbs went to fetch his own card and when he entered MTAC he was shocked to find Shepard with the girl. He asked to be filled in. Shepard sat down with him.

"Jethro, there's no easy way to say this so I'm just gonna say it. Megan is our daughter." Gibbs was completely taken aback by what Jen had just said and it took him a moment to gather his thoughts. "Our daughter? And how long have you known about this?" Gibbs asked.

"Oh, about since she was born," Allison said.

"Probably ever since she knew she was pregnant. Though she probably didn't know right away it was a girl."

I've only known for about a week.

"I guess Gibbs deserved that for asking stupid questions."

Shepard, however, seemed to really mean she'd only known for a week her daughter was Gibbs' daughter too. She told Gibbs that she had left the baby with her mother and that she visited them once a year. Fifteen years ago she hadn't been ready to be a single mom.

"Probably didn't visit for Christmas or Thanksgiving, or one of those other holidays that remind you of family."

The girl had Gibbs' eyes, but Shepard had never seen her eyes because the girl was always wearing sunglasses.

"Even as a baby? Divas wear sunglasses all the time. One-year-olds aren't divas yet."

"The sunglasses are just to show that this Sue is bad-ass," Tasmin said. "It's a ridiculous story. It implies that Shepard was sleeping with at least one other man when she was sleeping with Gibbs, otherwise I'm sure she would have been able to do the math as to who the baby-father was. Plus, this fic is set late season three, that means in 2006. If this Sue is fifteen, then she was conceived while Shannon was still alive. "

"Very bad-ass. The Sue made Jenny a woman of questionable morals and Gibbs an adulterer without a second thought." Allison started to scribble charges on one of the sheets of paper.

"Gibbs did once say that in his marriages he had made every mistake there is. He didn't elaborate, but that could include adultery."

"Okay, we won't charge the Sue with making Gibbs an adulterer." Allison put two lines through the charge.

"Although, it could be argued that Gibbs didn't make those mistakes in his first marriage. Just in the ones that ended in divorce."

"Okay, which do you want? Charge or no charge?"

"Charge for making Gibbs cheat on Shannon. And charge her with having Shepard know Gibbs when he was still a marine. Canon implies they first met when they both worked for NCIS, which Gibbs didn't join until well after Shannon died."

Shepard further told Gibbs that the Sue had witness the murder of her grandmother and had stopped talking due to the stress of this. Gibbs went into investigative mode and suggested that the laptop the Sue was currently typing away at, might hold some answers about the murder. He suggested to Shepard to take the laptop away from the Sue while she was sleeping and have McGee and Abby go through the files.

"Nice one, Gibbs," Tasmin said. "That's certainly going to win your daughter's trust."

Shepard accepted his suggestion and the next morning Abby and McGee joined efforts to break into the Sue's laptop.

The PPC agents went to Abby's lab to see them in action.

Abby and McGee had difficulty breaking into the laptop. Abby suggested it was not the laptop of a kid, but rather belonged to a genius.

"She is a genius, Abby. Her IQ is 150." Jen said.

"IQ says nothing about intelligence," Tasmin said. "Intelligence is a person's capacity to apply knowledge, acquire knowledge and engage in abstract reasoning. IQ says how well a person performed on an intelligence test that scores on IQ. It is actually possible to train yourself to do well on IQ tests – test questions are often roughly the same – but that doesn't mean you are more intelligent than someone who has not practiced the test. Besides, IQs over 145 don't have meaning, as these tests often have ceiling effect."

Abby was sufficiently impressed, however. She said she and McGee could crack the laptop. It seemed that a moment later they had. McGee announced he had found a cryptic message:

If you need some help ask the blue hen

This message meant nothing to him, but Gibbs knew right away what it could be about. He left.

"Follow him?" Allison asked.

"Better not. He's going in search of the Sue. Or rather, her water bottle."

"Uh, why? And, how do you know this?"

"I know, because it says over there." Tasmin pointed at the Words. "And because her bottle said University of Delaware on it, and the state bird of Delaware is a blue hen."

