Allison considered herself a seasoned agent. She had lost count of the number of missions she had been on, but she figured it were enough missions to no longer be spooked by the console.

The console, which by many agents in the PPC was considered to be sentient by some degree or another, took this attitude as a challenge to beep when agents least expected it. Or when they were drinking a hot beverage.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP, the console rang out.

"Bloody blooming," Allison started. She was just about to take a sip of tea and the loud beep had caused her to spill some of the liquid and burn her lip.

Tasmin, who was a seasoned agent and always expected the console to beep, was not perturbed in the least. She calmly walked over to the apparatus and accepted the mission. "Another NCIS fic. This one's called Before The Worst."

"I hope that doesn't mean it's a prequel to a fic named The Worst."

"It doesn't seem to be part of a series, but let's go in and make sure of that." Tasmin hit some buttons on the console to set their disguises and open up a portal.

-oOo-

When the two PPC agents entered the bullpen they found all the characters sitting behind their desks, inactive, and staring towards the stairs. A little man, about a foot and a half high, was jumping up and down next to Gibbs' desk. It seemed he was trying to reach for the cup of coffee on the desk.

"What's going on here?" Allison asked. She frowned at the miniature version of Gibbs, then stepped up to McGee and waved a hand before his eyes. He did not blink.

"I found the problem." Tasmin pointed at the Words.

They were all too occupied with the arrival of a new agent.

"That would explain."

"Grab that mini." Tasmin directed. "I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of them in this fic."

Allison walked up to the mini, whose name was Jethrow, and tried to get him to come with her. Not until she picked up the coffee and started to walk away, did she manage to lure the mini away from the desk.

A moment later -- the agents and mini barely had time to duck for cover -- Jenny appeared with a woman, who was wearing a wooden hat.

Allison rolled her eyes. "That's what you get when you say your hair is mahogany, rather than mahogany coloured." She pulled a pad and pen from her jacket pocket -- Tasmin had given them nice disguises for once -- and made a note. "Should we let this mini drink that coffee?" she asked her partner. "Doesn't it make them hyper?"

"It's a Gibbs mini. He probably handles his coffee just as well as Gibbs."

"Very well, but if he starts bouncing around the office, I'm not going to restrain him."

"Everyone. This is Special Agent Melanie Carlton. She's just transferred here from Australia"

"Then why are you introducing her here? Send her over to Immigration."

"I think she means, transferred to NCIS."

"Doesn't she need to be a US citizen to join NCIS?"

"She does, in general, unless she's going to be a liaison officer like Ziva."

"She doesn't sound like she's going to liaison."

"Yo" She said in her Australian accent.

"Yipes, I said in my British accent."

"Ugh, I added in my American accent."

Gibbs walked over to the Sue, gave her the once over, told her not to say 'yo' and told Jenny he didn't need another team member.

"Gibbs, this is a Suefic. The world does not revolve around you, it revolves around the Sue," Allison said. "Jenny could just be showing the Sue around the building."

"Before she has her escorted off the premises and put on the first flight back to Oz."

Gibbs had jumped to the correct conclusion -- he might have previous experience with Sues -- and Jenny left him with the Sue. Gibbs had mixed feelings about her, but pointed her to a desk nonetheless.

Sadly, for the agents, this was the desk they had chosen to hide under. They made themselves very small and hoped the Sue wasn't going to look down and see them. Allison pulled the mini on her lap to keep him from walking away and stealing more coffee. Tasmin rummaged through her duffel bag and pulled out a coffee pod, which she gave to Jethrow. He sniffed it suspiciously then put the whole thing in his mouth. Apparently satisfied he snuggled up to Allison.

"Should have know that an extra desk in the bullpen would be for the Sue," Allison wrote on the notepad. She showed it to her partner.

Tasmin nodded and signalled she wanted to write something too. Allison passed her the notepad and pen. "Remind me to slap you later."

Gibbs placed a gun and badge on the desk.

"Must have known she was coming, if he has a spare badge and gun to give to her."

Gibbs left to talk to Jenny. Tony and Ziva walked up to the desk to introduce themselves.

Tasmin indicated that they should try and crawl away from the desk now that the Sue was engaged in conversation. On hand and foot the two agents and the mini slipped past Tony and behind some half-high walls that partitioned off the bullpen.

