The New Girl In Town
"I've brought Ava Tyler to the Nursery," Tasmin said to her partner upon her return to their Response Centre. "It's gonna be a long time before she's gonna have anything resembling a personality. She didn't even know how to answer the question of what her favourite food was. She looked at me for the answer."
"Poor kid. Having to list freshly hunted raw meat as a favourite dish." Allison shook her head.
Tasmin glared at her. "Anything interesting happen here while I was away?"
"Agent Rose/Ross came to pick up the minis."
"You think that's wise, giving them to her? She's a bit..."
"They were the first to ask for the minis. Though, it's possible they only came in to ask for directions."
"It's the dual personality that bothers me."
"It'll be fine. Perhaps Gobbs will knock some sense into them." Allison chuckled.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
"I swear that thing hates laughter." Allison shivered.
Tasmin walked over to the console and accepted the mission. "It's a short one. A series of one shots about a Sue."
"Kind of like our missions." Allison grabbed pad and pen, conveniently placed on the side table, and jumped through the portal after her partner.
-oOo-
The portal brought the agents to the office floor which was partitioned into sections, creating an aptly named bullpen for the canons. McGee, Ziva and Tony were at their desks and Abby was just hanging out with them. They were waiting for Gibbs to return.
He was in the director's at the present time
"While you try to get that image out of your head, I'll try to catch that mini," Allison said. She sprinted across the office floor to pick up a little man that looked like McGee.
"Top o' the mornin' to ya," Magee said.
"You're not a leprechaun," Allison replied. "Snap out of it."
"He wouldn't be far off," Tasmin said. "Leprechaun comes from the Old Irish luchorpan, which means small body."
"None of the other minis we have caught spoke with an Irish accent. McGee doesn't speak with an Irish accent. Why would his mini?"
Tasmin shrugged. In the distance they heard the sound of a lift announcing its arrival. The PPC agents and their newest companion quickly hid behind the partitions.
A woman wearing a black jacket, a red top and jeans entered the bullpen. She carried an ID tag that said "Hailie Johnson, CIA" - rather than "visitor". She had beads in her hair and a pair of sunglasses shielded her eyes from the brightly lit office.
"I'm looking for Special Agent Gibbs." she called, her Cockney accent stark and loud in the silence.
"That better be a fake accent," Tasmin said. "The CIA doesn't employ foreign nationals."
"I hate it when they put on a fake accent," Allison muttered. "And if they must, could they be a little original and talk like a Scouser or a Brummie?"
"Just be glad she made no attempt at Cockney rhyming slang."
"At least that might have been amusing."
"In any case, write her up for posing as a CIA agent. The CIA has an informal dress code of business casual. Jeans and beads in the hair are not part of that. That's street wear."
"Guess we have another rule-breaker!Sue on our hands. A Grrl. She makes me want to go 'grr'."
Abby said Gibbs was upstairs and the Sue showed herself the way. An hour and a scene break later, Gibbs, Shepard and the Sue came down the stairs. None of them were in a good mood. Shepard introduced the Sue to the team and then quickly made her exit. Gibbs pointed the Sue to a desk.
"She's an ex-spy, DiNozzo." Gibbs called, passing a file to Magee. Hailie's picture was on the front cover.
"Her boss thinks I can get rid of her trigger-happy, screw-authority attitude." he continued, until Hailie interrupted.
Tasmin rolled her eyes. "If the CIA has a problem with the attitude of an employee they give them an ultimatum to sort themselves out, or they fire them. They do not off-load them to other federal agencies."
"Not to mention that NCIS decides who works for NCIS, not CIA."
"Exactly. Write her up."
"Way ahead of you."
The Sue defended herself and stated that she had fired blanks.
"Blanks," Tasmin huffed. "Unless she had two guns, I think that counts as reckless endangerment of herself and anyone she might have been working with at the time."
"Guess the CIA wanted to be rid of her for incompetence as much as anything else."
"That might explain why the CIA sent her to NCIS; the CIA hates them. The Sue's here on a secret sabotage mission."
"Careful there, you might discover logic to this plot after all."
Team Gibbs was given the case of a dead petty officer - found wearing only a thong and a tattoo - and left for the crime scene. On their way out the Sue and Tony made a bet on whether the victim was gay. Ziva was not amused.