"Of course."

"And write her up for McGee not even saying in jest, 'ask the state bird of Delaware?' He has excellent general knowledge."

Gibbs found the water bottle in MTAC, where the Sue was sound asleep.

"She's sleeping in MTAC? Why didn't Jenny take her home? Or to a psychiatric hospital where she can be treated for her post-traumatic stress disorder?" Allison made a note.

Gibbs took the bottle and returned to the lab where Abby and McGee had still not figured out what blue hen could mean. Although, to be fair, the fic had also not made them think about it; they had just waited patiently for Gibbs' return.

Gibbs told them the blue hen was the mascot of the UD. He looked inside the water bottle for a clue. When he found nothing – not even water – inside, he looked underneath, and found some writing. Abby typed in the word, and got access to the computer.

"Supposedly a genius, but not smart enough to A, remember her own password; B, follow the advice never to write down a password; C, pick a password that contains numbers and symbols as well as letters," Allison said.

Gibbs left again, and this time the PPC agents followed.

Gibbs entered Shepard's office and started talking to her without waiting for her to finish her telephone conversation. Shepard calmly finished her conversation with Tony and then turned to Gibbs. He told her Abby and McGee were making progress. Then he asked what Tony wanted.

"Tony and Ziva had been on the road for about twenty minutes with all the evidence and the case file when the officer they were in league with called Tony's cell. Less than five minutes after they left four highly trained, well armed, men shot up the police station, and broke into the evidence lab. They killed six officers and two of them were shot on the scene. The other two got away with a copy of the case file." Jen explained.

"She should be a news anchor," Allison said. "Never before have I heard someone talk this calmly about a raid on a police station that ended in a bloodbath."

"Particularly, since it seems that the case file Tony and Ziva went to pick up is about her mother's murder. She ought to be worried that four armed men are willing to kill police officers to get in possession of the same file. What made her mother so special?"

"Undoubtedly, it's the Sue that made it special."

"Of course. Make a note that the police of where ever Mrs. Shepard was killed just gave a copy of their case file to NCIS. The old woman wasn't Navy and there is no indication she was killed by someone from the Navy. Investigating her case is not the jurisdiction of NCIS."

"You will find it was worse. The police gave the original file and kept a copy themselves."

Tasmin grunted. "Another charge."

Gibbs jumped to the conclusion that the two men left over from the raid, would now come after Shepard and the Sue. He suggested they would be safer at his house.

"[H]ow are you going to prove that to Megan?" Jen asked. "I'll start by telling her and I'll take it from there." Gibbs said.

"And as proof of your superspecial protection skills, you can tell her that you stole her laptop and water bottle without her noticing," Tasmin said, but Gibbs didn't hear her; the PPC agent's Someone Else's Problem field protected her from being heard or seen by canon characters. Besides, he was already out of the room.

Rather than immediately go and wake up the Sue and make her a proposition, Gibbs went to the bullpen and called all the others to join him there to help Abby and McGee crack the next clue the Sue left on her laptop.

The PPC agents followed Shepard down the stairs and sat down on McGee's desk.

"Charge," said Tasmin, "that Abby and McGee have taken their computer hacking out of Abby's lab and brought it up here. Charge, that Shepard and Ducky are also staring at the clue to figure it out. And charge, that Gibbs is wasting time trying to crack a code. He's generally nice and patient with kids, but if he thought that there was information on that laptop that is linked to the murderers of six LEO's, I don't think he would let this Sue finish her beauty sleep. He'd wake her up and persuade her, one way or another, to give up that information."

Tony figured out the line was a quote – in Spanish – of a line of dialogue from the film Serenity. Abby and McGee went back to the lab to add serenity as a password.

Tasmin rolled her eyes. "They could have found that if they had googled the lines. They probably would even have found that the Serenity quote is a reference to a line from a Coleridge poem. If the Sue had really wanted to sent them on a wild goose chase she should have picked another line from that poem as her password, or something else loosely related to poem or movie."

