totally not my fault
Uhm? I don't even have tags for this.
A thousand 1200 words of a crossover between NCIS, which I've never written (ever), and SGA. Although you'll have to take my word on the crossover part, because I seem to be constitutionally unable to wade in from the shallow end.
On the website (one page)
On LJ: One | Two| Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten
"... and that's why I am the master and you are the probie," DiNozzo finished with a flourish, spinning on his heel and turning right into Hollis's wheelhouse. But Gibbs wouldn't appreciate her knocking the cover off of this fastball, so she checked her swing, settling instead for a raised eyebrow as DiNozzo first stopped short and then stepped back as recognition set in.
"Colonel Mann," he said by way of greeting, not-so-surreptitiously looking around for Gibbs. "What brings you to our humble house of detection?"
"There was a break-in at a lab at Fort Meade last night," she answered.
"Isn't that your job?" Gibbs asked, appearing out of nowhere from behind her and moving past without pausing, straight to his desk. "Army CID."
Jethro, like all marines, made 'Army' sound like a totally different four-letter-word without even trying.
"We think they were yours," she continued, unfazed.
"You think," he repeated.
She let the snide tone slide because she understood how shaky her intel was. "They weren't in uniform," she allowed.
Gibbs gave her a sour face. It was only going to get even more sour once she explained further.
"None of this narrows it down to active duty Department of the Navy personnel," he said as he handed back the folder she'd brought. "It just doesn't rule them out."
"Agreed," she replied, ignoring the way DiNozzo, McGee, and David were hanging on every word, as much looking for subtext as trying to parse the text. "But I've got orders to bring you in on this until they are."
"Partners," Gibbs mused, a twinkle in his eye and a tiny look up in the direction of Director Shepard's office. "Takes two to tango."
"Oh, it's good to go," she assured, letting a trace of her own annoyance seep through. She had not appreciated being told that this was a job too big for little old CID, that by extension she in particular wasn't up to the task. "Director Shepard was most generous with sharing her resources."
'Magnanimous in victory' was not a phrase applied to NCIS on any level.
"In that case," Gibbs said. "What else've you got? You didn't come all this way just for this." He gestured with his chin toward the folder in her hand.
She fished the flash drive out of her pocket. "Video camera footage."
After some signal from Gibbs, McGee came forward and accepted the drive, bringing it back to his desk and plugging it in. A moment later, the dark, grainy footage was on the giant plasma screen.
Hollis had watched it a dozen times already, at least. Five men, all of military bearing but dressed completely in black with balaclavas, gloves, and night vision gear appeared at the 00:22:15 mark; four moved purposefully through the lab's main room, carefully looking for something in particular and not as a general ransack, as the fifth kept watch through the window into the hallway. The video had an audio feed, but the men were observing perfect noise discipline, even catching a pencil before it fell to the ground. The first half-dozen times, Hollis had missed the noise the one playing sentry made to warn his teammates that someone was on approach. The men disappeared into the shadows as a flashlight beam cut through the room, and then waited for the all-clear signal before continuing.
"Fast-forward until the ten-minute mark," she told McGee, who complied.
The guards appeared at 11:42:18, opening the door but not making it as far as turning on the lights before a fight broke out. It wasn't a fair fight; the burglars were well-trained in hand-to-hand and the MPs, while far from helpless, weren't able to gain the upper hand. The black-clad men arranged the unconscious MPs on the ground with surprising gentleness, then made one final sweep of the room before moving out of the frame.
The video ended at 19:26:52.
"In and out in under twenty," DiNozzo mused, nodding with reluctant admiration. "Not bad except for them tripping the silent alarm."
"What did trip it?" McGee asked, rewinding the video to play back the part Hollis had told him to speed through.
"Motion detector in a drawer," she answered. "Provost Sergeant told us; you can't tell from the video."
"Some of them might be marines," David said, not taking her eyes off of the screen. The video had started again at the beginning and the fight was already replaying. "But one of them is -- or was -- IDF."
Hollis turned sharply. Espionage was the assumption, but they'd been working on the presumption that the ultimate recipients weren't allies.
