Allison had just finished repairing the dummy. Despite the fact that Tasmin had shot it, despite the fact that Tasmin on multiple occasions had forbidden her to touch PPC equipment, it some how had been her task to fix the dummy. For no other reason than that she once had let it slip that she had experience fixing bicycle tires. She didn't even remember saying that. Tasmin remembered it though, and she had once or twice mended a bicycle tire when she was a kid, which was good enough reason for Tasmin.
Closing the holes in the dummy — Tasmin's bullet had, of course, gone right through it — meant that she did not have to write the mission report, or drop the mini off at the adoption centre. Allison pulled the cord on the dummy to inflate it and check if the holes were properly closed. The dummy did not show any signs of losing air fast. She poked it to make it deflate and packed it up in a cube.
Allison complimented herself on a job well done, glared pro-actively at the console and decided to have a lie down on the couch.
She actually managed to get a few winks of sleep before the console rang out.
Tasmin, who sat at the console working on the mission report, growled, hit the accept button and growled again. "How can a person catch up with their paper work if people keep writing Sues?"
"I guess your paperwork is of ill-concern to these Sues."
Tasmin scanned the mission assignment. "NCIS again ... that's unusual ... bring the dummy." She opened a portal.
Allison frowned, neither NCIS or bring the dummy struck her as unusual. She grabbed the cube from the side table and threw it through the portal. Then she stepped into the fic herself. She was surprised to find that the dummy had flung itself over the back of a chair and hung there like a rag.
"What's that all about?"
"This scene isn't told from first person point of view." Tasmin hit her partner in the back of the head. "Fold the dummy and pay attention."
Allison mumbled something about poorly compatible tasks while she sat on the dummy to get all the air out.
The portal had brought the PPC agents to Tony's apartment. He was watching a film when someone knocked on his door. It was an old poker buddy, who came to collect his debt in the form of a favour. He wanted Tony to watch his seven-year-old niece for a few days. Both he and his sister, who had custody of the kid, were unavailable due to their jobs.
Tony thought about it. They had had kids at the office before, but those were all case related.
"She's seven," Allison said. "Shouldn't she be in school for most of the day?"
"I doubt she's home schooled," Tasmin said. "Her aunt works for the US Marshall and her uncle is with the MPD. I doubt though that going undercover to catch an assassin ring is part of the job description of a Metro homicide detective. And I most definitely doubt that an undercover mission with such an assassin ring only lasts a week."
Tony said he would do it and his poker buddy left.
Tasmin pulled the remote activator from her bag and opened a portal. "Now we use the dummy."
-oOo-
Just outside the doors of the lift the dummy morphed into a woman of average height and chocolate brown hair.
I stepped out into the squad-room, taking in the orange walls and the dividers between desks with the ease of a natural born investigator.
"Or, you know, anyone with eyes," Tasmin said.
The dummy took in everything: the mess on one desk, the neatness of others, and the man sitting at one of the desks. It said it had come to see Tony. Gibbs replied he didn't come in until seven.
I looked at my watch. 0530, another hour and a half.
"She's dropping off a kid and she hasn't even made arrangements with the recipient of that kid at when and where they shall meet?" Tasmin tapped on Allison's notepad. "Charge."
Then the US Marshall who claimed to be a born investigator noticed she had misplaced the kid.
Tasmin rolled her eyes.
"Not a good caregiver or observant law enforcement officer if she lets a seven-year-old give her the slip like that." Allison chuckled as she wrote down another charge.
"Let's see if we can find that seven-year-old." Tasmin opened up another portal.
"What about the dummy?"
Tasmin quickly scanned the Words. "I think we can leave that here for now."
-oOo-
Tasmin and Allison hid in one of Abby's labs. The seven-year-old had found her way there and was now talking to Abby. Abby asked if she was lost.
Jen shook her head, "Maggy upstairs. She say I stay with Mr Tony while she hunt bad guys. He Navy and Marine copper. Daddy is Marine, (...)"
"Seven-year-olds are capable of speaking in grammatically correct sentences," Tasmin said. "The average five-year-old speaks better than that."
Abby thought the information the kid gave was good enough. Rather than suggestion to go find Maggy so she wouldn't worry, she offered the kid to look up some information on her father.
Tasmin rolled her eyes.
"Charge on Abby out of character," Allison said.
"Obviously. And charge for using this opportunity to show what a great guy her father was."
"Sergeant Major Jon Trevodur. Force Recon, and every award there is to receive, including the Medal,"
"What Medal?" Allison asked. "If I remember correctly, there are lots of medals."