"Wouldn't that make the code too hard to crack?"

"That's the whole point of codes, that others can't crack them. This Sue seems to want people to break into her computer."

Twenty minutes later Abby announced that she had full access to the Sue's laptop. She had downloaded all her e-mail and chat history to track two people the Sue had regular contact with, and had planted a bug in the laptop that would give Abby real time information on the Sue's keyboard use. Gibbs took the laptop back to MTAC and placed it beside the Sue as if it had never been gone.

"Gibbs is not this underhanded," Tasmin grumbled. She was about to start a rant on how Gibbs would not behave like this when she was caught off by the booming voice of the author that filled the office space:

Okay, only got two reviews for chapter two, compared to seven for the first chapter, which was, to say the least, very discouraging. It gives me the impression nobody even likes my story even to leave me a review.

"Entitled much?" Allison asked from her position underneath McGee's desk. She had ducked for cover when the author started talking. She scrambled up, but Tasmin pushed her back down and hid underneath McGee's desk with her.

"Sue's coming," was the only explanation given.

Everyone that was left in the bullpen, except Tony, left. With no one around to keep him occupied Tony thought it prudent to watch a film on his computer.

"Shouldn't he be going over the Shepard murder to find out how that ties in to the raid on the police station?" Allison asked. "I know it's not his jurisdiction and all, but he was a cop and I'm sure it beats watching a film wear George Clooney and Brad Pitt sit in an Amsterdam coffeeshop and talk like they just consumed something that is not coffee."

"It's one of the Sue's favourite movies; therefore it is more important that Tony watches the movie than does his job. In this fic, seeing to the Sue's needs is his job."

The Sue came down the stairs. She put her laptop down on Gibbs' desk and was about to start working on it when Tony's laughter caught her attention. She walked up to him to see what he was laughing at.

Tony was shocked when Megan said, "I saw it the day it came out."

The Sue continued telling him that her grandmother had picked her up early from school to see it and that they were the only ones in the theater.

"Skipping school, getting a private screening," Allison quoted as she wrote down the charges. The agent talked in a hushed tone lest the Sue might hear.

The Sue asked Tony if he shouldn't be working. He replied it was his lunch break.

"Gibbs doesn't even accept toilet break as a valid excuse for work to wait. I doubt he would be more lenient for a lunch break," Tasmin said

"Gibbs is having lunch with Jenny at the moment."

"Nice of them not to wait for their daughter. Or does the kid with the weird sleeping pattern also have a weird eating pattern?"

Allison shrugged. "So far the Sue is only doing things that teenagers might consider cool, like sleeping from two AM till noon. Lunch with the parents, so not cool."

Tony put the film on the plasma screen and the Sue sat down to watch it. Ziva and McGee returned with sandwiches for lunch. They had one for the Sue too, but both were uncomfortable giving it to her.

Allison rolled her eyes. "She's not an alien. Or a bomb that will explode if you come too near it."

"Hmm, not to sure about that one."

Gibbs came down the stairs and scolded Tony for putting a film on the plasma screen. Tony explained the Sue was watching too, which the Sue confirmed. Gibbs sent McGee and Ziva away on some errands. He asked Tony how he got the Sue to talk. He replied she just started.

Gibbs let the Sue finish watching the film, before he sat down with her and asked her if he could ask her a few questions. He asked her what she remembered of the night her grandmother died.

"If Shepard's theory is correct that she doesn't speak to not be reminded of that horror, then that question should shut her right up again," Tasmin said.

The Sue, however, had no problem telling him that her grandmother had been out to dinner and that she herself had been watching TV. She didn't know if anything strange had occurred or if anyone in particular wanted to hurt her grandmother. She supposed that lots of people wanted to hurt her because she was a judge. That was news to Gibbs.

Grams never told Mom she was a judge because she thought Mom would say it's too dangerous.

"As opposed to working undercover missions with the intent to bring down terrorists?" Allison asked. Her annoyance caused her to raise her voice.