Ziva asked why the Sue had transferred.

Melanie shrugged. She wasn't going to tell them the truth just yet "Needed a challange. My director back home wanted me to go to Washington. Who can say no to that?" She put on a fake smile.

"The directors at NCIS for instance," Tasmin said. "Why can't she have a purpose for being here, like liaising information about terrorists?"

"I'm sure she has a purpose," Allison said. "But she's keeping it a secret for now."

"She's making the canons look stupid. They should know people don't just up and transfer to the NCIS. The NCIS must benefit from that in one way or another."

"Very stupid," Allison noted in response to McGee's next question.

"You come from Australia. What's it like?"

"What's it like to come from Australia? Does he think boarding a plane in Australia is very different from boarding one in the US?"

"They probably board on the other side of the road in Australia."

Gibbs came back from upstairs, said, "Gear up" and made everyone fly towards the lift. The Sue only managed to slip in just before the doors closed.

"Gotta be faster than that" Ziva snickered from the back of the elevator. Melanie threw her a look and was about to come back with something before Gibbs slapped her in the back of the head "Don't say a word" He warned.

Tasmin jumped up. "Did Gibbs just slap Ziva?"

"No, I think it was the Sue."

"Must have been the Sue, as there is no mention of Gibbs needing hospital care. But still, Gibbs rarely ever Gibbs slaps a woman. And I don't think that is because they never say anything he'd think worthy of a slap."

When the Sue tried to get off the lift, at their stop, Gibbs held her back and told her that if she was going to be on his team, she was going to play by his rules.

Melanie pulled a face which showed she wasn't scared of him. And this impressed the older man

"Making Gibbs easily impressed," Allison said as she made the note.

"Making Gibbs explain himself twice," Tasmin added. She fished the remote activator from her duffel bag. "Let's go to that crime scene."

-oOo-

The crime scene was nondescript, which made it very hard for the PPC agents to hide because there were no walls or trees or objects that could obscure the agents from view. Luckily, Team Gibbs had already assembled around the body, so Tasmin and Allison thought they could hide behind the car the team came in.

The Sue nearly threw up from the smell of the corpse.

Petty Officer Jamison Tyler. Killed by his head nearly getting his head decapitated from his body.

"Two seconds in and they already know that it was his head that committed the murder," Allison said. "That must have been one suicidal head."

"Stop fooling around, and just write her up for redundancy and bad sentence structure."

Ducky and Palmer arrived and pushed through the crowd. Ducky asked his usual 'what do we have here?', but rather than giving a run down on the facts that were known about the corpse, Gibbs introduced the Sue to Ducky. He said she looked familiar, but she replied she had one of those faces. The Sue seemed to be incapable of making an off-hand comment, because Ziva again thought that the woman was lying.

Ducky estimated the petty officer had been killed 48 hours earlier. The first to find the body was an eleven-year-old girl, who had hid under the kitchen sink for two days because she was so scared, and was now being questioned by Ziva.

"Where are the girl's parents?" Allison asked. "If the kid is so scared, why are they making her go to the crime scene again to make a witness statement?"

Tasmin shrugged. "Not all parents take good care of their kids. Note that it was a neighbour who found the girl, not a parent."

"Then why isn't that neighbour now holding a comforting arm around the kid's shoulders? If they cared enough about the child to help look for her..."

"Who says they helped look? Maybe she just wanted to grab the bleach from under the kitchen sink and that's how she found the girl."

"If they are that uncaring about kids in their community, then I'm surprised they even reported the corpse. They probably wouldn't want any government involvement in their lives. Just cover the body with some sand and hope it goes away on its own."

Tasmin thought about it. "Make it a tentative charge for bad characterisation of minor characters. We can't be sure unless these parents actually show up in the story, but, you're right, they do sound a bit inconsistent."

"Huh. So the little girl saw her father get murdered. This is going to be a bitch" Melanie continued to watch the little girl.

"How'd she come to that conclusion?" Allison asked. "There is not enough information here to come to any such conclusion. Actually, it's the combination of the statements 'kitchen sink' and 'her father' that put four walls and a roof around this crime scene. Before that, I thought we were in some woods behind someone's house."

McGee stepped away from the girl to tell the others her name was Ava and that the petty officer was her father.