"There are. The highest military award is the Medal of Honor. She could be talking about that. I've never heard it shortened to 'the Medal'. And I doubt I ever will. People say its entire name out of respect. And on the off chance that the person they are talking to doesn't know what they are talking about."
Allison took that to be a clue to write down a charge.
The kid's phone rang and she talked to her aunt. Not much later the dummy and Gibbs' came rushing into the lab. The dummy immediately ran over to the kid to give her a hug. Then it introduced itself to Abby.
"Sorry. I'm Maggs, her guardian."
"She would have done better saying she was her aunt. So far she's done a rather poor job of guarding."
The dummy then explained it was at NCIS because Tony had said he would babysit the kid. Gibbs pointed out that Tony had work to do, at which point Abby offered that the kid could stay in her lab. Which Gibbs for some reason — the dummy thought because he indulged Abby; Tasmin thought because there was Suefluence going round — was okay with.
Now I turned to her, "Take notes," I ordered.
"She's okay with that?" Allison said. "Has she looked around this lab and noticed its suitability as a kid's playground?"
"She's barely shaken hands with Abby. She accepts a person she doesn't know, on the recommendation of someone else she doesn't know, as a suitable babysitter for her ward. She must be rather desperate to offload the kid."
The dummy started to rattle off the particularities of the kid such as just sitting in a corner when put there, being smart, and taking a nap after lunch.
"Still? She's seven. Seven-year-olds do not nap after lunch any more."
Though Tasmin questioned this fact, Abby — despite having a niece, and childhood memories — did not. She merely wrote it down.
"And this is the most important: NO TATOOS."
"Tattoo artists don't put tattoos on minors. Who even says such a thing?"
"A person who leaves their ward in the care of someone they've never met," Tasmin said. "And charge for making Abby sound disappointed rather than say, 'what kind of irresponsible person do you take me for?'"
The dummy then took the kid back to the bullpen.
-oOo-
When the PPC agents arrived in the bullpen, via portal, they did not see the dummy, rather, its place was taken by an actual Sue.
Tasmin growled. "Great. No more first person point of view. Remind me that we have to search for the dummy before we leave. It's probably somewhere between Abby's lab and here."
Tony gave the Sue a hug. Ziva asked him who she was.
The woman was wearing a leather jacket with blue jeans. Clipped to the end of her right sleeve was a Marshall Service badge. She showed the badge to the agent, "Deputy Maggs Trevodur."
"She should be wearing a visitor's badge," Tasmin said.
"Is the NCIS building even open to visitors at 5.30 in the morning?" Allison asked.
Tasmin thought about it. "Good point. Probably not."
Ziva didn't question this. She took in the Sue's appearance.
All in all, she could, and did, turn the heads of most of the males in the room.
"That explains why Tony and McGee have been shaking their heads since she walked in."
The Sue talked to Ziva about how she knew Tony and then she introduced her niece to her. The kid had shrunk by more than a foot and looked distinctly younger.
"What happened in that lift when we took a portal?" Allison asked. "Or is this US Marshall so dense she took the wrong kid with her this time?"
Tasmin frowned and studied the Words. "There's our problem." She pointed up.
Allison had half a mind to take her partner's finger and make it point horizontally across the room.
"Words describe the kid as a toddler. So, the fic made her a toddler. She'll probably grow again once someone mentions she's a seven-year-old."
Ziva and the kid had an exchange in Hebrew and Russian. McGee then asked why the Sue was there at all. The Sue explained Tony would be watching the kid. She told him she had dropped off the kid's luggage at his landlady.
"Did she just say she went to his building to drop off luggage, but did not go up to his flat to drop off the kid?" Allison summarised. "She keeps saying the kid is smart, but that's probably because any seven-year-old — or toddler — would look like a rocket scientist compared to her."
Tasmin nodded. "I don't think Tony even has a landlady, not in the sense that Sherlock Holmes had one. Could be she dropped off the luggage with the owner of the building, but it could also be possible she just handed it over to some random woman she met at his building. It's probably sheer luck of the dumb she didn't do the same with the kid."
The Sue then left.
The fic fast-forwarded several hours and deposited the two PPC agents in Ziva's apartment. It was dark, save for one lamp Ziva had turned on when the ringing of the phone woke her up.
It was the kid on the other end of the line. She called to tell Ziva that Tony had injured himself and was bleeding. Ziva immediately rushed over.
Allison had barely gotten to her feet from the first move when she was thrown down again. "Why do I even bother to get up?"
"To get into the building." Tasmin — who always seemed to come out of these things unscathed — grabbed her partner by the collar and pulled her up.
Ziva had a key to Tony's building and let herself in. She did not bother to close the door behind her, and Tasmin caught it just in time to let the agents in. She ran after Ziva up the stairs.