Tasmin shushed her partner, but it was too late, the Sue had heard.

"Did you hear something?" she asked Gibbs. "It came from underneath that desk."

"I didn't hear anything."

"It was one voice talking, and another shushing it."

"Damn." Tasmin quickly pulled the remote activator from her duffel bag. She heard Gibbs getting up to investigate what the Sue was talking about. Quickly she opened a portal underneath herself and her partner and gravity pulled the agents through.

-oOo-

The portal took the PPC agents to Abby's lab where gravity changed direction on them. Their trajectory turned parabolic and came to a halt when they were thrown against the high legged table in the middle of the room.

"Ouch, pain." Allison tried to adjust to the fact her world had just tilted ninety degrees by lying down on the floor as flatly as possible.

Tasmin pushed herself up on one elbow and with her other hand slapped her partner.

"Did I mention I'm already in pain?"

Tasmin slapped her again. "That's for making us portal out of there in hurry. And that," another slap, "that's for making us miss a couple of charges."

"You didn't really miss them if you know there are charges." Allison pulled her arms over her head to protect herself.

"There's always charges." Tasmin found an unprotected piece of head and flicked her partner. She was about to flick her partner again when she heard Abby had made a shocking discovery. The forensic expert had traced one of the recipients of e-mails from the Sue.

It came from NCIS headquarters on base Robins in Warner Robins, GA.

"That would be shocking." Tasmin jumped up. "Warner Robins doesn't have a Navy base; it has an Air Force base."

Allison cautiously looked around her arms to see if it was safe to get up.

"The Sue could be referring to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynn County Georgia, but that's not what she said and I'm not about to start speculation about what a Sue could have meant that would make her less stupid."

Allison sat up and made a note of bad research.

The message was from a doctor Barbara Brown, NCIS employee and psychologist. Abby thought doctor Brown was related to Shepard.

"The familiar tone of the message probably also struck her," Allison said. "As an NCIS employee this Babs should probably know better than to send a minor messages and ask them when they will see them again."

Gibbs assigned McGee and Tony to lift the lid on Barbara Brown. He himself went to talk to Shepard.

"And we'll take a short cut by portal," Tasmin said. She picked up the remote activator where she had dropped it. "But this time we'll walk through it."

"Yes, please."

-oOo-

Gibbs was let into Shepard's office by Cynthia, who quickly closed the door behind him. Without waiting for an invitation to sit, Gibbs grabbed one of the office chairs and sat down. Shepard didn't bat an eye over the fact that Gibbs made himself at home – Tasmin, however, did – she asked him what was going on. Gibbs asked her about Barbara Brown.

Shepard told him Barbara was her cousin, and Barb's parents were like a second set of parents to her. She never told Gibbs Barb was NCIS because she didn't think he needed to know. The Sue had just spent three weeks with them baby-sitting.

"Because she's such a genius she doesn't need to go to school. She can take her holidays whenever she wants." The PPC agents had sat down at the conference table in Shepard's office. Allison was doodling on the charge sheet, because all the charges so far came down to canons stupid, Sue super special.

Shepard babbled on and mentioned that she talked often to her mother and sent her daily e-mails.

"And yet doesn't know what her mother does for a living." Tasmin pointed to the charge sheet indicating Allison should write that down.

"Perhaps being a judge was her secret identity. Lots of crime fighters use secret identities. Most of them suit-up in latex, and I'm not sure Jen would have wanted to see her aging mother in-"

Tasmin slapped her partner in the back of the head to make her shut up.

"There's something in this fandom that makes you very abusive."

"Yes, you."

Shepard told Gibbs the Sue had donated a kidney to Barbara's son.

Megan was a perfect match. Mikey's doctors said it was a miracle because 90 percent of the time, opposite genders aren't a match.

"False," Tasmin said. "Each organ has its own specific criteria for matching. Ethnicity, gender, religion, and financial status are not part of the matching system. If gender really was such a good predictor of donation success, it would have definitely been on the list of criteria. It's not on it because it doesn't matter."