"Great. Now we've got two of them."
The PPC agents weren't amused by the Tony-clone either.
"If they wanted a female Tony, wouldn't it have been easier to just write a gender-bender story?" Allison asked.
"Yes, but that would not have the added bonus of having two Tonies."
A chapter break made the scene turn dark for a moment. When light returned, two months had passed and another scene started.
McGee and the Sue were the only ones at the bullpen. He was trying to hack into the FBI's computer - for some undisclosed reason - and she was working on a prank directed at Tony. McGee caused her to spill her drink and then asked for her help. Rather than helping him with his work, she turned off his screen and sat on his desk. She wanted to know what Tony had been saying about her. She pointed out that Tony always stopped talking when she entered a room and never looked her in the eye.
"That's probably because he's afraid he'll turn to stone if he looks directly at her."
"Tony doesn't make eye contact with women, period."
"Men that don't make eye contact with women don't date much," Allison pointed out. "Lack of eye contact tends to make women uncomfortable, or at least disinterested."
The Sue called Tony a "showpony", and McGee assessed that she liked him. He told her Tony liked her. To prove it he showed her an e-mail Tony had sent him. In it Tony told him liked the Sue and asked for his advice.
Could you… I don't know. Forget it.
"I'd like to forget Tony sent that e-mail," Tasmin said. She buried her face in her hands.
"Why would he send it at all if he had changed his mind about the purpose of the message before he had finished typing it?"
"Mistook the send button for the cancel button? He's not very computer literate."
"I think the real question should be, is it likely he would have started typing that message at all?"
Tasmin glared at the mini which had started to hum When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. "That's not actually an Irish song." She turned to Allison. "No, I don't think Tony would confide in McGee like that. If he really wanted to know how she felt about him, he'd sooner go through her purse to see if she kept a private diary than that he'd ask McGee to ask some subtle questions."
A tearing sound pulled the attention of the PPC agents back to the bullpen as Gibbs, Tony, Ziva and Abby walked through the lift doors. Tony announced they were going on an undercover assignment. Without further explanation the Sue immediately knew what it was about.
"You seriously want me to pose as his girlfriend? At a whorehouse?"
"Ignoring the most obvious comment," Allison said, "you'd think that with that kind of foresight she'd be an asset to the CIA, regardless of her callous attitude towards rules and co-workers."
"The NSA would have wanted to have her, to predict possible compromises of national security."
The Sue was less than pleased, even though Gibbs, Ziva and Abby - in their own way - tried to reassure her that Tony would be on his best behaviour.
"I'll bet." she whispered, her eyes never leaving his.
"Did she just make eye contact with Tony?" Allison asked. "The man who never makes eye contact?"
"Consistency is never a Sue's strong point. Neither is providing a hole free plot. Would it really have been that much of an effort to relate McGee's computer work to Tony's and the Sue's undercover work, so it would actually look like the team are working on the same case?"
"Let's see, McGee was hacking into the FBI's files, so federal crime, tax evasion. Tony and the Sue are going to a private club of the sort that probably doesn't pay taxes. Thus more tax evasion. I can see a link there." Allison bobbed her head.
"How do you link this private club to the Navy?" Tasmin eyed her partner.
Allison shrugged. "A petty officer's uniform got ruined at the club, and when he asked to be reimbursed he was killed."
The PPC agents would never know how the different tasks were related. Without a further briefing, Tony and the Sue left the building, already adapted to their fake personae.
-oOo-
A chapter break fast-forwarded the story once again. This time the Sue and Tony were returning to NCIS, not from their undercover mission, but from Tony's home where the Sue had stayed over.
Her apartment building had been fumigated for termites, and since Hailie's first choices- meaning, everyone else- had 'plans', she was forced to spend a week with DiNozzo.
"What's wrong with booking into a hotel for a week? Doesn't Washington DC have any hotels?"
"It has loads," Tasmin said. "Temporary visitors to the capital have to stay some place. And believe me, the President does not put up those foreign leaders that come to visit him at the White House. They stay across the street."
"So, the Sue's staying with Tony because she's not a temporary visitor?"
"No, it's because the fanfiction cliché demands that when a person needs temporary housing they impose on their friends or co-workers."
"Tasmin, when my flat ever needs fumigating, I won't impose on you."