Ziva let herself into Tony's apartment, where she found Tony sitting on a stool guarded by the kid. When Tony tried to speak to Ziva the kid poked him with the broom she held. Ziva ignored her. She walked over to Tony and inspected the cut in his hand. She assessed he needed stitches, but rather than take Tony to a hospital she administered them herself.
Ziva carefully stitched up his hand, drawing on the first aid training she received from the Mossad.
"Which is great out in the field, but I'm sure Tony would appreciate being taken to the ER and have a trained medical professional take a look at his hand," Tasmin said. "Didn't Mossad train Ziva in common sense, or the existence of ERs?"
As soon as she was done, the kid slapped an eye-patch on Tony and called him a pirate.
"Or in telling kids they should sit this one out?"
"Sit this one out? Yes, please." Allison had only just arrived at Tony's apartment. She had injured her left knee at Ziva's apartment, colliding with a side table, and her right knee and hip at the curb outside Tony's building. Even under perfect health conditions she was not a fan of running up stairs.
"Don't even think about it. Write down: using a kid as a plot device to make Tony and Ziva realise they have feelings for one another."
"Can't have a Sue story without someone trying to romance Tony."
"That's not true. We've had Suefic where no one tried to romance Tony."
"Not counting all the non-NCIS missions, we've had one. And there the Sue was twelve, but the way she talked to Tony, romancing him was only a few years away from happening. I stick to my earlier assertion."
"You better stick to writing charges."
Tony put the kid to bed and then asked Ziva if she was interested in watching a film he'd been watching. She was. Also, she had been asleep earlier and soon fell asleep now.
The PPC agents looked at the two canon characters curled up on the sofa together.
"Did you pack a bullhorn?"
"Why do you ask?"
"No reason."
Both Tony and Ziva were woken up by the other's snoring. Both decided they were comfortable enough and didn't want to wake the other; they went back to sleep.
"I think I should start to include a bullhorn as essential when packing my bag."
"A gun fired is also pretty loud."
There was a little noise coming from the hallway. The agents quickly dove behind the sofa and managed not being seen by the kid.
The kid proceeded towards the kitchen, where she did a full inspection of all the cupboards.
She found milk, eggs, and bacon in the pantry. But the bacon had some funny word on it. Kosher... what does that mean?
"It means it's not bacon," Tasmin said. "At least not in the sense that it is cured meat from the back and sides of a pork. There is 'bacon' available from several alternative sources. Some of it is even produced observing Jewish food laws. Don't know why Tony would buy such bacon, though."
"Perhaps to impress Ziva."
Tasmin shrugged. "I don't think she is very observant of Jewish food laws herself."
Tony and Ziva woke to the sound of eggs frying.
"Note that it was to the sound of eggs frying, not the smell," Tasmin said.
"I was once woken up to the smell of bacon on the barbecue when my downstairs neighbour decided to plug in the electric grill in the middle of the night."
"Not sure kosher bacon would smell the same."
"Should we charge that a seven-year-old toddler is cooking breakfast?"
"At the very least we should charge the Sue with teaching the kid how to turn on the stove."
While Tony, Ziva and the kid ate breakfast, Tasmin had the presence of mind to open up a portal to the next part of the fic.
In that part Abby and the kid were in Abby's lab and the kid decided to share her personal life with Abby. Starting with a film of her father and aunt and the rest of their family singing a song in church. Though the youngest family member was only five — and one of them was a fourteen-year-old boy,
Their singing voices melded perfectly together.
Abby was moved.
Tasmin drowned out the sound by gnashing her teeth.
The kid then proceeded to unpack all her personal treasures, including a notebook from a dead uncle, her father's dog tags and a ring her mother had given to her father. She told Abby about their meaning. Abby noticed that the kid sounded more mature.
"Cause if I talk younger, people like me more," she explained.
"Not me," Tasmin confessed. "I'm more annoyed with you."
"Perhaps she's confusing being treated like a kid with a slow brain with being treated with kindness?" Allison suggested.
"Doubt it. Earlier she said she hated it when people treated her as if she was an idiot. Would have helped, of course, if she didn't speak like an idiot."
Tony came into the lab with a box containing evidence collected at the crime scene he was on that morning. He talked to Abby about the case and the kid slipped out of the lab "silent as a ghost".
The PPC agents followed her at an appropriate distance.
The kid led them to the squad room. There Director Vance was making a personal phone call to his wife. When he hung up the kid told him that lying is bad.
"I wasn't lying," he lied, keeping his face straight.
"Why's he arguing with her?" Allison asked.