"The Sue's got foresight," Allison said. "Or hasn't learned about the never take anything for granted rule yet."

Gibbs decided it was best to take the kid with them to NCIS.

"No, best would be to find the child a guardian -- where's her mother, by the way? And to talk to her, the child, in an environment she feels comfortable talking. Interrogation room, probably not one of those places." Tasmin watched the Sue and Tony walk over to the girl and introduce themselves. The crime scene had gotten walls, but also a large living-room window. "An interrogation room is where you talk to people if you don't want them to feel comfortable."

-oOo-

Rather than go to an interrogation room, Tony and the Sue took the girl to Tony's desk and let her sit in his chair. They crouched in front of her and tried to get her to say something.

Tasmin and Allison had taken a portal back to the bullpen and were hiding behind the partitions again. The mini sat between them. It had finished its coffee pod and begged Tasmin for another one. Which it had received. It was licking that contently.

"Doesn't the NCIS have specialists for interviewing traumatised kids?" Allison asked.

"I don't know. I'm not sure if they deal with a lot of kids considering the crimes they investigate. It would make sense, though, if someone suggested they needed a specialist. Now, we've got to contend with a Sue that gets the girl to talk by telling her about witnessing a bad thing herself as a kid."

When I was a little older that you. I saw something horrible happen to someone I loved. And I didn't get over it anytime soon.

The girl reached over and gave the Sue a hug.

"That's a horrible thing to do," Tasmin said. "That girl only two days ago witnessed a very traumatic event, and rather than help the kid get through this, the Sue makes this all about herself. I've seen many Sues make everything about them, but this one has got to take the cake. She's even playing 'my trauma trumps your trauma' against a kid."

Allison saw how her partner tensed up. "Would it help your trauma if you ate some chocolate?"

Tasmin's only reply was to hold out a hand, which Allison took to mean that she should dig through the duffel bag and find some chocolate. The mini also held out his hand.

"You've still got some."

The mini quickly swallowed the coffee pod and held out its hand again. Allison rolled her eyes.

The Sue told the girl that she had to tell them what she had seen, so that they could catch the person.

Tasmin chomped on the bar of chocolate. "This," she said with her mouth full, "could have been spun out into a very long scene where the Sue tries to wins the trust of the girl enough for her to talk."

"The benefit of winning trust in a single paragraph is that it makes the story considerably shorter, which means we have to spend less time sitting through it."

"The benefit of making it a long scene is that it could have lead to goodfic, which would mean we don't have to go into it at all." Tasmin bit another piece of chocolate off. "You want some?" She offered the bar to her partner.

"Thanks, I'm good."

The girl said she couldn't tell them who it was, as the woman had said she would kill her.

"This woman should have killed the little girl already, as a precaution to keep her promise," Allison said.

"Perhaps this killer doesn't feel comfortable killing little girls."

Nodding, Ava looked away. "Darl. I promise you. I'll look after you. I won't let anything happen to you"

"What?" Tasmin looked up at the Words. "Who's the girl talking to? Does she have an imaginary friend?"

"Bad paragraphing," Allison said. She pointed out the problem in the Words. "It's the Sue who's supposed to make that promise."

The Sue said she promised. The girl then told her that her mother was the killer, and that she had left her now.

"Well, that sorts out the question of where her mother is," Allison said.

Tasmin turned to look at her. "Actually, it doesn't."

"It sorts out the matter of why her mother wasn't at the crime scene," Allison corrected.

"Make a note that no one in the team had asked where the kid's mother was. Oh, and that the girl was hiding in the kitchen cabinet because she was scared of a 'bad man'."

"Could be that the mother and another man are involved."

"Then why isn't the girl laying the blame on that man and protecting her mother? Kids have amazing loyalty to their parents. If there was a way to keep her promise to her mother, and answer the question about who needed to be caught, she'd use that. Come to think of it, she's eleven, she's old enough to ask some questions, like, what's going to happen to the person if you catch them? She'd ask them. She'd want to make sure her mom would be all right."

"There you go again, making suggestions to make this scene long and realistic. How long have you been an agent? You should know better."

The scene switched to a conference room. The Sue and the girl sat beside each other, each behind a chicken sandwich and a soda in a paper cup. The girl asked the Sue to tell her what had happened.