"It's just another indication of how super special the Sue is."

Shepard gave Gibbs a picture of the Sue and her second cousin. Gibbs expressed regret over missing out on her life. Shepard said she had lots of pictures of the Sue and offered to take them over to Gibbs' house. Gibbs only objection was that it could be unsafe for her to collect the pictures from her own house.

-oOo-

That night at Gibbs' house, the Sue and Shepard watched some film until they fell asleep. Gibbs flipped through the photo albums for a while and then went to work on his boat. He was disturbed by two cars pulling up on his drive way. Six men exited the vehicles. He called 911 for back-up.

"Did he forget to put Tony under a speed dial of his new phone?" Tasmin asked. The PPC agents had stayed behind in Shepard's office.

Allison checked the Words. "Doesn't say. I'm surprised the emergency line operator accepts his claim of being an NCIS agent without further confirmation. Guess she's new to the concept of prank calls."

"Yeah, they're splitting up." Jen said.

"Which means either they are really stupid or they are waiting for someone else and they're just here to make sure we don't get out."

"I probably don't have a very good tactical mind," Allison said, "but since when is surrounding the enemy a bad move?"

"It's a bad move if you don't know the area, or don't know where exactly the enemy is. Perhaps he means that the bad guys aren't surrounding the house in duos, so one can watch the other's back."

"I thought you didn't speculate on what the Sue meant?"

Gibbs snuck out of the house and killed four of the men sneaking around his house. Two others managed to enter his house and shot the Sue. Shepard appeared to faint in the commotion, because when Gibbs returned to his living room, she was unconscious, but she had not been hit. Two local LEO's arrived at Gibbs' house and asked how the situation was.

"Well, we saw eight men exit the cars. I shot two and two got away." Jen said.

"Forgetting from one chapter to the next how many thugs are present at a scene," Tasmin said. "Which causes Shepard to give false information to the police."

An ambulance was called for the Sue, and Shepard decided it was safer if they went to her house.

"Is she assuming the 'it'll be the last place they'll look' logical fallacy?" Allison asked.

Tasmin shrugged. "So far the smartest thing that happened in this fic is Ziva translating some Spanish to English."

"Perhaps we should go in and charge her. We could pose as the paramedics from the ambulance and take her away from Gibbs and Jenny."

Tasmin glanced over the Words. "Yeah, I think we should. From what I can see, it looks like the Sue once had an interesting post-traumatic stress affliction, but is turning into an annoying teenager. Let's charge her before I turn my gun on myself."

-oOo-

When the agents stepped out of the portal, they stepped into an empty living room. Allison turned to her partner and gave her a quizzical look.

Tasmin looked around, at the Words, at the remote activator and finally at her partner. "I think this thing needs to go in for maintenance. It's long overdue for its 20,000 mile check up." She returned the item to her bag.

Allison rolled her eyes. "By how far did we miss the ambulance and when is our next opportunity?"

"It's actually good we missed the ambulance; I see some more charges."

"Not really what I wanted to know." Allison pulled the pieces of paper from her pocket and readied her pen. "Shoot."

"Let's see, after she got shot Gibbs and Shepard see a whole new side of the Sue: her sarcastic side."

"Well, they would. Gibbs has not actually met her before and Jenny only sees her once a year."

"Gibbs goes to the hospital with the Sue, where he finally remembers to call Tony. Tony's sent to Shepard's house to guard her, but because she doesn't want to be guarded, he guards her TV instead."

Allison frowned at her partner. "Does this man ever do anything other than watch TV?"

"Not in this fic. Though later he manages to get attacked by one of the Sue's cats and spots a van that drives through the street repeatedly."

"Cats? As in plural?"

"Yup. The Sue has three cats. And she has a friend, whom she calls to tell her that she got shot and that 'it was so cool'."

Allison looked up from her scribbling. "Is this the same kid that went mute after her grandmother was murdered? She thinks getting shot is cool? Is it possible to have Multiple Personality Disorder as a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?"