Tasmin returned her partner a weary look. "We already share a response centre annex bed- and bathroom at Headquarters. When your place gets fumigated, I don't mind if you stay at mine." She smiled pleasantly at Allison.
Allison furrowed her brow while trying to figure out the offer Tasmin had made.
The Sue and Tony were arguing about an item that had, inexplicably, moved from his bedroom to the kitchen.
"Anthony DiNozzo, I swear… you are the worst roommate I ever had! And I went to Oxford!" she exclaimed
"Don't see what that's got to do with anything," Allison said. "I've been to Oxford too and I ended up with a neat freak for a roommate." She nodded pointedly at her partner.
"You studied at one of the Oxford colleges?"
"No, I went to there for an exhibition and some sight seeing."
Tasmin rolled her eyes.
The Sue gave Tony the slip into the lift, forcing him to take the stairs.
"Why can no one in this fandom muster up the patience to wait for the second lift? Or is that always out of order?"
"I get the impression there is only one elevator."
"That has to be a building code violation. How many floors does this building have?"
Tasmin shrugged.
When Tony arrived in the bullpen the Sue was sitting at his desk, her feet propped up. They continued arguing until Gibbs entered and put an end to it. McGee and Ziva speculated that the Sue and Tony had slept together.
"It sort of seemed... you know... with the arriving together, fighting over nothing..." he said.
"Did McGee spy on them with CCTV? Because the Sue and Tony did not arrive in the bullpen together."
The Sue denied that they had slept together. They had been fighting over a hair brush.
"All this for a hair brush." Allison sighed. "No wonder McGee thought it was a post-coital fight that flared up over the breakfast table."
"At least it wasn't about Tony's selection of jams." Tasmin pulled the remote activator from her duffel bag. "I think we should see the Sue in action."
"I think we've seen her in action plenty." Allison jerked her head in the direction of the bullpen. "I say we find a nice quiet place and charge her."
"First we collect more charges." Tasmin opened a portal.
Allison grabbed Magee by the scruff of the neck. The mini struggled, but let himself be dragged through the portal. Not much he could have done: the agent was nearly four feet taller. Well, he could swear, which he did, liberally: "Let me go, you feckin' wan."
"Get bent."
-oOo-
On the other side of the portal was not a new location. Allison put the mini on his feet and gave him a warning look to be quiet. She glanced around the partition into the bullpen. It was empty, save for the Sue.
"Well, we missed the action. Let's charge the Sue." Allison stepped forward, but Tasmin pulled her back.
"Not yet. First the action. I must have miss-assessed when it was taking place."
The Sue looked around, a little disturbed. She noticed a note on her desk that informed her of the location of the team. She grabbed a file from Gibbs's desk and went to the basement.
"Why would they be meeting in the basement?" Allison asked.
Tasmin shrugged. "Perhaps they have a particularly large piece of evidence they all should look at." She turned towards the Words.
When the Sue arrived Gibbs had already started without her. She dropped herself into a seat next to Tony, who started with an elaborate expose of Gibbs's mood when the Sue had not answered her phone first thing when Gibbs had called. McGee handed her a file and the Sue read up on the petty officer suspected of drug trafficking, illegal arms dealing and mob connections. Apparently, he had been charged with possession of 10 grams of pure cocaine.
"If he had been found guilty of possession while in the Navy," Tasmin said, "then the suspect wouldn't be a petty officer any more. Wrongful possession of a controlled substance less than 30 grams is punishable by dishonourable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for five years. That's the maximum punishment, though; it's possible that the court martial reduced his grade rather than discharged him. I doubt that his grade would be reduced to petty officer, as that is bad for moral among those who earned their grade. The other option is that he worked his way back up to the rank of petty officer."
"And the third option is that the Sue doesn't know the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as you do. Shall I make a note of that?"
"Sure, and also make a note of the fact that all cases the Sue investigates - that mention their naval connection - involve a petty officer, either as victim or as perpetrator."
"Lack of variation is not a charge." Allison demonstratively stuck her pen behind her ear. "People'd accuse us of only going after Sues."
Tasmin harrumphed and turned her attention back to the Words.
Hailie was doggedly ignoring Tony's attempts at conversation. He eventually grew bored with whispering taunts at her deaf ears, and resumed kicking Magee's chair. Abby and Gibbs had managed to ignore the proceedings, until one of Tony's kicks made Magee accidentally knock Abby's computer switch, making all the screens go black.