"You can tell?" DiNozzo asked, skeptically. "Or are you just claiming the guy who kicked the most ass?"
"He did not kick the most ass," David replied tartly. "But from the ass that he did kick, I can tell that he got trained by the IDF, at least at the beginning."
Which was, more or less, how both the MPs and then CID had pegged the others as marines -- MCMAP was a synthesis of many styles, but it was unique in enough places to identify. Which didn't mean that they were marines, but it strongly indicated it. She thought that Gibbs had probably drawn the same conclusion as well, but Jethro was ever hard to read when he felt like being opaque.
"What kind of 'lab' is this?" David asked, still watching. "There does not seem to be much in the way of equipment."
"Where is this, anyway?" Gibbs asked with false casualness. He hadn't missed that she hadn't said. "Apart from 'Fort Meade.'"
"Near the Meade Shopette," she answered, giving him her best 'don't press me on this now' look. He knew as well as she did that not everything that happened on a military installation was findable on the visitor's map.
"That's not--"
"McGee, can you clean this video up?" Gibbs cut DiNozzo off and Hollis was grateful. "See if we can't get a face somewhere?"
"I can get Abby to run this through a few filters to remove some of the artifacting, see if the facial recognition software can't get a profile out of a lucky angle," he offered dubiously, not willing to say 'no' but clearly not holding any hope.
"Do it," Gibbs ordered. He looked back to Hollis. "Do we know if they got anything?"
Hollis nodded. "At least one box of SD memory cards," she replied, making a gesture with her hand to show how small the box was. Smaller than an Altoids tin. "The lab personnel are still doing inventory, but we're not sure we'll ever find out unless we catch these guys and they confess."
"A covert lab and they are not keeping close watch over their material?" David sniffed. "It is no wonder, then, that they were burgled."
"One of the researchers died recently," Hollis said with a shrug. "His effects are still being accounted for."
"'Died' or 'was killed'?" DiNozzo asked warily.
"Why don't we continue this conversation on the road," Gibbs not-really-suggested, already sure of the answer. "DiNozzo, get McGee."
(not necessarily TBC, btw)
... and, to conclude: Umm?
A thousand 1200 words of a crossover between NCIS, which I've never written (ever), and SGA. Although you'll have to take my word on the crossover part, because I seem to be constitutionally unable to wade in from the shallow end.
On the website (one page)
On LJ: One | Two| Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten
"... and that's why I am the master and you are the probie," DiNozzo finished with a flourish, spinning on his heel and turning right into Hollis's wheelhouse. But Gibbs wouldn't appreciate her knocking the cover off of this fastball, so she checked her swing, settling instead for a raised eyebrow as DiNozzo first stopped short and then stepped back as recognition set in.
"Colonel Mann," he said by way of greeting, not-so-surreptitiously looking around for Gibbs. "What brings you to our humble house of detection?"
"There was a break-in at a lab at Fort Meade last night," she answered.
"Isn't that your job?" Gibbs asked, appearing out of nowhere from behind her and moving past without pausing, straight to his desk. "Army CID."
Jethro, like all marines, made 'Army' sound like a totally different four-letter-word without even trying.
"We think they were yours," she continued, unfazed.
"You think," he repeated.
She let the snide tone slide because she understood how shaky her intel was. "They weren't in uniform," she allowed.
Gibbs gave her a sour face. It was only going to get even more sour once she explained further.
"None of this narrows it down to active duty Department of the Navy personnel," he said as he handed back the folder she'd brought. "It just doesn't rule them out."
"Agreed," she replied, ignoring the way DiNozzo, McGee, and David were hanging on every word, as much looking for subtext as trying to parse the text. "But I've got orders to bring you in on this until they are."
"Partners," Gibbs mused, a twinkle in his eye and a tiny look up in the direction of Director Shepard's office. "Takes two to tango."
"Oh, it's good to go," she assured, letting a trace of her own annoyance seep through. She had not appreciated being told that this was a job too big for little old CID, that by extension she in particular wasn't up to the task. "Director Shepard was most generous with sharing her resources."
'Magnanimous in victory' was not a phrase applied to NCIS on any level.