"Excuse me?" Tasmin said. "This eleven-year-old victim, witness of how her mother slaughtered her father, is asking the Sue what her tragic event was? Can we please give this kid some self-pity?"

"Perhaps this kid is also victim of neglect," Allison suggested. "She never learned that her feelings are important."

The Sue told the girl her mother had been a cop in Baltimore, and that she had arrested the wrong person. She had never known her father, so was taken into foster care. Tony stood by the door and listened in. He was moved by the Sue's story. He decided to knock and tell her that Gibbs wanted to talk to her. On the way to the bullpen -- Ziva stayed behind with the girl -- he stopped her and said to her:

"Melanie...I heard you talking to Ava. About your mom in Baltimore. She was a police officer" He stated.
Melanie looked down "Yeah well people die all the time" She mumbled.

"I worked with your mom. For a few days. I was new. She was a good person..." Tony stated.

"How does he know he met her mum?" Allison asked. "All he knows, she's from Australia. Shouldn't he put two and two together and come up with apples and oranges?"

"He's probably lying about knowing her mom. He only worked in Baltimore for a little less than two years before he started at the NCIS. Sue's mom was killed thirteen years ago, which would mean that Tony's been working at NCIS for eleven years now. Seeing as he started in 2001, that would make this 2012. I don't think so."

"Are you saying he's lying or are you hoping he's lying?"

Tasmin looked at the half-ravished bar of chocolate and sighed. "Hoping."

The Sue rushed away from Tony and sat down behind her desk. A moment later Gibbs walked into the bullpen with Tony on his tail. Gibbs stated the obvious about the girl's mother -- that they did not know where she was. The Sue jumped up.

"I may know where she is"

"How?" Tasmin said. "Did you actually let the girl talk a little bit about herself over lunch?"

"It's probably that foresight thing again. This Sue knows things no one else knows, or even can know."

The Sue pulled out her phone. Gibbs asked her who she was going to call.

Another mini was created in the bullpen. This one, named Gobbs, slapped Tony's right calf and ran away. Allison cursed and ran after it. She managed to catch the mini in a flying tackle before he had reached the lift. Holding the mini by the scruff of the neck -- because it was swinging its arms around wildly -- she returned to her partner.

"Now we have two." She put the mini down next to its brother. Then she sat down on the ground.

The Sue made a phone call to agent Callen in Los Angeles. McGee and Gibbs were surprised she knew him. Tasmin was annoyed at something else.

"So we have a case here yeah. And our prime suspect has done a runner. I was wondering, can you check if she's there?"

"Check how? It's not like people have to formally register before entering LA. And all this Sue is giving him to go on is a name of the suspect."

"I'm just curious why the mother's last name isn't the same as the father's." Gobbs smacked Allison in the back of the head. "Don't do that."

"Known aliases? Perhaps they never married." Tasmin suggested. "There is too much information missing in this story, all the time. The team should have gotten a picture of the mom from the house and put out a BOLO, or a KALOF, seeing as she's supposed to be Australian."

"What's a bolo, or a kalof, for that matter? I said, don't do that." Allison slapped the mini in the back of the head in response to his slap.

"They are acronyms. Be on lookout, or keep a look-out for. A law enforcement agency calls out a BOLO when they broadcast information to other law enforcement agencies about a suspect they would like the others to look-out for. Don't slap the minis. It's not their fault they are like this."

Callen said he would let the Sue know if they found anything. Ziva and the girl walked into the bullpen. The girl had received a call from her mother. She knew the girl had talked. Ziva had made no attempt to find out where the mother was, either by talking to her on the phone or confiscating the phone so McGee or Abby could trace the caller. She just sat down behind her desk and looked on in amusement. Gibbs ordered the Sue to take the girl home with her.

"Why aren't they calling in a social worker? Babysitting the kids of victims or suspects isn't part of their job description is it? Like babysitting minis isn't in our job description." Gobbs and Allison glared at each other.