"Multiple Personality Disorder is a dubious diagnosis. I don't think that's what the Sue is going for, though. It would be admirable if it was, but that would at the very least require the Sue to relapse to the mute state."

"Other than Tony, is anyone else actually doing their job?"

"Gibbs is going to call in some favours with Fornell so the Sue can have an FBI body guard when she goes to school."

Allison dropped her pen. "Since when is trying to kill a Sue a federal offense?"

"We'd be in a lot of trouble if it was." Tasmin smirked. "Arguably, with the number of people killed that tried to get to the Sue, it could be considered that it's organised crime that's after her. And though it doesn't seem to be an organisation with a particular long life expectancy, considering they're dropping like flies, organised crime is something the FBI deals with. Though, they'd deal with it by investigating the organisation and perhaps offering the Sue protective custody or a safe house. They wouldn't offer her a body guard in order for her to go to school. There'd be a lot less risk for other people if she took correspondence classes."

"Reckless endangerment of innocent bystanders, not questioning the Sue now that she has her power of speech back." Allison bent down to pick up her pen. "In short, no one's doing their job."

"Fornell is resisting Gibbs though." Tasmin pointed at the Words. "He keeps putting Gibbs on hold."

"Ah, the power of the weak in possession of a phone."

"Oh no, he's given in."

Three eight hour shifts of four agents until you catch these guys.

"Just like that? And he doesn't even want to take over the case?"

"Apparently, Gibbs told him where his ex-wife could find him and a loaded gun."

Allison blinked. "What a lame threat. From what I understand, it is not actually that hard for an adult to get a gun in the US."

"Plus the ex-wife had already cleaned him out. There's nothing in it for her to kill him."

The floor started to wobble and Allison wanted to step out of the way of an incoming carpet wave. Her feet, however, were glued to the floor and she could not move them. The carpet wave knocked her over, result of which was that now her hands and bum were stuck to the floor as well.

"What the hell is this?" Allison shouted. "Time rifts aren't supposed to behave like this, are they?"

"They do if months start to paste things," Tasmin replied.

Months pasted and there were several more attempts to kill Megan Gibbs, now 16.

"How do we get unstuck?"

"We wait for a month that dissolves things."

"Not funny. Don't you have something in your bag for an occasion like this?"

Tasmin smirked. "I probably have."

Apparently, round the clock surveillance still had not led to any arrests in the case of the Sue, and after the Summer she returned to school - along with fourteen FBI agents.

"Where does Fornell get the resources to put that many agents on the case of a sixteen-year-old with an over-inflated ego?" Allison asked. Tasmin's dissolvant had done the trick and she was able to move her feet again. Not far, because her arse was still glued to the floor.

"This is your tax dollars at work."

"I'm glad I don't pay taxes in the US."

"No." Tasmin grumbled. "This is my tax dollars at work."

Fornell had made the same objections as Tasmin had made earlier - which showed he had still some sense - but Gibbs had said that a normal childhood for his Sue-daughter trumped the safety of other school children, and thus the Sue went to a normal school.

Tasmin started digging through her duffel bag.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for my CAD. Want to make sure it's turned off. I don't want it to blow up in my bag the moment we come near Gibbs."

"Do you also have some food in there? I'm famished."

Tasmin held out an energy bar without comment.

In reply, Allison looked pointedly at her hands, still glued to the floor.

"Right. I'll take care of that first."

"Thanks."

It had been a while since the last attack, but Gibbs thought the baddies were just rethinking their plan to kill their only witness. Over the Summer, the Sue had also given a statement about her grandmother's death, but there were no useful clues in it.

"Perhaps Gibbs should make the Sue's statement public, so that whoever is after her because she's a witness, knows she's a useless witness and stops coming after her, because he might actually do harm to his cause."

"That would make the most sense in this case," Tasmin said. "But Gibbs would never let a suspect know he had nothing."

A bomb was found in one of the school lockers. The school was evacuated and the Sue brought to NCIS, where her four fed escort went with her everywhere. Until she told them that she would be safe without them in Abby's lab, which Gibbs and Abby concurred.

