Chagrin - Crazy Cat Tale Version

Jenny snarled and tossed the folder of paperwork that she’d been working on, before Gibbs and Tony interrupted her, at the wall. How dare Gibbs imply he was more dangerous than her? Her chagrin knew no bounds as she realized that she hadn’t stopped him and had essentially conceded that he was more dangerous than her.

Still she had an agency to run and a personal vendetta to achieve, Gibbs would not stop her. She would win him over eventually. Jethro would be hers again.

A calm facade settled onto her face, she knew what she had to do now. First, she needed to find Ziva and figured out what happened out there with Gibbs and Tony. Ziva was supposed to be reporting back to her not getting tossed out on her ass by Gibbs.

“Cynthia. Get me Ziva’s personal phone on line 1.”

Cynthia quickly dialed the number indicated for Director Shepard. It rang, but there was no answer. “There’s no answer.”

Jenny growled. “I don’t care how you do it, but get Ziva on the line. In the meantime, get me Eli.”

Cynthia rolled her eyes and dialed the Director of Mossad. What did Jenny expect her to do? Pull Ziva out of a hat? “Eli is on line 1, Director.”

“Thank you, Cynthia.”

“What is the meaning of this, Jenny?”

“That’s what I want to know, Eli. Where is your daughter?”

“That’s what I want to know. You’re meant to be watching over her and now I can’t reach her at all.”

Worry flashed through Jenny’s mind. Eli and Ziva were supposed to be giving her information on her father’s murderer in exchange for Ziva being on Gibbs’ team. If she couldn’t reach Ziva and Eli couldn’t reach Ziva something was really wrong.

It was time to start calling in favors before Mossad turned on her and made things even worse for her. Her first phone call was to Trent Kort with the CIA. Trent had his fingers in many pies and if anyone could figure out what had happened to Ziva it would be him.

Jenny hated engaging Trent’s services because the price he demanded was always exceedingly personal and steep in her opinion. This time was no different. Trent wanted her to call off the Frog op in exchange for his help finding Ziva.

The ask burned deep within her. The frog op was the op most important to her personally. She didn’t want to give it up and Kort knew that.

Jenny wondered what he really wanted. When she declined to cancel the op, Kort pretended like he was giving in, but she knew that whatever came out of his mouth this time is what he really wanted. When he demanded that DiNozzo be the one to seduce Jeanne, Jenny’s eyes lit up.

That would work perfectly for her as well. It would give her a reason to separate Jethro and Tony, so that she could work on wooing Jethro away from Tony. She never even stopped to consider why Kort wanted Tony to be the one to go undercover to seduce Jeanne and agreed on the spot.

Kort smiled darkly as he finished coming to an agreement with Shepard as to what exactly Kort would do in exchange for her getting DiNozzo to do the undercover Benoit op. Unlike Jenny, Kort was well aware of the prophecy surrounding DiNozzo and his Cat King status. In fact, he knew the prophecy was underway.

Everyone with a touch of magic sensitivity had felt the power when Leo the Lion had appeared and Ziva had been teleported away. Kort didn’t know exactly where Ziva was now, but the surge of magic that it had taken had undoubtedly fried her cellphone, so she wouldn’t be able to contact anyone. Fortunately, Kort had his own allies in some of the other dimensions.

He wasn’t worried about locating Ziva. No, he was worried about the prophecy coming true. Actually, he wasn’t sure if the prophecy coming true would be worse than what would happen if it didn’t come true.

However, the Cat Dimension had not treated him well and he had no desire to see them become allies of the Human Dimension. Tony still had to gather his allies and Kort hoped that getting him on the seduction op would prevent him from interpreting the prophecy and finding all of his allies. If he could do that, it would at least stall the conclusion of the prophecy.

He’d wanted to prevent DiNozzo from cementing his bond with Gibbs, but that ship had already sailed. Ziva would be hearing from the leaders about her failure in that regard. The whole point of sticking her on Tony and Gibbs’ team was to prevent them from bonding.

That hadn’t happened and now not only would Ziva pay, but Kort would have to try and pick up the pieces and do his best to salvage the plan that the leaders had. The leaders had tried to bring Jenny in on the plan, but that had failed. She was too desperate for revenge and they had deemed her too unstable to be a lynchpin in the plan.

Kort just hoped that she would come through with DiNozzo. He had some other backup plans, but he really didn’t want to have to tip his hand that much. Putting DiNozzo in touch with Benoit would be the simplest and least revealing plan.

Kort had no desire to be hung out to dry by the leaders and he knew if he messed up that he would be. He didn’t know for sure who all the leaders were, but he knew enough to know that not all of them were human. He would have to make sure that Jenny Shepard couldn’t mess things up for him.

Jenny meanwhile had turned back to trying to figure out how to salvage the frog op. For that matter, she needed to figure out how to convince DiNozzo to seduce Benoit. Preferably, without attracting Gibbs attention as that would only lead to more trouble.