"Why's he making private phone calls in public?" Tasmin asked.
"Why's he not wondering what an unattended kid is doing in his squad room?"
Vance introduced himself to the kid, then explained himself and only then asked where her parents were. After she told him Tony was supposed to be watching her, Vance took her to Tony. Gibbs gave Tony a slap for his oversight and Tony promised he would keep a better eye on her.
There was a change of chapter, and this time, the agents were allowed to stay where they were, i.e. the bullpen.
Tony and the kid, however, had gone to his apartment. Where, on inspection of his fridge, Tony found there was nothing to eat. He said he would go out and fetch some Chinese food.
As soon as he was gone, she pulled out her black cell phone and started dialing.
"So much for keeping a better eye on her," Allison said.
"He's lucky he doesn't live in Maryland. He would be committing a misdemeanour by leaving a child under the age of eight home alone."
At the Chinese take-away Tony met Ziva, who had been invited to dinner by the kid. Rather than checking first whether this was okay with Tony, she hopped in her little red car and rushed across town to meet him at the take-away. Tony surmised that the kid had purposefully thrown away the hot-dogs he thought he had in his fridge. Ziva decided to change the subject and talk about the kid's father.
In his three year stint in the Corps before his death in 2005, Sergeant Major Jon Trevodur was an unheard of prodigy. With over 400 confirmed kills and completing the Force Recon training Phases in 6 months instead of the usual 5 years, the man's name was etched in Marine legends. He pioneered the new CQB School, the mythical hell-hole that sent PJ's, the Air Force's special ops and the toughest sonsofbitches in the world, crying for mommy. Graduates of that school had the right to wear the White Beret as a sign of their badassness.
"I doubt that would be enough to name a boat after him," Allison said, remembering one of Vance's musings while he was lying to his wife on the phone.
"They're not called boats; they're ships."
"What's the difference?"
"A boat is a small vessel and a ship is a vessel that is larger than a boat."
Allison thought about this, but was derailed from her trail of thought by a slap to the back of the head.
"Charge her with her father being a Gary Stu."
"No, no," she shook her head, "I feel like I want to shoot him when I see his picture."
Tasmin smiled. "At moments like these, Ziva is my favourite canon character."
"And at other moments?"
"I don't pick favourites."
When Tony and Ziva arrived back at Tony's apartment, he found the kid had taken down the safety gates he had put up the night before. The kid told him she was seven.
"Too bad we stayed here," Allison said. "We could have seen the kid go through a growth spurt."
Regardless of the sudden increase in height, Ziva picked up the kid.
"I like her more and more as time goes by,"
"Too bad the kid doesn't look more like her father," Allison said. "Perhaps Ziva would have wanted to shoot her too."
Those feelings for the kid might have been aroused in Ziva after dinner, when they decided to play hide-and-seek, and Tony and Ziva were unable to find the kid. They collapsed on the sofa and fell asleep. The kid resurfaced in the morning and they took her in to work. Where Abby made the mistake of playing hide-and-seek with the kid.
Tasmin rolled her eyes. Her nostrils flared. She pulled her bag closer and looked for some chocolate, which had always been an essential on her packing list.
The kid managed to hide in Gibbs car and was taken by accident to Quantico. There she was found in the boot by the leader of her father's former squad. He remembered him well and decided to take the kid to meet the rest of the squad.
"Shouldn't he, I don't know, report that he had found a person, a minor, locked in someone's car boot?" Allison asked.
"No." Tasmin dragged out the 'O'. "That would make sense, and then we'd be missing out the kid playing hide-and-seek with a Marine squadron and winning." Tasmin hit her head against the wall a few times and took a bit of chocolate.
Allison said, "There, there now" in a soothing tone, while unwrapping the next bar of chocolate ready for quick consumption.
Gibbs and Tony were called to the barracks of the Marine squad and Tony decided to call the Sue for help. She told him to just give up the game. That would make the kid appear again. Then she heard some noises that gave her a clue as to where Tony was. She got angry, but Tony quickly hung up.
Tony said he gave up and the kid came out of hiding. Then they took her, and two of the marines back to NCIS.
Tasmin and Allison picked up their stuff and ran to the hallway, just in time to see one of the marines put his head through a vending machine.
McGee figured it probably was a regular occurrence. If it was, McGee wondered why 2nd Squad had yet to be investigated by NCIS. Guess Force Recon has privileges, especially a Direct Action specialty team like the 2nd.
"Doubtful," Tasmin said. "Uniform Code of Military Justice applies to all persons in the military or on reserve. I also doubt a Major Case Response Team would investigate the theft of candy from a machine."