The four agents left Abby's lab after receiving glares from Gibbs and Abby.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Allison said.

Tasmin shrugged. "You shouldn't have wolfed down that energy bar like that. Did your mother never tell you to chew before you swallow?"

"Not that. Gibbs. Those four men probably joined the Bureau to do more interesting things than babysit a spoiled teenager. They're essentially doing Gibbs a huge favour, and how does he repay them? By giving them death glares."

"Yeah, that. This Sue has gotten to him good. You want some bleeprin to settle your stomach?"

Gibbs left the lab to talk to Shepard and Fornell. When he returned with Shepard the lab was empty. Abby and the Sue were nowhere to be found. They searched the lab in a panic, until they received a foresightful phone call from Abby: she and the Sue were in the bathroom. Gibbs and Shepard immediately went to that bathroom too.

They caught up with the Sue and found out she had already figured out there had been a bomb at the school; she had seen the entire school was evacuated. Fornell showed up in the hallway and had an aside with Gibbs. The Sue claimed this was unfair because they were talking about her. She stormed off. Gibbs stormed after her.

"Hey, want to talk about it?" Gibbs asked.

"Why bother? Nobody ever listens." Megan said.

"What? Do you even listen to yourself?" Tasmin shouted at the Words. "You said you didn't want to be home-schooled, and you got what you wanted. People listen to you. A lot more than they should."

The Sue said she was tired of being treated like an object and a criminal.

"How is she being treated like a criminal?" Allison asked.

"I think she means the constant surveillance."

"If she had just let Gibbs do his job, he would have found out who was threatening her in no time. And her bodyguard could have been lifted. She's only got herself to blame for this situation."

Gibbs thought differently and told the Sue that she shouldn't blame herself because it wasn't her fault.

"Well," Allison said, "he doesn't know what we know."

Gibbs suggested to the Sue that they should out smart the FBI and sneak out of the building.

"Gibbs, if you don't want the FBI doing you a favour any more, just tell them already."

Gibbs took the Sue to his house and showed her the boat he was working on. With a photo album in hand he told her about the family he lost.

This is the last photo we ever had taken as a family. It was right before I left for Desert Storm in 1992.

"Operation Desert Storm was the air/land conflict in the Gulf War which started on January 17, 1991, and ended seven weeks later," Tasmin stated.

"Charge with giving Gibbs a time machine?"

Tasmin rolled her eyes. "Charge with getting dates wrong and not doing research."

"I like my charge better." Allison ducked to the floor to avoid getting slapped again. "Can't we go and charge the Sue? I'm bored, in pain and hungry."

"I guess we could. She's going to play chess with McGee in Abby's lab. We could interrupt them."

"I'm all for it." Allison jumped up.

Tasmin opened up a portal and the two agents stepped through it.

-oOo-

McGee and the Sue were sitting on high stools on either side of the high legged table. A chess game was set out between them, and most of McGee's pieces were standing next to the board. The Sue looked up when Tasmin caught her attention by scraping her throat.

"Oh great, more morons." The Sue jumped from her seat and assumed karate position.

Tasmin glared at her and Allison raised her eye brows. "What?"

"Whatever you've got, I can take it. I've got a black belt in karate. Second degree black belt as a matter of fact."

"Let me tell you a little secret about black belt," Tasmin said. "They have no actual meaning. All your claim to second dan tells me, is that you have passed twelve exams. The requirements for black belt are arbitrary as every school chooses its own set."

"Try me."

"Fine, Allison?"

Allison stepped forward, assumed no particular position and just waited for the Sue to become impatient and make the first move. Which the Sue did. Allison dodged her attack, grabbed the Sue by her arm, spun her around by twisting the arm behind her back and knocked the Sue's head on the surface of the high legged table. All the pieces of the chess board jumped and this was the first McGee noticed of the arrival of two strangers in the lab. He reached for his gun, but Tasmin had hers trained on him quicker.