"In that case," Gibbs said. "What else've you got? You didn't come all this way just for this." He gestured with his chin toward the folder in her hand.
She fished the flash drive out of her pocket. "Video camera footage."
After some signal from Gibbs, McGee came forward and accepted the drive, bringing it back to his desk and plugging it in. A moment later, the dark, grainy footage was on the giant plasma screen.
Hollis had watched it a dozen times already, at least. Five men, all of military bearing but dressed completely in black with balaclavas, gloves, and night vision gear appeared at the 00:22:15 mark; four moved purposefully through the lab's main room, carefully looking for something in particular and not as a general ransack, as the fifth kept watch through the window into the hallway. The video had an audio feed, but the men were observing perfect noise discipline, even catching a pencil before it fell to the ground. The first half-dozen times, Hollis had missed the noise the one playing sentry made to warn his teammates that someone was on approach. The men disappeared into the shadows as a flashlight beam cut through the room, and then waited for the all-clear signal before continuing.
"Fast-forward until the ten-minute mark," she told McGee, who complied.
The guards appeared at 11:42:18, opening the door but not making it as far as turning on the lights before a fight broke out. It wasn't a fair fight; the burglars were well-trained in hand-to-hand and the MPs, while far from helpless, weren't able to gain the upper hand. The black-clad men arranged the unconscious MPs on the ground with surprising gentleness, then made one final sweep of the room before moving out of the frame.
The video ended at 19:26:52.
"In and out in under twenty," DiNozzo mused, nodding with reluctant admiration. "Not bad except for them tripping the silent alarm."
"What did trip it?" McGee asked, rewinding the video to play back the part Hollis had told him to speed through.
"Motion detector in a drawer," she answered. "Provost Sergeant told us; you can't tell from the video."
"Some of them might be marines," David said, not taking her eyes off of the screen. The video had started again at the beginning and the fight was already replaying. "But one of them is -- or was -- IDF."
Hollis turned sharply. Espionage was the assumption, but they'd been working on the presumption that the ultimate recipients weren't allies.
"You can tell?" DiNozzo asked, skeptically. "Or are you just claiming the guy who kicked the most ass?"
"He did not kick the most ass," David replied tartly. "But from the ass that he did kick, I can tell that he got trained by the IDF, at least at the beginning."
Which was, more or less, how both the MPs and then CID had pegged the others as marines -- MCMAP was a synthesis of many styles, but it was unique in enough places to identify. Which didn't mean that they were marines, but it strongly indicated it. She thought that Gibbs had probably drawn the same conclusion as well, but Jethro was ever hard to read when he felt like being opaque.
"What kind of 'lab' is this?" David asked, still watching. "There does not seem to be much in the way of equipment."
"Where is this, anyway?" Gibbs asked with false casualness. He hadn't missed that she hadn't said. "Apart from 'Fort Meade.'"
"Near the Meade Shopette," she answered, giving him her best 'don't press me on this now' look. He knew as well as she did that not everything that happened on a military installation was findable on the visitor's map.
"That's not--"
"McGee, can you clean this video up?" Gibbs cut DiNozzo off and Hollis was grateful. "See if we can't get a face somewhere?"
"I can get Abby to run this through a few filters to remove some of the artifacting, see if the facial recognition software can't get a profile out of a lucky angle," he offered dubiously, not willing to say 'no' but clearly not holding any hope.
"Do it," Gibbs ordered. He looked back to Hollis. "Do we know if they got anything?"
Hollis nodded. "At least one box of SD memory cards," she replied, making a gesture with her hand to show how small the box was. Smaller than an Altoids tin. "The lab personnel are still doing inventory, but we're not sure we'll ever find out unless we catch these guys and they confess."
"A covert lab and they are not keeping close watch over their material?" David sniffed. "It is no wonder, then, that they were burgled."
"One of the researchers died recently," Hollis said with a shrug. "His effects are still being accounted for."
"'Died' or 'was killed'?" DiNozzo asked warily.
"Why don't we continue this conversation on the road," Gibbs not-really-suggested, already sure of the answer. "DiNozzo, get McGee."
(not necessarily TBC, btw)
... and, to conclude: Umm?