Abby was upset; Gibbs was furious and sent Tony, McGee and the Sue out of the room like naughty school children. The Sue took the opportunity of idle time to call her boyfriend. She giggled and blushed and made envy rise in Tony.
"Did it say anywhere that this was a high school AU?" Allison asked. "I'm only asking because every one's behaviour matches high school tropes. A high school AU might explain that."
"It doesn't work that way." Tasmin opened another portal. "This will take us to the action."
-oOo-
The portal brought the agents and mini to the unkempt backyard of a suburban house. Tasmin pulled everyone down behind a shrub.
Tony and Ziva approached the house from the front, the Sue and McGee took the back, and Gibbs covered all other exits. Tony knocked on the door and announced NCIS. When there was no reply he kicked down the door and was met by four men with automatic rifles.
The men were happy to see NCIS, but when a gun was fired in their backyard they all turned their heads and let Tony and Ziva escape from the house.
"Idiots," Tasmin muttered. "People who are easily distracted by noises should not be allowed a weapons permit."
"What makes you think they have a weapons permit?"
The sound of a body dropping to the floor and the sight of that body in the middle of the living room floor made Tony decide to go back inside.
"Idiot," Tasmin muttered again. "Where are the rifle-toting men? Surely, they didn't all run into the backyard, where a gun was fired?"
"Well, you did say they were idiots."
Tasmin grumbled.
On the floor was the unconscious petty officer. Tony tried to wake him by shaking him, and when that didn't work he and Ziva carried the man outside, where they put him on a pile with three of the rifle-toting men who had been apprehended by his co-workers.
"I have no words for this," Tasmin said.
"'Idiots' is probably as appropriate as any."
One of the rifle men had gotten away, and the Sue had run after him.
Suddenly, a gunshot split the quiet, followed by a blood-curdling scream.
Tony, followed by Ziva, ran off to investigate that scream. He heard a cry coming from a shed. He threw open the door and saw the Sue exit the back way. She turned around.
"Tony get out! There's a bomb!"
"When you said action, you sure meant action. I think we have everything. NCIS agent held at close range, bad guys apprehended, bad guy getting away, a bomb in a shed."
"Hailie!" he shouted, turning to dive for cover. She was already a good six feet away, but Tony barely had time to call her name before the shed exploded, sending shrapnel and debris everywhere.
"Though I could have done without it actually going off." Allison got up from her crouched position. "Now what?" She watched McGee and Gibbs run from the backyard.
"First we take care of these guys," Tasmin said. "They're dead wood anyway." She kicked one of the bodies and it turned into a tree trunk.
"Neat trick." Allison poked the other bodies lightly and they too turned into trees.
Tasmin pulled a box of matches from her duffel bag and set fire to the pyre.
"That takes care of the bit characters without lines," she said. "Now, let's go take care of that Sue."
-oOo-
The PPC agents stepped through the portal into a hospital. Tasmin had set their disguises so they could pass for nursing staff. Even the mini was wearing scrubs. Tasmin led the way to the room where Tony lay in a hospital bed.
Tony was floating in and out of consciousness. Ducky and the Sue were talking to each other. Ducky had noticed the way the Sue looked at Tony and suggested she should tell him.
"Do we go in now?" Allison asked.
"I think we better wait until Ducky has left."
"I have been dating Mark, you know. I can't just dump him."
"No, staying with him while you'd rather be with someone else, that's fair to the guy."
Ducky said she should think about it and, after adding some kind words for Tony, left.
Allison wanted to step into the room, but Tasmin blocked her path. Allison looked up at her partner. "Still more charges?" her look said. Tasmin nodded. Allison rolled her eyes and sighed. "There's never going to be an end to this mission if you keep taking us to new, chargeable offences," she muttered. "At some point you've got to say: 'enough is enough'."
Tasmin slapped Allison in the back of the head. "Enough."
The Sue held on to Tony's hand and told him how sorry she felt about what had happened to him. She started to sob. Tony managed to lightly squeeze her hand. The Sue jumped up to get him a nurse.
Which turned out to be Allison because she was standing just outside the door. "Doesn't he have a call button beside his bed?" Allison asked.
