Tortuous - Crazy Cat Tale Version

Tony headed down to the bullpen after leaving Jenny’s office in a frustrated huff. That woman drove him up a wall. She let her personal feelings get in the way too frequently.

Everyone could tell that she wanted Jethro as her own and that she wasn’t going to let some pesky bond between Gibbs and Tony stop her from claiming him. He hated leaving Jethro with her, but Gibbs did know how to handle her. The bullpen was empty as he walked through and he hoped that meant that McGee was down with Abby trying to figure out that prophecy.

Taking the stairs to give himself a couple of extra minutes to compose himself, Tony took a couple of deep breaths. While he trusted Abby and McGee for the most part. He really didn’t want them asking questions about what had happened in Jenny’s office.

He knew he would have to give a brief overview to the team, but hopefully that would be it. They really needed to figure out that prophecy. Tony couldn’t help wondering if the reason they couldn’t figure it out was because there were other prophecies floating around that they needed to understand this one.

Tony finally calmed down enough to walk into Abby’s lab. “Have we figured out anything new, guys?”

Ducky, Abby, and McGee exchanged glances. “Not really. Is the director pissed?”

Tony shrugged, “Probably. Gibbs is handling it. We have a couple of new cases that we need to work in addition to the prophecy.”

Tony handed out the new case files and Abby and McGee exchanged looks. “What about Ziva?”

“I’m not sure where Ziva is. She vanished.”

“Will we be getting a replacement team member?”

“I don’t know. That’s up to the director and Gibbs. Focus on the cases and the prophecy, for now.”

McGee glanced through the case file with a confused expression on his face. “Why are we working these cases, Tony? They don’t seem like MCRT cases and aren’t cold cases.”

Tony shrugged. “Director gave them to us. Maybe there’s something big coming and we need to clear the decks.”

Gibbs joined them a few minutes later. “What do we have?”

“Nothing, yet, Gibbs.” Tony reported, “I just finished explaining everything to the team.”

Gibbs nodded, before ordering, “Abby, you keep on the prophecy. McGee, Tony, upstairs. We’ll sort out the new cases.”

“Yes, Gibbs.” Tony and McGee parroted.

As McGee packed up his laptop, Tony turned to Abby. “Abby check for any more prophecies. I’m wondering if there are more that relate to this prophecy that would help clarify it. I might need to take a trip to where this one originated to find more at some point.”

Abby nodded, already typing away steadily on her keyboard as she tried to figure out what the prophecy meant. Gibbs had already headed for the elevator, so Tony and McGee took the stairs to meet him in the bullpen. Tony would love to leave now for the Cat Dimension to see if there were more pieces of the prophecy there, but he knew they had to figure out the cases first.

“Calm down, Tony.” Gibbs sent down the bond as he could feel Tony vibrating to leave and try to find more prophecies.

Tony shot Gibbs a look, but said nothing. Opening up the first case file, Tony started going through it to try and figure out what they had. McGee should be working on the second case file and hopefully Jenny had given Gibbs some more information on both of them, so that they weren’t going into this completely blind.

Tony paused as a name stuck in his head from the first case file. He flipped over to the second case file to see if the same name appeared there too. Tony shuddered.

Why was this coming up now? It wasn’t bad enough that Senior had ruined his childhood? Now, he had to be bringing cases directly to the attention of Director Shepard with a demand that his son work on them.

There was no proof that he’d asked for the MCRT to work on the case, but that was the only reason for the MCRT to be handed these cases. They really weren’t major crimes. Tony knew this couldn't spell anything good.

He didn’t want to fill McGee in just, yet, but he couldn’t help reaching out to Gibbs through their bond to let him know that the key witness in both cases was his adopted father.

“Is that going to be a problem?” Gibbs sent back.

“Not for me, but anything Senior is involved in always end up more tortuous than it should be, so be prepared for that.” Tony sent back.

Gibbs nodded and sent a wordless expression of love down the bond. He could feel the bond getting deeper the more they used it. He loved the idea of having a permanent connection to Tony that couldn’t be broken.

However, they still had 2 cases to solve. “McGee, get DiNozzo Senior in here. Let’s get the full information on both cases directly from him. Once that’s done, start looking into any connections Senior may have that could relate to either case.”

McGee nodded and picked up the phone to ask Senior to come in to NCIS for an interview. While he waited to be connected to DiNozzo Senior, McGee started typing in some searches to gather information for the next task Gibbs gave him. He wondered what the relationship between Tony and Senior actually was.

Tony meanwhile was picking apart the other pieces of the first case. Something was off with this case, but he didn’t know what, yet. He just knew that there was something that felt off and he was determined to figure it out before Senior arrived to confuse everything.

The first case covered a missing amulet, which really shouldn’t have been an NCIS case at all, except there was a substantial amount of evidence indicating that a Navy sailor had perpetrated the thievery. Tony couldn’t help wondering if Senior was trying to frame someone just to get his attention and if so, why he wanted Tony’s attention. Still if the sailor had been framed, Tony would make damn certain to prove his innocence.