"Nope, it's unprofessional behaviour, and this may actually be considered kidnapping, seeing as the Sue is not the girl's court appointed temporary guardian. Ziva's unprofessional too, not acting just smiling. "

The Sue took the girl home. The PPC agents decided they had no desire to see how the Sue lived, so they stayed put at the NCIS building. They would read the proceedings of the story in the Words. Besides, they had two minis to keep an eye on. Gobbs had stopped smacking Allison, but that was due to the fact that she had found some tie-strips and duct tape in Tasmin's duffel bag and tied the mini up. She'd given Jethrow another coffee pod to keep him quiet. She thought about asking Tasmin why she had even packed these things -- they'd never needed them before -- but decided against it; she probably wasn't going to like the answer.

The girl went to bed and the Sue wondered what she could do: it was only six in the evening.

Usually, she and Callen would go out somewhere for a dinner or out to a club.

"Callen works for NCIS Office of Special Projects. He works undercover a lot. She was his colleague. If they were out dining every night, it must have been because they were working on some sort of case together."

"He's canon?"

"Two episodes of NCIS and a regular in its spin-off."

"I'm never going to get a grip on all these characters."

"Good. It's gripping characters that has gotten you into trouble before."

Allison made a haha face. "Anyway, this Callen, is he likely to have gone clubbing with this Sue for another reason than work?"

Tasmin shrugged. "I don't know him that well. He's fifteen years her senior. So even if he was the kind of guy that would date a co-worker, I doubt he'd have the stamina to maintain the student-life dating style. By the way, this Sue is too young to have the career she claims to have had."

"Don't they all? Perhaps she's like Fran, forever thirty. Or in this case twenty-four."

Before the Sue could get lost in her memories, Callen called with his news. McGee had sent him a photo of the girl's mother and he reported that she was not in LA. The Sue pressed on, asked him if he had looked thoroughly enough.

"Does she know how big LA is? It's not like she asked him to check for a certain someone in the school cafeteria."

"Words say she used to live in Los Angeles for a while -- before going to Australia -- so it stands to reason that she'd have some knowledge on the size of it."

After the phone call, the Sue decided to check on the girl and found she was gone. The window was open and there was a pool of blood in the bed.

"Girl just had her first period, and rather than ask for help she did a runner," Allison suggested.

"Through the window of an apartment? We don't even know what floor this Sue lives on."

"It makes about as much sense as getting kidnapped, without making any sound."

Tasmin pondered it for a moment. "I think it actually makes more sense."

The Sue grabbed her phone and called in Team Gibbs.

-oOo-

Gibbs walked in to the Sue's apartment, assessed the situation and blamed the Sue for the kidnapping.

"Though I'm all for blaming Sues," Allison said. "I'm also for blaming them for things they are at fault for. What exactly is her fault here? Not staying with the girl in the bedroom? There is such a thing as giving a kid a little privacy."

"Guess he's taking his own bad decision -- giving the kid to the Sue -- out on her."

"Is he like that?"

"No, not really."

Tony and McGee were also in the apartment taking pictures of the crime scene. The Sue went to talk to them after Gibbs walked out. Tony tried to make her feel better.

"...But we'll find Ava alive and we'll put her mom away for a long time. I promise" Tony felt this sensation in the pit of his stomach. The feeling he's only had once before.

Tasmin rolled her eyes. "Bedding one canon character wasn't enough for her. She's got to make another one fall for her."

"Perhaps it was something he ate?"

Without as much as a scene break, all of Team Gibbs and the Sue were returned to NCIS. And half a day had passed. The Sue sat at her desk and complained that she would be much better at solving the case. Gibbs walked in and said he knew that -- her incompetence of the previous day already forgotten. He had brought in someone to handle her, her old boss Callen.

The Sue screeched and flew into a hug. This caused some feelings of jealousy in Tony. It apparently also made Abby's hug-o-meter go 'ding', because a moment later, she, too, arrived at the bullpen, for no other reason than to introduce herself to the Sue and give her a hug. She had nothing useful to the case to add, and Tony summarised that their task was easy: to find the girl and her mother.

"They only have 51 states to hide in" Ziva said quietly from her desk.

"Fifty states, she could fail her citizenship test if she doesn't know that," Tasmin said.

"No one else seems to know either; no one corrects her," Allison observed. "Callen even nodded as if he agrees with her."

"I think this goes beyond making the canons look stupid. They're starting to look like they failed elementary school."

McGee reported someone called in two bodies they found. He walked up to Gibbs and whispered something in his ear.