"I thought that was for emergencies only," the Sue replied. "And I saw you standing outside; I thought it would be quicker. He just woke up, he needs some water."
"Don't you suppose it would be quicker if you got it yourself?"
The Sue burst out crying again and rushed away.
"I don't think I handled that very well."
Tasmin returned her a blank look.
A scene break put the Sue right back in Tony's room. In fact, it put her in bed with him. Tony woke up and tried to pull her closer. This woke up the Sue. After she was done crying over how happy she was Tony asked her what had happened to the petty officer.
The four we caught- the three thugs and the Petty Officer- each got 15 years for drug offences.
"No." Tasmin threw open the door and stormed into the room. "Tony's been in a coma for only a few days. The American legal system does not work so quickly that it can charge, try and convict a person in four days flat."
The Sue and Tony stared at her.
"That's a charge," Tasmin said.
"A what?"
"A charge. Hailie Johnson, 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. And your first charge is suggesting the War on Drugs has gotten so far out of hand the USA has to resort to show trials. Allison has more charges for you." Tasmin jerked her thumb at her partner.
"What are you talking about?" The Sue pushed herself up. "You can't charge me; you're nurses."
"Ow, injured man." Tony winced. "Still in pain, ow."
"They're disguises," Allison said. "As an ex-spy familiar with undercover work you should know such a thing." Allison flipped open her notepad. "We charge you with the CIA dumping you on NCIS because you are a dangerous colleague and disregard the rules. CIA doesn't determine who NCIS hires. And Gibbs and Shepard would have never accepted if the CIA had tried. Not that NCIS proved to be very professional themselves. We charge you with not getting a visitor's pass when you first visited NCIS."
"Where'd you get all these 'charges'?"
"We've been following you around for a bit. We charge you with showing your cavalier attitude towards rules by speaking with a Cockney accent and wearing beads in your barnet."
"What?"
"Beads in your hair. If you're speaking Cockney, you might as well go all the way: Barnet fair, hair."
The Sue shook her head. "I'm not wearing beads any more."
"Yeah, you've grown up a bit. Speaking of growing up. We charge you with making Tony and McGee act like naughty school children, and consequently getting kicked out of a meeting by Gibbs, as if they were naughty school children. We charge you with making Tony act out of character and send an e-mail to McGee in which he confesses he likes you. We charge you with saying Tony never makes eye-contact with you and then making prolonged eye-contact with him only moments later. We charge you with making Tony fall in love with you and changing his ways and character. He wouldn't ask McGee for information about you; he'd go through your purse and computer himself."
"That's enough." The Sue jumped up, but before her feet hit the ground Tasmin already had her Colt M1911 trained on her.
"Sit back down."
"Make me."
Magee decided it was his turn to add to the debate. He kicked the Sue in the shins.
"Ow. What's that?" The Sue grabbed her leg and glared at the mini.
"Your own fault," Allison said. "Literally. You created him. Every time you misspell a character's name a mini is created. He's the result of your inability to spell McGee's name right. It's M-C-G-double-E. Not M-A. Though it would have been interesting to see what you would have given him as a writer's pseudonym."
"Got any more?"
"Sure, we you charge with using the fumigation equals room mates cliché; with stupid bad guys that put a bomb in a random suburban shed; with not consulting the Uniform Code of Military Justice before giving someone from the Navy a rap sheet; with just knowing things; with being inconsistent and with plots that lack logic. To wrap it up, we charge you with being a Mary Sue."
"These charges are preposterous."
"You haven't even heard the punishment yet."
"What's that?"
"Death."
Tasmin shot the Sue. Her dead body collapsed on Tony, who winced again; then it slid to the floor.
"Oh, bah, bah." Tony tried to wipe the blood off his sheet. "You know, you're nurses. You're supposed to prevent this sort of thing from happening."
Tasmin dropped her gun into her duffel bag and pulled a small box from it. She opened the box, donned the pair of sunglasses that was inside and took the neuralyzer from it. "Look into the light."
"Hey, I know what that is."
Tasmin flashed him. "I know you do. You are not in love with a CIA reject turned NCIS agent. And you don't confide in McGee." Tasmin returned neuralyzer and sunglasses to their box and the box to the duffel bag. She opened a portal and grabbed the Sue by the legs. "Grab that mini," she said to her partner. "We're leaving."