"Unless you want to tell Gibbs you got his daughter killed, I suggest you put that down on the floor and slide it towards me."

McGee paused for a moment, trying to figure out what the best course of action was. He couldn't see the Sue, she was lying on the floor with Allison on top of her on the other side of the table, just outside his visual range. "Okay, fine." He put his gun down on the floor and pushed it towards Tasmin.

Tasmin picked up his gun. "I'll be holding on to this for the moment."

"Megan Shepard-Gibbs, we are Protectors of the Plot Continuum and we are here to charge you with crimes against fanfiction in general and NCIS fanfiction in particular," Allison said. "I'll start by charging you with having your father's last name. He's not on your birth certificate, what with your mum not knowing he was your dad until a few months ago. There was no mention of Shepard petitioning the court to have your name changed and I doubt you have thought about the legal ramifications of a name change."

"Are you saying I can't have my dad's last name?"

"Pretty much, yeah. And could you lie still? Or'll tie you up like a young buck."

The Sue seemed to take this threat seriously. Allison pulled the sheets of paper on which she had made the charge sheet from her pocket. With one hand - the other was busy holding down the Sue - she unfolded them to the appropriate page.

"We charge you with making all the canon characters stupid. Shepard would not have gone for fifteen years not knowing who her baby's father was. And she would have also gone for a more certain clue than eye colour. You know, like DNA. I'm sure Shepard would have found a way to get some of Gibbs' DNA if she needed it. She wouldn't wait for fifteen years until her daughter thought to take off her sunglasses for a moment.

"You made Gibbs stupid and not doing his job when he went about hacking your computer the hard way, that is, not asking you. He was also stupid for letting you go to school with a bodyguard, thereby recklessly endangering other people's lives. And he's stupid for not being able to catch whoever is after you, despite the fact that they must be really dense, because several attempts at killing you have only resulted in getting you shot. Tony was stupid for only watching TV rather than doing his job, investigating.

"As the investigation goes, or what was supposed to be an investigation: we charge you with NCIS working on a case that is not theirs, and despite that, local police being very cooperative. We charge you with being superspecial, to whit, you got a private screening for Ocean's Twelve, you protected your computer so even Abby and McGee in their combined efforts can't hack it, you are an organ donor - and apparently a rare match - and hordes of bad guys can't seem to kill you.

"We charge you with bad research. There is not an NCIS headquarters on an Air Force base, and operation Desert Storm started and finished in 1991 - Gibbs did not go there in 1992. We charge you with getting a round the clock bodyguard from the FBI. We charge you with wasting a PPC agent's tax dollars. We charge you with at one time having an interesting post-traumatic stress disorder, but dropping this in favour of becoming an annoying teenager. We charge you with being a Mary Sue. You have been charged. Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

"What are you getting off charging me? Wait until I get up. I'm going to kick you ass so hard you can't sit down for a month."

"Charming." Allison dropped the charge sheet on the ground. "Your punishment for these charges is death. Let's see if it is really that impossible to kill you." Allison grabbed hold of the Sue's head and quickly turned it beyond breaking point. "It seems it isn't."

Allison scrambled up. She picked up the sheets of paper and returned them to her pocket. Then she dragged the Sue to her feet and hoisted the Sue on her shoulders in a fireman's carry. "I'm ready when you are." She smirked to Tasmin.

Tasmin nodded and pulled the remote activator from her pocket. She opened a portal.

Allison stepped towards the portal. "Oh, and give the man back his gun. It's a canon issue. You can't keep it."


It often happens that, when writing for a series with an ongoing canon, something you think of is made uncanonical or AU as soon as the next episode. If you want to use your plot and incorporate the canon information then please be aware of side-effects. In this story, giving Gibbs and Jenny a fifteen-year-old daughter ànd acknowledging that Gibbs's wife and daughter were killed in 1991, had the effect that for both to be true, Gibbs had to be an adulterer. If that is the story you want to tell, go for it. If it isn't, a rewrite, or a mention you are ignoring certain canon events might be in order.

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