Gibbs looked over at Tony, Ziva and Callen "You three. Come with me. McGee. You stay here and keep Melanie company" And with that. The men and Ziva walked out.

"Emasculating McGee," Allison noted.

"That's it." Tasmin jumped up. "We're going in to charge her." She stormed around the partition and poked the Sue in the ribs.

"What?" The Sue turned around. "Who are you?"

"Special agent Melanie Carlton, 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."

"We? You and what army?"

As if on cue, Allison and the two minis came around the partition. Allison had cut Gobbs from his bonds. The mini took advantage of this situation, walked straight over to the Sue, and slapped her calf.

"Ow. What was that for?"

"Don't ask me," Tasmin replied. "You created him." She took her bag from Allison. "If you two canon characters could stand over there, we have some business to conduct with this 'agent'." She directed McGee and Abby to stand to the side.

"Special agent Melanie Carlton," Allison smiled at the Sue, "I heard we were already introduced, so I will get straight to the charges. We charge you with bad spelling, bad grammar and bad punctuation. Among others, your loose spelling of character names has created two minis."

Gobbs slapped the Sue again.

"Hey, stop that." The Sue tried to kick the mini.

"Gobbs, come over here. You can only hit the Sue when she says something stupid."

Gobbs reluctantly walked back to the agent and stood between her legs, ready to launch another attack on the Sue.

"I suggest to you to stay quiet." Allison smirked at the Sue. "We charge you with giving the suggestion that you are Australian, yet no one questioning your purpose or eligibility for joining NCIS. Also, when it is later revealed that you are likely American, your earlier story is still not questioned. We thus charge you with making the canon characters look stupid."

"What's going on?" Abby whispered to McGee.

"I have no idea. Perhaps Tony has planned this as a joke for the newbie."

"Wouldn't he be here to see how his joke works out?"

"Usually, yes. I guess he didn't plan on two bodies being found."

"Could you be quiet while I charge? It's a little distracting."

"Sorry," Abby said, and pretended to zip her mouth.

"Let's see. We charge you with making the canon characters look stupid on the crime scene. We charge you with not making the least bit of effort to describe the crime scene, thus requiring readers to assume its situated anywhere but here. We charge you with knowing things that have not been disclosed yet, such as why the girl's mother would go to LA.

"About the girl, we charge you with managing to connect to her by telling about your own trauma, thus diminishing the importance of her trauma. We charge you with making the girl betray her mother. We charge you with being so self-centred it stands in the way of a good story. We charge you with no one even suggesting to call child welfare services. We charge you with Gibbs telling you to take the girl home with you, making Gibbs both unprofessional and a possible accessory to kidnapping.

"We charge you with multiple accounts of out of character behaviour from Gibbs, to wit, slapping a woman, repeating himself, blaming someone unfairly and being easily impressed. We charge you with making Ziva unprofessional and more of an office accessory than an agent that can think on her feet. We charge you with emasculating McGee."

"Hey," McGee said. "Hey," he said in a deeper voice.

"We charge you with having both Callen and Tony fall for you, and we charge you with no one correcting Ziva that there are only fifty states. We charge you with being too young for the career you claim to have had. These charges are all subsidiary to the final charge, we charge you with being a Mary Sue. The penalty for these crimes is death. Tasmin will shoot you now."

"Wha--" Before the Sue could finish her exclamation she fell to the floor with a neat hole to the forehead.

"Right." Tasmin returned her Colt M1911 to her duffel bag and pulled out a plastic sheet and a bottle of carpet clear from it. "Perhaps we should start laying out the plastic before we kill the Sue."

"Sure, as soon as we get an assignment in American Psycho." Allison took the sheet and folded it out. "Gobbs, stop smacking the Sue. She's dead."

While the PPC agents cleaned up the Sue and the splatter she had made, McGee and Abby went back to work as if nothing had happened. With the Sue gone, canon reset itself to the situation before her arrival, so as far as they knew, nothing had happened.

"What are we going to do about that girl?" Allison asked as she grabbed the Sue by the legs. "She's not a Sue. It doesn't seem right to kill her."

"We could recruit her for the PPC," Tasmin suggested. She opened up a portal.

"We have to find her first."

"She was last seen entering the Sue's bedroom. If we're quick we can pick her up there."