"What if it belonged to a baby?"
Tasmin glared at her partner.
Back in the bullpen Tony received a phone call to warn him the Sue was on her way. Alas, too late, she was already there. Ready to rip him a new one for introducing the kid to her father's former squad. The US Marshall she had brought with her tried to talk sense into her, and took the weapons she threatened Tony with, away from her.
Tony asked why she didn't want the kid to meet her father's former squad. In answer, the Sue nodded pointedly at the marine that now put his head through a partition.
"Oh, this is getting stupid." Tasmin ran into the bullpen.
"Getting stupid? I thought we passed that landmark five minutes in." Allison followed at a dumb run. She heard Tasmin had already begun charging the Sue.
"We charge you with being a Mary Sue. We charge you with dropping a kid off, but not arranging a time or place with their sitter for the transfer. We charge you for not keeping an eye on said kid when taking her into an unknown building. We charge you with not wearing a visitor's badge while at NCIS. We charge you with accepting a total stranger to watch your kid. We charge you with thinking an adult needs to be reminded not to get tattoos for a seven-year-old. We charge you with not telling a seven-year-old not to hide in dangerous places, like the cars of strangers. We charge you with leaving your job to threaten Tony. We charge you with being able to threaten Tony without getting held at gun point by his colleagues. We charge you with everyone seemingly thinking everything you do is cute and/or funny. You have been charged. You will be executed."
Before the Sue could put a word in edgeways, Tasmin had shot her.
Then Tasmin turned her attention to the marine that used his head as a ramming iron. "Norse warriors went berserker. US Marines do not." She shot him too.
Walls, candy machines and partitions had not been able to stop him, but a 9 mm did the trick.
Next Tasmin turned to the other marine. Glared at him for a moment, then charged him with "finding a kid in a trunk and rather than reporting it, taking the kid with you to meet your unit. And having no purpose in the story other than to be a cheerleader for the kid's Stu father." This marine was shot, too.
Tasmin looked around, nostrils flaring. "Where's the kid?"
"Playing hide-and-go-seek, I guess," Allison said.
Tasmin glared at her partner. "I'm done playing," she shouted. "I give up."
A moment later the kid came crawling out from underneath one of the desks. She smiled. "I'm still the best." Then she noticed the dead bodies lying around her and the looks of shock on the faces of the canon characters. "What's going on?"
"Jennifer Jon Trevodur, we are Protectors of the Plot Continuum and we are here to charge you with crimes against fanfiction in general and NCIS fiction in particular. You missed that bit," Allison said to her partner.
Tasmin grunted and shrugged in reply.
"We charge you with bad spelling, bad grammar and bad punctuation. We charge you with speaking ungrammatical sentences on purpose so that people will like you better. They don't. Not necessarily. Most will think you are a seven-year-old with a learning disability. Come to think of it, why aren't you in school anyway?"
The kid looked left and right, but couldn't come up with a good answer.
Allison continued. "We charge you with taking naps after lunch. We charge you with behaving like a toddler. You are seven. You are not a toddler. We charge you with actually claiming you are a toddler. We charge you with making the canon characters behave out of character, more particularly, we charge you with making the canon characters behave irresponsibly. Abby would not be okay with a kid using her lab as a playground; it's her playground. Vance would not make private phones calls in public and he would not argue with a kid about them. And I'd like to think that both Ziva and Tony would have more sense than to let her apply sutures to his hand.
"We charge you with always being impossible to find at hide-and-go-seek. We charge you with being able to open Gibbs' car boot, crawling in and closing the lid. We charge you with playing matchmaker between Tony and Ziva. We charge you with being a Mary Sue. You have been charged. Do you understand these charges?"
The kid nodded. "This is bad, isn't it? I'm sorry." She knelt down and hung her head. "I think you must kill me."
Tasmin, who had been brandishing her gun, looked helplessly at her partner. "Allison?"
"You're not helping, Sue. Tasmin has a hard enough time killing kids without them saying sorry and acknowledging their sentences."
The kid did not budge, and neither did Tasmin. She looked at her partner imploringly. "She knows being a Sue is a bad thing. She's got great stealth."
Allison rolled her eyes. "Don't tell me you want to recruit her for the PPC?"
"That's settled then." Tasmin returned her gun to her bag and pulled out a bottle of carpet cleaner. "As your first task, start cleaning these carpets. It got a little messy."
The kid looked every bit as surprised as Allison. She looked at the bottle in her hands, then she looked at Allison.
Allison inhaled deeply and let go of that breath. "Welcome to the PPC, kid." Then she turned on her heel. "While you clean up in here, I'll go and find that dummy."